Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  Batches of men left the line, openly defying Red Daniel who was impotent in the face of this wholesale defection, and when at last the sun set I do not think there were sixty men left on the ledge.8

  At Warren’s headquarters there was increasing anxiety. Winston Churchill, still a war correspondent but now also holding a commission as a second lieutenant in the South African Light Horse, went up to Captain Cecil Levita, an artillery officer on Warren’s staff, and said, “For God’s sake, Levita, don’t let this be a second Majuba Hill!”

  Levita shrugged and suggested that Churchill talk with Warren, who was pacing up and down nearby. Second Lieutenant Churchill approached Lieutenant General Warren and offered his advice. Levita overheard snatches. Churchill was in full flow: “Majuba Hill ... the great British public....” Warren stopped his pacing and glared through his monocle; then he turned to Levita and bellowed, “Who is this man? Take him away! Put him under arrest!”

  Thorneycroft, who throughout the day remained too far forward to give general direction to the fight, sent a message to Warren at 2:30 P.M. begging for more reinforcements. Meanwhile Coke, still unaware of Thorneycroft’s appointment, formed the impression that the summit was too crowded; he therefore held back reinforcements and had them fire long-range volleys at the Boers on Green Hill. Coke, having heard that Crofton was severely wounded (he had been hit but was, apparently, still exercising command), assumed that he was taking over command from the next senior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Hill of the Middlesex Regiment. Hill, too, had heard that Crofton was badly wounded and thought himself in command until he encountered Coke. Thus for a time three or four officers—Thorneycroft, Hill, Coke, and perhaps Crofton—each thought himself in charge of all the troops on Spion Kop.

  About four o’clock in the afternoon Churchill and Captain Ronald Brooke, 7th Hussars, started the climb up Spion Kop, and Churchill recorded what he saw:

  Streams of wounded men met us and obstructed the path. Men were staggering along, or supported by comrades, or crawling on hands and knees, or carried by stretchers. Corpses lay here and there. Many of the wounds were of a horrible nature. The splinters and fragments of the shell had torn and mutilated in the most ghastly manner. I passed about two hundred while I was climbing up. There was, moreover, a small but steady leakage of unwounded men of all corps. Some of these cursed and swore. Others were utterly exhausted and fell on the hillside in stupor. Scores were sleeping heavily.9

  Churchill later wrote Pamela Plowden: “The scenes on Spion Kop were among the strangest and most terrible I have ever witnessed.”

  On the summit the battle, which had swayed backward and forward on different parts of the field, became stationary by the end of the day as both sides, suffering from heat and exhaustion, lay where they were, incapable of launching new assaults. But the musketry continued and the Boers’ guns went on firing.

  The British now had some 2,000 men alive and on the summit, but the trenches were clogged with 400, perhaps 500, dead and wounded. The Boers probably had about 800 men on the hill, though Botha later claimed that there were never more than 350 burghers there. For no other battle of the war does there exist such a wide discrepancy in the facts and figures provided by commanders, participants, and historians.

  Coke finally found Hill and received from him a report on the situation as far as Hill understood it. To neither did it occur to consult with Thorneycroft, who, as far as Coke was concerned, was simply “a junior brevet lieutenant-colonel in command of a small unit . . . assisting Colonel Crofton in a position on the front line.” At six o’clock Coke sent a report to Warren which hinted that the battle might end in defeat: “The situation is extremely critical.... Please give orders and should you wish me to withdraw, cover retirement. . . .”

  A half hour later Thorneycroft also sent Warren a report: “I request instructions as to what course I am to adopt.... It is all I can do to hold my own. If casualties go on occurring at present rate I shall barely hold out the night. A large number of stretcher-bearers should be sent up and also all water possible. The situation is critical.”

  On the British right Lyttelton had made a demonstration early in the morning, but Buller had ordered it stopped. In the afternoon, however, Lyttelton launched an attack on Twin Peaks with a battalion of the Kings Royal Rifle Corps. He did not consult Buller, who he knew would disapprove.

  The battalion crossed the Tugela at 1:00 P.M. and then divided: Lieutenant Colonel Robert Buchanan-Riddell led half his battalion towards the eastern peak and Major Robert Calverley Arlington Bewicke-Copley took the other half towards the western peak. An hour later they were at the foot of the hills and began the steep climb. The naval guns covered Twin Peaks with their heavy shells. Schalk Burger, the Boer general commanding on Twin Peaks, sent urgent messages begging for reinforcements, and Botha was alarmed, as well he might be, for if the British gained these heights and held them they could make Spion Kop untenable for his burghers. Although short of men, he rushed reinforcements to counter this new threat, but the Rifles spread out, made use of all available cover, and climbed steadily.

  Botha’s greatest support came not from his burghers but from Buller, who, when he saw the attack developing, sent a furious message to Lyttelton demanding that he recall his men. Lyttelton, watching through his glasses the battalion struggle up the steep slopes in the face of the Boer rifle fire, was himself beginning to have doubts about the attack. Then an unnerving message arrived from a staff officer he had sent with the Rifles declaring that he did not think they would be able to take the peaks. There seemed nothing else to do but heliograph the battalion to withdraw. The message was twice repeated within the next hour, but both Buchanan-Riddell and Bewicke-Copley chose to ignore it.

  Not able to stop the attack, the Boers withdrew their guns from Twin Peaks and the burghers began to flee. At 5:00 P.M. Buchanan-Riddell sent Lyttelton a message that if possible he would “recall the advanced sections.” He then ordered his men to fix bayonets and they cleared the enemy off the peak. Fifteen minutes later the other peak was captured and the British were in full possession, although a few Boers still remained hidden behind rocks on the slopes. Buchanan-Riddell, standing upon the summit to look at the valley below, was shot through the head by one of them.

  Buller, meanwhile, was growing ever more angry that his orders were not being obeyed. He sent message after message to Lyttelton, who forwarded them to Twin Peaks. Bewicke-Copley, who had assumed command of the battalion, had already brought up ammunition, water, entrenching tools, and food, but he could not disobey the repeated direct orders. Reluctantly he withdrew. The Rifles lost 20 officers and men killed and 69 wounded in this ably conducted, gallant exploit now rendered purposeless. Officers and men alike in the Rifles were bitter, and one soldier wrote home: “We were wild at getting the order to retire after getting right up to the top.” For Buller to order the withdrawal of the Rifles when success seemed improbable was an act of prudence; to continue to insist on the withdrawal when the improbable had been achieved and such an important tactical victory had been won was the purest folly.

  Thorneycroft in his advanced and isolated position knew nothing of the activities of the Rifles. Coke saw that Twin Peaks had been captured, but it never occurred to him that he should now make a determined effort to clear the Boers from Aloe Knoll and link up with the Rifles. Instead he sent another discouraging dispatch to Warren:

  The situation is as follows—

  The original troops are still in position, have suffered severely, and the dead and wounded are still in the trenches. The shell fire is, and has been, very severe.

  If I hold on to the position all night, is there any guarantee that our artillery can silence the enemy guns? Otherwise to-day’s experience will be repeated, and the men will not stand another day’s shelling....

  The situation is extremely critical....

  Please give orders, and should you wish me to retire cover retirement from Connaught’s Hi
ll.10

  Just ten minutes later, at 6:00 P.M., Thorneycroft sent a similar report to Warren:

  The troops which marched up here last night are quite done up. They have had no water, and ammunition is running short. I consider that even with the reinforcements which have arrived it is impossible to permanently hold this place so long as the enemy’s guns can play on the hill.... It is all I can do to hold my own. If casualties go on at the present rate I shall barely hold out the night. ... The situation is critical.11

  Although Warren’s headquarters on Three Tree Hill was not well sited to observe the battle, most of the staff officers could see some of the to and fro movements of the Boers and soldiers on Spion Kop. Warren, nearsighted, could see nothing; he was serenely unworried. All day he busied himself with minor details, which he handled splendidly; Warren liked to gnaw on small bones. It was not until late in the afternoon that he thought of the balloon and sent for it; although it was too late in the day to use it, it would be useful tomorrow, he thought. Not until even later did it occur to him that sandbags and entrenching tools ought to be sent up to Spion Kop. The signalling arrangements were deplorable, but he made no effort to better them; neither did he worry about pushing guns up onto the hill. Early in the day the mountain battery had been sent for and it arrived at Trichardt’s Drift at 4:00 P.M., but Buller, instead of hurrying it on with all speed, sent a message to Warren saying, “They will have a devil of a march. You must give them a rest before they go up.” So men and mules rested and the battery did not reach the foot of Spion Kop until three and a half hours later.

  It was eight o’clock and growing dark by the time Coke’s discouraging message reached Warren; this was followed shortly after by a staff officer sent down by Coke to report personally on the appalling conditions on the summit and to explain how critical the situation had become. Warren was inclined to dismiss the staff officer as an alarmist. But then came Churchill, who gave him a vivid word picture of the demoralised troops, the casualties, and the ineffectiveness of Coke.

  Finally alarmed, Warren began thinking of useful things to do: he ordered the naval guns sent up, he sent off 200 men of the Somerset Light Infantry with entrenching tools and sandbags, and he sent Churchill back with a message to Thorneycroft. The only other thing he could think of was to order Coke to climb down and report to him in person.

  No one, it seems, gave any thought to the possible effect of the battle on the Boers. Although Botha had been forced to weaken other parts of his line to send men up Spion Kop—and Warren or Buller might have reasonably assumed as much—no attempt was made by the British to take advantage of their tremendous numerical superiority by launching a full-scale attack all along the line, or even on Tabanyama, to relieve the pressure on Spion Kop. It appeared to the Boers on Spion Kop that the British were hanging on with that bulldog determination for which they were famous, and it was obvious that they were sending increasing numbers of men to hold it. The reports of burghers who had fled down the hill were alarming and grew more so as they were repeated in the laagers and trenches. All along the Boer line discouraged burghers prepared for flight. Towards evening, from a height at Ladysmith, H. H. S. Pearse could see the activity on the Boer side: “The Boers came hurrying down in groups from Spion Kop’s crest, their waggons were trekking from laagers across the plain towards Van Reenan’s, and men could be seen rounding up cattle as if for a general rearward movement. To us watching it seemed as if the Boers were beaten and knew it.”12

  Deneys Reitz described what it was like for the Boers on the summit at the end of the day:

  Darkness fell swiftly; the firing died away, and there was silence, save for a rare shot and the moans of the wounded. For a long time I remained at my post, staring into the night to where the enemy lay, so close that I could hear the cries of their wounded and the murmur of voices from behind their breastwork.

  Afterwards my nerves began to go and I thought I saw figures with bayonets stealing forward. When I tried to find the men who earlier in the evening had been beside me, they were gone. Almost in a panic I left my place and hastened along the fringe of rocks in search of company, and to my immense relief heard a gruff “werda.” It was Commandant Opperman still in his place with about two dozen men. He told me to stay beside him, and we remained here until after ten o’clock, listening to the enemy who were talking and stumbling about in the darkness beyond.13

  At last even Red Daniel Opperman came to believe that the situation was hopeless, and he led his tired men down the hill, stumbling in the dark over rocks, their boots sometimes striking with sickening thuds against the scattered bodies of the fallen. At the foot of the hill they found that most of the horses were gone, taken by those who had deserted the fight; only their own horses and those of the dead and wounded abandoned on the hill remained where they had been left standing without food or water all day. Close by was an old man who by the dim light of a lantern was tending to some of the seriously wounded burghers who had been carried down. Opperman and his men were hungry and, above all, thirsty. They got water for themselves and their horses from a nearby spring and ransacked saddlebags for food. Then they wearily mounted and rode slowly back until they came to the laager of the Carolina Commando.

  STORMING THE BOER TRENCHES AT THE BATTLE OF SPION KOP.

  They found it in chaos. The Carolina men had fought bravely and well, but now, feeling that all was lost, they were loading wagons and packing saddlebags in a panic. The first wagons were leaving when out of the night galloped Louis Botha, shouting at them to turn back. There were similar scenes elsewhere as throughout the night Botha rode from laager to laager trying to put heart into the dispirited commandos: “If only we stand firm our Lord will give us victory.” In most places he was successful, but not in all. Schalk Burger and his men, having been driven off Twin Peaks, considered the battle lost and had already fled north.

  All day long Thorneycroft had fought with great gallantry and grim determination. He had behaved splendidly as a soldier, but he had played a colonel’s role, not a general’s. He had stayed too far forward on just one segment of the line, and he knew nothing of what had happened elsewhere. He had received no messages from Warren since the one making him a general, there was no food or water that he knew of (although sandbags, water cans, and other necessities were piled only 300 yards down the slope behind him), Warren had not silenced the Boer artillery, his ammunition was low, guns had not arrived, his groaning wounded were all about him, his exhausted men were one by one leaving the firing line; worst of all, tomorrow would be a repetition of this dreadful day as far as he could see. Looking at the dead and wounded around him he murmured, “My poor boys.... my poor boys.” He decided to call it all off.

  Thorneycroft moved back from the front line a bit and summoned Crofton and Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Cooke, commanding the Cameronians. Coke with his bad leg was by this time making his way down the slope to report to Warren. Thorneycroft gave the two colonels his reasons for withdrawing—“Better six battalions safely off the hill than a mop up in the morning,” he said—and they raised no objections. The order was given and the Cameronians were instructed to form the rear guard and to bring off as many wounded men as they could. Many of the troops were confused, and Captain Hubert Gough overheard a Cameronian ask: “What the hell are we leaving the bloody hill for?”

  An hour later Thorneycroft on his way down encountered Churchill, who gave him Warren’s message, told him of the guns and supplies that had been ordered up for him, and tried to dissuade him from continuing the flight, but Thorneycroft was not to be deflected and was as stubborn in his refusal to give up his retreat as he had been all through the day in not retreating. He stomped down the hill with Churchill in his wake. They were three-quarters of the way down when they met Captain Walter Braithwaite leading the Somerset Light Infantry with sandbags and entrenching tools. Braithwaite had a written message from Warren. Thorneycroft took it, but he was shaking from exhaustion and tension, Warre
n’s handwriting was small, and he was unable to make it out. Churchill read it for him. The Somersets were to dig trenches for him, Warren wrote, and he should hang on. But Thorneycroft said, “I have done all I can, and I am not going back.”

  Thorneycroft ordered the Somersets to turn back. The mountain battery and a company of engineers they met were also told to turn around. Meanwhile, Captain Henry Phillips, whom Coke had left in charge of the signal station well below the summit, awoke from a short nap about eleven thirty; half of the troops had already moved past him down the hill, but he at once tried to stop the retreat, insisting it was contrary to Coke’s orders. He managed to halt Cooke and Major Ernest Twyford of the Cameronians. They agreed to delay a bit until Warren could be contacted. Then Phillips discovered that the signal lamps were out of oil.

  Shortly after midnight a naval lieutenant with the unusual British name of Schwikkard reached the summit of Spion Kop by a route which avoided the retreating troops. He had been sent to select sites for the naval guns. To his astonishment he found the battlefield deserted: on the summit of Spion Kop, on Aloe Knoll and Twin Peaks, there were only the dead and the wounded, whose groans were now the only sounds to be heard. In the moonlight Schwikkard wandered over the hill and into what had been the Boer lines. The Boers later claimed that a small group of Prinsloo’s men, led by Jan Kemp, had spent the night on the slopes, but Prinsloo himself was certainly not there, for he had left the hill earlier, carrying off the dead body of his brother Willie. On the summit itself Schwikkard found only an ambulance man tending some wounded. Boer and Briton, having fought each other to a standstill, had all given up in despair and fled. Each side was prepared to grant the other victory, but neither knew it.