Showdown on Majuba Day: that was the buzzword on the western front as well. Roberts’s unexpected incursion into the Orange Free State, and particularly his cavalry’s advance on Kimberley on 15 February, had thrown the Boers into confusion and destroyed all coordination between their ranks. Cronjé and De Wet chose their strategies—each his own.
Right at the start, De Wet showed Roberts how risky an overhasty advance could be. This applied in particular to an expeditionary force as large as Roberts’s, which was steadily moving further away from the railway line and would therefore have to rely on traditional modes of transport for supplies. Before the campaign started Roberts had got Kitchener to change the existing arrangement whereby each battalion was responsible for its own provisions. It might seem more flexible, but he and Kitchener agreed that it was inefficient and wasteful. They wanted a single, large supply convoy. And that’s what they got. They soon discovered just how vulnerable it was. The day Kimberley was liberated, a large British convoy of oxwagons, which had broken its journey at Waterval Drift to rest the animals, fell into the hands of Christiaan de Wet’s commandos. They made off with 180 wagons filled with valuable supplies of food, as well as 2800 oxen—almost a third of the number the British expeditionary army would need for its march to Bloemfontein. As thrilled as they were about the relief of Kimberley, this was a serious setback for Roberts. The options now were either to turn back with a detachment to recapture the convoy, or reduce the rations. Roberts chose the latter—in other words, speed.68
On the same day, 15 February, 20 kilometres to the north, Cronjé found himself in the same predicament—and took the other option. His 5000 men couldn’t remain in their trenches at Magersfontein. They were in danger of being surrounded and had to strike camp. The question was, what should they take with them? They had been there for months and had built a semi-permanent camp, where even women and children came to visit. Their supplies were stacked on hundreds of oxwagons. Taking it all would slow them down. Still, Cronjé decided to take as much as possible. He was planning to occupy new positions further to the east and obstruct the British advance to Bloemfontein, and to do so they would need their equipment. That evening, a procession trailing back eight kilometres set off along the north bank of the Modder.
They were spotted early the following morning. Roberts hadn’t arrived yet, but Kitchener immediately sent his troops in pursuit of the Boers. His advance units met their rearguard at Klipdrift. An exchange of fire followed, but the Boers were still able to proceed. That night they reached Paardeberg Drift. From there Cronjé sent part of his oxwagon convoy to the south bank of the Modder. That group managed to escape. Cronjé himself, together with his main force and the rest of the convoy, continued along the north bank towards Vendutie Drift. There, on 17 February, he discovered that they were almost completely surrounded—to the west by Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Colville’s 9th Infantry Division; to the south, from the opposite bank of the Modder, by Lieutenant-General Thomas Kelly-Kenny’s 6th Infantry Division; and to the north and east by the cavalry units French had raised in Kimberley. French’s horsemen had intercepted back-up troops under General Naas Ferreira, and now took advantage of the Boers’ bewilderment to rob them of 2000 oxen—fair compensation for the cattle De Wet had made off with. There was only one way for Cronjé and his men to escape. They would have to leave their wagons behind and under cover of darkness cross the river to the south bank on foot in the hope of meeting up with De Wet’s commandos. At least, this is what Cronjé’s commandants advised him to do, but Cronjé decided otherwise. They would entrench themselves on the north bank and fight.
This was exactly what Kitchener wanted. Roberts, suffering from a bad cold, had remained in Jacobsdal and entrusted Kitchener with command of his men during his absence. This was Kitchener’s chance to show how the Boers should be dealt with. After the Mahdi fighters at Omdurman he would be able to add the Boers at Paardeberg to his list of notable feats. He would strike at once, now that they were on the defensive, with a fullscale assault from all sides. The divisional generals protested, but he waved their objections aside. On 18 February Kitchener gave the command for the usual onslaught accompanied by artillery fire. Like Methuen, like Buller and a long line of British generals before him, he believed he could simply charge through the Boer positions. But Kitchener was also to learn ‘the hard way’ about entrenched sharpshooters with modern rapid-firing weapons. The encounter turned into a bloodbath, but then on his side. By nightfall, the British had lost 300 dead and 900 wounded.
This was comparable to Spion Kop in terms of casualties and it damaged Kitchener’s reputation permanently. Roberts was distraught and rushed to the front line the following day. They would handle things differently, he decided. The Boers had paid a price, too. The artillery bombardments had destroyed most of their supplies, and virtually all their horses and oxen had been killed or seized. They were stranded. All Roberts had to do was tighten the screws: surround them completely, blast them with his hundred guns, dig trenches to get closer to them, and it would be over in no time at all.
The Boer positions at Paardeberg were indeed hopeless. The British forces on the south bank of the Modder were managing to hold off De Wet, but he thought there was still a way out. Inclement weather prevented him from communicating with Cronjé by heliograph, so on the night of 24 February he instructed the commander of the Boer Scouts Corps, Captain Danie Theron, to slip through the British lines and deliver a message by hand. If Cronjé tried to escape to the south, De Wet would cover him. It was doubtful whether De Wet was in a position to do so, Cronjé knew, but he was prepared to take the chance. His commandants were, however, against it. The unrelenting British bombardments had taken their toll. They were close to exhaustion, they had been drinking water contaminated by corpses, their food smelled of lyddite, they were worn out, they were broken, and on top of it all the rain of the past few days had swollen the river and turned their trenches into mud holes. They weren’t interested in trying to escape. They were ready to surrender.
Cronjé managed to hold out for two more days. On the evening of Monday 26 February he held another war council meeting. If they were really determined to capitulate, could they at least wait until after Majuba Day? But his commandants refused. In the meantime, the British troops were within earshot of the Boer trenches. Early the next morning they prepared to mount the decisive attack. At five o’clock Major-General Horace Smith-Dorrien called on the Boers to surrender. White handkerchiefs went up one after another. Cronjé resigned himself to the situation; there was nothing else he could do. At six o’clock he hoisted the white flag. He was escorted to Roberts, who greeted him courteously. ‘I am glad to see you. You have made a gallant defence, sir.’ More than 4000 men surrendered at Paardeberg that day. The units under De Wet, Ferreira and other Boer commandants in the area moved on. It was the end of the western front. Roberts could march into Bloemfontein.69
The good news reached Buller by field telegraph. It was Tuesday 27 February, just before dawn. Roberts had achieved his breakthrough. Now it was Buller’s turn. The unique chance to achieve a double success on Majuba Day was in his hands. Another failure would mean the end of his career; he could count on that. By ten o’clock in the morning the pontoon bridge was installed in its new location. From there his infantry brigades, backed by the artillery and cavalry on the south-east bank, would attack Hart’s Hill, Spoorwegkop and Pietershoogte. Buller pulled out all the stops. For the first time he took advantage of his numerical superiority; he had four times more men and ten times more guns. The Ferryman of the Tugela was ready to embark on his last crossing.
From his vantage point Churchill had an excellent view of the whole operation. The Cockyolibirds had taken cover behind boulders near the river, and kept up a steady barrage of rifle and machine-gun fire against the Boer positions on the opposite bank. The rest of the cavalry and the artillery batteries higher up did the same. It took a while for them to get going, as far as Ch
urchill was concerned, but the firing gradually built up to ‘a capital loud noise, which I think is a most invigorating element in an attack’. The thundering explosions and the volley of covering fire served to unnerve the Boers, but it was the infantrymen who had to do the real work. Churchill saw them fanning out from the pontoon bridge to the hilltops. They advanced slowly, fighting to gain each hill, but this time their actions were coordinated and they were making progress. The Boers lost more ground as the day wore on. At the end of the afternoon they abandoned some of their positions and fled or surrendered. Towards evening their resistance was broken and cheers from the British rang out. They had won the battle at Pietershoogte and broken through here as well. They had taken revenge for Majuba.
This was the sign for Lord Dundonald and his impatient cavalrymen to leave their positions, mount their horses and cross the Tugela in pursuit of the fleeing Boers. However, at the pontoon bridge they found Buller waiting for them in person. He was still uneasy. There might be a counterattack by night and he wasn’t prepared to put his cavalry at risk. No pursuit. The disappointed horsemen returned to their camp.
On his way back, Churchill passed a small group of Boer prisoners. They looked like men one might see in a bar, ‘very ordinary people, who grinned and chattered without dignity . . . it was difficult to understand what qualities made them such a terrible foe’. He was also taken aback by one of their guards, who was railing against them. ‘I never saw such cowards in my life; shoot at you till you come up to them, and then beg for mercy. I’d teach ’em.’ He would have bayoneted them there and then, if it had been up to him and his mates, but their officers had intervened. With which remark the man turned to the prisoners and offered them water from his own canteen. The incident left Churchill ‘wondering at the opposite and contradictory sides of human nature as shown by Briton as well as Boer’.
The following day, 28 February, the cavalry—and the artillery—were sent across the Tugela. The infantrymen were given a day’s rest. They had gained their victory at a loss of 80 dead and more than 400 wounded. The British casualties over the previous two weeks—in the campaign against the Boers’ left flank—came to a total of 400 dead and more than 1800 wounded. Buller was intending to push forward on 1 March. He had dispatched reconnaissance patrols to find out whether the Boers had set up a new defence line ahead of Ladysmith and, if so, where.
Churchill took the opportunity to examine the abandoned Boer trenches on Hart’s Hill. There, he met a group of soldiers from the East Surrey Regiment, who were more than willing to show him around. ‘Come along here, sir; there’s a bloke here without a head; took clean off, sir.’ Churchill thanked him for his kindness, but he was more interested in the way the trenches had been constructed. They were deep, he could stand upright in them, and they had no real parapet, just a few rocks placed along the edge in front, with small heaps of Mauser ammunition every few metres along. The floor was knee-deep in cartridge cases. One of the officers produced a few dum-dum bullets. They had found boxes full of them, he said, roughly one in five of all the bullets left behind. Churchill responded with a derogatory remark about the dark side of the Boers’ character, presumably forgetting that he himself had been carrying dumdums at the time of his capture.70
As the day wore on, more and more evidence emerged that the Boers had not only abandoned the Tugela line, but were retreating from Ladysmith as well. Dundonald’s cavalry occasionally encountered resistance, but none of it lasted long. Towards evening a message came from Major Hubert Gough’s regiment in the vanguard, saying that the way to Ladysmith lay open. On hearing this, Dundonald decided to ride there himself and invited Churchill to join him. It was an unforgettable experience. Galloping through the countryside in a cool evening breeze, knowing that Ladysmith was just beyond the next hill, perhaps the one after that, one more to go, and there it lay before them. Just before reaching the town they joined Gough’s column of Natal Carbineers and Imperial Light Horse which, after 118 days, brought an end to the siege of Ladysmith.
That evening, Churchill had dinner at the headquarters of the garrison commander, White. He was seated next to his old friend Ian Hamilton. It had been a while, but here they were, together again at last. Time for a drink and a good cigar. They had a lot to talk about.71
Fever
Ladysmith, 3 March 1900
Not many sons would escort their mother on a tour of a battlefield almost 10,000 kilometres from home, where they had taken part in a life-anddeath struggle barely a week earlier. Winston Churchill was that kind of son. Neither he nor his mother gave it a second thought. She was an unconventional woman who did as she pleased, he had never known her to be otherwise, and she happened to be passing that way. Lady Randolph had arrived in Durban towards the end of January 1900 on board the Maine, a hospital ship she had chartered in London on behalf of an American women’s relief group. Churchill had visited her in Durban some time earlier. Once the hostilities were over, she wanted to see the front where it had all taken place: the reports her elder son had written, the misfortune that had befallen her younger son, who happened to be one of her first patients on the Maine.
Churchill obtained a pass for her as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He would have liked to take his friend on the trip as well, but for some unfathomable reason Pamela Plowden had decided to remain in England. Lady Randolph had embarked on her ‘sightseeing tour’ in early March. She had taken the train to Colenso, and at Chieveley passed close to the derailed trucks of Churchill’s first exploit. After that it was a matter of improvising. She crossed the Tugela over a makeshift bridge and then travelled on to Ladysmith in an open railway truck. The journey was slow but it had one big advantage, ‘We could see and understand everything with the help of Winston’s graphic tongue.’ And there was plenty of time for ‘Kodaking’. Ladysmith itself was a disappointment: a sweltering, dusty ghost town, houses with shutters over the windows and people slinking warily through the streets. Fortunately Sir Redvers was kind enough to invite her to dinner and offer her a real bed in the convent where he was staying. The following morning Lady Randolph left for Durban and a week later sailed back to England.72
The relief group she was working with was one of many spontaneous initiatives organised in the wake of Black Week, in Great Britain and its overseas territories. ‘We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist,’ 81-year-old Queen Victoria had replied on hearing the bad news. Her subjects throughout the British Empire echoed that view. Many of them also wanted to do something about it. ‘War fever’ cut across all geographical and social boundaries: from Ottawa to Melbourne and Auckland, from the polo club to the music hall and the beer hall, everyone was eager to help. Thousands of volunteers applied to join one of the newly formed cavalry regiments such as the Imperial Yeomanry in Britain, or the Imperial Light Horse or the South African Light Horse—the Churchill brothers’ Cockyolibirds—in the Cape Colony and Natal. It was the same in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The public flocked to join the contingents their governments had promised to send out. The British Empire was getting ready to hit back.
Those who couldn’t or chose not to engage in combat found other ways to help. They organised fundraising drives to support the troops overseas, or joined teams of medics like Lady Randolph’s. That was how Arthur Conan Doyle, for instance, a physician by profession, but better known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, expressed his patriotic sentiments. The Imperial Yeomanry had rejected him because of his age (40) and military experience (none), but he was more than welcome at the privately run field hospital that the philanthropist John Langman was sending out. He set sail for South Africa in February 1900.
Mohandas Gandhi had a shorter distance to travel. He had been living in Natal and working as a lawyer since 1893. But he also had a handicap, namely his race. The military authorities didn’t welcome ‘sons of Empire’ from a different ethnic background, at least not in the beginning. After all, there were limits
to imperialistic fervour. At the beginning of the war, in mid-October 1899, Gandhi had offered his services as a token of the loyalty of the local Indian population, but he was scoffed at. ‘You Indians know nothing of war,’ he was told. Things changed after Mournful Monday, 30 October. Gandhi repeated his offer, which was gratefully accepted. The Natal Indian Ambulance Corps was formed, made up of roughly 1000 stretcher-bearers. They were desperately needed, as evidenced by the sad list of battlefields they served: Colenso, Spion Kop, Vaal Krantz.73
These private initiatives were welcome additions to the British army’s regular medical services, which by nineteenth-century standards were fairly comprehensive. The Royal Army Medical Corps, established in 1898 after much urging by the British Medical Association, improved the status of military physicians and the quality of their services. But it had little time to prepare for its mission in South Africa. Nor could this have been otherwise. The army had expected to dispatch a relatively small expeditionary force, not the tens of thousands of soldiers who were needed after Black Week. Just the scale of the operation in all respects—manpower, bandages, equipment, transport, everything imaginable—made it difficult to provide adequate medical care for British soldiers.
The wounded were generally the best off, at least if they could be removed from the battlefield reasonably quickly. Depending on the severity of their injuries, they were treated either at a field hospital on the spot or in a facility at some distance from the front. They were attended by skilled surgeons, who could treat most bullet wounds and broken bones, and who possessed ether, chloroform, X-ray equipment and a practised hand to perform amputations. They knew the dangers of infection and how to prevent and treat it.
The Boer War Page 31
