The Boer War

by Thomas Pakenham

  In reply, the Boer artillery performed prodigies of improvisation. The day before the battle, it was said, the Boers had calculated the range, for the sake of their own riflemen and artillery, by planting white markers at measured intervals alongside the railway line.27 The Free State artillery commander, a Prussian ex-NCO called Major Albrecht, had dug a series of unconventional gun emplacements. Outnumbered three to one, Major Albrecht’s Krupp field-guns dodged back and forth all day between emplacements. His artillery horses suffered heavily. But the British could not knock out a single one of his guns. Firing from concealed positions, Albrecht’s gunners wrought havoc on their British counterparts, standing out there in the veld without sandbags or rocks to protect them.28

  Meanwhile, alarming reports had reached De la Rey from the men on his right – from Prinsloo and the Free State commandos, who had dug themselves into the riverside village of Rosmead, a mile to the west of the railway line. Cronje had failed to put enough men there to guard Rosmead Drift, to protect it with guns, or to reinforce the place later. Now the price was paid. Opposite the drift was part of the 9th Brigade, Pole-Carew’s. For about three hours they, like the Guards, were nailed down in the veld. Soon after eleven they could be seen creeping forward in rushes. Prinsloo’s men could not hold them. A fold in the veld gave the attackers better protection at this point. Some of the defenders had occupied a farmhouse which made a perfect target for the field-guns; and they were Free Staters, their morale dented by the reverses at Belmont and Graspan. By midday, these wretched Free Staters, as De la Rey saw, had fled back to the north bank. Using the captured farm as a strong-point to protect their advance, the British followed them.29

  They were actually Kekewich’s men, the half-battalion of North Lancashires that he had left behind at Cape Town when he had taken the other half with him to Kimberley. Now they seized the honour of being first across the drift, slipping and struggling over the slimy stones and floundering waist-deep in the pools. Other men of various units – Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and so on – followed on their heels. Some soldiers managed to scramble in single file across the wall of the dam, just above the drift.30 By one o’clock, the British had dug themselves into the north bank and driven the Free Staters out of Rosmead. They were soon covered by four guns of the 62nd Battery, whose gunners had only left Orange River the previous day, and ridden hell for leather since dawn. (Six dead horses had to be cut out of the traces.) With Pole-Carew at their head, the British now began to push through the hedges of prickly pear towards a second resort hotel behind the Boers’ central position.31

  What did Cronje do to cope with this alarming threat? He did nothing, said De la Rey bitterly.32 It was De la Rey who organized the counter-attack. Having recrossed the river, he sent the men of the Lichtenburg Commando, left in reserve on the north bank, westwards to block Pole-Carew’s advance. They gave covering fire to Major Albrecht’s hard-pressed gunners working the Krupp field-guns. They pinned down the leading men of the North Lancashires and Argylls who were crawling forwards through the reeds and bushes along the river bank. They drove Pole-Carew’s men back into Rosmead. Assisted by a deluge of British shrapnel bullets fired in error at Pole-Carew’s men from the field-guns across the river, De la Rey’s burghers then held on to their trenches until darkness put an end to the fighting.33

  It was just before this that De la Rey’s eldest son, Adriaan, was dangerously wounded. He had been at his father’s side all day, as De la Rey strode up and down the scattered trenches, exhorting, cursing, lashing the burghers with his small sjambok. De la Rey himself had been slightly wounded in the right shoulder by a shell fragment. Adriaan had escaped without a scratch. Then, in the last hour of the battle, a shell splashed on the trench a few yards behind where De la Rey was standing. When the dust cleared, De la Rey saw that Adriaan was wounded in the stomach. He was forced to leave him in a safe place, till an ambulance could be found. There was no ambulance. In the darkness, De la Rey’s staff wrapped Adriaan in a blanket and they set out to carry him the nine miles to Jacobsdal, the Boers’ base hospital.34 About eight o’clock they were walking along the road when they met Cronje, whose men were in full retreat. De la Rey later recorded the bitter exchange:

  Cronje: ‘How did the battle go?’

  De la Rey: ‘Why did you leave us in the lurch? We saw nothing of you all day.”35

  De la Rey’s party reached Jacobsdal just after dawn. An hour later Adriaan died in his father’s arms.36

  Meanwhile, De la Rey had reached a decision almost as painful as this bereavement. How could they keep their grip on the line of the Riet and Modder? Cronje, Prinsloo and the Free Staters had betrayed them. Had the Free Staters on the west flank stayed firm, he believed Methuen would have been forced to fall back all the way to Orange River; there was hardly sufficient water in the sandy veld between. But the Free Staters had fled. Now Methuen would have no difficulty in reinforcing Pole-Carew’s bridgehead on the north bank. So De la Rey had to accept that his own men, too, had to abandon the Riet and Modder.37

  The moon rose about ten, and the night was clear and cold. Along both sides of the river bank, torches moved in strange, halting patterns, as men collected up the dead and wounded: 460 casualties on the part of the British, about 80 on that of the Boers. Opposite Rosmead, British reinforcements lined up in the darkness and splashed across to join Pole-Carew. They were followed by the first of the Guards.38

  Methuen’s chief staff officer, a personal friend, lay mortally wounded in the field hospital. Methuen lay near him. A bullet had pierced the fleshy part of his thigh, a couple of hours before the end of the action; the wound was slight but painful. It was decided that both his brigades would renew the attack as soon as it was light. All night Methuen tossed and turned in the hospital.39

  At dawn, the naval guns reopened the bombardment. There was no reply. When the British infantry reached De la Rey’s position, they found it deserted. There were traces of a meal eaten in the hotel and a few gin bottles. Outside, the trenches were knee-deep in spent cartridge cases, and there were dead bodies floating in the river (perhaps those of onlookers caught in the bombardment). The Boers themselves had withdrawn to the north and east. Now there was only the Spytfontein ridge, ten miles to the north, violet against the sky – the last natural defensive position this side of Kimberley.40

  The death of De la Rey’s son had one immediate result. De la Rey stayed at Jacobsdal to bury him, and missed the krijgsraad (council of war) on the day after the battle.41 He strenuously objected when he heard the decision of Cronje and Prinsloo. In his absence they had decided to withdraw the burghers ten miles back to Spytfontein, instead of digging in at Magersfontein, six miles back. How to reverse this decision? De la Rey telegraphed to President Steyn over Cronje’s head, and Steyn passed on the message to Kruger, who asked Steyn to go to the front line in person to set matters straight.42

  In fact, both Presidents were already deeply disturbed by complaints about the behaviour of the Free State burghers at the Battles of Graspan and Modder River. Prinsloo, their own commander, complained, ‘I was convinced that victory was ours… but after their flight there was nothing we could do.’43 In his reply, Kruger did not mince words. Cowardice was the cause of the flight. Officers and men must both learn to do their duty. He urged Steyn to go to the front line himself, ‘because this is the final moment of decision whether we are to surrender the country’. He added, ‘Brother, my age does not allow me and my eyes are too painful, or I would be there myself.’44

  Steyn drove from Bloemfontein in haste, and reached the front six days after the Battle of Modder River (the Battle of Twee Rivier – Two Rivers – the Boers called it, taking the name from the farm on the island). Kruger had given him a long telegram addressed to the burghers. Steyn drove round to each laager, a tall, bald red-bearded figure, and read aloud to them the old President’s homely lines:

  De Heer heeft gestooned dat Hij met ons is…. The Lord has shown that He is
with us because the enemy has lost hundreds and we only a few men…. This now remains to be decided: are we to surrender the country? If we give in, what might then become of our brother Afrikaners in Natal and Cape Colony, who have attached themselves to us? No, no, even though we must lose almost half of our men, we must still fight to the death, in the name of the Lord.45

  Steyn reported back next day to Kruger that the burghers were full of heart. Then he summoned the generals to a second krijgsraad. Here De la Rey put the case against fortifying Spytfontein. They must try more daring tactics. And he persuaded them all to adopt his own plan.46

  Everything that had happened at Twee Rivier seemed to confirm his earlier ideas on tactics. The place to lie in wait for a force of British infantry was the plain, not the hill – the plain at the edge of the first line of kopjes between the Modder and Kimberley. These were the kopjes dominated by Magersfontein, not the second line which culminated, to the east, in Spytfontein. Most of the arguments for digging in at the Modder applied equally well to digging in below Magersfontein. They would be safer from artillery. They would catch the British by surprise. If the worst happened, they would still have a second line of defence – Spytfontein – before abandoning the siege of Kimberley.47

  But how could they avoid further débâcles like the flight of the Free Staters? Many of these burghers were now unmounted. Then put them in the centre of the defences. They would fight better, De la Rey concluded grimly, if they had no obvious mean of escape. Concentrate the mounted burghers where mobility was essential – on the flanks.48

  The combined Boer armies had now been further reinforced by the main part of Cronje’s force which had arrived from Mafeking. There were perhaps eight thousand, two hundred burghers in all, of whom six thousand were mounted.49 There were the camp-followers and commandeered African labourers. These Africans were set to work digging a twelve-mile-long defence line under the shadow of the Magersfontein ridge. It was a back-breaking job. Beside the Modder the soil was as soft and black as chocolate cake; here it was red and stony. Gradually the fortifications took shape; and no one had seen anything like them. Most of the defences consisted of broken lines of breastworks, built of stone or earth. The main trench itself ran for about a thousand yards along the foot of the Magersfontein ridge. It was three to five feet deep, and only three feet wide, giving much better protection than any equivalent British shelter trenches of the period.50

  The boldness of De la Rey’s plan lay not only in the scale and originality of these home-made defence works. Like Botha’s line in Natal, they were camouflaged with the skill of a man who digs a trap for an elephant. All along the line, De la Rey had arranged for grass and acacia scrub to be laid in front of the trenches. In six days the job was done. Methuen’s scouts rode within a mile of the trench before they were driven away by Mauser fire. They scanned the plain through their field-glasses without an inkling that the trap had been set.51

  CHAPTER 18

  Marching up in Column

  Magersfontein,

  9–12 December 1899

  Such was the day for our regiment

  Dread the revenge we will take.

  Dearly we paid for the blunder –

  A drawing-room General’s mistake

  Why weren’t we told of the trenches?

  Why weren’t we told of the wire?

  Why were we marched up in column

  May Tommy Atkins enquire …

  ‘The Battle of Magersfontein’, verse by Pte Smith of Black Watch December 1899

  On Saturday 9 December, eleven days after the Battle of Modder River, Major-General Andrew Wauchope, the commander of the Highland Brigade, rode up to Methuen’s HQ on the north bank. He was tall, and clean-shaven, and eager; he had come for his battle orders. Methuen was preparing for a night march that Sunday. The HQ was the Crown and Anchor Hotel, across the river from the hotel where Cronje and De la Rey had installed themselves less than a fortnight earlier.1 Now the Crown and Anchor was awash with British orderlies and staff officers. A crate of champagne (a present to Lord Methuen from Lord Rothschild) had replaced the empty gin bottles left behind by the Boers.2

  Wauchope emerged after his interview with Methuen, and paused at the door. ‘I do not like the idea of this night march,’ he said to Colonel Douglas, the new chief staff officer.3 Wauchope was not a man to be rattled easily. He was said to have been wounded in every action he had fought.4 Douglas now urged him to return to Methuen again and explain his doubts. For some reason, Wauchope did not return. He rode gloomily back along the river bank to the brigade camp where the Highlanders were assembled, fixing aprons over their kilts, painting out their buttons and buckles in preparation for battle.5

  The plan for a night march – followed by a dawn attack – was certainly risky, but less risky than the alternatives. This was Methuen’s view, and he had had nearly a fortnight, since the Battle of Modder River, to turn things over in his mind. As a soldier schooled in the short, sharp wars of Africa, it was Methuen’s natural inclination to strike at the Boer positions immediately after the latest battle – before they could reorganize themselves. But he had decided to contain his impatience.6 His own flesh wound had taken a week to heal; his men needed a respite after their three battles; new staff officers had to be brought up to the front; and the last of his reinforcements – including Wauchope’s Highland Brigade, an extra cavalry regiment, more field-guns, howitzers, and a 4.7-inch naval gun – would not reach Modder River till next day, 10 December.7 Finally, he thought it would be folly to advance before repairing the dynamited Modder River railway bridge. Here was a gash in the life-line of his own army. Here was also a broken rung in the rescue ladder essential for the job Buller had given him: to resupply Kekewich at Kimberley and remove those of the garrison who were proving a liability – the women and children, the ten thousand African mine-workers and their employer, Cecil Rhodes.

  How long could Kekewich hold out? Methuen had been relieved to receive a code signal from Kekewich on the 4th, in answer to his own searchlight signals: the garrison, said the Kimberley searchlight, still had food enough for forty days.8 By the 8th the railway bridge had at last been repaired – or, rather, the engineers had rigged up a temporary affair of timber and piles beside the twisted steel girders.9 On the night of the 10th the Highland Brigade would march off to the attack.

  ‘The job has got to be done,’ Methuen had answered Buller.10 He proposed to use the same tools as before. As usual, his scouts could give him only a sketchy idea of the enemy’s defence line. It appeared they had adopted the same kind of position as at Belmont: a line of kopjes. Well, it was Belmont tactics he would use against them. The key to the enemy’s position was, he believed, the Magers-fontein Kopje.11 From his camp at Modder River, it looked like the prow of a battleship.12 On closer inspection, it was the usual South African kopje, decorated with greyish-brown rocks and dusty grey-green vaalbush. It was six-and-a-half miles from the camp, though it looked ten at midday, floating in the heat haze, and barely a mile away when the sun first rose.13 The job of the Highlanders was to storm this strong-point with the bayonet at first light, to deal the same short, sharp thrust at Cronje here that the Grenadiers had dealt Prinsloo on Gun Hill, above Belmont.

  About three o’clock on Sunday afternoon, the five artillery batteries trundled off across the plain. The Highlanders tramped along behind: three thousand five hundred men in khaki;14 khaki aprons to hide the front of the kilts, and no sporrans, claymores or gleaming coat buttons. Yet, viewed from behind, they were still unmistakably Scottish: dark green tartan kilts for the leading three battalions, the Black Watch, Seaforths and Argylls; khaki trousers for the reserve battalion, the Highland Light Infantry.15 Sleety rain began to fall, and the men had no greatcoats, only a blanket and groundsheet, one for each pair of men, strapped to their backs.16

  About three miles from the kopje they halted. This was the evening’s bivouac: the bare veld, with neither food nor shelter; but the men were chee
rful.17 Wauchope rode back to consult Methuen and Colvile, the commander of the Guards Brigade. There was a final briefing, directed by Methuen, resting his injured leg on the box-seat of a wagon. The Guards and the 9th Brigade were to be held in reserve. Wauchope seemed satisfied with his orders – so Methuen said later.18 But, as the meeting broke up, Wauchope remarked to Colvile, ‘Things don’t always go as they are expected. You may not be in reserve for long.’19

  Meanwhile, the Boers were receiving their dose of British shells, delivered by twenty-four field-guns, four howitzers, and the British answer to Long Tom – ‘Joe Chamberlain’ himself, the 4.7-inch naval gun. The bombardment, one of the biggest since Sebastopol, seemed to the war correspondents awe-inspiring. To the usual grey puff-balls of shrapnel were now added huge water-spouts of red earth and rocks hurled skywards by a high explosive called ‘lyddite’. Onlookers were told by the naval gunners that Old Joey would kill every man within 150 yards of where his shells struck.20 This assumed, of course, that the enemy was on the hill being bombarded by Old Joey. Of this there was no actual evidence. Later Methuen, who in this respect had only followed Buller’s orders, made the admission: the artillery ‘preparation’ did nothing except prepare the Boers for the British attack.21

  It was now dark, and the fireworks faded out on the distant ridge. The wind rose and the icy rain continued. The orders were: no fires, no smoking. In the Highlanders’ bivouac, spirits waned. Wauchope ate a beef sandwich, then lay down in his sleeping-bag. He was upset by the loss of a knife and compass given him by his wife. He decided he would take his old claymore, despite Methuen’s orders.22