Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  The Boers obtained copies of this speech and reproduced it for distribution to the commandos, proof that even the British themselves were sickened by Kitchener’s policies.

  Milner in a dispatch defended the policy and clearly stated the position of the British military:

  The fight is now mainly over supplies. The Boers live entirely on the country through which they pass, not only taking all the food they can lay hands upon on the farms—grain, forage, horses, cattle, etc., but looting the small village stores for clothing, boots, coffee, sugar, etc., of all which they are in need. Our forces, on their side, are compelled to denude the country of everything moveable, in order to frustrate these tactics of the enemy.... Indeed, the loss of crops and stock is a far more serious matter than the destruction of farm buildings, of which so much has been heard.12

  In South Africa there was (and still is) something almost sacred about a farm. A farm was more than the means for making a living, more than just a home. This feeling was well expressed by Victor Sampson, himself a loyal British Cape colonist: “Personally, the burning of a town house would lie no heavier on my conscience than shooting a cock pheasant, but to burn a farm or a haystack is, according to my ethics, utterly heartless and damnable.”13

  For precedent the British pointed to Sherman’s farm- and- crop-burning operations in the Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War and the destruction wrought by the Germans in France in 1870. But it was, as Conan Doyle said, a policy “which warfare may justify but which civilization must deplore.”14

  Burning farms, depriving the commandos of food and supplies, was only half of Kitchener’s strategy; the other half was to catch the slippery burghers on the veld, and this he found an exasperating task. In his dispatch of 8 July 1901 he explained his problem:

  Divided up into small parties of three to four hundred men, they are scattered all over the country without plans and without hope, and on the approach of our troops they disperse, to reassemble in the same neighborhood when our men pass on. In this way they continue an obstinate resistance without retaining anything, or defending the smallest portion of this vast country.15

  In effect, the Boers fought where and when they wished, retaining the initiative. Although many uitlanders had returned to the Transvaal, the mines could be worked and fields ploughed only as long as there were British bayonets to protect the workers and farmers, mines and crops. The extent of British rule was still measured by the range of their guns.

  There was a highly protected zone around Johannesburg, roughly a rectangle 120 miles long and 60 miles wide, within which the mines were working, producing by December 1901 some 53,000 ounces of gold per month. Even so, there were sometimes attacks on them, and these particularly incensed Milner, who saw “no reason or justification” for such raids. The destruction of mining equipment was, he said, “pure vandalism, and outside the scope of civilised warfare.” It took a Milner to make the fine distinction between the destruction of farms and the destruction of mines.

  It was impossible for Kitchener to be equally strong everywhere. There was too much land and too much property to be defended. To eliminate the menace of the maurading commandos he had to go into the countryside and first find and then kill or capture the burghers in arms. To this end his columns combed the veld.

  The columns marching to and fro across the Transvaal and the Orange Free State seldom obtained results commensurate with the effort expended. Perhaps the column commanded by Lord Rawlinson was as successful as any. It was composed of two battalions of mounted infantry and, for part of the time, the Imperial Light Horse. It was therefore more mobile than those containing infantry. Between 1 April 1901 and 10 June 1902 it marched 5,211 miles and halted in 276 camps. The column killed 64 Boers, wounded 87, and took 1,376 prisoners; 3 guns, 1,082 rifles, and 68,600 rounds of ammunition were captured. The operation cost the lives of 12 British soldiers, and 42 others were wounded.

  Rawlinson did not say how many of his prisoners were noncombatants, but as there were more Boer prisoners than rifles taken it is safe to assume that not all were fighting burghers. He also failed to record the numbers of livestock taken or destroyed, but Smith-Dorrien, leading a larger column, rounded up 5,000 head of cattle and tens of thousands of sheep while picking up only a few sick or wounded Boers. Driving the livestock was a problem, he found, so he decided one day to slaughter 15,000 sheep to get rid of them, but the following day he swept up 23,000 more and 4,000 head of cattle.

  Major General E. Locke Elliot was in charge of a large drive in the Orange Free State in June-July 1901. A month’s hard work costing 3 casualties netted 17 Boers killed or wounded and 61 prisoners. Although he also collected 7,000 horses, 7,000 cattle, 6,000 rounds of ammunition, and 300 vehicles, some wondered whether the game was worth the candle.

  Sometimes individual enterprise accomplished more than the heavy columns. Three colonial troopers, hearing that a strong patrol was to be sent to Ladybrand, then in republican hands, obtained permission to go there too and buy saddle stuffing for their company. The patrol was cancelled—perhaps because it was feared that the town was too strongly held—but the troopers rode boldly in. Meeting no opposition, they went straight to the landdrost and demanded the surrender of the town. All of the official keys were yielded up to them; they tore down the Free State Vierkleur and raised the Union Jack; they arrested the gaoler and made themselves comfortable in the government offices while they received the rifles they had demanded be turned in to them. A few townsmen became suspicious, and eight armed burghers came to seek an explanation. Their general with 1,000 men was near at hand, the troopers assured them, and General French with 16,000 was not far away. They had been sent ahead, they explained, to accept the town’s surrender in the hope of avoiding bloodshed. Satisfied, the burghers turned in their arms.

  The three spent the night in town, and the next morning, after a hearty breakfast, they commandeered some carts, loaded them with the surrendered weapons—as well as the saddle stuffing they had come for —and drove back to their unit. The following day, when a column rode into Ladybrand, the Union Jack was still flying.

  The most successful of the independent columns, and the only one the Boers really feared, was that led by Lieutenant Colonel George Elliot Benson, an artillery officer who had been twenty years in the army, passed through the staff college, and seen much active service in the Sudan and on the Gold Coast. A square-faced man with a small nose, large eyes, and a bushy moustache, he had been in South Africa almost from the beginning of the war, and it was he who had guided Wauchope’s Highland Brigade at Magersfontein.

  Principally responsible for the success of Benson’s column was its intelligence officer, a remarkable character, Aubrey Woolls-Sampson (1856-1924). Benson had the acumen to use him properly and the ability to make effective use of his advice.

  It was Woolls-Sampson who had advocated the formation of a colonial unit before the war started, a suggestion which had recommended itself to Milner but was rejected with disdain by General Butler. He was born plain Aubrey Sampson in Cape Town, but later added his mother’s family name of Woolls. According to his brother, Victor Sampson, “His whole life had been one long wooing of danger and adventure.”16 When he was twenty-three he fought in the Zulu War and shortly after in the campaign against the Bapedi. He and a companion had the misfortune to be captured in that campaign, and the Bapedi had turned them over to their women, who had used “sharp thorns and thin pointed sticks to have their way with them.” He survived this treatment and recovered too from a severe wound he received in the First Anglo-Boer War. He had been an active plotter on the Johannesburg Reform Committee and after the failure of the Jameson Raid had been, along with the other members, arrested and imprisoned. Although Rhodes paid the fines and the others went free, he and Karri Davies stubbornly refused to petition for their release (part of the conditions imposed) and spent thirteen months in prison until the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee gave the Boers an excuse to free the
m.

  When the war started Woolls-Sampson helped to raise the Imperial Light Horse. He was given command of a squadron and fought at Elandslaagte, where he was severely wounded. As a commander he was too impetuous; he found his true metier when he was made an intelligence officer.

  He had an implacable hatred of the Boers, and it exasperated him that most of the British officers fought them without rancour as honourable foes. “He is a fanatic, a fanatic,” said Cecil Rhodes, adding, “but nothing is ever done in this world except by fanatics.”

  Officers who knew him admired his abilities, although they found him somewhat strange. Colonel Bruce Hamilton spoke of him as “a quick tempered man” and commented on his habit of not messing with the other officers but eating alone or with his scouts and spies. Captain Frederic Shaw said, “He never mixed with us in a social sense.” To General Bindon Blood it was curious that “he never took any pay for himself and wanted to pay all his men himself.” He clung superstitiously to a talisman, a stick he was never without. “Where ever he might go and whatever danger he might encounter,” said his brother, “so long as he had the stick with him he felt safe.” When he died more than twenty years after the war it was buried with him.

  Major Woolls-Sampson’s intelligence-gathering methods depended upon the use of Bantu scouts sent out to locate Boer laagers; then, as Bruce Hamilton described it:

  He would spend hours talking to his boys on their return, encouraging them, cross-questioning them, and checking what they told him. It was dangerous work for the boys, as the Boers killed any they caught and we found their bodies left as warning on the veldt.... He had an extraordinary sense of what the Boers were likely to do, and over and over again, after marching all night, we would find them where he expected.17

  Of 28 such attacks by Benson, 21 were successful. Lax about posting sentinels, the Boers were usually caught unawares. On one night attack Benson nearly captured Louis Botha himself, who was forced to flee so precipitously that he lost all his possessions. Kitchener courteously returned his Bible, hymn book, personal papers, and a hat thought to be (but was not) that of Botha’s son.

  Benson’s was a hard-riding column that suffered more casualties by falls from horses than from Boer bullets. It was made up of 1,400 men, 4 guns, and 2 pompoms, the men being drawn from 14 combat units, and it included Australians and South Africans as well as British regulars—an indication of the way normal units were scrambled during the guerrilla phase of the war.

  Benson’s column became such a terror to the Boers in the central Transvaal that they were afraid to laager in the same place two nights in succession. Anxious to destroy this menace, they at last, on 30 October 1901, had their chance.

  The events leading up to Benson’s destruction began on 7 September when Louis Botha marched out of Blaawkop with 2,000 men to invade Natal. Warned of his movements, Kitchener sent four columns in pursuit. Slowed down by the first spring rains, it was not until 17 September that a force of 285 cavalry and three guns under Lieutenant Colonel Hubert de la P. Gough made contact with Botha’s main force. Gough, unfortunately, did not know it. Assuming he had discovered only an isolated commando, he decided, with that impetuosity which ever characterised British cavalry commanders (much lauded as “the cavalry spirit”) to charge. The result was disastrous. In less than a quarter of an hour half of his officers and 38 of his men were killed or wounded; the rest surrendered.

  Kitchener, ever prone to swatting flies with sledge hammers, reacted to this minor disaster by mobilising 16,000 men and 40 guns into seven columns and sending them after Botha. However, it was not Kitchener’s heavy columns but the determined resistance of the men in two small British forts, Itala and Prospect, on the Transvaal-Zululand border which did more than anything else to discourage Botha’s men.

  The Boers seldom attacked fortified positions and rarely succeeded when they tried. Still, in this instance the forts were small, the Boers had overwhelming numerical superiority, and success seemed sure, but they had not counted on the stubborn spirit of such men as the Durham miner who, when Fort Prospect was called on to surrender, shouted out: “I’m a pitman at home, and I’ve been in deeper holes than this before.”

  On 25/26 September the Boers attacked Itala and Prospect and were thrown back at both places. Of the fight at Fort Itala, Conan Doyle claimed that “there have been battles with 10,000 British troops hotly engaged in which the Boer losses have not been so great as in this obscure conflict against an isolated post.”18 Discouraged by their failures and aware of the heavy columns bearing down on them, Botha and his men turned back. At the sacrifice of most of their wagons the main force eluded the columns and reached the safety of the high veld again.

  Here Botha heard from Commandant H. S. Grobler, 70 miles away at Brakenlaagte (also called Noitgedact, about 40 miles from Middelburg) that his commando had made contact with Benson’s column but that alone he was too weak to do much more than harass it. Hurriedly gathering up 500 men, mostly from the Ermelo and Carolina commandos, Botha set out by forced marches to join him.

  Early on the morning of 30 October Benson started out in the rain with his column for a 35-mile trek back to the railway to replenish his supplies. In the previous week there had been a number of small engagements, short and indecisive; he knew that the Boers, although still too weak to launch an all-out attack on him, were gathering their strength. They had been exceptionally wary, and he had been unable to catch them off guard with his usual tactics. He had no more than started out that morning before Grobler’s commando darted out to harass his rear and flanks. A difficult drift over a spruit delayed the column for several hours. A cold rain driven by a southerly wind made the work of the rear guard under Major F. Gore Anley of the Essex Regiment increasingly difficult, but the rear guard was skilfully handled, the men dropping back in successive rushes covered by a pompom; there seemed nothing to worry about.

  At midday the situation was altered radically when Louis Botha and his men arrived, tired but eager for battle. Botha had so screened his movements and had ridden so rapidly, taking the last 30 miles at a rush, that Woolls-Sampson and his scouts had had no time to learn of his approach. About one o’clock in the afternoon Major Anley, feeling an increasing pressure on his rear guard, dispatched a warning message to Benson. Fifteen minutes later he sent another, and Benson decided to go back himself, taking with him about 100 men of the Scottish Horse.

  Until he actually arrived on the scene Benson probably did not realize the seriousness of the situation. To hustle and harass a rear guard was a common Boer tactic, but it rarely constituted a major threat. He had been busy getting his convoy of wagons over the drift and parked, and putting his infantry into camp at Noitgedact Farm so as to be free to manoeuvre with his mounted troops. Doubtless he was only annoyed by Anley’s messages and thought his rear-guard commander was overreacting to the pressure on him. Only when he rode back to see for himself did he begin to realise his danger. For a number of reasons, a considerable part of his force was scattered over some 2 miles of country in weak detachments. The pompom had jammed and was on its way back to camp with a small escort. The situation was perilous.

  Botha, who had been able to concentrate 800 men in a key position in Benson’s rear, examined the field with satisfaction: the scattered detachments, some in the act of retiring, and the convoy of wagons 2,000 yards beyond offered an attractive opportunity. He ordered a charge.

  Benson, meanwhile, had given orders for his men to retreat to better defensive positions. He personally led the Scottish Horse and 40 men of the Yorkshire Light Infantry in a rapid retirement to a low kopje (subsequently called Gun Hill) where two guns of the 84th Battery and 20 men of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps were in position. Anley, with a company of the North Lancashire Regiment, made for a ridge about 1,000 yards east.

  Benson and the Boers began a race for Gun Hill. The Boers were extended in a long line, making a front of nearly a mile and a half. Goading their tired horses to t
heir best speed, they pounded across the sodden veld, yelling and firing from the saddle. A heavy mist made visibility difficult, but Anley, looking back over his shoulder, caught a glimpse through a rift of a cloud of horsemen streaming over the veld. An Irish trooper looked back too: “There’s miles of ’em, begob!” he exclaimed.

  A portion of the Boer force on the extreme right made for the ridge held by Anley, but the larger part raced for Gun Hill. A company of the Buffs (East Kent Regiment) and, separate from them, a detachment of 30 more Buffs were all that stood in their way. These knots of soldiers proved trifling obstacles. The first was overwhelmed with scarcely a struggle, the young subaltern in charge being shot down at the onset; the second put up a fierce but brief resistance, 19 out of 30 quickly becoming casualties. The Boer horsemen swept on, engulfing a covering section of the Scottish Horse and pressing on the heels of Benson’s men who, on reaching the hill, threw themselves on the ground in defensive positions around the guns. The Boers drew rein in a hollow at the foot of Gun Hill, dismounted, and began an attack at close quarters.

  The two guns of the 84th Battery, posted 20 yards apart, fired only three rounds and then fell silent. Every gunner was shot down. Corporal Atkins, though wounded, tried to reach up and remove the breech block from his gun. As he raised his hands to the block a bullet passed through them. Sergeant Hays, badly wounded and the only survivor of his gun crew, managed to crawl forward and pull the lanyard for a round before he fainted. Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Guinness, the battery commander, fired the last round from the other gun himself and then called for the limbers and teams waiting on the reverse slope of the kopje. They came up at a gallop, but as soon as they appeared on the skyline they were mowed down “like corn under the scythe.” Guinness, too, fell. Most of the officers were killed or wounded. Benson himself was hit in the knee, but he crawled about from point to point in the firing line, encouraging his men and directing their fire.