Deeper diggings required more machinery, more capital and more expertise. So individual diggers had sold out to the diamond companies, who came to control both production and marketing. Most of the physical work was now done by African miners imported on contract from all over South Africa. A parallel process, propelled by the technical and financial demands of deep-level gold-mining, had also taken place on the Rand. But Kimberley had taken the process a stage further. Unlike the Rand, controlled by separate groups of foreign companies, Kimberley had passed into the hands of a single corporate giant, De Beers. De Beers thus achieved what the Rand companies longed most of all to achieve: complete control over the pay and conditions of their African contract labour. These Africans were kept confined, almost like slaves, in vast compounds, covered with wire netting. Hence, for both Europeans and Africans, the peculiarly claustrophobic quality of the place. And there were not only the dismal compounds and the mine dumps.46 There was also the shadow of the Colossus. As managing director of De Beers (though only a minority shareholder), Rhodes behaved as though he had the town in his pocket.
The shadow of Rhodes had haunted Kekewich ever since early September; the man himself, since the day the war began. Rhodes made a few well-publicized expeditions to show the flag; riding out to visit his vegetable garden at Kenilworth; showing off his horses to the cronies he had brought up with him from Cape Town – Dr Smartt and Mr and the Hon. Mrs Rochfort Maguire – pushing past the street barricade, by the perimeter fence, conspicuous for his white trousers, as though challenging the Boer snipers to pick him off.47 At first, his relations with Kekewich were not unfriendly. And De Beers provided, apparently with Rhodes’s blessing, innumerable services for the garrison.48
The town’s water-works, at Riverton, were far beyond the defensible perimeter and the Boers soon cut the pipe. De Beers’ chief mechanical engineer, a high-spirited American called George Labram, connected the town’s supply to the deep springs owned by the company.49 The town’s food supply was estimated to last for seventy days; part of this consisted of food stocks held by De Beers. By now, mid-November, the town’s garrison had reached a grand total of 4,606 men. Of these 596 were regulars, 352 were Cape Police, the rest locally raised volunteers50 for whom De Beers helped Kekewich find horses and mules. The De Beers mines themselves dominated the defences. It was Labram who had constructed the conning-tower on top of the headgear of the De Beers Mine; and the man-made topography of the mine dumps served as fortifications, kept illuminated by arc-lights. In addition, De Beers produced, slightly sheepishly perhaps, some useful little mementos of the Raid: 422 rifles, 6 machine-guns and 700,000 rounds of ammunition sent to Kimberley in 1895 to be ready for the rising at Johannesburg.51
In the first three weeks of the siege all had gone as smoothly as Kekewich could hope. The Boers lay low in their laagers; so did Rhodes in his own private laager, the luxurious sanatorium. Kekewich gave the command of the mounted troops to Lieutenant-Colonel Scott-Turner, one of the three special service officers sent to the town in July. Scott-Turner made a few sorties. The armoured train steamed up and down a short length of railway line.’ The Boers issued a proclamation annexing Kimberley to the Free State. Kekewich issued a counter-proclamation.52 The town was filled with civilian refugees from the neighbourhood, and with detachments of Cape Police withdrawn from isolated posts. But the siege itself started as a light-hearted affair.53 There were no casualties except for Captain Scott, the serious-minded commander of the police garrison which had surrendered at Vryburg. Scott had blown out his brains at the sight of the white flag.54
On 6 November the Boers began a desultory bombardment with their 9-pounders. The occasion was the rejection of the Boer commandant’s ultimatum for Kimberley to surrender; alternatively, for women and children to be removed to a safe distance from the town, a proposal that proved impractical to carry out55 The shelling at first caused alarm among the civilians, and the weird triple blast on the mine’s steam hooters started a panic. But at this stage many of the shells were duds, and the mine dumps effectively smothered most of the others. The population soon began to take the bombardment in their stride. Some people dug shelters in their gardens. Others relied on the noise of the shell to give them time to take cover. ‘You heard the gun boom,’ wrote the local doctor, Dr Ashe, in his diary, ‘and a few seconds after the “whiz” of the shell came, and you ducked close under a wall or earthbank … then the shell burst; immediately everyone in the neighbourhood tore frantically towards it to pick up the pieces, for which there was a ready sale, and good pieces … would fetch from one to two pounds.’ At this stage there were only minor casualties – apart from an African woman, whose head was blown off on the 11th, as she walked past Kimberley Club.56
At dawn on the day after the beginning of the bombardment, there was a more alarming incident. Kekewich had climbed the conning-tower as usual, and saw in the half-light a ‘living mass’ of men approaching the ‘Crusher Redoubt’ on the north-east side of the perimeter. The British field-guns opened up at point-blank range. As the light improved, Kekewich suddenly realized that the men were unarmed African ‘mine boys’. He telephoned the cease-fire. It turned out that the men were three thousand Basutos released by De Beers from the mine compounds, without a word to the military authorities. Since the siege had closed the Kimberley mines, Rhodes had become restive about the ten thousand Africans locked up in the compounds. He claimed that this ‘hoard of savages’ threatened the lives of the Europeans. At any rate, they were using up the De Beers rations. So he had tried to pack them off home to Basutoland. But immediately after their release, the Boers had driven them back to the British lines.57 (Eventually, Rhodes hit on a less violent solution – to employ the Africans in relief work – and they began to build a great avenue of vines, a mile long, that was to serve as a monument to the siege.58)
Two days later, Kekewich received a direct hit on his headquarters – in the form of a telegram from the C-in-C, Sir Redvers Buller. It was about midnight on the 9th when a knock was heard on the door of the hut below the conning-tower. Kekewich was dozing. The door was opened by an NCO. He brought in an African runner who had eluded the Boer patrols in the darkness. The telegram was blunt: ‘Civilians in Kimberley representing situation there as serious. Have heard nothing about this from you. Send appreciation of the situation immediately.’59
Kekewich was flabbergasted. Who were these ‘civilians’? What had they told Buller? He himself had been sending out reports by African runner ever since mid-October. He had reported all well. He realized that Rhodes had been sending out alarmist messages behind his back.60 He could only bite his lip and try to postpone the inevitable showdown with Rhodes. He sent an African runner back the same night with a cautious reply for Buller: the situation was certainly not critical, although it might become so if the enemy brought up heavy guns, or if the defenders ran out of ammunition for their 2½-inch guns.61
The next ten days brought mixed blessings from both Rhodes and De Beers. The ammunition problem was miraculously solved. Labram was in the habit of climbing the conning-tower to relieve the monotony of Kekewich’s long vigils in that eyrie. Kekewich told him that he was running out of shells for his guns. Labram agreed to try and cast shells in the De Beers workshops and succeeded brilliantly.62 On his part, Rhodes acted with his usual disregard for consistency. Only a week after he had cabled the news of the impending fall of Kimberley to Milner, he announced to Kekewich that the garrison was quite strong enough to spare mounted troops – about eight hundred of them – to march 220 miles north to help Baden-Powell in the defence of their sister-garrison at Mafeking. Kekewich tried to explain the realities. First, they were needed here. Second, they would be cut off by much larger Boer forces armed with artillery. He did not add (a fair comment) that it would all end in another Battle of Doornkop. As it was, Rhodes was abusive and lost his temper. ‘You are afraid of a mere handful of farmers,’ he shouted in his curious falsetto voice. ‘You call yourselves
soldiers of an Empire-making nation. I do believe you will next take fright at a pair of broomsticks dressed up in trousers. Give it up. Give it up.’63
A few days passed, and once more Rhodes came to see Kekewich. The see-saw had gone back with a bump. Rhodes was seriously alarmed by the absence of mounted troops in the garrison. Why not raise two thousand extra troops in Cape Colony and let them be ‘thrown into Kimberley’? He would pay the whole cost himself; he could well afford it. Kekewich told him the scheme would take time, and it would not be fair for him to recommend it to Buller. Rhodes must send the proposal direct to Cape Town himself. Buller would be fully in touch with the whole military situation. ‘Military situation,’ shouted Rhodes, on one of these occasions. ‘You damned soldiers are so loyal to one another that I verily believe if God Almighty even was in a fix you would refuse to get him out of it should [this] interfere with your damned military situation.’64
On 21 November, the day that Methuen began his march, Kekewich was still in the dark about Buller’s plans to relieve him and take Rhodes off his hands.65 Two days later, the long-awaited code telegram arrived by runner: ‘Greenish manures hydrometer avec swarm gabbler,’ it began; ‘… General leaves here with strong force on November 21st, and will arrive Kimberley on 26th, unless delayed at Modder River. Look for signals by searchlight….’66 Already this news seemed to be confirmed by a stir in the enemy’s laagers. From the conning-tower, large bodies of men had been seen trekking southwards towards the Modder. Kekewich decided to do everything to assist the relief column. But what could he do?67 He had pitifully small numbers of mounted troops at his disposal – twenty regulars, and about eight hundred police and volunteers – against a force of mounted Boers believed to total eight thousand men between Kimberley and the Modder River; and there were rumours that General Piet Cronje was giving up the siege of Mafeking to come south and attack Kimberley. Kekewich had not the faintest idea of the size of the relief column, nor even of the name of its commander, though he had sent intelligence reports to Orange River pointing out the dangers of taking the direct route up the railway line north of the Modder; the Boers might dig in on the Magersfontein or Spytfontein ridges. So Kekewich naturally decided it would be reckless to try to join hands with the relief column – the policy that Rhodes was now quick to advocate, goading him on with gibes about the cowardice of the English soldier. Kekewich listened with his usual politeness, and as usual paid no attention. He decided on a diversionary tactic: a sortie in strength by Scott-Turner’s mounted troops against ‘Carter’s Ridge’, the strong-point where the Boers had installed some of their 9-pounders.68
The first attack was a qualified success. It was on the 25th. For once, Kekewich was not up the conning-tower to watch the dawn. He was installed on the ‘Reservoir Redoubt’, looking across to Carter’s Ridge. Under cover of darkness, Scott-Turner’s men crept forward. As the sky paled they stormed the ridge, killing and wounding twenty-eight Boers and capturing thirty-two prisoners at a cost to themselves of seven killed and twenty-five wounded.69 Scott-Turner was cheered by the townspeople back to the Kimberley Club. Next day, a Boer medical officer rode into the town asking permission to buy drugs. Kekewich gallantly arranged this, and the officer confirmed that his side had suffered heavily. Scott-Turner did not, however, capture any of the 9-pounders. The bombardment from Carter’s Ridge began again on the 27th.70
The second attack, launched next morning, was an unqualified disaster. It was now Wednesday, two days after the relief column had been expected to arrive. The column had made progress of a sort – progress that was visible. The previous evening a searchlight beam appeared in the sky, directed upwards from somewhere close to Modder River railway station. Slowly the wavering beam spelt out the vital message. ‘Lord Methuen thanks the merchants of Kimberley for their kind present of cigars. He is a non-smoker. He has given them to his soldiers.’71 All that the unfortunate Kekewich could gather was that the relief column had been checked. He decided to fling a third of his garrison into the field, to try to detain as many Boers as possible north of the river. Perhaps he had been goaded into this risky enterprise by the gibes of Rhodes. Yet he drew Scott-Turner aside before he left for the attack and gave him a final word of warning: ‘My dear chap, remember I do not want you to make an assault on Carter’s Ridge … unless it is unoccupied by the Boers, or so slightly occupied that there is every prospect of an attempt against it succeeding.’72
A few hours later Scott-Turner lay dead on Carter’s Ridge. The position had been heavily defended. Scott-Turner stormed it with reckless daring. Twenty-three others of the garrison died with him, and thirty-two were wounded. When the search parties came for the dead bodies they were so mangled that it was claimed that the Boers had finished off the wounded who had fallen there. There was an ugly mood among the townspeople. Early optimism had given way to mutterings of defeat.’73
Rhodes did not mutter. He rose to the occasion – as only the colossus could. With breath-taking inconsistency, he accused Kekewich of recklessness – of throwing away the lives of the volunteers. ‘Remember,’ he sneered, ‘you are not in command of a lot of “Tommies” now.’ Kekewich did not reply. He felt it would be disloyal to Scott-Turner to expose him as the cause of the disaster. He returned to his gloomy vigil on the conning-tower, where a light had been rigged up, ready to flash a signal to the relief expedition.74
The solitary searchlight beam to the south of Modder River flickered on the clouds. What had happened to Methuen?
* * * * * *
To say that Methuen was shattered by his victories hardly put it too strongly. After his army had marched from Orange River, he had won two minor victories – at Belmont on the 23rd, at Graspan on the 25th. The high cost sickened him. He ‘detested war’, he told his wife. ‘People congratulate me; the men seem to look on me as their father, but I detest war the more I see of it.’ He had written those words on the night of the victory at Belmont. It had been a ‘sad day’. They had already buried two officers and thirteen men. Outside his tent he could now hear a ‘poor fellow groaning and dying, shot through the chest; he is at last silent, so perhaps God has released him’.75
Methuen’s officers, too, were shocked by the realities of battle. This was old-fashioned war in all its ugliness. ‘I won’t inflict you with details of a battle-field,’ wrote Captain Gerald Trotter of the Grenadiers to his mother. ‘It is too horrible. As I marched back to camp with all the various regiments of the Brigade mixed up it reminded me of Lady Butler’s picture, “After Inkerman” … the hospital was also a gruesome sight.’76 Trotter’s regiment, the Grenadiers, lost thirty-six killed or mortally wounded, and a total of 137 casualties, the highest of any unit engaged.77
To add to the bitter aftermath of victory, there were claims – as there were to be throughout the war – of Boer atrocities. People said the Boers had deliberately misused the white flag.78 ‘We had a hot job,’ said Trotter, ‘with some fellows who showed the white flag, and shot two of the Yorkshire … and a correspondent [Knight of The Morning Post] very badly, so we plugged away till one of them walked out. I believe they hung him at Belmont before we marched away.’ There were also stories that the enemy had shot twelve men with dum-dum bullets.79 In reply, a number of Boers were given no quarter.80
Methuen’s column had lost 297 men killed,81 wounded and missing, compared with the Free State Boers’ loss of under 150.82 What had gone wrong?
These first British victories on the western front had proved as expensive as the first British victories in Natal. And most of the tactical errors could be traced to the same basic handicaps: weak intelligence and poor mobility. Methuen had marched his eight thousand troops forward from Orange River and found the Boers at Belmont in a position of their own choosing. He could not bypass them. He had to clear the enemy from his line of communication, the railway. Yet he had no means of satisfactorily reconnoitring the enemy position at Belmont. His official intelligence maps marked no contours and were of litt
le use. Methuen had to base a complex plan on a rough sketch of the Boers’ position made the day before the battle – a dangerous proceeding. So it proved.83
The Free State Boers were few in number, but their position was strong. They held a mass of broken ground and three strong-points astride kopjes. Methuen’s plan was for his two infantry brigades to attack the first two kopjes simultaneously from the west flank, approaching under the cover of darkness, then to work round to the third kopje.84 But the sketch-map was defective. Methuen saw to his horror that the two brigades had diverged, and the Guards were heading straight for the foot of a jagged kopje. ‘An awful moment,’ he said later, ‘no retreat available, and a brave enemy ready to destroy us. I did not lose my head. I saw I was committed to a frontal attack, and I sent one ADC to get the Guards straight, and another to [tell the] 9th Brigade to stick to the Guards; all was right in 10 minutes, and there came grand work for the Guards, the guns covered the tops with shrapnel, the men went up precipice after precipice….’ 85
The Battle of Belmont was in fact remarkably like the Battle of Talana: a short, crude, bloody affair, a so-called ‘soldier’s battle’ in which all the refinements of tactics were submerged in the simple, overwhelming urge to seize a hill and exterminate the enemy. They seized the hills – three in turn. Then Methuen saw what the victorious British troops had seen at Talana: hundreds of Boers trotting away across the veld, untouched by artillery or cavalry.86
The Battle of Graspan two days later had repeated the pattern on a smaller scale. Methuen drove the enemy from the next line of ridges at heavy cost to his men. The enemies’ losses were about a hundred. Once again, Methuen had the chagrin of watching the majority of the Boers trotting away across the veld, unhindered by the exhausted 9th Lancers or his own field-guns.87
Two more days had passed, and it was now the night of 27 November, the night when Kekewich had seen that wavering searchlight beam signal Methuen’s thanks for the cigars. Methuen’s army had by now covered fifty of the seventy-four miles to Kimberley and was only a few miles south of the Modder River. His plan was to begin a flank march next morning. Despite the jolt he had received at Belmont and Graspan, his self-confidence had begun to return. He told one of his officers that he intended to ‘put the fear of God into the Boers’. He thought the Boers had withdrawn to the Spytfontein kopjes: back across the river and astride the road and railway to Kimberley. His plan was to turn the enemy’s left flank by leaving the railway and marching twenty-five miles in a broad arc to the east.88
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