Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  The disappointment in Kimberley was intense. The town’s citizens angrily demanded to know what had happened, and when Kekewich, as disappointed and as uninformed as they, could tell them nothing, he was accused of deliberately withholding information.

  It is not certain what Methuen would have done had he reached Kimberley. From evidence he gave to a royal commission after the war it would appear that he was not very clear himself:

  Methuen: I had to relieve Kimberley, throw in a large supply of provisions, clear out the non-combatants, and return to the Orange river. These were, in short, the orders I got from him [Buller].

  Question: The intention of your advance was simply to reinforce the garrison of Kimberley, and move the non-combatants, and come away again?

  Methuen: No, I could not say my object was to reinforce Kimberley, but it was to clear out, I think, something like 11,000 useless mouths, who were black men, and so on. I was to send up the trains holding provisions sufficient for Kimberley to go on with for some time, and clear out all these black men and send them down country or where I could; at any rate get them out of Kimberley. 3

  If this was really what Methuen intended to do, it certainly would not have been satisfactory to Rhodes or other citizens of Kimberley. Kekewich actually did receive orders to prepare for the evacuation of all civilians when Methuen arrived, and he unwisely passed this information on to Rhodes—in confidence. Rhodes told the Town Council and then published the news in his newspaper. There was an uproar. Troubles rained down on the hapless Kekewich. The townspeople read the news in a rage. Unforgivably slow in coming to their relief, the military were now laying plans to dispossess them of their homes and to bankrupt the merchants. Dr. Ashe thought there might even be “a civil war in the town,” and Winifred Heberden recorded: “People who have been quite cheerful and happy throughout the siege say that this is the first time they have felt the least depression, and in many cases there is great alarm.”

  There were, of course, thousands of Bantu, Coloureds, and Asiatics who under the whites’s self-imposed rules could not take an active part in the defence except to dig trenches and build fortifications, but who nevertheless had to be fed. Early in the siege Rhodes tried to get rid of them by sending them en masse out of town during the night, but the Boers forced them to turn around and go back. As Rhodes had said nothing to Kekewich about this scheme, the British shelled them as they streamed back before it was realized who they were.

  There was still enough food, at least for the white population, if one included horse meat. On 6 January 1900 Winifred Heberden wrote in her diary: “Today we had horseflesh for the first time, and very excellent it was, though many people foolishly refused to taste it.” Before the end of the siege 164,183 pounds were consumed. The Bantu, caught in the middle of the warring whites, suffered most: some 900 developed scurvy. Kekewich estimated that he had enough food to last until 28 February. De Beers had large stocks of food which Kekewich, with Rhodes’s permission, commandeered and rationed out—but only after the top De Beers officials had laid in their own private stocks. Prices soared: eggs, when they could be obtained, sold for £1 per dozen; among the Coloured servants kittens sold for 5s 6d and plump cats for 12s 6d.

  On 29 January Kekewich was asked by Methuen if he could hold out for another six weeks and he replied that he could. The grumbling townspeople began to mutter that perhaps it would be better to surrender, and the mayor told Kekewich that Rhodes planned to call a mass meeting. When Kekewich, horrified at what might happen should the townspeople demand that he surrender, told the mayor that such a meeting must be prevented at all costs, he found an angry Rhodes on his stoep threatening to hold the meeting anyway unless he was given a detailed account of what the British army was doing towards relieving the town. Kekewich quickly sent off a message to Methuen intimating that he feared the inhabitants, led by Rhodes, would force him to surrender. Rhodes, he said, was “quite unreasonable.” Roberts had now arrived at the Modder River, and he read Kekewich’s message with concern.

  The next day, 10 February, the Diamond Fields Advertiser, in an article entitled “Why Kimberley Cannot Wait,” lauded “the heroic exertions of her citizens” and made plain the editor’s opinion of the military: “Is it unreasonable, when our women and children are being slaughtered, and our buildings fired, to expect something better than that a large British Army should remain inactive in the presence of eight or ten thousand peasant soldiers?”

  Kekewich closed down the paper and ordered the editor arrested, but Rhodes, anticipating this, had hidden him in a mine.

  Soon after, Rhodes appeared at Kekewich’s headquarters with the mayor in tow. He had met, he said, with “the twelve leading citizens in Kimberley” and they had drafted a message to Roberts which was to be sent off at once by heliograph. Kekewich read it. After painting a pitiable picture of conditions in the town, it demanded that Roberts inform them if he had any intention of making “an immediate effort for our relief. ... It is absolutely essential that immediate relief should be afforded to this place.”4 Kekewich did not refuse to transmit the message; he only refused to send it off immediately, as his signallers were busy. Rhodes exploded and shouted: “You low damned cur!” To the startled mayor it appeared that Rhodes was about to hit the colonel, and he stepped between them. The two angry men glared at each other and then Rhodes turned his back and stomped out.

  When Roberts received the message he replied at once to Kekewich, reminding him that he was in charge and telling him that if anyone, however grand, interfered with his conduct of the defence he should be arrested. He added that Kimberley would be relieved in a few days and that he should represent to Rhodes and the mayor the “disastrous and humiliating effect of surrendering.” Kekewich marked a copy “Secret” and sent it to Rhodes, who at once read the part about imminent relief to a group at the Sanatorium Hotel and then to his friends at the Kimberley Club; then he wrote a message for Kekewich to relay to Roberts: “There is no fear of our surrendering, but we are getting anxious about the state of the British Army. It is high time you did something.”5

  Kekewich refused to send such a message to his commander in chief, and Rhodes was obliged to rewrite it in a less offensive style. Kekewich sent with it a message of his own. He found it necessary to explain—or to try to explain—the peculiar position he was in. Rhodes had done “excellent work,” he admitted, but he “desires to control the military situation” and he had been “grossly insulting.” He summed up his position: “The key to the military situation here in one sense is Rhodes, for a large majority of the Town Guardsmen, Kimberley Light Horse and Volunteers are De Beers employees. I fully realize the powers conferred on me by the existence of Martial Law, but I have not sufficient force to compel obedience.”

  With relief on the way at last, Rhodes felt sure that the Boers would intensify their bombardments of the town. On 11 February, without bothering to tell Kekewich, he had the town plastered with notices:

  Sunday I recommend women and children who desire complete shelter to proceed to Kimberley and De Beers shafts. They will be lowered at once in the mines from 8 o’clock throughout the night. Lamps and guides will be provided.

  C. J. Rhodes6

  The town panicked. People arrived at the shafts early, and from 5:30 P.M. until 4:00 A.M. the mine lifts worked continually, carrying down women, children, and those men not directly involved with the defence, black and white. There were not enough latrines and the air was soon foul, but there were electric lights, it was cool, and plenty of food and tea was provided by the De Beers Company, an indication that not all the company’s food supplies had been turned over to the army for equitable distribution.

  On 15 February, the day of deliverance, Kekewich made an effort to capture “Long Tom,” but its crew had fled, taking their gun with them. He then went wandering over the veld looking for French, while French and his staff rode into Kimberley and were welcomed by the mayor and Rhodes. Douglas Haig, French’s chief o
f staff, looked around and thought the inhabitants appeared “fat and well.”

  That evening when Kekewich rode back into town he heard sounds of revelry coming from the Sanatorium Hotel (owned by Rhodes). Inside he found tables laid with luxury foods and champagne flowing freely. Like an awkward schoolboy he stood at the door until Rhodes saw him and pushed his way through his guests toward him. “You shall not see French,” he growled. “This is my house, get out of it.” But Kekewich had also been seen by one of French’s staff officers, who came up and arranged for him to meet the general in a private room. Here French, having already heard Rhodes’s views, did not conceal his own opinion that Kekewich had made a bad job of it.

  Rhodes and his people had also got to the newspaper correspondents first, and every story sent out credited Rhodes and the De Beers Company with saving Kimberley.

  So ended the four months’ siege of Kimberley. As the Daily Mail put it: “Kimberley is won, Cecil Rhodes is free, the De Beers shareholders are full of themselves, and the beginning of the war is at an end.”7 There had been only 134 casualties among the armed defenders, only 21 citizens had been killed by the 8,500 shells the Boers had thrown into the town, but some 1,500 people, mostly Bantu and Coloureds, died of diseases. It proved a bad time and place to be born: infant mortality was 67.1 percent among whites and 91.2 percent among nonwhites.

  24

  PAARDEBERG

  On 16 February, the day after French rode into Kimberley and drank Rhodes’s champagne, the cavalry division went looking for the enemy. They rode over the positions the besiegers had occupied, but the Boers had gone and had taken their guns with them. A few commandos fighting rear-guard actions engaged them in some inconclusive skirmishes in which they suffered 28 casualties. Not much was accomplished. The most significant result of all this pounding across the veld and among the kopjes around Kimberley was the utter exhaustion of the horses.

  French too was tired when at seven o’clock in the evening he returned to Kimberley, but he was to get little rest. Three hours later he received a message from Kitchener ordering him to move out and head off Cronjé, now trekking east along the Modder. He climbed back into his saddle and with less than 1,200 men—all that still had horses capable of moving or could be mounted on horses borrowed from the Diamond Fields Horse and the De Beers Company—set off that night on a 30-mile ride.

  By eleven o’clock the next morning Cronjé had reached the Modder River at Paardeberg Drift. He and his burghers felt reasonably safe here, believing that the main British force could not catch them before they crossed the river and took up suitable defensive positions blocking Roberts’s path to Bloemfontein. Some of the wagons had already started to cross; others were outspanned and the oxen turned loose to graze. Some of the burghers and the women had built fires and were preparing to cook their midday meal; others had stretched out in the shade of their wagons to get some rest. Without warning, from only 1,200 yards away, guns boomed, and seconds later shells were bursting among them. Most of the Boers panicked, and it was lucky for French that they did, for it is unlikely that his exhausted men could have withstood a determined attack or that they could have escaped on their spent horses. Cronjé’s force outnumbered French’s by four to one.

  All afternoon French held his own and prevented the Boers from moving while Kitchener energetically hustled forward more troops. The mounted infantry under Hannay came up before dark and occupied the high ground to the south and southeast. The 13th Brigade got lost in the dark, but the Highland Brigade marched 31 miles in twenty-four hours and reached Paardeberg just before midnight. The 19th Brigade marched all night and came up at 4:30 A.M. By the end of the second day the Boers were surrounded, the British perimeter stretching for 24 miles.

  The senior commander on the spot was now Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Kelly-Kenny, commander of the 6th Division, but the energetic Kitchener quickly arrived, and although he held no command of his own, he was soon throwing orders in all directions. There arose the question of who was in charge.

  Kelly-Kenny, the older man, had been nearly three years senior to Kitchener when the two men had been colonels, but Kitchener had been promoted to the rank of major general six months earlier than he. However, in South Africa Kelly-Kenny, like French and Colvile who were also on the scene, had been given the local rank of lieutenant general, while Kitchener held only his substantive rank as major general. Also, Kitchener, as chief of staff, could give orders only in Roberts’s name, although quite obviously the orders he was giving at Paardeberg were his own, for Roberts had come down with a severe chill and was in bed at Jacobsdal, where he had established his headquarters. Sick or not, only Roberts could make the delicate and important decision as to who was to command at Paardeberg. A soldier was sent galloping off with the question. Roberts’s reply was a courteous letter to Kelly-Kenny asking him to consider Kitchener’s orders as being his own. Kelly-Kenny, piqued, huffily replied, “This is not the time to enter into personal matters. Till this phase of the operation is completed, I will submit to even humiliation rather than raise any matter connected with my command.”

  Kitchener proceeded to throw himself into this battle with all the energy for which he was justly famous and with a ferocity and ruthlessness which were to make him more famous still. Just before dawn on 18 February he rode forward to inspect the Boer positions.

  It is probable that had Cronjé moved out on the night of 17 February he could have made his escape with at least most of his force. Such a course was urged on him by most of his commandants; some of his burghers on their own initiative did get away, but Cronjé, perhaps with thoughts of how the voortrekkers in their wagon laager with their backs to the Blood River had beaten back Dingaan’s Zulu hordes, was determined to stay where he was. The coffee-coloured Modder provided water, and its steep banks lined with trees and bushes offered some protection for the cattle and horses and were themselves natural defensive works. He ordered the wagons parked together near the drift and started his men digging trenches and developing positions along the river’s banks. The Boer position was now in the shape of a huge snail, its length the 2 miles of the brushwood-fringed riverbanks running east and west and its shell the bulge which formed the laager of animals and wagons on the north bank. North and south the Boers had clear fields of fire.

  Kitchener viewed Cronjé’s positions with satisfaction. Kelly-Kenny, who was with him, explained the plans he had made for mounting guns on the surrounding kopjes and distributing the infantry in defensive positions to prevent the enemy’s escape. Kitchener thought the scheme was imbecilic. His tired troops had already been paraded and were on the move. He was going to throw them at the Boers. “To annihilate Cronjé’s force, and then, with the terror of his dripping sword preceding him, to march straight on to Bloemfontein, was to Kitchener’s mind, the only policy worthy of a soldier.”1 Impatiently he cut short Kelly-Kenny’s exposition and ordered an immediate attack. Looking at his watch, he said confidently to the knot of staff officers around him: “It is now seven o’clock. We shall be in the laager by half-past ten. I’ll then load up French, and send him on to Bloemfontein at once.”

  It was not to be so simple.

  The soldiers were thrown recklessly at the Boer positions. Kitchener appears to have had quite clearly in mind what he wanted to do, but he had not troubled to explain himself to his subordinate commanders. Major General Horace Smith-Dorrien, commanding the 19th Brigade in Colvile’s division, was told by one of Kitchener’s staff officers to take his brigade and a battery across the river and “establish yourself on the other side.” Smith-Dorrien asked where he was supposed to cross and was airily told: “The river is in flood and as far as I have heard Paardeberg Drift, the only one available, is unfordable; but Lord Kitchener, knowing your resourcefulness, is sure you will get across somehow.” Smith-Dorrien cursed, but he did manage to get his brigade across. Once established on the other side he had no idea of what he was supposed to do next, and later said that
he was “in a complete fog, and knew nothing of the situation either of our own troops, or of the Boers, beyond what I could see, or infer, myself.”2

  The Highland Brigade made a gallant charge across a bare, open stretch of veld in the face of a hail of bullets, but about 500 to 800 yards from the Boer positions the Highlanders were brought to a standstill and again found themselves, as at Magersfontein, lying on their stomachs on the veld in front of Boer positions.

  THE YORKSHIRE REGIMENT CHARGED WITH BAYONETS INTO THE BOERS *

  NEAR SLINGERSFONTEIN.

  By two o’clock in the afternoon British attacks from east, west, and south had all been checked, but Kitchener, still determined to get into the laager with his bayonets, insisted that the Boer positions be taken “at all costs.” In a frenzy he galloped about, tossing orders in all directions. Kelly-Kenny, ordered to rouse his troops and renew the attack, thought Kitchener was mad, but he obeyed. Smith-Dorrien was amazed to see his entire line, even the transport guard, suddenly rise up and charge. Kitchener was giving orders directly to subordinate commanders. Smith-Dorrien later complained that “the only man who was not told what 19 Brigade was to do was its commander.” The brigade lost 22 percent of its strength.

  Hannay’s mounted infantry, its horses left behind, had pushed up to within 700 yards of the Boers’ main position in front of their laager, but the fire was so fierce that it could make no further progress. Hannay sent Kitchener a message saying that it was futile to attempt to go further, but Kitchener fired back: “The time has now come for a final effort. All troops have been warned that the laager must be rushed at all costs. Try and carry Stephanson’s brigade with you. But if they cannot go, the M.I. should do it. Gallop up if necessary and fire into the laager.”3