At three o’clock on the morning of 6 January the Boers attacked the western extremity of Wagon Hill and the eastern end of Caesar’s Camp. The assault on Wagon Hill was led by Field Cornet Ignatias Vermaak of Utrecht, “a splendid old patriot of sixty-two years of age, who with flowing white locks and accompanied by four sons was the first to charge and the last to evacuate.” Commandant C.J. de Villiers, a Majuba veteran, led another attack up the nek between the two hills. There was a great deal of confused fighting in the dark before dawn revealed to both sides their positions. The Boers had made some headway, but the British had put up a stubborn resistance. Throughout the morning a fierce fight moved backwards and forwards over the slopes; here one side gained an advantage, here another.
Second Lieutenant W. E. Davies of the Rifle Brigade led a small charge. He was glad, he said later, that the Boers retreated. “I found I had only brought my walking stick.”
At 12:30 P.M. Hamilton was on Wagon Hill with Major Claude Miller-Wallnutt of the Gordon Highlanders and Lieutenant Robert Digby Jones of the Royal Engineers when, amid a furious burst of musketry, De Villiers and his men made a rush and pushed back the defenders just in front of them. Hamilton drew his pistol and, with Miller-Wallnutt, Jones, and a handful of men, dashed forward in a counterattack. The two opposing commanders found themselves face to face by a gun pit. There was a deadly shoot-out. De Villiers shot Miller-Wallnutt in the head, killing him. Digby Jones killed De Villiers. A few minutes later Jones was shot dead.
The fighting raged all afternoon. The British rushed up reserves from Ladysmith, the Devons made a gallant charge—losing all their company officers and a third of their men—and eventually the Boers were forced off the ridge. Philip Pienaar saw some of the burghers returning: “Down the hill our wounded dribbled, thirsty men, pale men, men covered with blood and weeping with rage.... One man is brought down lying across a horse. His face hangs in strips, shattered by a dum-dum bullet. Thank goodness, some of ours are using back-shot today.”26
Conan Doyle was later to write: “There has been no better fighting in our time than upon Waggon Hill on that January morning.”27 Certainly it was a bloody day long remembered by the surviving participants, though perhaps not many thought of it as good fighting. It was remembered too by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who, on hearing of the British victory at Bardia in Libya on 6 January 1941, wrote a note to Ian Hamilton, then eighty-eight years old: “I am thinking of you and Wagon Hill when another January 6th brings news of a fine feat of arms.”28
The Transvaalers blamed their failure on the lack of support from the Free Staters, leaderless that day, because General Prinsloo and a number of his principal officers had left to attend a cattle sale in Harrismith.
The British suffered 417 casualties, including 168 killed—higher casualties than Buller had suffered at Colenso. The Boers reported 183 casualties, including 64 killed, but this was undoubtedly an understatement. When John Gough (Hubert’s younger brother) of the Rifle Brigade ordered his meticulous sergeant major to collect the Boer dead, 99 bodies were found, a disappointment to the sergeant major, who had hoped for a tidy 100; he was troubled too by a kind of problem peculiar to sergeant majors: he had lined up the corpses by their heads, but if this was incorrect, he told Gough, he could easily line them up by their feet. Gough assured him that his arrangement was satisfactory: “This seemed to lift a considerable weight off the sergeant-major’s mind.”29
Three field cornets were killed; one was old Vermaak, who left seven grown sons to continue the fight. White, in a letter to his wife, wrote: “When we handed over the dead next morning, as each succeeding hero was brought down—for they were heroes—the Boers wrung their hands, and owned we had killed their best.”30
The British were impressed with the ferocity of the Boer attack; the Boers, depressed by their failure, lacked the heart to launch any more, and the British were glad this was so. Neither side ever again embarked on serious offensive operations.
While Roberts was bombarding Cronjé’s laager, Buller began his last attempt to relieve Ladysmith. He had with undue deliberation moved his force back to the Colenso area, where the incompetent Lukas Meyer had temporarily replaced Botha as commander of the Boer forces on the Tugela. After waiting several days because he thought the weather was too hot for fighting, he made a few abortive minor attacks. Finally, due to the initiative shown by Dundonald and Lyttelton, some important kopjes were taken and the Boers drew back. Hlangwane fell without a fight, thanks to the carelessness of the Boers; the Krugersdorp Commando occupying it had walked off the hill when the Heidelberg Commando, due to relieve it, was late in arriving.
By 18 February news of Roberts’s successes had put the Boers on the Natal front in a turmoil, and under the pressure of Buller’s army they gave way; many discouraged burghers simply gave up the fight and went home. Some of the commandants urged Joubert to raise the siege of Ladysmith and to take up new positions on the Biggarsberg, but he refused. Buller, who felt no compulsion to crush the Boer army but only to reach Ladysmith, gained the impression that the Boers were retreating, and so, instead of pushing forward vigorously, he decided to wait a few days for them to clear out of his way. This respite enabled the Boer leaders to rally their men; Botha returned to take command; President Kruger sent a long telegram replete with Biblical references and quotations exhorting the burghers to hold firm, to “stand fast in faith to fight.” Inspired with fresh if still unsteady courage, the Boers prepared new defences.
On 21 February Buller sent a message to White: “I hope to be with you tomorrow night. I think there is only a rear guard in front of me.” Thus, believing he would encounter only slight resistance, Buller gave his army its marching orders: troops, guns, and transport were to cross the pontoon bridge being thrown over the Tugela west of Hlangwane. By two o’clock in the afternoon the bridge was ready and Coke’s brigade, led by the Somerset Light Infantry, crossed and debouched onto the small open plain beyond, the arena of an amphitheatre surrounded by hills from whose heights the Boer riflemen looked down. The infantry pushed forward bravely at first, but were soon brought to a halt by the Boer musketry and lay prone on the ground for the rest of the afternoon under a galling fire. The Somersets alone sustained 90 casualties, and there were another 20 in the rest of the brigade as a result of this encounter with the “rear guard.”
It was the kind of tactical situation the Boers liked best: they could crouch behind comfortable defensive positions with a clear field of fire while the enemy ran at them with bayonets. Their spirits rose. At the end of the day Botha sent a jubilant telegram to Kruger:
Thanks to our Father the burghers already showed to-day that they had taken heart again, when they had such splendid shooting at the enemy with their Mausers at 300 yards range.... With the help of the Lord, I expect that if only the spirit of the burghers keeps up as it did to-day, the enemy will suffer a great reverse.31
Not even the bloody result of this day’s fighting shook Buller’s unreasonable conviction that he was facing only a rear guard, and all night long he sent infantry, artillery, and supply wagons across the bridge until at dawn the next morning he had eleven battalions of infantry and forty guns packed into the amphitheatre behind the Colenso kopjes; during the course of the morning he added four more battalions and pushed in still more baggage. There was heavy fighting all this day and all the next as the troops struggled to dislodge the Boers from their hills flanking the road to Ladysmith. The British suffered 500 casualties in these two days, yet Buller still refused to believe that he was fighting the Boer main force on the Tugela, and the orders he issued were mere marching orders, the only reference to the enemy being to “snipers” in the hills.
Buller’s state of mind can only be imagined. He had to get through to Ladysmith somehow. He knew that. Yet he could not bear the thought that he was sending his precious soldiers to face the full fury of the Boers’ musketry. Only by deceiving himself, by pretending that he was not fighting a
full-scale protracted battle, could he bear to continue the offensive. If he was faced by only a stubborn rear guard he could push on, soon the nightmare would be over, and the Boers would go away. It was only a rear guard. Only that.
The troops behaved gallantly, and in spite of their heavy losses—Hart lost 30 percent of the troops engaged in an attack on one hill—they did push on, and for once Buller shut his eyes and let them. But the resistance was stubborn indeed, and by the evening of the 24th the army had come to a complete standstill. Faced with the loss of 1,200 men in four days of fighting, even Buller had to accept reality, but he had no plan for remedying the perilous position in which he had placed his army:
It was now strung out along the river in a chain of insecure positions, liable to be cut off from each other, difficult to reinforce, and still more difficult to escape in case of a reverse.... all the units had become hopelessly mixed up, while most of the artillery and mounted troops were in positions where they could be least effective.32
On 25 February Buller asked for an armistice to allow him to bring in the wounded and bury the dead; many of the wounded had been lying in agony for days in the hot sun without food or water. Botha and Lukas Meyer agreed, and stretcher parties moved onto the now silent battlefields. Soldiers and burghers also ventured forth to meet and talk, exchanging tobacco and views on the war.
General Lyttelton joined in the fraternization and told one Boer: “A rough time? Yes, I suppose so. But for us, of course, it is nothing. We are used to it and are paid for it. This is what we are paid for. This is the life we lead always—you understand?”
“Great God!” exclaimed the burgher.
Buller used the time of the armistice to sort out his troops and guns. He could see that at this point it was more dangerous to retreat than to try to go forward. He had to go on. After considering several plans he decided on a frontal attack along a 3-mile front using three brigades. For once he would make use of his overwhelming superiority in numbers of men and guns.
Another pontoon bridge was thrown across the Tugela further upstream and the Royal Engineers painted a signpost for it: TO LADYSMITH. Seventy-six guns were positioned to support the attack. As the infantry moved forward on the 27th the soldiers were heartened by the news of Cronjé’s surrender to Roberts at Paardeberg. It took six hours of heavy fighting and cost another 500 men, but the British at last cleared the kopjes and opened the way to Ladysmith. “The British infantry has once more saved their generals,” said Rawlinson.
The Boers had fought long and hard, but this sustained fighting was difficult for them. In a one-day battle they could be counted on, but fighting every day and being slowly driven back from position to position was beyond their capabilities; besides, the news of Cronjé’s surrender had spread despair among them. Kruger appealed for a last-ditch stand, but Joubert simply ordered a general retreat and himself fled to Elandslaagte, leaving Botha to organize a rear guard as best he could. At 12:30 P.M. the Long Tom on Pepworth Hill fired its last shot, the shell exploding in Dunton’s store in the middle of Ladysmith.
Botha had difficulty holding together enough burghers to form even a weak rear guard, and it was only after the greatest exertions on the part of his officers that the guns were brought away. One Long Tom was saved by an American, “Colonel” John Y. Fillimore Blake, a West Point graduate who commanded a group of Irish-American volunteers. He and his men, assisted by some American scouts, hitched oxen to the gun and during the night crawled with it past Ladysmith almost within earshot of the British outposts.
It was a mystery to most why the Boers were allowed to leave in peace. Richard Harding Davis wrote to his mother: “I watched the Boers for four hours the other day escaping from the battle of Pieters and I asked ... ‘Why don’t you send out your cavalry and light artillery and take those wagons?’ The staff officer giggled and said, ‘They might kill us.’ I don’t know what he meant; neither did he.”33
It was raining, and through the mud the Boer ox wagons streamed away north in a disorganized mob—away from the Tugela heights and away from Ladysmith. “In all directions the plain was covered with a multitude of men, wagons, and guns ploughing across the sodden veld in the greatest disorder,” wrote Deneys Reitz. “Had the British fired a single gun at this surging mob everything on wheels would have fallen into their hands.”34 But not a gun was fired. Buller did not, would not, pursue.
“Never, perhaps, has a general enjoyed such an opportunity for destroying a beaten and demoralised adversary,” wrote Bron Herbert in The Times History. Urged by his senior commanders and staff officers to fall upon the fleeing Boers with the full weight of his army, Buller refused to sacrifice the life of a single additional soldier, although by doing so he would have shortened the war and saved the lives of many. White sent out a “flying column,” but the men and horses were too weak to fight; Buller sternly rebuked him and ordered the pursuit halted. “Few commanders have so wantonly thrown away so great an opportunity,” fumed Lyttelton. Even years later Colonel à Court said, “I cannot think of that day even now without rage.”
The fleeing, panic-stricken burghers could hardly believe that they were not being pursued:
The main column followed the railroad to Washbank, while part of the forces under Lukas Meyer, went towards Wessels Nek, where a scene of the wildest confusion reigned. Hundreds of canvas topped wagons converging to the narrow road, formed on the side of the hill a great solid triangle, two miles at the base and visible for miles. The recent rain had made the pass most difficult, every wagon having to be assisted over the steep incline with double teams. The clamor was fearful, each tried to be first, forcing their own vehicles into every crevice, in the hope of passing others, only to cause a more hopeless lock. The mounted men had carelessly gone before, seeking rest, regardless of this mass of wagons and field guns constituting the entire transport of the west wing, an inviting spoil for capture. Fortunately ... by the heroic labor of the teamsters, the tangle was worked clear in twenty-four hours. The last wagon made the passage safely the following night, without any threatening demonstration from the British.
The danger was passed, the entire army of the Tugela had made the perilous circuit of forty miles, without the loss of a gun or wagon not abandoned, and proceeding by slow stages, they commenced to recover their spirits.35
Just before sunset on 28 February Major Hubert Gough of the 16th Lancers splashed across a drift of the Klip River at the head of his squadron and rode into Ladysmith. Colonel Frank Rhodes described his reception:
It is impossible to depict the enthusiasm of the beleaguered garrison. Cheer upon cheer ran from post to post, and staff officers, civilians, and soldiers flocked to greet them. At the ford of the Klip River, women, with children in their arms, tearfully pressed forward to grasp the hands of the gallant band. Sisters and brothers, friends and relatives met again. The contrast between the robust troopers of a dozen battles and the pale, emaciated defenders of Ladysmith was great.36
It was, said Gough, “the most moving moment of my life.” Although he later claimed that he had maintained “a dignified calm,” Colonel Beachamp Duff saw him “sitting in his saddle with the tears in his eyes, unable to say more than, ‘Thank God’ over and over again.” White was waiting for him in the main street and greeted him calmly: “Hello, Hubert, how are you?”
Thus ended the 118-day siege of Ladysmith.
Dundonald with the rest of the cavalry, some mounted infantry, and Winston Churchill soon followed Gough. That night Churchill dined with White, Ian Hamilton, Hunter, Dundonald, and Gough: “Never before,” he said, “had I sat in such brave company nor stood so close to a great event.”37 He presented Hamilton with a copy of his recently published novel, Savrola. Miss Pamela Plowden’s brother-in-law, Major Edgar Lafone of the 4th Hussars, had been among the besieged, and she had sent out a box of food for Churchill to give him. Finding Lafone too ill to appreciate the delicacies, Churchill ate them himself.
Lieutenant
Claude Lafone of the 2nd Devonshire Regiment, Major Lafone’s nephew, was also with the relieving force, and on 2 March he wrote to his mother: “Ladysmith at last. Thank goodness! God bless the Queen.... I don’t think the Ladysmith troops can have been more glad to see us than we were to see them, as I think the relief of Ladysmith had begun to be looked on by most of us as rather mythical.”38
Midshipman Wybrow Hallwright thought “the people in Ladysmith looked very ill and feeble, and the smells in the place were frightful, but as far as I could see there was not much damage by shell fire.”39
News of the relief of Ladysmith raced around the world. Durban “went mad,” and in London crowds in the street cheered Buller and White and sang “Soldiers of the Queen.” H. S. Gaskell disembarked at Cape Town with the 10th Imperial Yeomanry on the day the news reached there:
The scene and sounds that followed baffle description. Every steamer in the harbour (and there were hundreds) gave vent to furious blasts on its fog-horn, flags were up every rigging in a trice, and the gunboats lying outside the harbour sent off rockets or let off guns for about twenty minutes; in fact, it all went on for about this time, and the din was something deafening. I bet that the Boer prisoners on board the gunboat, and old Cronje, who had been also brought down with a lot of his staff, felt pretty bad....40
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