The Boer War

by Thomas Pakenham

  It was not only what they had heard about him and the war. Before the ships had sailed, many of the Tommies must have seen the popular papers, like The Daily Mail, which predicted an easy victory.23 But the man himself had an extraordinary magnetism. It was partly that splendid Devonshire name, which rolled off the lips like a roll of drums. It was more the result of what he did for his men: the trouble he took to get them their canteens before he started his own dinner, the way he would move heaven and earth to see they could get their letters from home. In a curious way, they could identify with him. He had the massive frame and the red face of a Devonshire farmer. He could be blunt and bloody-minded, and he could make blunders like the best of them. But he was as brave as a lion, and when the lion had ceased roaring there was usually a twinkle in his eye.24

  He was none of your red-tape generals. He had none of them airs and graces. A real man was old Buller.25

  Their confidence in Buller did not, of course, prevent the men from grousing. Grousing, like swearing, was the background music of the barrack room.26 And at Frere, despite all Buller’s efforts, there was no shortage of things to grouse about. The men were unshaven, and their belts, boots and faces were all one colour: khaki.27 The flies were everywhere; and so was the dust. Water was short (as this unusual heat-wave had succeeded the spring rains); the Blaauw Krantz River was a series of muddy pools – good enough for washing khaki clothes, but strong drink. The food was the usual soldiers’ grub: bread and beef.28 No wonder some of the soldiers looted and stole; and a crowd of Durham miners, a tough crowd by any standard, were put on a charge by the Provost-Marshal. Major-General Neville Lyttelton, their brigade commander, became worried at the effect on the town.29 But the looting was fairly good-humoured. Anyway, the victims were mainly Afrikaners, absent fighting with the Boers.

  The Uitlanders and colonial volunteers excelled everyone as looters. The ‘Imperial Light Looters’ and ‘Bethune’s Buccaneers’ they were dubbed.30 This was in a sense a reprisal for what their own people had suffered. All over this district, British-owned farms had been looted and stripped by Botha’s raiders. When the tide of raiders first receded, the station-master’s house here at Frere had been left with two or three red geraniums blooming outside in the dirt. Inside, the place was a surrealist wreck of burnt photographs and clocks stuffed down into flower-pots. Since then, the station-master’s house had been patched up. There was a Union Jack on a pole outside. It was clean and neat and bare. It was Buller’s headquarters.31

  Buller had arrived at Frere in the small hours of 6 December, alone except for his Military Secretary, Colonel Fred Stopford.32 Stories were later circulated about Buller’s addiction to champagne – stories that he perhaps encouraged, to confirm the reassuring picture of himself coolly emptying his glass within sound of the enemy’s guns. But there is no reason to think that Buller actually lived a less modest life than a conventional British commander-in-chief on a major campaign. He did not have a French chef like Clery, his own divisional general, nor was he to make a fool of himself with a court of dukes’ sons, like Lord Roberts. He had three ADCs and a Military Secretary, whom he worked off their feet. He spent most of his own day at his makeshift desk in the station-master’s house, or riding round the camp on Biffin or Ironmonger.33

  His feelings when he arrived at Frere were a characteristic mixture of cautious hopes and profound anxieties. He did not, by any means, expect a walk-over. His spirits, always volatile, had been cheered by the dramatic improvement in the situation since he had left Cape Town on 22 November. ‘It has been an uphill journey … but I do believe we are pulling through…. I am happier than I was but I cannot say I feel out of the wood.’34 That was what he told Lansdowne in a private letter on 4 December, and it coincides with the general impression he conveyed in his cypher telegrams and despatches and his personal letters to his wife.35 Milner, he said, was still ‘very nervous’ about the chance of an uprising in the Cape. He himself did not think there was much risk; the further he got from Milner, the less impressed he was by these dangers. Gatacre could hold his own in the north-east Cape. Methuen’s success at Kimberley, he told Lansdowne, was ‘assured’. He personally regretted the long halt Methuen had made at Modder River. ‘However it is the sort of delay that only the man on the spot can deal with, so I say nothing.’36 To his wife he added the admission that he was puzzled by the tactics Methuen had adopted at Modder River: the frontal assault – why not a flank attack? ‘I daresay it will be explained later.’37

  The only problem that Buller faced with a sinking heart was the one that he had set himself: to get White out of the unholy mess he had got into at Ladysmith. He had told the War Minister,

  I am in great doubt how to attack Ladysmith. The main road through Colenso goes through a ghastly country exactly the sort made for the Boer tactics and they have strongly fortified it. I can turn it by going across the Tugela at Potgieters Drift some 15 miles up the River, and should have better ground to advance over but I should not be in so good a tactical position to help White, as I should be if I came up the main road from Colenso. I must leave it till I get up to Frere. I don’t know that I ever had a problem which has bothered me more.38

  That was his view the day before he reached Frere. Six days later – that is, on 11 December – he had decided to make the flank march by Potgieters. A flank march from Colenso – but a frontal attack, it must be noted, not a flank attack, on Potgieters.39 ‘The whole Tugela River is a strong position,’ Buller explained later. ‘There is no question of turning it, the only open question is whether one part of it is easier to get through than another.’40

  He had chosen Potgieters because it did look easier – or, rather, less ghastly – country to get through. This was the view of the Natal colonists, who should know: Laing (the Lang of Laing’s Nek),41 and T. K. Murray, the member of the Natal Parliament who had lived there all his life and was organizing Buller’s corps of African guides.42 It was also the impression conveyed by the inch-to-the-mile blueprint map, prepared by Captain Herbert at the Field Intelligence Department, and the reconnaissance sketch, on a marginally larger scale, made by Major Elliot’s gunners.43

  Tactically, there seemed to be distinct reasons for preferring Potgieters. Buller had personally inspected the Colenso position by telescope and decided that to force it would be ‘too costly’. The approach from the south was dead flat, without any cover, and the north bank was commanded by a line of kopjes systematically fortified by the enemy. There was also a prospect of nine miles of subsequent fighting in the gorges to the north. At Potgieters, the actual crossing might be easier, as the ramparts of hills were set back farther from the Tugela and were only two miles in depth. After that, it would be downhill all the way to Ladysmith.44 However, Potgieters itself would be a tough nut to crack. Buller’s scouts reported the enemy were already beginning to fortify it as they had fortified Colenso, and White heliographed from Ladysmith to say that his war balloon confirmed this.45

  There were, however, two other tactical arguments against a flank march by Potgieters. First, the practical difficulties and dangers of such a march. Owing to those wretched delays in the War Office arrangements for animal transport, Buller would have an appalling task to assemble the minimum number of oxen and ox wagons: four hundred teams with a thousand African drivers. He had no divisional field hospital, and bearer companies would have to be organized to carry the wounded twenty-five miles back to the railway line. He would have to leave one brigade at Chieveley to hold this line; so he would have three, not four, brigades for the attack at Potgieters.46 There was a chance that his whole force, if defeated at Potgieters, might lose their line of communications and be beleaguered in turn.47

  Second, White had heliographed to say that he could send a flying column as far as Onderbrook – that is, about ten miles north of Colenso.48 There was no doubt that one of the keys to victory was to co-operate with White, and especially with his cavalry, the four precious cavalry regiments that,
despite Buller’s appeal, White had insisted on keeping with him when the siege began. Buller had convinced himself, perhaps mistakenly, that White would not lift a finger to help him if he attacked Potgieters.49

  How difficult it was, in every sense, for the two Generals to communicate. Apart from the rugged country – bridged by the flickering searchlight beam, the fitful heliograph and the wayward carrier-pigeons – there was a mountain of resentment between them. Again and again Buller heard his own prophetic voice at the War Office that July and August: ‘Do not go north of the Tugela, do not go north of the Tugela.’ Penn Symons, White and Lansdowne had wrecked everything.

  Buller blamed them all, of course. He also blamed himself. So he said later, when he made a ‘clean breast’ of everything to his old comrade-in-arms, Sir Arthur Bigge (‘You may show any of it to the Queen,’ he added rather touchingly). He blamed himself for not ‘having insisted on choosing my own generals when in London’. He had not been ‘hard enough then’. Apart from the choice of Major-General French, all his proposals had been rejected.50 He had been too weak – or too much of a gentleman – to throw his weight about and have a showdown with Lansdowne.

  This was Buller’s outburst of self-criticism in the following March, after much muddy water had flowed under the broken bridges of the Tugela. He was surely right. But what did he feel on 11 December, as he planned the attack on Potgieters? His bitterness towards White is clear. What about his other generals, on his own side of the Tugela? There were two whom he might have chosen himself: Major-General Neville Lyttelton, commander of the 4th Brigade, who had worked under him at the War Office,51 and Major-General Henry Hildyard, commander of the English (2nd) Brigade, who had made a name for himself as the head of the Staff College, and had trained the 2nd Brigade under Buller’s eye at Aldershot.52

  The other generals inspired less confidence in Buller. There was the divisional commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Francis Clery, the nominal commander of the army at Frere. If Clery had wished, he could have retained full control of this Natal expedition, and Buller would have stayed, as Milner had begged him, to keep a grip on things in the Cape. Clery had insisted that Buller came too. Clery’s performance during Botha’s raid into South Natal confirmed Buller’s own misgivings. He had got in a frightful ‘funk’, and retreated quite unnecessarily to Estcourt.53 The same could be said about Major-General Geoffrey Barton, commander of the Fusilier (6th) Brigade.54 And the cavalry commander, Lieutenant-Colonel John Burn-Murdoch, had made a poor showing in the Sudan.55 On the other hand, the commander of the Irish (5th) Brigade, Major-General Fitzroy Hart, was brimming with a self-confidence which was almost more alarming than Clery’s and Barton’s funk. He was a man of the Penn Symons school, a fiery Irishman, beautifully dressed, a master of field-day tactics, who believed in the traditional virtues of close order and dash.56 Finally, there was the artillery commander, Colonel Charles Long, an intrepid gunner, who believed in taking his 15-pounders up under the noses of the enemy’s guns. He had done well as Kitchener’s chief artilleryman at Omdurman; but then, at Omdurman there were no guns on the enemy’s side. His action in sending forward the armoured train from Frere the previous month had been labelled by Buller as ‘inconceivable stupidity’.57 This disaster does not seem to have knocked the stuffing out of Long. On the contrary, he was keen to redeem himself by some spectacular feat of arms.

  These were the commanding officers – some timid, others headstrong, all inexperienced in Boer tactics – that Buller had to make the driving force behind his ‘fighting machine’, as he hopefully called it58 He blamed himself for not choosing better ones.59 He could not blame himself, except indirectly, for the collapse of the staff arrangements.

  It was one of the most extraordinary features of Buller’s expedition that he had arrived at Frere with only his personal staff – that is, with Colonel Fred Stopford (his Military Secretary) and the ADCs. As we saw (in Chapter 14), other twenty-odd headquarters staff, provided in the War Office scheme for the Army Corps, had all vanished: locked up in Ladysmith (like Major-General Hunter, his Chief of Staff, and the Intelligence Officer, Major Altham); sent off to help Methuen (like Colonels Miles and Douglas); left behind at the Cape to hold the fort (like Colonel Wynne and Colonel à Court). This was inevitable, given White’s blunder, and the need to break up the Army Corps. But the price was to be paid at the Tugela. Buller had to take over Clery’s staff and issue his orders through them.60 This was bound to end in confusion – and was one of the causes of the disasters ahead.61 There were also embarrassing personal problems concerning two young men attached to Clery’s staff.

  The first was Prince Christian Victor, a favourite grandson of the Queen’s. It was one of Buller’s sources of strength that he was an old friend of Sir Arthur Bigge, the Queen’s Private Secretary, and hence in touch with the Queen herself. The previous month, Bigge had cabled to ask why Major Prince Christian Victor, who was under Clery’s command, had been sent back to base at Durban; what was going on?62 Now the Prince was a poor fish, and no real use to anyone. But the reason for sending him to base was in fact Clery’s ‘funk’. He was terrified the Boers might capture him. Buller had then decided to transfer the Prince to Hildyard’s staff, and sent him up to the front at Frere to take his chance like the rest of them.63 Still, it must have been an anxiety for Buller to have a royal hostage-to-fortune so close at hand. Buller remembered the ghastly business of the Prince Imperial, Napoleon III’s heir, killed by the Zulus in 1879 while serving in the British flying column of which Buller was one of the leaders.64

  The other young staff officer was Lieutenant Frederick Roberts, the only son of the Field-Marshal. As one of Roberts’s Ring, Sir George White had agreed to take him on his own staff. But the siege had begun before young Roberts could reach Ladysmith. He had joined Clery’s staff as a galloper – and so, in effect, Buller’s staff. Freddy Roberts was a delightful fellow; but not very bright, unfortunately; that summer he had failed the Staff College entrance examination by a record margin. No doubt Buller, as one of the Wolseley Ring, had heard the embarrassing story. The Field-Marshal had had to go on his knees to his bitter personal rival, Wolseley, to beg him to admit his son on his special recommendation as Commander-in-Chief. Wolseley had refused – but left the door ajar. It was up to Lieutenant Roberts to show by some feat of gallantry that he deserved to be admitted.65

  Alas, poor Freddy was to win his recommendation – but not in the way that anyone, least of all Buller, would have wanted.

  On 11 December Buller sent that heliograph message to White to say that he proposed to march on Potgieters.66 Next day he moved Barton’s brigade up to Chieveley, within five miles of the Tugela, and prepared to send the other three brigades off on their fifty-mile flank march. But that day he received a string of telegrams from the Cape that led him to abandon this plan immediately, and decide that the balance of risk, strategic and tactical, had shifted. After all, he must ‘make a run’ for Colenso.67’

  The decision was later to bring down a storm of criticism on his head. Buller’s reasons were as follows.

  The news from the Cape was bad, shatteringly bad. On the 11th he had heard of 548 men missing and captured (actually 696, as it proved), lost by Lieutenant-General Gatacre at the Battle of Stormberg.68 It was to emerge that Gatacre, although instructed to take no risks until reinforced, had hazarded his small force in a night march to recapture a strategic railway junction. The column had lost its way through the mistake of a guide. Gatacre had pressed on, and at dawn found himself at the mercy of the enemy.69 Buller did not reproach Gatacre. Accidents were bound to happen when the men and the generals were strange to the country. He sent Gatacre a reassuring telegram: ‘Am sorry to hear your bad luck; you are right to concentrate; will reinforce you as soon as possible.’70

  On the 12th Buller heard of Methuen’s crushing reverse at Magersfontein, which Methuen reported with the conclusion: ‘Our loss is great. Possibility that further advance is questionable, b
ut shall endeavour to hold my own and keep my communications secure.’71 Buller telegraphed, ‘Fight or fall back.’ Methuen dithered – or so it seemed to Buller. ‘He was all to pieces,’ he said later, ‘and could do neither.’72

  From Buller’s point of view, this was the last straw. Ever since he had reached South Africa, six weeks before, Milner had been in ‘an unholy terror’ of a Cape rebellion. Buller had taken the moral burden of rejecting Milner’s advice and striking out against the Boers. Now both the mobile armies in the Cape – Gatacre’s and Methuen’s – were themselves at risk; Methuen was sending ‘lachrymose’ messages, begging for reinforcements; clearly he and Gatacre might both be cut off. Milner was ‘in agony’ about the Cape, and Milner might be right.

  In this frightening new twist of the strategic situation, Buller decided he could not hazard the only other mobile force – his own Natal Field Force – in a fifty-mile march away from the railway line. Not only would he himself be unable to communicate with Cape Town in case of emergency. His whole force, if defeated at Potgieters, could be left as helpless as White at Ladysmith.73 As he later explained, in the light of events, both plans of attack, at Potgieters and Colenso, were ‘forlorn hopes’. In the case of the latter, ‘Colenso was in front of me. I could attack that and control the result. But Potgieters … I could not pretend I could control that. I might easily have lost my whole force.’74