There is little doubt that had Warren moved rapidly with his infantry and artillery he could have turned the Boer flank and moved behind the enemy’s positions, demoralising them and relieving Ladysmith. But this was not Warren’s way. He was mentally and temperamentally incapable of realizing the importance of Dundonald’s actions and of exploiting the opportunity now open to him. He sent Dundonald a squadron and a half of cavalry but no artillery. The next day, over Dundonald’s furious protests, he ordered the mounted brigade to return.
Buller later told a royal commission:
On the 19thg Lord Dundonald ... had taken the right flank of the Boer position, whereas General Warren had advanced to the westward and was crossing Venter’s Spruit. I was dissatisfied with Warren’s operations, which seemed to me aimless and irresolute. Dundonald’s movement was a decided success, and should have been supported by artillery, while Warren’s infantry should have attacked the salient, which Dundonald’s success had left exposed.7
At the time, however, Buller made no attempt to countermand Warren’s orders or to interfere with him in any way.
Warren, even at this date, had no concrete plan of action. He considered several schemes, built another bridge, and shifted about his men, wagons, and guns in a purposeless manner. John Atkins overheard two soldiers talking:
“What are we waiting ’ere for? Why don’t we go on?”
“Don’t yer know?”
“No.”
“To give the Boers time to build up their trenches and fetch up their guns. Fair—ain’t it?”
What was obvious to the men in the ranks was not, apparently, capable of being grasped by their general. When Warren announced that he was not going to do anything for another two or three days in order “to adopt some special arrangements,” even Buller grew impatient with his languid advance to battle. He later confessed:
On the 19th I ought to have assumed command myself. I saw that things were not going well—indeed everyone saw that.... I blame myself now for not having done so. I did not, because I thought that if I did I should discredit General Warren in the estimation of his troops; and that if I were shot, and he had to withdraw across the Tugela, and they had lost confidence in him, the consequences might be very serious.8
At long last, on 20 January, Warren decided on an attack—a frontal attack directed towards Three Tree Hill at the end of one of the fingers projecting south from the Tabanyama range. Warren designated Clery, that expert on minor tactics, to conduct the battle, and at 3:00 A.M. the troops moved out, led by E. R. P. Woodgate’s brigade with Hart in reserve. Three hours later the leading elements of Woodgate’s brigade reached the summit of Three Tree Hill and discovered what a couple of scouts might have learned had they been sent out, or what might have been observed from the balloon that was available: the hill was unoccupied.
The sight of the great army advancing on them had badly shaken the Boers, but with the arrival of Botha and the reinforcements he had summoned they had taken heart and, under Botha’s energetic direction, had quickly constructed an excellent line of trenches and sangars well back on the high end of the slanting table that constituted the top of Tabanyama ridge. These were so placed that everywhere they commanded from 600 to 2,000 yards of sloping, grassy glacis with a clear field of fire. Field Cornet Jan Kemp said later: “Though I have to say it myself, our officers certainly knew what they were doing when they selected those positions.”9 Botha’s right was in the air and weak—he had only 2,000 men on the ridge—but by now he was convinced that British generals would always make frontal attacks. His belief was confirmed by the result.
Clery sent Hart’s Irish Brigade climbing up the fingers of Tabanyama to the west of Three Tree Hill and ordered up batteries to support the advance. The guns were soon in action, bombarding the Boer positions. As Hart’s infantry neared the top the Boers fell back to their well-prepared positions at the opposite end of the glacis.
By 3:30 P.M. the British line had reached a point where only the open glacis separated them from the Boer trenches, and here they paused. Hart —brave and hot-headed-was about to draw his sword and lead his men in a charge up the glacis when Clery, tormented by misgivings about the whole enterprise, fearful of the casualties he would suffer if his men tried to rush up that exposed slope, called a halt. Clery communicated his doubts and fears to Warren, who agreed that a further advance ought not to be attempted at this time. Twenty-eight officers and men had been killed and 280 wounded in the aborted attack.
There was no thought, apparently, of making a night attack on Tabanyama, and Hart’s brigade was pulled back somewhat from the edge of the glacis, although it remained on the ridge. Colonel Frederick Walter Kitchener, Lord Kitchener’s younger brother, led an attack on the Boer right flank, an attack which might well have succeeded had not Clery abruptly ordered it stopped. Churchill, who was observing the action on Tabanyama, began to wonder if “perhaps the task before Sir Redvers Buller and Sir Charles Warren is an actual impossibility.10
Warren moved his headquarters up to Three Tree Hill near Clery; Buller came around and, although he gave no orders, criticised almost everything. He found, he testified later, that Warren had “divided his fighting line into three independent commands, independent of each other and apparently independent of him, as he told me he could not move any batteries without General Clery’s consent.”11 In other words, Warren was delegating his responsibilities just as Buller himself had done.
It was unfortunate for the British that two generals such as Buller and Warren should have been placed in command of the forces on the Tugela. Both were, though for different reasons, indecisive; together their incompetence was compounded. Neither was particularly clever. Buller knew he was not; Warren was convinced that he was, and even when it was dramatically proven he was not, he ever kept a high opinion of himself. Buller’s mistakes were those of a simple, honest soldier, determined to do his duty but thrust into a position where he was expected to assume more responsibility than he wanted or could handle. Failure resulted from his lack of skill in planning battles involving large bodies of men, his own awareness of his deficiencies (though he tried to hide them from others), and his deep compassion for those he led, which he concealed behind a gruff, uncommunicative manner. Warren’s mistakes were those of an arrogant man caught in the net of his own absurd theories and deceived by his own conceit. He hid his lack of experience, his uncertainty, and his lack of ability behind a mask of bouncing self-confidence. Buller was a blunderer, but Warren was a fool.
Buller distrusted Warren’s theories; he was aware of his lack of experience, and Warren’s personality grated on him. But perhaps he envied him his self-confidence and believed, or wanted to believe, that Warren was capable of extricating him from his difficulties on the Tugela. In any case, he placed in Warren’s incapable hands his own reputation, the lives of most of his soldiers, the fate of Ladysmith, and the credit of the British army in the eyes of the world. Then he compounded his mistake by meddling. Warren left to himself was a menace; under the carping criticism and interfering “suggestions” of Buller he became a disaster.
None of the generals produced any comprehensive battle plan, and they wandered over the front wondering what they should do. Warren briefly considered renewing the attack on the Boer right, but after worrying the idea a bit he decided against it and hit upon the uninspiring plan of a frontal assault on the Boer trenches opposite Three Tree Hill. But first he wanted a four-day artillery bombardment. He asked for more troops, more guns, and once again the large naval guns. Buller gave him another brigade of infantry and four howitzers, ignoring the request for the naval guns, and the following day rode over to have another talk. It was a fateful conversation.
Buller scoffed at the notion of demoralising the enemy with a long bombardment, regarding it as a time-wasting activity which Warren was using as an excuse to delay making the painful decisions as to where and when and how he should attack. He told Warren that either he must attac
k at once or he would order his forces withdrawn behind the Tugela. He himself favoured an attack on the Boer right, but he gave no positive orders. Warren was against this; he feared it would leave his base camp inadequately protected—and what might not the Boers do to his oxen? He insisted that he could not attack in the centre without the long bombardment which Buller had vetoed. If he attacked on his right, he said, he would first have to seize Spion Kop. All right, then take it, said an exasperated Buller. And thus in a heated exchange between two irritated generals was the fateful decision made to attack Spion Kop.
Indecisive generals hold councils of war. As soon as Buller left Warren summoned every available general to come and debate what should be done and to consider the off-hand decision, if decision it can be called, to attack Spion Kop. At the meeting someone again suggested an attack on the Boer right, but Clery the tactician argued vehemently against this, advancing an extraordinary argument: If successful they would then be committed to a series of attacks on all the enemy positions on the ridge. This is what is usually considered the highly desirable objective of rolling up the enemy’s flank. No one pointed this out. In the end there was a kind of agreement to attack the hill called Spion Kop. Later Buller said that Warren “had evidently not thought the matter out.” Neither had he. No one had.
20
SPION KOP
While Warren and Clery were fighting their inconclusive battle on Tabanyama, Lyttelton had been conducting a series of demonstrations with his brigade on the right of the British line. He wanted to do something more, to be helpful if he could. He was independent of Warren and reported directly to Buller, but every day he inquired of Warren how he could best cooperate with him; he made suggestions, such as a night attack; he was willing to consider any plan. Warren could think of nothing for him to do. Barton, left at Colenso, also made some demonstrations, carrying out a vigorous reconnaissance in force in the direction of Hlangwane and other Boer positions. The Boers were alarmed, but had no need to be, for Buller, incapable of effectively orchestrating the movements of his subordinates, was not the man to exploit such opportunities, and nothing was accomplished.
Although Buller had already agreed to the attack on Spion Kop, he still felt that an attack on the Boer right was better, and he sent Warren a letter in which he outlined a promising plan for such an operation. It was not an order, not a plan Warren was directed to follow, merely a suggestion. Warren ignored it.
Buller’s behaviour was becoming increasingly vacillatory. The Times History summed it up: “He was determined not to let Warren work out his own plan in his own way; he could not bring himself to insist that Warren carry out the plan he himself was convinced was the right one; he would not take over the command himself.”1
Warren had given Buller to understand that Spion Kop would be seized that night, 22 January. The man selected to lead the attack was Major General John Talbot Coke, a veteran of forty years in the army who was still lame from a recently broken leg. It was late in the afternoon when he was summoned to Warren’s tent and given his orders. Coke protested that some of the troops selected were still at Venter’s Spruit; he also sensibly suggested that he ought first to have a look at the position he was to attack. Warren readily agreed and the operation was postponed, although Warren neglected to inform Buller. When Coke left Warren’s tent it was dark, and although his own camp was not far away, he became so hopelessly lost that he was forced to spend the night in the open. That a lame general who could not find his way home in the dark was a poor choice to lead a night attack on a strange height did not occur to Warren.
Early the next morning Warren and Coke with Major General E. R. P. Woodgate and some other officers rode out to look at Spion Kop, looming 1,470 feet above them. Tabanyama ridge ends on the east with a height called Green Hill; from here the ground drops sharply into a gully on the other side of which is Conical Hill, the northeastern end of Spion Kop, which extends 3 miles to the east. A spur, or arête, extends to the southwest, and on the eastern edge of the triangular-shaped summit of Spion Kop proper is a prominent rise called Aloe Knoll. Beyond, further east, are two commanding heights known as Twin Peaks.
The inspection of Spion Kop by Warren and his officers was cursory, and they appear to have viewed it from only one angle, most of their attention being directed to the arête running to the southwest by which the troops would ascend. From where they stood they were unable to see Twin Peaks or Aloe Knoll. Their failure to discover the existence of the latter was to prove tragic. Had one of the generals ascended in the balloon or had Warren ordered an engineer to make a sketch this oversight would not have occurred. But the balloon was not sent up and no sketch of any description was made; those responsible for the attack had only the vaguest notion of the configuration of the hill.
Warren returned to his tent to find Buller there waiting to hear his report on the occupation of Spion Kop. When Buller heard that no attack had yet been made, that it had been delayed without his knowledge, he exploded. Warren did his best to calm him with assurances that there would be no more delay, that the attack would be launched that night without fail. Buller had to be satisfied with that, but when told that Coke was to lead the attack he balked. He did not like the man anyway, and he pointed out that a lame man was not the best choice as a commander for so energetic an enterprise. Warren had to agree. He gave the command to Woodgate, a fifty-five-year-old general in poor health.
The force selected included the Lancashire Fusiliers, six companies of the Royal Lancasters, and two companies of the South Lancashires. In addition to these regulars, 200 troopers from Lieutenant Colonel A. W. Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry (composed mostly of Johannesburg uitlanders) and a half company of Royal Engineers were selected—a total force of 1,700 men. Although a field telegraph unit was available, the communications were put in charge of an artillery officer with a small staff of signallers. The mountain battery would have been useful—in the event, decisive—but it had been left behind at Frere and no one thought of it until it was too late. No one thought of taking machine guns either. There was, in fact, very little thought of any sort.
No one had any clear conception of the reasons for attacking Spion Kop. Buller, when asked by a staff officer what the force on Spion Kop was to do after it had secured the summit, thought about this for a few moments and then said, “It has got to stay there.” No consideration had been given either as to what the rest of the army would be or should be doing. Lieutenant Colonel Charles à Court (afterwards Repington), a member of Buller’s staff assigned to Warren as liaison officer, later wrote: “Some 1,700 men were to assault a hill . . . in the centre of the Boer position, and the rest of Buller’s 20,000 men were to look on and do nothing.”2
Selected to lead the way up Spion Kop was Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft, a heavily built man, 6 feet 2 inches tall, in command of a mounted infantry unit. He was supposed to have two Bantu guides, but one bolted and the other proved useless. Nevertheless, Thorneycroft had spent much of the day looking at the arête along which they were to climb and memorizing a series of landmarks; he felt confident that he could lead Woodgate and his men to the top.
At seven thirty in the evening on 23 January Woodgate’s force assembled below Three Tree Hill. The men were told that their work was to be with the bayonet, and to make sure no one fired his rifle, all magazines were carried empty. An hour later they began their march, down a gully and past a large pile of empty sandbags which some intelligent officer had supplied with the intention that each man should carry one with him for use on the summit. However, as no one remembered to give the order to pick them up, they were left behind.
About eleven o’clock in the evening they reached the foot of Spion Kop and the actual climb began. It was a dark night and there was a slight drizzle. The climb was slow and arduous, and it took four hours to reach the last of Thorneycroft’s landmarks; here the slope grew less steep, but they were enveloped in a heavy mist. Quietly the word was passed
to fix bayonets and extend in long lines. The advance continued cautiously. Suddenly there was a challenge from a Boer sentry: “Werda?” The soldiers threw themselves in the damp weeds on the hard and rocky ground, as they had been instructed to do, while the Boer picket—about seventy men of the Vryheid Commando and some German volunteers—emptied their magazines into the misty night. Then Thorneycroft jumped to his feet and yelled, “Charge!” His own men and the Lancashire Fusiliers leaped forward shouting “Majuba!” One burgher was killed: he died on a bayonet wielded by Lieutenant Vere Awdry, an athletic young man who swung him into the air like a bale of hay. The rest of them fled, some in their stocking feet. It was 3:30 A.M. Woodgate formed up his men and ordered them to give three cheers to let the army below know that the position was won, and he sent Lieutenant Colonel à Court down to give Warren a firsthand account of their victory. Then, instead of sending out officers to discover the configuration of the hill, he ordered his engineers to lay out a line of trenches where they were and the men began to throw up stone sangars and to scratch out the trenches which were to become for many of them their graves. The ground was hard and stony; the entrenching tools were few and flimsy. Woodgate did not know that he was on a false crest, still more than 100 yards from the true crest line. And of course he was ignorant of the existence of Aloe Knoll, the dominant height on the summit.
As soon as Botha learned what had happened he sent messengers galloping to all the laagers with an urgent call for volunteers: “Spion Kop must be taken this day.” But many burghers, assuming that this was the beginning of a general British offensive, panicked. Wagons and saddlebags were hastily packed and men streamed down the road north. To stem the headlong flight Botha himself galloped out to the road where he pleaded and argued with the fugitives, tried shaming them by pointing out a group of foreign volunteers steadfastly making for Spion Kop, and even lashed out with his sjambok. Many turned back, but few went to Spion Kop.
Great Boer War Page 24