The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  The disaster unfolding at Nicholson’s Nek at the same time only added to their humiliation. The troubles there had started earlier, at two o’clock in the morning. Carleton’s column, comprising 950 infantrymen and 150 artillerymen with mountain guns, was making slower progress than they had expected and had lost hope of reaching Nicholson’s Nek before sunrise. Carleton and Adye, who had joined the expedition to witness his plan in action, decided instead to take positions on Cayingubo Hill, nearby. But fate intervened. For one reason or another, pandemonium broke out. Some said it was caused by falling stones, others by the sound of gunshot; no one really knew. In any event, the mules carrying the munitions and mountain guns suddenly bolted and scrambled downhill in the dark. Scores of men were trampled underfoot; some were dragged along by the animals; many fled. It looked as if the mission had come to an end, but Carleton and Adye weren’t ready to give up. They restored order and assigned their remaining troops to the south side of Cayingubo Hill, to lie in wait for Boers on the retreat.

  They didn’t have to wait long. The Boers soon appeared, but they weren’t retreating. Three of their units had heard the commotion on the hill. At daybreak, a division of the Pretoria Commando, led by Piet Zeederberg, opened fire from the south-east. Approaching from the opposite side, the northern slope of the Cayingubo—which wasn’t visible from the British position—were 300 Free Staters of the Heilbron Commando. For their acting commandant, Christiaan de Wet, this was a re-enactment of Majuba. He had been there, 18 years earlier, and the scenario was exactly the same. Yet again, the British had left one slope unguarded, allowing the Boers to advance, crawling through the tall grass and sheltering behind the outcrops of rock that covered the hill. Around eight o’clock, the Free Staters received reinforcements from the Zarps, led by Commandant G.M.J. van Dam. The British troops on the southern slope were surrounded.

  The Boers were in no hurry. They continued to climb the hill at a leisurely pace, knowing that heat and fatigue would take their toll. At eleven o’clock the front units of the Gloucesters began to retreat. Half an hour later, Carleton saw flashes of light coming from a spot near the British headquarters. It was a heliogram from White, in Morse code. He was instructing them to ‘retire as opportunity offers’, but they didn’t stand a chance. They were hemmed in and their supply of ammunition was almost depleted. At a quarter past one, a few white flags appeared, and the Boers emerged from their shelters. Carleton and Adye surrendered. The remaining Gloucesters and Royal Irish Fusiliers—the 840 men who had not fled or been killed or wounded—were taken prisoner.

  The British sustained far heavier casualties than the Boers at Nicholson’s Nek as well as Modderspruit. The two clashes together are known as the Battle of Ladysmith. All in all, on Monday 30 October, the Boers lost 16 dead and 75 wounded. The British losses amounted to 106 dead, 374 wounded, and 1284 captured.

  But the outcome could have been far worse. If the commandant-general, Joubert, had listened to his younger officers, the British press might have had to think up an epithet even more dismal than Mournful Monday. Commanding officers like De Wet and Louis Botha—Botha had replaced the ailing Lukas Meyer at the eastern end of the Boer horseshoe—were eager to give chase to the British troops fleeing to Ladysmith. But Joubert wouldn’t allow it. His men were exhausted, he said, and he wouldn’t risk throwing away the victory. In any case, he felt it was ‘unchristian to pursue an enemy on the run’. De Wet could only watch from the heights as the plain filled with demoralised British soldiers. He gave vent to his frustration. As if Joubert were at his side, he hissed, ‘Go, your horsemen, go! Go, your horsemen.’22

  Thus the Dublin Fusiliers at Modderspruit were spared the humiliation that befell the Royal Irish Fusiliers at Nicholson’s Nek. The wholesale surrender of British troops caused dismay in military circles and beyond, even more than the high toll in casualties. Churchill was outraged and expressed his views in the Morning Post. He wrote a personal letter to the adjutant-general, Sir Evelyn Wood—another old family friend—demanding that the officers responsible be punished.23

  But five days later, on 15 November, it was Churchill himself who was under fire from the Boers. He was taking cover with the Dublin Fusiliers and Captain Haldane in an armoured train that was gathering speed as it hurtled downhill. Slow down, he thought to himself, convinced that the Boers would have blocked the line up ahead. He was just turning to Haldane to suggest that someone should warn the driver, when the train crashed. It came to an abrupt halt, as if it had hit a brick wall, hurling the men in all directions. After recovering from the shock, Churchill returned to his box. He had little time to inspect the damage to the front of the train. Bullets whistled past his ears and clattered like hailstones against the steel armour. He ducked down again and conferred with Haldane. None of the Dubliners or sailors were injured. If the gunners could return the Boer fire with their rifles and the naval gun, he would go out to investigate. Haldane agreed.

  Protected by the train and crouching low, Churchill made his way to the front of the train as swiftly as he could. The engine and the tender were still on the line, but the three cars in front of them had derailed. It had only taken a single rock to do the job. The front truck containing equipment for repairs had uncoupled and overturned on the embankment. The two carriages behind it, carrying the Durban Light Infantry and the labourers, were badly damaged. One lay on its side, the other was wedged across the track, half on and half off the rails.

  As Churchill drew level with the locomotive, a shell burst overhead. He was unharmed, but the driver was injured by a shard. He stormed out of his cab in a rage, his face bleeding. He was a civilian, he protested, he wasn’t getting paid to be shot at. He took shelter behind the overturned cars and refused to budge. Realising that there could be no escape without the driver, Churchill used all his powers of persuasion to calm him down. If he—the man’s name was Charles Wagner—remained at his post, Churchill assured him, he would receive a medal for ‘distinguished gallantry’ in action. The ploy was successful. Wagner wiped the blood from his face and went back to the locomotive. The Durban Light Infantrymen had been flung out of their carriage, but most of them could still hold a rifle and fire it. Churchill returned to the rear of the train. He had a plan.

  Churchill never stopped to reflect that he was a civilian too, a correspondent dispatched to report on the war, not take part in it. Under enemy fire, he conducted himself like the officer he had once been, and instinctively assumed command. Even Haldane seems to have accepted Churchill’s authority when he explained his plan. The Dubliners and the Durban Light Infantry gunners would keep the Boers at a distance while Churchill used the locomotive to remove the wreckage from the line. They had the expertise and equipment, so it wouldn’t be too difficult. The only problem was that many of the labourers had fled, leaving their equipment scattered on the ground. There was also the unrelenting attack from the Boers to deal with. Their own gun had been damaged beyond repair. Undeterred, Churchill went ahead with the help of the engine driver, who meekly followed his orders.

  First, they uncoupled the truck that was lying on its side and pushed it off the rails. The carriage was more of a problem. Using steam and sheer physical power—nine men volunteered to face the Boers’ barrage of fire—they managed to move it, too. Well, almost. There was just enough room for the tender to pass, but the locomotive was too wide to get through. The driver struggled to clear a passage, taking care not to derail the engine in the process. They finally succeeded more than an hour later, after 11 or 12 attempts. After they managed to lift the carriage a few inches off the ground, the engine tilted precariously to the right, but inched through, with a grating screech of steel on steel.

  Estcourt was now within reach—in any event, for the locomotive. To Churchill’s dismay, the coupling between the engine and the carriage behind it gave way at the crucial moment. It would be too risky to try to force the engine past the obstruction a second time, and if they were to push the cars up to the
engine, the men would be exposed to the Boers’ line of fire. The only option was to transport the wounded—more than 40 at that stage—in the engine and the tender and have everyone else run alongside the train. There was a small hamlet near Frere station, 800 metres further along. They might be able to take shelter there while the engine continued to Estcourt to fetch reinforcements.

  Fearing that their prey was about to escape, the Boer gunners redoubled their efforts. The engine driver put on steam. The men running alongside struggled to keep pace and many of them, including Haldane, were left behind. As the locomotive approached the houses, Churchill leapt off to assist the stragglers, after instructing Wagner to press on and get the wounded to safety in Estcourt. He then returned on foot along the railway line, passing through a cleft in a hill, unaware that most of the men he was going back to help had already surrendered.

  Two figures in civilian clothes suddenly appeared a hundred metres ahead of him. At first, Churchill thought they were British railway workers. But he was wrong—they were Boers and they were armed. Churchill spun around and fled. He heard the thud of bullets left and right, felt one of them graze his hand, but he continued to run and managed to scramble up the railway embankment. There was a brief respite, then shock, when he realised that another disaster was looming on the crest of the hill. A horseman was galloping towards him across the tracks, a tall, dark figure with his rifle trained on him. Churchill weighed up the odds. He knew how to shoot and—war correspondent or not—he was carrying a Mauser pistol. He had shot to kill before, in Tirah and Omdurman. He felt for his holster, but the pistol was gone. Slowly, he raised his hands.24

  The rules of warfare

  Pretoria, 18 November 1899

  His arrival at Pretoria station was ghastly. On the way, walking through Natal and during the train ride, Churchill had almost come to like the Boers. They had been inquisitive and trusting, had gathered around him, offered him coffee and cigars, bandaged his wounded hand and plied him with questions. ‘So they were not cruel men, these enemy,’ he had noted with some surprise, having expected to meet with hostility and humiliation. But it felt different here on the platform of the station in Pretoria. In those three days in captivity, he had come to respect and even sympathise with the simple, kind-hearted burghers who were making their way to the front to defend home and hearth. Here, however, he sensed animosity—and corruption. These were the profiteers, the fat cats who got others to do their dirty work. Unsavoury types, Portuguese, Dutch, all scum. Ugly women, too, in threadbare clothes, who stood in the hot sun glaring at the British for a good 20 minutes.

  A battery of cameras recorded their shame: prisoners at the mercy of the enemy, compelled to submit and obey. A few days earlier he had scoffed at the officers who had been so quick to surrender. Then he had done so himself. It was the ultimate humiliation. Policemen in white helmets—called Zarps, he was told—herded them into rows: himself, Haldane, the 50 men from the Dublin Fusiliers and the Durban Light Infantry. Couldn’t they stop sneering? ‘Now for the first time since my capture I hated the enemy.’

  His fame meant nothing here. At first he had been placed with the soldiers. Haldane had put in a word for him. Churchill belongs with the officers, he protested—not because he had acted like an officer on the train (it was wiser not to mention that)—but because he was a war correspondent and, moreover, the son of a lord. Your aristocrats mean nothing to us, they snapped back. Haldane spoke to a field cornet, with more success. A few minutes later, Churchill rejoined the two officers. The conditions under which the two groups were detained were vastly different. Soldiers were assigned to the racecourse, already congested with 2000 men, while officers were housed in a former school building, now used as a prison. There were already about 60 men there.

  Churchill had mixed feelings about them, but at least they were all British. Their quarters were reasonably comfortable, and they were treated exceptionally well. Even so, he wanted nothing more than to be free as soon as possible. At the time of his capture he had invoked his status as a journalist. He was a civilian, he had insisted, and should be released—though he didn’t really have a leg to stand on, as he realised himself. He was wearing an army jacket of sorts, and had taken part in active combat, a leading role in fact. A military tribunal could have had him executed there and then. Moreover, he had reason to be grateful to the Boer who had captured him, Field Cornet Sarel Oosthuizen—although Churchill claimed to his dying day that it was Louis Botha in person. On his way to prison, he had suddenly remembered the two clips of Mauser bullets in his pocket. They were ‘soft-nosed bullets’, in other words dum-dums. Just having them in his possession was a serious offence. He managed to drop one round on the ground without being noticed, but he was caught with the second. ‘What have you got there?’ the dark horseman asked in English. Churchill feigned innocence and opened his hand. ‘What is it? I picked it up.’ He got away with it. The man took the clip, inspected it and tossed it away without saying another word.

  The Boer leaders he spoke to weren’t intending to release him. The state attorney, Jan Smuts, was in Commandant-General Joubert’s tent when Joubert took the decision. Smuts’s advice was clear. On the train Churchill had conducted himself like a soldier, and what a soldier! The story of his heroic exploits had spread like wildfire. So there was nothing to do but detain him. Joubert agreed. He also had unpleasant memories of Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph, who had travelled through southern Africa eight years earlier and spoken disparagingly about the Boer regime. Even after Churchill had arrived in Pretoria by train, Joubert sent a telegram to the authorities there, instructing them ‘not to release the son of Lord Churchill’ as long as the two countries were still at war.

  The upshot was that they turned down Churchill’s formal request for recognition of his civilian status. President Paul Kruger would probably have approved it, but he wasn’t prepared to override Joubert. So Churchill remained in prison. As a British prisoner of war he was short of nothing except his freedom. They slept six to a room, but in warm weather they were allowed to spend the night outdoors on the veranda, with only a flimsy iron fence separating them from the street. Their mess committee supplemented the prison rations they received daily, and they could buy anything else they wanted, except firearms, from the local shop. Churchill traded his prison-issue mustard-yellow overalls for a dark tweed suit. Prisoners could also communicate freely with the outside world, by telegram or letter, and they were allowed to receive visitors. And Churchill could continue to send his dispatches to the Morning Post, as usual. The prison governors treated them well, too. The deputy director, J.W.B. Gunning, ‘an amiable little Hollander’, went out of his way to make them as comfortable as possible, even borrowing books for them from the national library. Churchill formed a friendship with one of the governors, Louis de Souza, a Transvaler of Portuguese descent, who was also secretary of the war ministry and second only to Joubert in rank. The two men corresponded and De Souza visited Churchill frequently. Over a bottle of whiskey he smuggled into the prison in a basket of fruit, they reflected on the outcome of the conflict for both sides, poring over charts of the theatre of war. Adversaries, but gentlemen.

  As for visitors, Churchill couldn’t complain. The American consul Charles Macrum, whom his mother had contacted through friends and acquaintances, called to see how he was getting along. Other war correspondents came to interview him. The under-secretary for foreign affairs, Pieter Grobler, spent time with him as well, reflecting on the causes of the war. Churchill was in demand because of his family background as well as his new-found fame. It was just what he had always wanted, but what good was it here in prison? He hated being confined, however comfortable the conditions. The fences, the guards, the regulations—the humiliation was unbearable. He was determined to get out, and he kept trying.

  He wrote letter after letter to the Transvaal government, asking them to review his case. He persuaded Haldane to testify on his behalf. On his birthday, 30
November, he wrote a long letter to the Prince of Wales, another of his mother’s friends. It was on the pretext of commending the bravery of Charles Wagner, the driver of the armoured train, but he made a point of noting that he himself had been present strictly as a ‘non-combatant’. That last statement was presumably intended for the benefit of the Transvaal censors, as was his praise for the Boers’ kindness, courage and compassion. He wrote a second letter that day, to another of his mother’s admirers, the American entrepreneur and politician Bourke Cockran, with whom he had struck up a friendship on his journey to Cuba. Here he expressed his feelings more candidly. ‘I am 25 today—it is terrible to think how little time remains.’25

  Impatient, ashamed and disappointed by the lack of good news, Churchill continued to languish in prison. There was nothing uplifting for a British patriot to report as far as the war was concerned, though of course all the news that filtered through from the four fronts reflected the Boers’ point of view. And for all his usual complacency, even he was shaken.

  He had felt miserable that first night in custody, cold and wet in a shed somewhere in Natal. Unable to sleep, he had heard the Boers singing their evening psalm. Worse than shellfire, he thought, ‘It struck the fear of God into me.’ What if the war was unjust and the heavens had turned against them? What if the Boers were actually better men than they were? He could see it all before him: Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley fallen, the garrison in Estcourt wiped out, intervention by foreign powers, South Africa lost. ‘That would be the beginning of the end.’

  The sun rose the following morning and dispelled his gloom. On the way to Pretoria, Churchill used his skills as a journalist to record his own experiences. He wrote in detail about his lively conversations with his prison guards, giving readers of the Morning Post an impression of the thoughts and sentiments of ordinary Boers. On the culprits, for instance, ‘You know it’s those damned capitalists and Jews who have caused the war.’ And on the controversial cavalry charge at Elandslaagte, ‘We have heard that your Lancers speared our wounded.’ But most revealing for newspaper readers in the late nineteenth century—and certainly for readers today—was what Churchill heard from a certain Spaarwater, a Transvaal Boer from the Ermelo district. He struck Churchill as a mild, soft-spoken man until the subject turned to freedom. That was something they enjoyed in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, Spaarwater remarked, but life in Natal and the Cape Colony was ‘not free’. There, the natives could do what they liked. ‘Well, is it right that a dirty Kaffir should walk on the pavement—without a pass too?’ That’s what they do in your British colonies. Equal! Free! Not a bit... We know how to treat Kaffirs in this country... We educate ’em with a stick... They were put here by the God Almighty to work for us. We’ll stand no damned nonsense from them.’ Churchill made no reply.