Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  No greater boost to Boer morale could have been given than the sight of a thousand British prisoners being marched through the streets of the Transvaal capital. The doubters, the waverers, all those who had found a pretext for not going to the war, now seized their rifles and rode off to join their commandos.

  It was a sad night in Ladysmith when news of the disaster came. The next morning G. W. Steevens went to the camp of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and in the tent that served as the officers’ mess he found only the doctor, the quartermaster, and a young second lieutenant fresh from Sandhurst who had just arrived. Another officer, pale and haggard, came in. They were all that was left of the regimental mess. “They had been busy half the night packing up the lost officers’ kits to send down to Durban.... Tied up in a waterproof sheet were the officers’ letters—the letters of their wives and mothers that had arrived that morning....4

  It was a grey, raw day in London when the news of the battle of Ladysmith was announced. Horse-omnibuses stopped to allow passengers to buy newspapers, which were silently read and solemnly folded. It was “Mournful Monday.”

  G. W. Steevens ended his dispatch to the Daily Mail with bitter words: “At the end, when the tardy truth could be withheld no more—what shame! What bitter shame for all the camp! All ashamed for England! Not of her—never that!—but for her. Once more she was a laughter to her enemies.”5

  11

  BULLER

  The full significance of the battle of Ladysmith was not at first apparent —perhaps it was simply too shocking to be believed: for nearly a century the British army had repeatedly engaged enemy forces of vastly superior numerical strength and defeated them; now an almost equal number of Boers and Britons had fought a major battle on nearly equal terms and the British had been soundly beaten. No one in Britain dared say it, or even think it: the Boer had shown himself to be, man for man, a better fighter than the Briton.

  At the end of the first fortnight of war the situation looked very grave indeed for the British: on the western front the Boers had won small victories, Kimberley was besieged and Mafeking was about to be, and there seemed nothing to prevent the Boers from sweeping down off the high veld into the heartland of Cape Colony; on the Natal front the British had lost about 1,200 men and the Natal Field Force was almost bottled up in Ladysmith; there was no serious force between Joubert’s army and the sea, nothing to prevent the Boers from overrunning Natal. But help was on the way. A full army corps, 40,000 strong, the largest expeditionary force in British history, had been put together in England, and daily at Southampton troops, horses, guns, ordnance, and stores were being loaded on transports for the more than 6,000-mile voyage to South Africa. A long line of ships already dotted the sea, and on one of them was the commander of this mighty host, the man on whom all Britain’s hopes were pinned: General Sir Redvers Buller, V.C. Everyone -the government, the army, and the people—had complete confidence in him—everyone, that is, except Buller himself.

  “My confidence in the British soldier is only equalled by my confidence in Sir Redvers Buller,” said Lord Salisbury, the prime minister. Sir Evelyn Wood, who had soldiered with Buller, said he was “careful of his men’s lives, reckless of his own, untiring and unflinching in the performance of his duty.” Walter Jerrold summed up the general feeling of Britons when he wrote: “His fitness for the job now entrusted to him cannot be questioned. He is the best soldier of his standing available for the present crisis.”1 Churchill more moderately described him as “a characteristic British personality. He looked stolid. He said little and what he said was obscure. He was not the kind of man who could explain things, and he never tried to.... he was regarded as a very sensible soldier.”2 Conan Doyle called him “a heavy, obdurate, inexplicable man.”

  Redvers Henry Buller was born on his father’s estate in Devon on 7 December 1839 of a family that could trace its history in the west of England back three centuries. His mother was a granddaughter of the twelfth Duke of Norfolk; his father was a wealthy country squire. Young Redvers was sent first to Harrow and then to Eton, but in neither school did he distinguish himself. He was eighteen—tall, big-boned, and strong —when he was given a commission in the 60th Regiment (King’s Royal Rifle Corps), and six months later he was in India. He first saw action in the China War of 1860. There his front teeth were kicked out by a horse so that ever after he spoke indistinctly and with a lisp. In 1862 he was promoted lieutenant and joined the 4th Battalion of his regiment in Canada.

  Like most young officers in this era, he knew almost nothing about his profession and took little interest in it: with nothing required of him except that he act bravely should he find himself in combat, he filled his time contentedly enough with horses, billiards, and cards. Then one day his colonel asked him to be battalion adjutant. He accepted reluctantly, but, to his own surprise, he began to take an interest in the army and proved to have a talent for military administration.

  In 1869-1870 he took part in the bloodless Red River Expedition in Canada led by Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913) against a half-breed rebel in Manitoba. His career was made, for he impressed Wolseley and became one of his protégés. In 1871 he entered the Staff College, but when given the opportunity to join Wolseley in fighting the Ashanti, he quickly dropped his books and sailed for West Africa. His next two campaigns were in South Africa, where he fought in the Sixth Kaffir War and played an active part in the Zulu War of 1879, winning the Victoria Cross.

  He was forty-two when he married the daughter of a marquis, and he was on his honeymoon when Wolseley invited him to go to Egypt as his chief of intelligence in the expedition against Arabi. From Egypt Buller wrote to his bride to explain his feelings about war: “I do believe that it is wicked and very brutal, but I can’t help it; there is nothing in this world that so stirs me up as a fight.”

  For his part in this campaign he was knighted. After a brief spell in London, he returned to northeast Africa in 1884 to fight the Dervishes in the eastern Sudan and was promoted major general for distinguished services. When it was decided to send a force under Wolseley to attempt the rescue of Charles “Chinese” Gordon besieged at Khartoum, Buller was again on the staff.

  The Gordon Relief Expedition was Buller’s last campaign until his appointment to the South African command. Sixty years old and a full general, he was in command of the troops at Aldershot when the Anglo-Boer War broke out. He appeared to have all the qualifications for high command: he was a brave and experienced battlefield officer; he was a good administrator; and he was solicitous for the welfare of his men, by whom he was liked and trusted. Yet, something curious was observed during the manoeuvres held in Britain in the summer of 1898 when Buller commanded one side and the Duke of Connaught commanded the other. The Duke handled his forces with greater skill than the more experienced Buller, who was at times overly cautious and indecisive.

  Throughout his fighting career Buller had served under Wolseley, and it had been this brilliant general who had planned every campaign and battle; Buller was the able executer of his chiefs strategy. While on the Gordon Relief Expedition he wrote his wife, telling her how pleased he was to have the position of chief of staff; it was a position, he said, “involving all the responsibilities of execution without those of invention and preliminary organization. I have never credited myself with much ability on the inventive side; all mine, if I have any, is on the executive side, and possibly if I have a strong point it is resource, which is a great help in execution.”

  Given clear orders, Buller carried them out with vigour and resolution, but he had never in his life been in charge of planning and directing a campaign. He had no head for it, and, not being a fool, he knew it. When offered command of the army corps to be sent to South Africa, he hesitated. Honest with others as well as himself, he plainly told Lord Lansdowne, secretary for war: “I have always considered that I was better as second in a complex military affair than as an officer in chief command. ... I had never been in a position where the who
le load of responsibility fell on me.”3 Finally he went to consult with his mentor, Wolseley, telling him frankly that he did not want the command and that he would relinquish it at the first opportunity. Such words must have sounded strange to Wolseley, his memory often failing him now but eager as ever for battle. When Buller did at last accept, Wolseley wrote: “Buller will I am sure end the war with complete success for England.... But how I envy him!”

  It had been fifteen years since Buller had taken part in a battle. During his desk assignments in Britain he had changed: good food and soft living had made him stout and given him a double chin. In that time there had been changes, too, in the art of war, for improved weapons now called for changes in tactics.

  On the dozens of battlefields where British soldiers fought during Queen Victoria’s long reign there had not been, except in Wolseley’s campaigns, much military genius displayed; there had not been much need of it. The greatest asset of the British army was its infantry, and British generals tended to rely rather too heavily upon it. The strength of British infantry lay in the stolid discipline exhibited by the men in the ranks, in the bravery, often reckless, of its officers, and in the regimental esprit which animated them all. Generals usually knew how to inspire their men in battle, and they seldom missed an opportunity to seize their swords and lead a charge, but in planning a battle, in the deployment of troops, in the coordination of the available arms and services, in overall strategy, in the organization of proper staffs and their best employment, in the use of the increasing technology which was available to them—in all these matters the knowledge and skill of most generals was deficient.

  The British army, like most armies, was a conservative institution that resisted change, and always had. It had long delayed the switch from muskets to rifles, from muzzle-loading cannon (which, incredibly, they were still using) to breech-loading guns, and most officers chose to adopt a supercilious attitude towards machine guns, which tended to be forgotten or left behind when going into battle. Lord Rawlinson once saw a battalion commander deploying troops over ground on which his machine gun stood. It interfered with the movements of his infantrymen, and he shouted at the subaltern in charge of it: “Take that damned cart out of the way!”

  When civilian volunteers entered the army for the war in South Africa many asked questions which regular officers had never thought of asking: Mortimer Memper, an artist and a marksman, asked why telescopic sights were not used when in the clear South African air the conditions were perfect for them; no one could give him an answer. In the cavalry the sword and lance were favoured and the carbine despised; in the infantry the bayonet was preferred, and it was the object of every general to close with the enemy as quickly as possible so that this knife on the end of a rifle, this inferior descendant of the pike, could be made formidable or at least effective. Had some commander-in-chief, wise enough and respected enough to overcome the objections of every other officer in the army, ordered that all bayonets be thrown on the scrap heap the army might then have been forced to learn tactics based on firepower rather than knives and lances. No such general existed-not then and not later. Most Victorian generals never realized that the magazine-fed rifle made obsolete the tactics and the training which had enabled the British to win their earlier wars.

  There were a few officers—Ian Hamilton was one of them—who realized the importance of musketry training and understood that against modern rifles and quick-firing guns troops had to be deployed in open order and be allowed to take advantage of available cover. Buller still clung to conventional views on such matters, views which were reflected in a memorandum he issued to officers at Aldershot asserting that battles were won not by “jacks-in-boxes” but by resolute, enthusiastic men who kept on their feet. “Jacks-in-boxes,” he explained, were men who “bob up, fire, and bob down again.” Officers under fire did not “bob” and such antics should not be encouraged in their men. This memorandum was issued only a few weeks before he embarked for South Africa to lead resolute, enthusiastic British soldiers against an entire army of jacks-in-boxes.

  One final quality unfitted Buller for the command of an army in the field. Behind this brave man’s gruff manners, his stern immobile face, and stout, four-square indomitable figure there lurked too tender a heart. Few knew this, and no one realized the disadvantage of such a possession to a man whose business was to send others to be killed.

  Such was the man whom Britain was about to send to South Africa to salvage its imperial fortunes.

  On 5 October Buller met with the Queen and assured her that he did not think there would be much hard fighting. On 14 October he left London amid a pandemonium of enthusiasm: men, women, and children shook with emotion as they watched this stolid-looking warrior of proved valour, appearing to typify the British leader of men in battle, depart to take command at the seat of war. No general going to war ever enjoyed such complete and unbounded confidence. Who could doubt that once this man arrived on the scene all would be put right in South Africa? For Buller himself, already loaded with honours as he was, it was anticipated that the future would bring even more, and a peerage certainly.

  On board the Dunottar Castle which carried him to South Africa was a “mutograph” or “cinematograph,” a motion picture camera in the shape of a huge square box on an iron tripod, its innards full of “burring electrical works,” for this was to be the first war recorded on film for the biograph, as the cinema was called—and is still called in South Africa. It was a cumbersome affair, and John Atkins, one of the many newspaper correspondents on board, said, “It looks as though it would require a team of artillery horses to bring it into action on the field.”4 When it was set up on the hurricane deck where Buller and his staff strolled before dinner, Buller gruffly told the camera crew: “You can catch me if you can, but I won’t pose for you.” Among the newspaper correspondents on board was Winston Churchill, who had himself considered a scheme to take motion pictures of the war but had abandoned the idea when he learned that the American Biograph Company had already made arrangements to do it.

  The three-day passage to Madeira was rough, and Churchill was “grievously sick.” All on board had hoped that there would be some late news of the war waiting at Madeira, but there was none. It was a two-week sail from here to the Cape, and until almost the end of the voyage the commander-in-chief, his staff, and the newspaper correspondents were incommunicado. On 29 October they sighted the Australasian, a homeward-bound troopship. One might think that it would have been of some importance for the two ships to have paused long enough for the commander-in-chief to obtain the latest intelligence, but no one thought of it, and they silently passed each other. However, from the deck of the Australasian a large blackboard with white lettering was held up:

  BOERS DEFEATED

  THREE BATTLES

  PENN SYMONS KILLED

  This was discouraging news; it seemed as if the war would be won by the time they arrived. A staff officer said to Buller: “It looks as if it will be over, sir.”

  But Buller was sanguine: “I dare say there will be enough left to give us a fight outside Pretoria.”

  On 31 October, the day after White’s defeat at Ladysmith, the Dunottar Castle arrived at Cape Town. Buller’s reception there was no less enthusiastic than it had been in London and Southampton. When, at 9:00 A.M. precisely, he stepped on the gangway, the guard of honour presented arms, the harbour batteries banged out a salute, the deck hands and stokers of the Dunottar Castle gave three cheers, crowds on shore roared a welcome, and the cinematograph buzzed noisily, recording it all. As he was driven from the ship to Government House in a carriage with a mounted escort along streets gay with flags, jubilant masses lined the way, shouting “Bravo General!” and “Avenge Majuba!” He had brought no troops with him, and not even an adequate staff, but his appearance alone was inspiring: imperturbable, impassive, he had the bearing of a man who could not fail.

  Behind that calm mask which so impressed the crowds there w
as many a self-doubt; in fact, he seems to have had a premonition that the future held little glory for him. Shortly after his arrival in Cape Town he wrote to his younger brother, Tremayne: “I am in the tightest place I have ever been in.... I don’t know if I shall ever get out of it, and I think if I fail that it is fair my family should know afterwards what at any rate I had to say in my own defence.” It was a long letter, a detailed apologia for defeats he had not yet suffered, placing the blame for them squarely on the politicians, especially Lansdowne, of whom he wrote bitterly and petulantly. It was an astonishing letter for Buller, or any man in his position, to write.

  Some difficult and crucial decisions had to be made immediately. The campaign Buller had intended and for which all his plans had been made was simply a straightforward march of his entire army corps from the Cape to Bloemfontein and Pretoria, in the course of which he would defeat the Boer armies, seize their capitals, and end the war. The troopships loaded with men and supplies were all headed for Cape Colony ports; elaborate arrangements and intricate timetables had been designed to carry out the first phase of the original campaign plan, the march north from Cape Colony into the Free State. But in the two weeks that Buller had been en route too much had changed: three towns, containing more than half of the entire British force in South Africa, were besieged or about to become so.

  On the western front little Mafeking, where a cavalry colonel named Baden-Powell with a handful of locally raised volunteers was holding out, did not seem important yet, but Kimberley contained not only the largest diamond mines in the world and a force of British regulars, but also the world-famous Cecil Rhodes. And Rhodes was screaming for help: he was not pleading, he was demanding that the British army relieve Kimberley -NOW. On the Natal front White at this stage still thought it possible to break out of Ladysmith and take up a position behind the Tugela River, but the effect on public opinion of a retreat from Ladysmith was incalculable, and all things considered, he thought it would be better to hold on and allow himself to be invested; he telegraphed this proposal to Buller, who agreed. Thus the Natal Field Force, including its splendid but now almost useless cavalry, ceased to be a field force and became merely the garrison of a beleaguered town and sat waiting to be relieved. After the disaster of 30 October White never again sought a general engagement.