THE BATTLE AT MAGERSFONTEIN.
In another part of the line, young Frederick Pohl noticed among the dead and wounded left behind one man who still clutched his rifle with both hands. Pohl had been fighting long enough to be cautious. He worked his way around to the right of the corpse and called “Hands up!” The “dead man” released his rifle, sat up, and to Pohl’s surprise turned to a lifeless comrade beside him and said, “Get up, Tom, the game’s up.”
Behind the British lines Dr. Nathan Rutherford came upon a young Highlander sans helmet, rifle, and accoutrements sitting motionless on an anthill. He looked up at the doctor in a daze and said dully, “All the battalion is wiped out, and all the officers killed.”
James Barnes, a newspaper correspondent well in the rear, heard the firing die down and thought that the battle was over and that it would be safe for him to go forward; he assumed the British had won. He was soon disillusioned:
The first man I met was a wounded Highlander.... his face wore a set, puzzled expression, and now and then he glanced back over his shoulder. I spoke to him, but he did not reply, and kept on. And now I could see them swarming back, some limping, some running, others dodging from bush to ant-hill, and almost all occasionally looking back over their shoulders.... Something had gone wrong! ... I stopped a bare headed Seaforth and asked him.
“We’re a’ that’s left,” he said, including perhaps twenty men near him with a sweep of his hand....4
The British howitzers and naval guns dropped shells on the Boers in a desultory fashion; from time to time a rifle cracked; the Highlanders were re-formed well to the rear, but no further attacks were ordered.
At dawn the next morning Colvile repaired to Methuen’s headquarters and found the general discouraged and inclined to retreat. Colvile did his best to dissuade him and Methuen seemed to waver, but an hour later, at a council of war, most of his staff came out in favour of retirement: both ammunition and water were in short supply, and the Highlanders were in a state of shock. In these terms retirement seemed the wisest course; they had no way of knowing that the Boers were thirsty too and that their supply of rifle ammunition was so low that they could not have sustained another day of hard fighting.
While Methuen and his officers debated, the Guards were brought up and exchanged shots with the Boers, but about the middle of the morning, before any orders were given, the firing died down of itself and then ceased. A rumour spread along the front that an armistice had been arranged to allow the dead and wounded to be collected. Nothing of the sort had happened, but from both sides ambulances, doctors, and bearers, Boers and Britons, started moving out onto the silent battlefield.
As sometimes happens, orders followed rumours; the fight was over, the British drew back, and began their retreat to the Modder. Their casualties amounted to approximately 7 percent of Methuen’s force: 23 officers and 182 men killed; 45 officers and 645 men wounded; 76 men were missing or prisoners. Total British casualties: 971. The Highlanders suffered the worst, of course; the Highland Brigade lost more than a quarter of its officers. For the Black Watch in particular the battle was a catastrophe: 17 out of 22 officers and 338 out of 943 men had fallen. Not since the regiment had fought the French at Ticonderoga in 1757 had it taken such casualties. Total Boer losses were about 250 killed and wounded.
The Highlanders’ feelings were best expressed by one Black Watch soldier who declared that his regiment had been “led into a butcher’s shop and bloody well left there.” An anonymous Black Watch private wrote:
Tell you the tale of the battle, well, there’s not much to tell;
Nine hundred men went to the slaughter, and nigh four hundred fell.
Wire and Mauser fire, thirst, and a burning sun
Knocked us down by hundreds ere the day was done.
Although it was clearly Wauchope’s fault that the brigade had not extended when it should have, the Highlanders refused to blame their dead commander. It was Methuen who had been responsible, they said: it was he who had ordered them to attack in quarter columns in spite of Wauchope’s protests; the rumour spread that Wauchope himself had fastened the blame on Methuen with his dying words. Lieutenant Lang wrote home: “Everyone here is furious with Methuen for his bad generalship.”
When the news of the disaster reached Scotland there was general mourning, and in Edinburgh all dances were cancelled. Conan Doyle said that “it may be doubted if any single battle has ever put so many families of high and low into mourning from the Tweed to the Caithness shore.”5 Wauchope was buried in a small private burial ground at nearby Majest-fontein; a piper played “Lochaber No More” over his grave.
For long afterwards the controversy raged over who had been responsible for the fiasco. Although Methuen in his official dispatch had stated, “I attach no blame to this splendid brigade,” he clearly felt that the Highlanders had let him down.
While no Highlander was willing to admit that the conduct of his own regiment had been in any way blameworthy, most were willing to concede that other Highland regiments had crumpled. Lieutenant Colonel Kelham of the Highland Light Infantry said, “The troops in front of us [that is, the Black Watch, Seaforths, and Argylls] were thrown into complete disorder.” An Argyll and Sutherland officer, referring to those in front of his regiment (the Black Watch and the Seaforths), said, “They turned and bolted.” A Seaforth sergeant said, “The Black Watch, who were in front, could stand it no longer and were driven back on the Seaforths, throwing them into confusion.” The Black Watch, however, refused to take any blame. One officer said in the face of all the contrary evidence: “The Black Watch never retired.... What other regiments did I only know from hearsay.” And Captain Charles Stewart of the same regiment wrote: “The Black Watch behaved as they should, I think, but I have heard some queer stories of other regiments.” The newspapers, for the most part, were kind: the Daily News said, “All that mortal man could do the Scots did. They tried, they failed, they fell, and there is nothing left now but to mourn for them and avenge them.”
The Scotsmen in their kilts were curiosities to the Boers. F. S. (“Frikkie”) Badenhorst wrote to his wife Allie: “We had a great battle. ... A lot of men have been brought in as prisoners: they are called ‘Highlanders’ or mountain Scotch. They wear a very strange dress. A yellow jacket with a short skirt above the knee, and long stockings. The skirt is made of Scotch stuff, with some bears’ tails sewn on their front.”6
The Boers clearly owed their victory to the inspired plan of Koos de la Rey, but on the day of the battle he had disappeared. Perhaps it was still too soon after the death of his son for him to face another fight; more probably, he could not stand the thought of serving in another battle under Cronjé. It is not clear exactly where he was on 11 December, but it appears that he spent the day in the vicinity of Kimberley.
For the British, Magersfontein was not only a major defeat but the retreat of Methuen to the Modder meant that Kimberley and Mafeking could not be relieved, at least not in the immediate future. Britons at home found news from the front sad reading indeed, for in addition to Methuen’s defeat there was also the extraordinary event which had taken place in another part of Cape Colony only twenty-four hours earlier when General Gatacre attacked the Boers at Stormberg.
14
STORMBERG JUNCTION
The Boers had begun the war by invading the territory of their neighbours in three places: over the Drakensberg range into Natal; across their western frontiers into Bechuanaland and Griqualand West; and south into north central Cape Colony, striking at the heartland of Britain’s oldest and most populous South African colony. It was this third thrust which, although the weakest, put fear into the heart of Alfred Milner, who anticipated a large-scale rebellion on the part of the Afrikaner colonists there who, when they spoke of “our victories,” usually meant Boer victories.
The invaders moved south following the two railway lines which crossed the Orange River at Bethulie and at Norval’s Pont. To cope with thes
e threats the British divided this theatre of war into two parts: the western commanded by French (who had left Ladysmith on the last train) and the eastern by Lieutenant General Sir William Gatacre. In Buller’s original plan Gatacre was to have commanded a division, but units had been withdrawn to fight in Natal, and by 1 December 1899 his command consisted of two infantry battalions, 300 mounted infantry, and 1,000 men in local corps such as the Cape Mounted Rifles, Brabant’s Horse, and the Cape Police-in all, about 3,000 men. Although Buller had with unnecessary haste ordered the withdrawal of Gatacre’s troops from Stormberg in early November, the Boers had not occupied it until three weeks later. It was an important railway junction, and with its occupation by the enemy Gatacre’s lateral railway communications with French were severed. When on 5 December Gatacre was reinforced by a battalion of the Royal Scots and two batteries of field artillery, he decided to attack Stormberg Junction.
Sir William Gatacre (1843-1905) was a small, spare man with a bristling moustache on what Conan Doyle described as “a gaunt Don-Quixote face.” Now aged fifty-six, he weighed 142 pounds, exactly his weight as a twenty-year-old subaltern in India. He was inordinately proud of this, for he made a fetish of physical fitness, never drank or smoked, and delighted in performing feats of physical endurance. G. W. Steevens said of him that “his body was all steel wire” and Major (later Lieutenant General) Edward Ellis called him “the hardest man I ever met.” Winston Churchill described him as “the exhausted victim of his own vitality.” Gatacre was not only hard on himself, but hard on his men as well, and he had no patience with those whose energy and endurance did not approach his own. His men called him “General Back-acher.” He was a martinet who did all things in strict accordance with army regulations, insisting that those under him do likewise, and as his second wife charmingly phrased it, “He never shrank from the disagreeable duty of rebuke.”1
He had been commissioned at eighteen, but had had as a young man no opportunity to distinguish himself in action; as yet, his only claim to fame was that he, who took so little interest in food, was the inventor of a mess tin. Of another distinction he was less proud: he was divorced. After fifteen years of marriage his wife had gone off with another man. He was then with the Bombay army at Poona, and it was at about this time that he was bitten by a jackal. Whether as a result of his experiences with his wife or the jackal, Gatacre’s mind became unhinged; he complained that howling jackals kept him awake and in his terror had all the windows of his bungalow fitted out with bars to keep them from leaping in. But that had been eight or nine years ago. Since then he had remarried (at age fifty-two); commanded a brigade in the relief of Chitral, where he distinguished himself by riding standing in his stirrups because of a boil on his buttocks; and commanded another brigade in Kitchener’s army in the Sudan, where his efforts earned him a knighthood (KCB).
Stormberg is the name given to the great Drakensberg range in this part of Cape Colony. Bleak and inhospitable, it long resisted the advances of civilisation. Bushmen retreated here, and their splendid artistry can still be seen on the walls of the many caves and on the rock faces of the cliffs. There had been lions in the area less than fifty years before; it was now the haunt of hyenas, lynxes, baboons, and, superstition said, of unknown monsters and legendary creatures. The only town actually located in the Stormberg range was Molteno, a small village that contained more loyalists than did most of the towns in this area. Stormberg, less than 10 miles away, was described by Steevens as a “little junction station. A platform with dining-room and telegraph office, a few corrugated iron sheds.”2
Gatacre planned to launch a surprise attack on the Boers ensconced in the hills around Stormberg by bringing his troops up as far as Molteno by train in the afternoon and then making a night march to the Boer positions. That his troops after all this movement and lack of sleep might not be very fresh for an attack on stoutly defended hills the following morning did not seem to have occurred to him. The scheme required good timing, and of course it was essential that the troops not get lost in the dark. There seemed little chance that they would, for he planned to follow a road that ran beside the railway tracks; there would be moonlight in the early hours of the night; and he would take local guides.
The troops available were in scattered locations, but he managed to assemble at Molteno the Northumberland Fusiliers, the Irish Rifles, two batteries of field artillery, and a hotchpotch of mounted infantry, engineers, Cape Police, and a field hospital-about 2,700 men, not many for the size of the task. He was to have had 400 additional troops, four more guns, and a Maxim, which were stationed at Pen Hoek, but the telegraph clerk to whom the order was given forgot to transmit the message.
Gatacre and his staff arrived in Molteno on the afternoon of 9 December, and there he received a report that the Boers had erected wire entanglements in front of the positions he planned to attack. The report was false, but it worried him and he changed his plans. Three roads led north from Molteno. Instead of the centre one beside the railway track which he had intended to use, he decided to take the west road and make a flank attack. The night march would be a few miles longer, but this hardly worried Gatacre. There was also some danger of losing the way, for they would have to turn off the road near their objective, but Sergeant W. S. Morgan and four other Cape Police who had been selected as guides assured him that they knew every inch of the ground.
Battle of STORMBERG
10 December. 1899
As the trains arrived packed with sweating, dusty soldiers, Molteno schoolboys raided their mothers’ kitchens for tidbits to exchange for bully beef and army biscuits—and the soldiers were eager to trade. No one in town had ever seen so many men before, and everyone watched with interest as the troops formed up in the dusty streets and marched past the Central Hotel and Mrs. Annie Rörich’s boarding house. Gatacre had planned to leave at 7:15 P.M., but the troops from Pen Hoek, who had not received their orders, naturally failed to arrive, and the last troop-carrying train was late, not pulling in until 8:30 P.M. because the line had been blocked by a trainload of mules. The troops, who had been up since 4:00 A.M. and had spent most of the day standing around on railway platforms or sitting in open trucks under the African sun, were tired before they started out on their long night march at 9:15 that evening. The Irish Rifles, who led the way, were ordered to march with fixed bayonets, a wicked, unnecessary order which forced a man to carry his rifle at an awkward and tiring angle and forbade the easing of the strain by frequent shifts of position.
When after a long march the head of the column struck a railway track, a branch line that was known to be 2 miles beyond the planned turnoff for their objective, it was obvious that the guides had missed the turn. It was by this time past midnight and the moon had set. Gatacre called a halt at a nearby farm and gave his men an hour’s rest while he conferred with his guides, who, reluctant to admit their mistake, insisted that they had simply avoided some wire and a bad piece of track and were only a mile and a half from the enemy’s positions. In actual fact, they were at this moment sitting midway between two Boer forces.
Gatacre’s column was not the only British force that was lost. There was also a collection of odds and ends, including the field hospital, the bearer company, and the Maxim of the Irish Rifles, all led by Colonel John Edge, RAMC, who had been late in starting and had not been informed of the change of route. Marching along the centre road, they encountered three journalists on their way back from an unsuccessful attempt to find Gatacre. Assured that Gatacre was nowhere along the road he was following, the perplexed Edge decided to wait where he was while the journalists rode on to Molteno to find out what he ought to do. But not even Colonel Wallscourt Waters, Gatacre’s chief intelligence officer, left in charge in Molteno, had been informed of the changed plan. Wakened from a sound sleep, he assured them that all was well; Edge was certainly on the right road. Galloping back with all speed, they met Edge, who, tired of waiting, had turned back. Wearily he turned his column arou
nd and started once more down the road. The column was still plodding along at 2:30 A.M. when noises of men and wagons in the darkness to their left proved to be five policemen and two mule wagons, one of which carried the reserve ammunition of the Northumberland Fusiliers. They, too, were lost. Edge now wisely decided to wait where he was until dawn. Shortly, two of Gatacre’s staff officers, who had also lost their way, joined them. At this point a considerable portion of Gatacre’s force was scattered and all—including Gatacre—were lost. So thoroughly confused was he that a month after the battle a sketch map he drew to accompany his dispatch showed that even then he had no idea of where he had been.
About 2 A.M. he led his men out of the barnyard. They recrossed the railway tracks of the branch line and moved eastward along a miserable track into a dark mass of hills. Gatacre was under the impression that he was approaching Stormberg from the northwest; many of his regimental officers thought they were approaching from the southeast. All were wrong. Approaching from the southwest, the column arrived—it was 3:45 A.M.—at the exact point Gatacre had wanted to reach and just at the time, shortly before dawn, he wanted to be there. Above him on his right were the heights he had wanted to seize in order to dominate the Boer position. The trouble was that he not only did not know where he was, but, worse, he thought he knew-and he thought he was several miles away from where he wanted to be. They marched on.
Great Boer War Page 17