Murdoch shrugged. ‘If you think I could possibly interest them.’
‘Sure you will. Son, grandson, great-grandson of famous soldiers...that’s always interesting.’ He grinned. ‘You might even be able to tell me who won this darned battle.’
Murdoch looked him in the eye. ‘Why, Mr Caspar, we did. Haven’t you observed that the Boers have withdrawn?’
*
The orders were given at last, and the army crossed the Modder River the next day—and there rested for twelve days. There were sound reasons for this, to the casual observer. The men were exhausted after their day-long exposure to sun and hunger and thirst and Boer gunfire, and they had expended so much ammunition during the battle that supplies were short. Even so, with Kimberley only twelve miles away, and daily heliograph messages being flashed to and from the defenders and the relieving force, it seemed absurd just to sit in camp. Murdoch was convinced that by a dash the two cavalry regiments might catch the Boers napping and gain the beleaguered town. Certainly, as he surveyed the country between the Modder and the diamond city, it seemed to him that a detachment should be thrown forward immediately to seize the large kopje known as Magersfontein, half a dozen miles north of their position and overlooking the railway line along which their precious line of communication had to run.
The orders remained to rest and recuperate, however, and there was an informal truce arranged between the two sides in order to exchange wounded prisoners. The Boer general, Cronje, even came down to speak to the British padres. Like all of his compatriots, he wore a heavy beard and was dressed in civilian clothes; a short, stocky man, he carried no weapons and indeed gave no suggestion of being engaged in military activities at all, save for the binoculars slung on his shoulder.
The British staff affected to regard him with contempt, but they later realised how wrong they were when a reconnaissance in force was sent out, preparatory to a general advance upon Kimberley. It was then discovered that General Cronje had not neglected to observe the potential of the Magersfontein Ridge, and had occupied it in strength; the reconnoitring party, consisting of the lancers and some horse artillery, were forced to return in a hurry.
General Methuen fumed when this was reported, but he had to accept the fact that he had been outmanoeuvred by his own carelessness. He could not attempt to march on Kimberley, with a Boer force of some six thousand men sitting on his immediate flank. The only course, other than another frontal assault to clear the way, would have been to attempt to outflank the Boers in turn, but this was impossible, not only because Cronje looked down on his every move, but because he dared not leave the line of the railway, without which his army would have starved in a few days.
Murdoch, thinking of all he had read of Sherman’s march on Georgia—and some of Bonaparte’s campaigns—when lines of communication had been abandoned to achieve certain objectives, regardless of hardship, was once again deeply disappointed in the quality of British leadership.
Harry Caspar, who had become a regular visitor to B Troop, took a somewhat wider view.
‘Sherman lived off Georgia, sure,’ he agreed. ‘But I suspect Georgia had more to offer than the veldt around here. And Sherman was driving at the back of an already beaten enemy. You guys haven’t won a single real victory so far. Seems to me your Lord Methuen has a problem.’
One it appeared he intended to solve in the only way left to him. He had now been reinforced, not only by the arrival of ample supplies of munitions, but by one of the most famous brigades in the British Army, the Highland, commanded by Brigadier-General Wauchope and comprising the Gordons, the Seaforths, and the Argyll and Sutherlands. The kilted warriors marched into camp behind the skirl of their pipes and amidst the cheers of the rest of the division; here were fresh troops with a formidable fighting reputation, which greatly increased the strength of the army.
‘I have no doubt that we now outnumber the Boers by two to one,’ Methuen told an officers’ conference. ‘I therefore intend to destroy General Cronje’s command, once and for all. He holds Magersfontein, and will, I suspect, feel obliged to do so as long as possible; it is his last natural defensive position between ourselves and Kimberley. In thus committing himself, I would say he has played into our hands.’
He paused to look over the faces, and Caspar passed a scribbled note to Murdoch: Do you think he meant Cronje to occupy the Mag?
Murdoch scribbled back: If we could only believe that.
‘Gentlemen,’ General Methuen continued, ‘it is my intention to seize Magersfontein by a coup de main. It will be a bloody business, but we will succeed. I can now tell you that some weeks ago I sent to Cape Town for a supply of lyddite shells, and these have now arrived. I need hardly remind you that these are the most terrible weapons of destruction yet invented by man. You may think I am taking a sledgehammer to crush a nut, but that is precisely what I intend to do. The artillery will smother that hillside with lyddite. When they have done their work, the army will advance, led’—he looked at Brigadier Wauchope—‘by the Highland Brigade. Supposing there are any Boers left alive in their defences, they will be killed or captured. The 1st Brigade will move forward on the left, the 2nd on the right, so that the enemy position will be entirely overrun. The cavalry brigade will prepare to move on immediately the enemy has been driven from his position, and I estimate that we will be in Kimberley in twenty-four hours. Now to detail. The bombardment will commence at midnight tonight, and will last for three hours. At three ack emma the troops will move out. That will give them the benefit of the last hour of darkness in which to approach the Boer position. Now...’
He prodded the large sketch plan—it could hardly be called a map—erected on a blackboard behind him and gave his orders. Murdoch listened in consternation, not daring to look at Caspar. There had been absolutely no reconnaissance of the lower slopes of the hill, the ground over which the three infantry brigades would have to cross in the darkness, simply because the Boers had fired at anyone who had attempted to approach their position. There had not even been any reconnaissance to ascertain the exact size of the force opposing them. General Methuen, relying on a map drawn up entirely on information supplied by various locals and natives, was simply pointing his sword and saying Forward. This might well have worked against ill-armed and totally undisciplined African or Indian tribesmen, but surely the general realised, after his experience just a fortnight ago at the Modder River, that it would never succeed against such born defensive fighters as the Boers?
For the first time Murdoch felt relieved that the regiment was not to be involved. They, with the lancers, were simply to make ready to commence their march on Kimberley the moment the Union Jack flew from the top of Magersfontein Ridge. He, as well as his men, therefore had a distant view of the catastrophe that now took place. For three hours the artillery roared, and with his glasses he could make out the shell-bursts on the hill-side. Certainly the entire Boer position appeared smothered with fire—but Murdoch could not help remembering those kopjes outside Belmont, when the Boers had appeared to be exposed to a fire they could not withstand, yet suffered almost no casualties at all.
At three o’clock sharp the guns fell silent and the three infantry brigades began their advance, each led by their brigadier-general. They disappeared into the darkness, and the rest of the army waited, anxiously watching the slowly lightening sky to the east. But the sun had not yet risen when there was a sudden tremendous fusillade from far lower down the hill than any Boers were supposed to be. An almost unbroken wall of red fire spread across the darkness.
‘By Christ, but they’ve walked straight into it,’ muttered Sergeant Bishop, at Murdoch’s elbow.
The firing became general along the whole front, and when the sun rose the true situation could be discovered. As was only to be expected on a night march over unfamiliar ground, the three brigades had not advanced at the same speed. The Highlanders in the centre had progressed much faster than those to either side, and had thus been the fi
rst to encounter the enemy. At the tremendous outburst of firing, all three brigades had gone to ground, but whereas the 1st and 2nd had done so in reasonably sheltered terrain, the Highlanders could be seen, easily identified by the green of their kilts beneath the khaki tunics, well up on the lower slopes of the Boer position, but pinned down in the open by the accurate fire of the enemy Mausers, much as the entire army had been at the Modder.
Once again, there was a total lack of direction; the Scots lay and fired up the slope, at invisible enemies who did not appear to have been the least affected by the bombardment, and the Boers fired back from their concealed vantage points. It later transpired that Brigadier-General Wauchope had been killed in almost the first Boer volley, and that no other officer felt sufficiently in command of the situation to take any initiative. What was disturbing was the way Methuen, as at the Modder, merely sat and watched what was going on. No doubt he was again waiting for darkness, and perhaps for another Boer withdrawal, Murdoch thought. But this was not to be.
All morning and into the afternoon the Highlanders sat it out, steadily losing men, being able to advance only a few feet at a time before falling back again...and then the unthinkable happened. Watching through his binoculars, Murdoch saw one or two men filtering back from their advanced positions. He assumed at first that they were wounded dropping out for attention. And then realised they were not, as whole clusters of men rose and began to retire down the hill. If retire was the right word. Soon the panic spread through the entire brigade, and men could be seen unashamedly running away from the deadly Mauser fire of their enemies.
Within half an hour, the Highland Brigade was in head-long retreat, streaming back to the shelter of the rest of the army. Lacking leadership, they had been routed.
*
‘I wonder how his lordship is going to represent this to the newspaper johnnies,’ Murdoch remarked to Morton, as they stood their men down and had a cup of tea. ‘They were actually looking on. Has anything like this ever happened before? Yes, in India once, didn’t it?’
‘Did it?’ Morton asked. Even his contemptuous ebullience had faded. ‘It won’t be represented at all, young Mackinder. The general will simply slap down a censorship order on all reports until we have retrieved the situation.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Murdoch queried. ‘And how do you suppose we are going to do that?’
But Morton was absolutely right. Caspar came over that evening. ‘Would you believe that we have been told what we must send back to our papers?’ he demanded. ‘Hell, I thought you were a free people.’
‘What have you been told to say?’ Murdoch asked.
‘That the assault on the Magersfontein position was not as successful as had been hoped. Jesus Christ!’
Murdoch had to grin at his frustration. ‘Well, I suppose that is a perfectly true statement.’
‘Yeah? So what do you reckon is going to happen now?’
‘If I knew that,’ Murdoch told him, ‘then presumably I would be the general?’
‘Yeah?’ Caspar commented again. ‘Well, in my opinion, he doesn’t have a clue.’
Because the British army remained on the plain, and the Boers remained in command of Magersfontein, the battle might never have been fought—save for the loss of nearly a thousand casualties, including over two hundred dead, amongst them several senior officers apart from General Wauchope, who was buried with full military honours that evening.
And save too for a general collapse of morale, a feeling that under commanders who could think of nothing better than frontal assaults on impregnable positions, there was no hope of ever winning a decisive victory. That, Murdoch realised, was not going to be put right in a hurry, even as the Highland Brigade, under a new commander, Brigadier-General Hector MacDonald, painfully began to pull itself together.
No doubt General Methuen was as stunned as everyone else by his defeat. But before he could consider what to do, even more disastrous news arrived—first of all from the south-east, where General Gateacre had also attempted an assault on the Boer position at Stormberg and been heavily defeated, and then, worst of all, from Natal. General Buller, determining to relieve Ladysmith, had attempted to force a crossing of the Tugela River south of the town, which the Boers had taken as their line of furthest advance. His attack—undertaken, Murdoch guessed, with the same lack of adequate reconnaissance as Methuen’s—had been utterly repelled, with heavy casualties. To compound the disaster, two batteries of guns, which had been prematurely advanced, had been lost. Two pieces had been gallantly retrieved by several officers, amongst them Field Marshal Lord Roberts’ only son, a lieutenant, who had been mortally wounded in the process. The loss of ten guns made Colenso, the name of the village where the crossing had been attempted, just about the worst defeat in British military history since the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. And neither Colenso nor Stormberg nor Magersfontein could really be concealed by censorship. ‘Do you know what they’re calling the last seven days back in England?’ Harry Caspar asked, having been busy on the telegraph. ‘“Black week”! I would say that just about sums it up.’
Buller, indeed, was so shaken by his repulse that he heliographed Sir George White in Ladysmith, advising him to surrender as there was no hope of relieving him in time. To his credit, Sir George declined to obey the suggestion. When the news of Buller’s action reached England there was a storm of protest, and instant action by the Government—action which should have been taken at the very outset of the war.
‘Gentlemen,’ Colonel Edmonds told his officers. ‘Sir Redvers Buller has been relieved of the general command of Her Majesty’s forces in South Africa, although he retains command of the Natal front. We have a new commander-in-chief, who is already on his way to join us.’ He paused and looked from face to face, savouring the news he was about to impart. ‘Field Marshal Lord Roberts is now general-officer-commanding, South Africa.’
There was a murmur of delighted consternation. Bobs, the greatest living British soldier, was coming to them. Bobs, Murdoch thought, with whom Father had marched on Kandahar, and at whose orders the dragoons had charged and routed the Afghans outside Kabul. Bobs, who had once patted him on the head—so he had been told; he did not remember the incident himself, as he had been in his pram at the time.
‘Nor is that all,’ Edmonds went on, clearly as pleased as they were. ‘Field Marshal Roberts is bringing with him, as chief of staff, General Lord Kitchener.’
Again consternation. Kitchener was generally agreed to be the most formidable of all the British generals, the man who, with determined efficiency, had reconquered the Sudan for England and Egypt, whose reputation for thoroughness and ruthlessness was fearsome.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ Edmonds concluded, ‘I suspect that we are going to fight a war.’
*
The division’s spirits had been so crushed by the defeat at Magersfontein that Methuen had felt quite unable to make any fresh move against the Boer citadel. He was clearly relieved that the responsibility of deciding what should be done next was in mightier hands than his own. But it was none the less galling for the men to remain in their cantonments, in sight of the enemy but only exchanging occasional shots with them for several weeks, including Christmas. Meanwhile the daily heliograph exchanges with Kimberley told of dwindling morale as the town was being subjected to continued bombardments by one of the Boer heavy guns. The small pieces which were all the garrison possessed could make no adequate reply.
‘I am sure it could be done, if we just had the will,’ Murdoch grumbled.
‘If the general had the will, you mean,’ Morton corrected him. For once they were entirely in agreement. With inactivity there came disciplinary problems, and then health problems. Men fell out sick because they were bored. Only the prospect of the arrival of Roberts and Kitchener kept the division in being, Murdoch sometimes thought.
In the new year he received a letter from Rosetta. It had been written some time before, soon after his
departure from Cape Town, in fact, but had taken all this time to catch up with him. In it she gave vent to some of the feelings he suspected she was about to reveal when the regiment left Cape Town. It was the first love letter he had ever received, and he might have enjoyed it more had it not given a definite impression that she now regarded herself as engaged. He sat down to write a reply, attempting to disabuse her of that idea without appearing ungallant, but had made little headway when, to the great excitement of the camp, Lord Roberts arrived at the Modder River.
‘Now, say,’ Harry Caspar said when the news that the field marshal was at hand was received, ‘just what is so big about this guy, anyway?’
‘Well...’ Murdoch assembled his memory. ‘He’s getting on for seventy now—’
‘Seventy? And commanding an army in the field?’
‘Why not? Marshal Bluecher was older than that at Waterloo. And Bobs has been a fighting soldier since the Indian Mutiny forty years ago. He won the Victoria Cross at Khudaganj, took part in the capture of Delhi, the relief of Lucknow and Cawnpore. He’s fought in Abyssinia, and all over India, and of course on the North-West Frontier. He beat the Afghans in ’79, when he made the forced march from Kabul to the relief of Kandahar. He’s never been beaten.’
‘Maybe. But it doesn’t sound to me as if he ever really met any organised opposition,’ Caspar objected.
‘Maybe. He’s still regarded as the greatest soldier in the army. And more than that. His men have always worshipped him. They’d follow him anywhere. As will we. He’ll show us how to lick the Boers, you’ll see.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Caspar said. ‘I didn’t come to Africa to spend the rest of my life here.’
The entire division was turned out for the field marshal’s inspection. The little man with the white moustache and the twinkling eyes was quite dwarfed by the huge, stern-featured figure of General Kitchener behind him. Roberts smiled and made a point of stopping and speaking with as many men as possible. Including Murdoch. ‘Mr Mackinder,’ he said. ‘Your father was with me in India. One of the finest soldiers I ever knew. I am sure you will always remember his example.’
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