As the Boers melted away, British cheers echoed backwards and forwards across the canyon walls of the Tugela. The key had found the lock at last. Pieters Hill (enough of it, at any rate) – Railway Hill – Hart’s Hill. The three last notches of the combination lock had dropped into place. Something extraordinary had happened – something ‘better than feast or couch’, Churchill romantically called it, ‘for which we had hungered and longed through many weary weeks, which had been thrice forbidden us, and which was all the more splendid since it had been so long delayed – victory’.40 The wave of cheering lapped against Buller’s staff, who took off their helmets and cheered and shook each other’s hands, as merry as schoolboys. They had done it at last.41
Buller stood there, paradise regained. ‘It has all seemed like a dream.’42
* * * * * *
In Ladysmith, the pendulum swung across with a dazzling suddenness, and people were dazed by the shock of relief.43
The 28th dawned cloudy and empty. There was no rumble of guns and no heliograph from Buller. It was the kind of day when the boredom lay like lead on everyone’s backs. No one dreamt that this, the 118th day of the siege, was to be the last. Gunner Netley’s battery stood to arms as usual. Colonel Rawlinson was glad not to have to go to Caesar’s Camp to see if there was any sign of Buller; his eyes were hurting after days of futile peering through the telescope.44
Before midday, the sun emerged, a garish sun, advancing the claustrophobic rim of hills even closer to the edge of the town. Donald MacDonald, The Argus correspondent, glanced out of the window to the east and half-curiously picked up the binoculars to study the green hills in the direction of Zululand. There was something odd about the view that morning. ‘Look there! What do you make of it?’ ‘It’s a trek … a great trek. They’re retreating at last.’
Through the binoculars it was plainly visible: a long silver snake of retreating wagons, white canvas covers flashing in the sun, strangely uniform in colour and build for anything belonging to the Boers, yet unquestionably Boer. MacDonald climbed Maiden Castle to see the view to the west. His hand trembled and he could not hold the binoculars steady. But there was no doubt. It was the great trek – a five-mile train of wagons. And not wagons only, but riders – ‘galloping black-coated horsemen moving forward in groups of twenty, fifty, a hundred, a continuous living stream … coming into view round the corner of End Hill, sweeping away in a long curve, and disappearing northward behind Telegraph Hill’ towards the railway station. ‘They went their way and they went fast.’ MacDonald was a colonial, an Australian, and he admired the Boers’ undisciplined speed. ‘In any other army it would have been evidence not merely of defeat but demoralization. But we knew the Boer way… [to go] rapidly and effectively; that is why pursuit is such a hopeless thing…. Their retreat was as masterly a thing as their desperate clinging to the hills of the Tugela… The one thing, the great thing, was that they were going.’45
Of course, it was frustrating to see the Boers go free – under the noses of Ladysmith guns. ‘Look yonder,’ said one of the Gordons at Maiden Castle, ‘look yonder, mon; ain’t they rinnin’! Aye, it’s a pity we canna get at them.’ If only the field artillery gun teams, or the cavalry, could have galloped out to try to stop them. But most of the cavalry horses had been eaten, and the men would have fallen down after a few miles from sheer exhaustion. The 12-pounder naval guns did their best, and their best only hammered the veld hundreds of yards short of the target46
At Sir George White’s HQ in the convent, the news of the sudden stream of fleeing Boers was greeted with the same mixture of nervous enthusiasm and frustration. At 1.00 p.m. they received a triumphant telegram from Buller: ‘I beat the enemy thoroughly yesterday and am sending my cavalry… to ascertain where they have gone to. I believe the enemy to be in full retreat.’ If only they could have joined in themselves.47
Even Bulwana Tom had taken his final bow before his admirers in Ladysmith. ‘The naval boys,’ wrote Gunner Netley cheerfully (though envious of their longer-range guns), ‘gave Long Tom a warm time of it as the Boers were trying to remove him.’48 A wooden derrick, shaped like a giant letter A, loomed up in Tom’s sand-bagged gun emplacement. The moment had come for which the gunners from the Powerful had hoarded the last of their 4.7-inch ammunition. Lady Anne let fly from Caesar’s Camp (she had been moved there, once again, in the hopes of covering Buller’s advance). Bloody Mary thundered from Cove Redoubt. The giant letter A vanished in a curtain of smoke. But no one could say if Tom himself had been hit. Then there appeared one of those operatic African thunderstorms, which always seemed to coincide with Ladysmith’s climactic days, and the whole of Bulwana vanished behind the curtain.49
It was soon after the rain had stopped that the relief column itself came in sight. Rawlinson spotted it first about five o’clock: two squadrons of mounted infantry, totalling about 120 men, plodding along on tired horses, winding over the low ridge to the east of Bulwana and down and into the plain by Intombi. Colonel Royston’s Natal Volunteers were sent out to meet them, and Sir George White prepared himself for the ordeal of the relief.50
Meanwhile, the incredible news was spreading, carried by a thin ripple of cheering from the direction of Intombi. People began to run down through the streets of the town, shouting and pushing, black men, brown men, white men, forgetting caste and colour. MacDonald was sitting at dinner, about to eat horse stew. He heard the rush of feet, then one sentence clearly above the uproar: ‘Buller’s cavalry are in sight; they are coming across the flats.’ He dashed into the street. The last of the evening sun caught the little column of khaki as the horses jogged along towards the Klip River bridge at the edge of the town. The horses were fat and well, and so were the riders. They were Buller’s men.51
Nevinson, still groggy after a fortnight’s fever, had driven up to King’s Post to see the tail-end of the great trek. On his way back, he found that Ladysmith had gone wild. All the world was running. He followed as best he could. Already the pavements were lined with soldiers off duty, officers, townsfolk, Zulus and doolie-bearers – all yelling and cheering like lunatics. The two strange-looking squadrons clattered up the street, and paused opposite the gaol (where the few unfortunate Boer prisoners had been kept). Sir George White and his staff appeared.52 Then the junction of the two armies was sealed in a handshake: Ladysmith’s pale, thin hand reaching out to grasp the bronzed and battle-hardened hand of the rescuer.
The most famous eye-witness descriptions of this meeting, the most dramatic moment, perhaps, from a British point of view, of the whole war, come from the pen of Winston Churchill: ‘It was not until evening’, he wrote in My Early Life:
that two squadrons of the SALH [actually ILH and Carbineers] were allowed to brush through the crumbling rear-guard, and ride into Ladysmith. I rode with these two squadrons, and galloped across the scrub-dotted plain, fired at only by a couple of Boer guns. Suddenly from the brushwood up rose gaunt figures waving hands of welcome. On we pressed, and at the head of a battered street of tin-roofed houses met Sir George White on horse-back, faultlessly attired. Then we all rode together into the long beleaguered, almost starved-out, Ladysmith. It was a thrilling moment.
I dined with the Headquarters that night….53
In fact, despite the eye-witness description, Lieutenant Winston Churchill was not there to witness the meeting of Sir George White and his rescuers, who were led by Lieutenant-Colonel Gough. It was just about six o’clock and there was still some daylight. Mr Churchill, The Morning Post’s special correspondent, might be inside Ladysmith. Lieutenant Churchill, of the SALH, was still miles away – galloping across the veld, miles in the rear, with the commander of the 2nd Mounted Brigade, Lord Dundonald, Major William Birdwood and the orderlies. They did not arrive till all was darkness, and the public celebrations were over – not till eight o’clock, according to Gough.54
The real meeting between Gough’s column and White had a quality of pathos that is missing from Churchill
’s imaginative account. ‘Poor old man,’ said Rawlinson about the Chief, ‘he has quite broken down.’55 Other people had noticed the way White now looked ten years older than the trim, taut soldier of his official photograph; a stooped, patient, almost pathetic figure, walking, cane in hand, through the streets of Ladysmith. He had known that many of the garrison mocked him and protested at his own inertia and feebleness. Now, when the cheers echoed round him, his emotions were too much to bear.
His voice broke as he tried to thank the cheering, yelling mob. He began almost inaudibly, then, in firmer tones: ‘Thank God we kept the flag flying.’ He faltered again: ‘It cut me to the heart… to reduce your rations as I did.’ Another long, agonizing silence, and it looked as though White would break down completely. He squeezed out a wan smile. ‘I promise you, though, that I’ll never do it again.’ Everyone laughed and cheered. Relief was, in every sense, the word. The crowd melted away into the night. But the flag, that White had kept flying – the Union Jack on the tall pole outside his HQ – the flag flew no longer. The emotions of the relief had proved stronger than the cotton it was made of Forgetting themselves completely, some officers had gathered round the pole, pulled down the flag, and ripped it into shreds, each shred a curio for the button-hole.56
Nevinson watched the wild scenes, still only half able to comprehend that the 118-day siege was over. The new arrivals had found billets in the other ILH’s squadron’s camp – alas, empty enough because of their exceptionally heavy casualties. ‘To right and left the squadrons wheeled, amid greetings and laughter and endless delight. By eight o’clock the street was almost clear, and there was nothing to show how great a change had befallen us.’57
The ordeal of the relief was still not complete. Three days later, it was arranged that Buller should lead a ceremonial march-past through the town, and his two divisions accordingly tramped through the streets from 11.30 a.m. to 1.45 p.m.. Rawlinson was immensely impressed by the sight of Buller’s strange, tatterdemalion army:
I never heard the troops cheer like they did when they passed Sir George White today – they waved their helmets in the air and simply yelled, such magnificent men, too, full of reservists of course, making our poor garrison look mere boys – their clothes are tattered and torn of course, for it is now 18 days since they changed them – their khaki is split and torn to pieces, some of them hardly decent – many of them have got hold of Boer trousers of various shades of blue and brown to protect their nether ends – they carry no cooking pots but are all cooking in their mess tins … most of the men carried a little bundle of dry sticks to cook their dinner with when they reach camp…58
Rawlinson was the man who had actually first proposed the march-past; White took up the idea; Buller agreed, though reluctantly.59 Perhaps he had sensed the curiously mixed reactions to the first meeting.60 Some of White’s force did not conceal their resentment at the slowness of the relief. ‘The garrison,’ wrote Lieutenant Alford, ‘seemed half inclined to be angry with us for taking so long….’61 John Atkins, too, received that impression, and was struck by the coolness displayed by the garrison towards their rescuers. It seemed as though, after the sudden frenzy of delight, when Gough’s two squadrons had ridden in, that Ladysmith had relapsed into a kind of emotional exhaustion. Atkins overheard the greeting of one general to another. ‘Well, how have you been getting on?’ ‘All right, thanks.’ A long silence, that Atkins found reassuringly British.62
Some of the relief column, too, regarded the victory parade as a cheap stunt, and an insult to both relieved and relievers. Lieutenant Grant found it ‘un-British and undignified’: it was ‘infamous stage management’.63 Colonel Sim called it ‘one of the most mournful pageants that could have been devised by idiotic Generals’.64 Warren himself wrote years later, ‘I cannot even now bear to think of it, the march of 20,000 healthy men triumphant and victorious, through the ranks of the weary and emaciated garrison, who were expected to cheer us and who actually tried to do so – it was an ordeal for me and many others.”65
Paradoxically, other officers in the relief column were surprised – and even resentful – of how fit the garrison looked. Fleet-Surgeon Lilly, of HMS Terrible, fresh from meeting the long-lost men from HMS Powerful, said, ‘We all thought the garrison looked more robust than we had expected.’66 Major (later Field-Marshal) Henry Wilson, who had reached the town on 1 March, wrote, ‘The relief is an accomplished fact. It all seems so curious. I was struck by how well most of the men looked. Rawly told me they could have held out for another month. It appears they were practically not under rifle fire, and only under big gun fire which did little damage….’67
To suggest that Ladysmith was not, after all, at its last gasp – this was hardly tactful to the garrison, true though it was. And it was on this issue and others that, as soon as the victory pageant was over, all the submerged mutual resentment between White and Buller finally broke surface.
Buller had himself ridden into Ladysmith on 1 March, the morning after Gough’s squadrons had made their dramatic entry. White met him in the street, a moment of history that passed quite unnoticed, and conducted him back to the HQ at Convent Ridge.68 There followed a small banquet: champagne, and trek ox, no doubt, hoarded for a special occasion. Unfortunately, Buller made some kind of tactless remark about the abundance of the food – or so White believed. One of White’s staff reported a few days later: ‘Buller himself arrived and made himself as unpleasant as he could. We had saved up a few stores … and used up everything giving him a good lunch. The ungrateful ruffian now goes about saying that the Ladysmith garrison lived like fighting cocks and that stories of hardships are all nonsense.’
White’s bitterness towards Buller, and the furious resentment of White’s confidant, Ian Hamilton, were fanned by the wave of anti-Buller stories that now reached them from Buller’s own army. Lyttelton, whom Buller himself trusted, arrived at White’s HQ on 6 March ‘full of abuse of Buller’, according to Rawlinson. And it was not only Lyttelton who abused the C-in-C. One of Buller’s own staff – presumably Colonel à Court, whose feelings had clearly been wounded by Buller’s bluntness in rejecting his advice after Monte Cristo – launched into a tirade against Buller’s errors as a field commander. ‘He [Buller] seems to work everything off his own bat,’ wrote Rawlinson after one of these tirades, ‘never even telling his staff what he is going to do, hence there is often chaos in his staff….’ Still, Rawlinson had to be fair to Buller. He was not the only man to have enemies. ‘The Divl. leaders [Lyttelton, Warren, and Clery] all crab each other and they say that in the whole force they have not a brigadier worth a damn – the fact is that they are all at loggerheads.’69
Generals, like poets, are an angry race. And here in Natal, the moment the enemy was beaten, the real battle began: among Buller’s generals. Buller, himself, was partly to blame. His grand seigneurial manner, his brusqueness, his habit of not explaining himself to the outer circle of his staff: these were all dangerous flaws in a commander-in-chief – even though their source, in Buller’s case, was a kind of shyness. Those he knew well (his personal staff, his ADCs, and Colonel Stopford, the Military Secretary) were all devoted to him.70 Colonel Sandbach, his Intelligence Officer, wrote of him in March, ‘Whatever may be said as to the gallant defence of Ladysmith… it will be Buller who will stand out before Europe as the man who… [saved] the honour of England from the disgrace of a surrender of 10,000 men to the Boers.’71 Regimental officers echoed the tribute.72
And the ordinary rank and file of his army also revelled in old Buller’s success. ‘General Buller has had a hard task,’ wrote Corporal Hurley, of the 3rd 60th, to his sister at home, three days after the victory parade, ‘the hardest of any, and if people at home find any fault with him it is because they are ignorant of the country, the enemy and their positions. All the men under Buller’s command… would go through fire and water for him.’73
As for Buller himself, it was his poor bloody infantry’s moment of triumph,
and he delighted in it. To his wife he wrote on the day of the victory parade, ‘I am filled with admiration for the British soldier, really the manner in which the men have worked, fought and endured has been something more than human….’74 To the men themselves he paid the compliment of a Special Army Order, beginning, ‘Soldiers of Natal! The relief of Ladysmith unites two forces, both of which have, during the last few months, striven with conspicuous gallantry and splendid determination to maintain the honour of their Queen and Country.’75 Queen and country echoed the congratulations. A shower of telegrams poured into his HQ: from the Queen, from Lansdowne, from Roberts, from friends and enemies alike. It was indeed like a dream. And with what depth of feeling Buller looked back on his ordeal: ‘However it is all over and well over thank God.’76
For the moment, it seemed that Buller was right. The squabbles among his own generals seemed to have fizzled out. The Roberts faction among the Ladysmith garrison – Ian Hamilton, Rawlinson, and so on – were called away by Roberts to serve with him on the western front.77 White went down with fever, a few days after the relief.78 The two Natal armies soon looked hardly recognizable: after the Ladysmith garrison had had a fortnight’s bread and potatoes, and the relief column had been given new seats to their trousers.79
The Boer War Page 58
