The bugle sounded the advance. Across the Klip River, under their new imperial flag, rode the six hundred.
It was 20 October – the tenth day of the war – and still hardly a shot had been fired. Yet Milner was not reassured by the stream of code cables sent from Natal to Cape Town. ‘Lulled one ethnology cheatingly’ the cables would begin. Decoded by Ozzy, that became ‘with regard to your message of…’ The latest military news would follow. At 3 a.m. on the 18th, White cabled to say he was pulling Symons back to Ladysmith. At 5 a.m. he changed his mind. He agreed to let Symons stay at Dundee. It was all very disquieting. Milner himself felt sure that Symons would be cut off if he stayed where he was.42
Early that morning Milner went for a ride with Hanbury. At times of greatest strain, he would often ride his horse up to the great Lion of Table Mountain, the crag from which one could see half the Empire. When he returned Ozzy had the cable ready. Its message was clear enough, even without decoding. ‘Lulled one ethnology cheatingly,’ it began as usual, and continued, ‘Bookoath shelling camp.’43
Symons was under attack. The war – Milner’s War – had definitely begun.
PART II
Buller’s Reverse
Redvers Buller has gone away
In charge of a job to Table Bay;
In what direction Redvers goes
Is a matter that only Buller knows….
If he’s right, he’ll pull us through.
If he wrong, he’s better than you.
Black and White Budget, 30 December 1899
SIR PAUL KRUGER
CHAPTER 11
‘Taking Tea with the Boers’
Dundee, North Natal,
20 October 1899
‘I don’t think the Boers will have a chance, although I expect there will be one or two stiff little shows here and there … I think they are awful idiots to fight although we are of course very keen that they should….’
Lieutenant Reggie Kentish, Royal Irish Fusiliers, to his parents, 30 September and 12 October 1899
‘I hope to hear this evening or tomorrow morning that Symons has taken tea with the Boers [at Dundee].’
Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, Governor of Natal, to Sir Alfred Milner, 20 October 1899
Five a.m. on Friday 20 October, and a damp kind of dawn – real Scottish weather, one of the English soldiers said. There was a curtain of mist hanging low on the shoulders of Mount Impati, to the north of the town of Dundee.1 It was from the north that Joubert’s main army were known to be advancing. In the valley below, General Symons’s garrison of four thousand men was already on parade in full battle gear, a sombrely warlike spectacle: the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, the 60th Rifles and the 1st Leicesters,2 arranged in a chequerboard of anonymous khaki; brown paint over buckles and sword hilts and bayonet scabbards, with only the small coloured badges on the khaki helmets to tell the four battalions apart. The officers carried swords, knives, revolvers, field-glasses and whistles. They looked as drab as the men.3
At 5.20 a.m. the men were told to fall out, and one of Symons’s staff came round with the day’s orders: prepare for infantry training. Some officers of the 18th Hussars – the cavalry regiment sent to Dundee along with the four infantry battalions – were strolling across to the mess tent for a cup of tea. A sudden shout: ‘There they are!’ Everyone laughed. For days people had talked of little else but the coming scrap (‘If only the Boers would buck up and do something,’ one had just written home),4 but the idea of a couple of thousand Boers attacking an entire British brigade seemed comic. Anyway, the expected threat was from Impati, and the north. The men were wearing black macintoshes. Perhaps they were the town guard.5
From inside his tent, Lieutenant Maurice Crum, the senior subaltern of the 60th Rifles, heard the shouts and the laughter. He had spent four months in Natal training for this battle, four months of the warscare alternating with depressing rumours of peace, and was desperate not to miss the ‘scrap’. But today he was lying on his blanket with a mild dose of fever.6
‘What’s them ‘ere blokes on that bloomin’ hill?’ he heard a man shout. Crum crawled from his tent. Out came the binoculars. The whole camp was now staring across the valley at the steep ridge, two miles east of the town above Piet Smit’s Farm: Talana Hill, as the Zulus called it. Intermittently, in the mist, Crum saw groups of figures notching the smooth line of the pale eastern sky, crowds of riflemen with three field-guns. Lucas Meyer’s commando. Boers. The officers were still staring in astonishment a quarter of an hour later when the first Creusot 75-mm shell swept with a whirr and a scream high across the valley.7 The second shell, better aimed, splashed into the wet earth behind the rear file of the Dublin Fusiliers.8
Down in the artillery lines, Gunner Netley, No. 5 of No. 1 gun in the 13 th Battery, noted the exact time – 5.40 a.m. by the barrack-room clock – and the exact place where the next Creusot shell landed. It struck the wooden peg a few yards behind him; and to the peg he had tethered his pony. Fortunately the shell was a dud.9 ‘Of corse [sic] you can bet that everyone was a bit surprised,’ Netley later scrawled in the diary he kept in his haversack, ‘and men were running about in all directions, but only for a minute or two. When we were ourselves again the Battery was brought into action and commenced firing at the Bores long ranged gun…. The Bore firing was very erratic.’10
All three batteries – six guns to a battery, making a total of eighteen guns – were ordered to open fire. About 6.00 a.m. small white stars of shrapnel smoke spangled the skyline, as the 67th Battery began to thunder away from its position in the gun park.11 The 69th and the 13 th Batteries were slower off the mark; the drivers had just been sent down to water their horses, along with the other transport animals. Gunner Netley was sent off on his pony to tell them to return immediately.12
‘Battery Column. Sections Left wheel. Action Front.’
The batteries hooked in the horses, limbered up, and jingled off in pairs through the town, then bumped across the railway line, metal against metal, and unlimbered two miles from the enemy’s position.13
‘Battery fire 15 seconds. Fuse 35.’ At 6.20 a.m. the 69th opened up. At 6.30 a.m. the 13th joined them, the guns lined up as neatly as on a field day, the gunners counting out loud after each shot to give the regulation interval of fifteen seconds between the firing of each gun.14
General Symons himself had been about to have his breakfast when the first Creusot shell landed. The CO of the Hussars, Lieutenant-Colonel B. D. Möller, rode across to his tent to get orders. Loose horses were still galloping along the picket lines, sending mud flying. Men were cowering behind the walls of canvas. Orderlies struggled to get the officers’ horses saddled and bridled. Symons’s tent was unmistakable: outside, on a high mast, flew a huge Union Jack; inside, the General was smoking a cigarette and issuing orders. Shells continued to splash into the ground nearby. ‘Impudence’ was the word he used to Möller to describe the Boers’ attack. Damned impudence to start shelling before breakfast.15
By 6.40 a.m., the enemy shelling had begun to slacken. The Boer guns had never had much chance. Three guns against eighteen. Not that Brother Boer, as the officers called the enemy,16 had proved himself much of a gunner. Many of the Boers’ shots had gone wide, and of those that hit the mark, most had percussion fuses, and the shells had failed to explode in the rain-sodden ground. There were virtually no British casualties, apart from poor Trumpeter Horn, the boy bugler of the 69th Battery, whose head was blown off by a Maxim i-pounder,17 and the grey mare ridden by the orderly of Colonel Gunning (CO of the 60th Rifles), on which a 75-mm scored a direct hit.18
Even before the artillery duel was over, Symons had issued his battle orders to the commanding officers. Despite his interrupted breakfast, he was anxious to get the battle started. His plan was a simple one, in keeping with his ideas on strategy. To attack the enemy, the enemy must have first been allowed to concentrate. Yet the eastern commandos, led by Lucas Meyer, must not be allowe
d to link up with the main Boer army under Joubert. According to the intelligence reports, the vanguard of Joubert’s army (in fact, two thousand men commanded by General Daniel Erasmus) was now close behind Mount Impati and might link up with Meyer’s column in a few hours. So there was not a moment to be lost in letting loose the infantry against Meyer.19
Symons had already studied the Boer position through his field-glasses. To the naked eye the long hog’s-back ridge looked almost featureless. Through field-glasses it seemed, tactically, more promising. The ridge was, in fact, made up of twin hills – 600-foot high Talana to the north, 550-foot high Lennox Hill to the south – and, like most South African kopjes, the hillsides were terraced by erosion and strewn with red volcanic rock, aloes and acacia-thorn. Directly below the summit of Talana was a eucalyptus wood and Smit’s Farm: a group of white farm buildings and pink stone walls.20 Here was the place, Symons decided, from which to launch a concentrated infantry attack. He was going to use conventional field-day tactics, the Aldershot set-piece in three acts. First, the artillery duel and the preparation of the ground. Second, the infantry attack and the infantry charge. Third, the cavalry charge to cut off the enemy’s retreat. Symons was no genius – nor was he a fool. These were the tactics in which all regular armies of the period were trained, on the Continent as well as in Britain and India. And they were the tactics that had served Germany well enough against France in 1870, and Britain well enough against the ill-armed tribesmen of the North-West Frontier.21 By contrast, as Symons reminded himself, Colley had been trapped at Majuba without either artillery or cavalry.22
A few of the more intelligent officers, it must be repeated had been alarmed by one feature of Symons’s tactics during the field days in Natal. They believed that exceptionally open order was the tactic to use against Boers armed with magazine rifles. Symons believed in the well tried virtues of close order and concentration.23 He had decided to leave his artillery to cope with the southern part of the ridge, Lennox Hill. He would concentrate his forces in the few hundred yards covered by the stone walls and the wood directly below Talana, and then storm it in overwhelming strength. He wanted to deal a knock-out blow and there was no time for manoeuvring, so he believed, if he was to crush Meyer before Meyer could join hands with Joubert.24
By contrast to his belief in the traditional virtues of concentration and close order for infantry, Symons had unconventional (if not reckless) ideas on the handling of cavalry. He told Colonel Möller not to wait for the infantry but to act on his own if he saw the chance. Hence, about 7.00 a.m., Möller took his small group of cavalry and MI (Mounted Infantry) and rode around to the back of Talana to cut off the enemy’s line of retreat.25 Symons had found this tactic effective on the North-West Frontier, although, against the disciplined forces of cavalry textbooks, it would have invited disaster.
It was now 7.30 a.m. and the artillery duel was well finished. Time for the second act of the Aldershot set-piece – the infantry attack.26
As the infantry lined up in the sandy bed of a river to the east of Dundee, a war correspondent, Monypenny of The Times, late Editor of The Star, Johannesburg (where he had, by joint arrangement with Beit and Milner, kept the Uitlanders ‘pegging away’), hurried to the front.27 In the bed of the stream, the men waited for orders. Symons, conspicuous by the scarlet pennant carried by his ADC, rode across to study the position. It was a calculated risk to throw almost everything he had into the battle – three battalions of infantry, two batteries of artillery and all the cavalry and MI. This left only the Leicesters and the 67th Battery to defend the camp if Joubert launched a flank attack, which Symons was well aware might happen. (In fact, the Boers were poised to strike from Impati.)28 But it seemed to him the only chance of giving it to the Boers straight on the jaw.
‘Dublins first line. Rifles second. Fusiliers third.’ It was a nervous moment. As the men had marched through the town there had been scenes of hysteria: some of the townspeople were laughing, others crying, and a woman rushed forward to kiss one of the NCOs of the Rifles, shouting, ‘God bless you, lad!’ The men blustered and joked, but many looked pale enough, swallowing hard and trying not to show it.29 After all, few of these short-service soldiers had ever seen action. And of those that had not a single one had ever experienced either shell fire or modern rifle fire. In the whole of Europe there was no body of soldiers that had ever seen the concentrated fire of the magazine rifle, with the muzzle end facing them. The people who knew this end of the rifle best from personal experience were the Dervishes of Omdurman – those that survived.
A sudden hush fell on the ranks of the 60th Rifles.30 This was the regiment whose 3rd Battalion had been almost annihilated at Majuba, and the men regarded the present war as a personal duel to settle that debt of honour. The Colonel, Bobby Gunning, called the NCOs together. ‘Now quietly, lads. Remember Majuba, God, and our country.’ Then the order was taken up along the line. ‘Forward, men.’ And over the top they went.31
A few unlucky men dropped, hit by the invisible riflemen firing down from the misty hilltop. The casualties were scooped up by the Indian stretcher-bearers of Major Donegan’s field hospital, and carried back in green ‘doolies’ (four in each doolie) to the dressing-station by the post office.32 Most of the infantry reached the wood. Here the panting men found shelter in the ditches and behind the walls of Smit’s Farm. They were now less than a mile from the crest of Talana, and above their heads the eucalyptus leaves fell in swathes, cut by Mauser bullets.
But how to advance beyond the wood? On the farther side was a stone wall, a small gap and then a quick-set hedge covered in brambles. Beyond that was open ground.33 Major Bird and most of the Dublins worked their way out of the wood and crawled up a ditch, but were soon pinned down and unable to make progress.34 Lieutenant-Colonel R. F. C. Carleton sent his Fusiliers to line the stone wall on the left. Others remained jumbled together in the wood, now heavy with cordite fumes and the smell of crushed eucalyptus. For an hour, the unfortunate commander of the infantry brigade, Brigadier-General James Yule, tried to organize the assault. The men were unwilling to brave the invisible curtain of bullets beyond.35
Shortly after nine, they saw the General’s red pennant approaching through the drizzle, and Symons rode up to the wood. He had already sent two of his staff officers to order the assault. What had caused the delay? Yule explained that there was still a tremendous fire coming from Talana, despite the pounding they had received from the shrapnel of the eighteen British field-guns. No doubt Yule then suggested – it was the view of at least one of his officers and the obvious point to make – that it would be sensible to postpone the infantry attack until the artillery had finished its job. Symons refused. His strategic anxieties were too great. No more delay. Everything depended on attacking Meyer before Joubert joined him. Despite the protests of his staff, Symons rode through the wood, dismounted and strode to the gap in the stone wall, his ADC carrying the scarlet pennant beside him.36
There were times in the wars of the nineteenth and earlier centuries when a general had to sacrifice his life to rally his men. It was the counterpart picture to the Last Stand: the Death of the General at the Moment of Victory. Perhaps Symons saw himself in this noble tradition. At any rate, he now had to pay with his life the price demanded. After a few moments, he returned through the gap in the stone wall and stiffly remounted, with the help of his ADC. The scarlet pennant retired slowly from the hill.37 When Symons was out of sight of the troops, he let himself be taken by the Indian stretcher-bearers to the dressing-station. Major Kerin, Commanding Officer of the 20th Field Hospital, found him there in excruciating pain. He was mortally wounded in the stomach. ‘Tell me, have they got the hill?’ was all he could say.38
In fact, without the encouragement offered by Symons, some other men had already begun to push forward on the west side of the wood. Despite that deafening tempest of rifle fire – the drumming, roaring, hammering, grinding sound of Hundreds of Mausers fired simultaneously,
and of bullets ricocheting off the red rocks, and splashing into the ground like a storm of rain on a lake – the infantry began to make some ground. Casualties they suffered in plenty. By 9.30 they had reached the main terrace below the crest line, a terrace bounded and protected by a second stone wall, running parallel to the hillside. By 10.00 a.m. swarms of men from all three battalions could be seen firing from behind this second stone wall, and their presence gave the rest of the infantry new heart to leave the wood.39
Down in the valley, the two batteries of artillery had been having the best of the battle. The townspeople treated the gunners to a late breakfast of bread and butter, tea and coffee. (‘Here goes to finish this little snack – in case I loose it’ [sic] was Gunner Netley’s jaunty comment. ‘The Mausers are singing … they must be crack shots for they only hit one man in the battery.’)40 In the 69th Battery, Lieutenant Trench received the orders to close up to fourteen hundred yards. As the twelve guns opened up on the hill, the shrapnel bursting in balloons of white smoke and red dust, Netley saw the infantry fix bayonets and charge.
But at that moment a new misfortune occurred. Netley and the gunners of the 13th Battery could see the British bayonets clearly – ‘like minute flashes of lightning’. Some of the men with Trench and the 69th Battery could not.41 What happened next was described to The Times by Captain Nugent of the 60th:
The Boer War Page 21
