Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  De Wet himself led the attack on Roodewal Station (today, Rooiwal) just 2 miles away. This was his main objective, for there the British had piled up immense quantities of stores. Informed that the force guarding these riches was a small one, he took with him only one Krupp gun and 80 burghers. The force at Roodewal Station was indeed weak—a company of the Railway Pioneer Regiment and one weak company of the 4th Derbyshires, altogether about 150 men—but it was not as small as he had expected. His message demanding surrender was returned with a cryptic “We refuse to surrender” scrawled on the back, and the fire of his one Krupp and his Mausers had little effect, for the soldiers had excellent cover along the railway embankment and behind hastily thrown-up barricades of the boxes and bales of the stores.

  Not until he was reinforced by two of Froneman’s guns, ordered up as soon as he heard the firing cease at Rhenoster River, did the British seek terms. They tried to negotiate, offering to surrender if they could retain their personal possessions and the mail bags, but although De Wet willingly agreed to the first, he insisted that the mail bags were his. These terms they were forced to accept.

  Once the prisoners were collected and disarmed, the burghers were caught up in an orgy of looting. The captured stores, valued at £ 100,000 (some said £250,000), included vast quantities of ammunition of all calibres, boxes of boots, bales of blankets and winter clothing (including 12,000 “coats, British warm”), and a treasure trove of other items. “You could have found there practically anything from an anchor to a needle,” said Commandant C. A. van Niekerk. The burghers fell upon the 1,500 mail bags, dumping out the contents, tearing open the packages of food, cigarettes, stockings, and underclothing. Letters and goods were soon scattered everywhere. The contagion spread; two of the prisoners asked if they too could open mail bags, and De Wet told them to go ahead. “It was a very amusing sight to see the soldiers thus robbing their own mail!” said De Wet. “They had such a large choice that they soon became too dainty to consider even a plum pudding worth looking at.”1

  De Wet was anxious to get away before the British could catch up with him, but first he wanted to preserve some of the captured ammunition by hiding it nearby. He had the greatest difficulty getting his men to help:

  I did succeed, however, in dragging a few of the burghers away from the post-bags, but the spirit of loot was upon them, and I was almost powerless. Even when I induced a burgher to work, he was off to the post-bags again the instant my back was turned, and I had to go and hunt him up, or else find some other man to do the work.2

  Some 600 cases were hidden, and with these he had to be content. At sundown he marched his men away. The burghers had so loaded their horses with loot that they had to walk beside them; the prisoners too trudged along with their arms filled with the booty from their own army. When they were clear of the station De Wet sent fifteen men back to set fire to all that was left. The conflagration lit up the sky, exploding shells providing De Wet with “the most beautiful display of fireworks that I have ever seen.”

  De Wet was, quite naturally, pleased with himself. At small cost—he claimed a loss of only one killed and four wounded—he had demolished a bridge and cut the railway in three places (completely rupturing Roberts’s communications with Bloemfontein and all his other bases of supply); he had captured 800 prisoners and destroyed vast quantities of supplies and ammunition. “It was a wonderful day for us,” he said. “A day not easily forgotten.” It was certainly not forgotten by the lucky burghers who had taken part in the affair. Philip Pienaar saw De Wet shortly after: “It was interesting to see his entire band in complete khaki, with only the flapping, loose-hanging felt hats to show their nationality. Wristlets, watches, spy-glasses, chocolate, cigarettes, were now as common as in ordinary times they were rare.”3

  Mail has always been sacred to the British; the deliberate destruction of all those letters and packages seemed, as Conan Doyle said, “unsportsmanlike.” Colonel W. H. Mackinnon of the CIV damned it as “a most uncivilized act.” Prevost Battersby called it “a most stupid and uncivil action.” To Churchill it seemed “a poor and spiteful thing to burn up soldiers’ letters, nor can I see how this can benefit the cause of his campaign,” but later he noted that the destruction of the mail “has caused, and is causing, intense annoyance and distress throughout the army, and perhaps some dissatisfaction at home.”4

  Letters from the looted mail sacks blew about the veld near Roodewal for weeks and, curiosity about other people’s mail being universal, many were read. Unable to resist temptation, the British felt excuses were necessary: Battersby was careful to explain that he “read for information and not from curiosity,” and Conan Doyle quoted from a letter he “could not help observing.” De Wet had no such qualms and read the letters with obvious relish: “I never realized how many love-sick women there were in Britain,” he said.

  H.S. Gaskell arrived with his unit at Roodewal shortly after the raid and described the scene there:

  It was indeed a sorry spectacle.... The station buildings were knocked down in all directions, the line torn up, and the whole veldt for literally acres was strewn ankle deep, with burnt clothing, destroyed ammunition, and parcels that might have been gladdening the hearts of poor Tommy further up the line. About a ton or more lay about the place wasted and destroyed out of pure cussedness by brother Boer.5

  Gaskell and his friends began to poke about: “We didn’t fare so badly. Several men in rummaging about managed to get hold of lumps of tobacco only a little burnt around the edges, and many more got illustrated papers, etc. I secured a Sketch, and a very respectable thick serge jacket, only a little burnt in places....”6

  De Wet later had some interesting reflections on the raid:

  Undoubtedly Lord Roberts would be very angry with me; but I consoled myself with the thought that his anger would soon blow over.... He should have kept his supplies at Kroonstad, or better still, at Bloemfontein, until he had reconstructed all the railway bridges which we had blown up on the line to Pretoria. Lord Roberts had already begun to trust the Free Staters too much; and he had forgotten that ... never for a single moment had we thought of surrendering our country.7

  But perhaps De Wet himself placed too much confidence in his countrymen. Three days after the raid a field cornet and twenty men deserted. One of the prisoners, Captain Wyndham White of the 4th Derbyshires, gave them passes which allowed them to turn in their rifles and return to their farms. De Wet was enraged. It was, he said, “an event which filled me with disgust.”

  Even important officers were on the point of defecting, including De Wet’s own brother, Piet. De Wet opened negotiations with the British, offering to surrender with the Bethlehem commando if he were allowed to return to his farm, an offer that was rejected at this time, for on 15 May Roberts had decreed that while he was quite willing to allow ordinary burghers to lay down their arms and go home, Boer leaders must be made prisoners of war. Buller meanwhile was negotiating with another Boer general, Christiaan Botha, brother of the Transvaal commandant-general, but nothing came of these negotiations either.

  On 8 June Buller advanced and captured Botha’s Pass; three days later he occupied Alleman’s Nek. He was in the rear of the Boer positions at Laing’s Nek, but failed to realise the strategic effect of his victories, to see that his advance made the Boer positions untenable. He thought he would have to attack and made plans to do so, but the Boers, quick to realise their plight, evacuated their positions. Buller, surprised, now marched with ease into the Transvaal.

  Roberts, alarmed about his severed supply line and by the loss of such large quantities of stores and supplies, sent Kitchener, the troubleshooter, south with Smith-Dorrien’s brigade and ten guns to put things in order along the railway and to protect Kroonstad, which Christiaan de Wet now threatened. But De Wet, who had remained west of the railway for several days, doubled back and crossed it near the point where he had mopped up the Derbyshire militia. In the process he attacked a construction train w
hich was trying to repair the damage he had done earlier. Froneman ordered his men to attack a second train brought to a halt by the fighting, but they balked and thus lost a great prize: Kitchener was aboard.

  In addition to sending off troops to protect his exposed railway line, Roberts resorted to schemes which had been used by the Germans in their war with France thirty years earlier: he ordered that farms near any place where the railway was cut or from which attacks were made on British troops were to be burned and the owners taken into custody; hostages were also to be taken and forcibly carried on military trains, a practice which created such an uproar in Britain that it was hastily abandoned.

  The wide-ranging commandos in his rear were disturbing, but Roberts’s primary concern was the concentration of Boers under Botha now entrenched in strong positions on a long range of kopjes about 16 miles east of Pretoria. This force guarded the last remaining stretch of railway left to the Boers: the line that ran east to Middelburg, to Machadodorp —where the Transvaal government was attempting to carry on its business from offices in railway carriages—thence down off the high veld to Komatipoort on the Mozambique border, and on through Portuguese territory to Lourenço Marques on Delagoa Bay. It was the free Boers’ only link to the outside world, the only way by which supplies from abroad could reach them, and the only route by which they could escape.

  On 11 June Roberts marched out of Pretoria with 14,000 men, 70 guns, and some pompoms to engage a force of 6,000 men and 23 guns under Botha and De la Rey. They fought all that day and the next around and near Diamond Hill. By the night of the 12th the two armies appeared to be stalemated. The following day the British again attacked, but over empty ground; the Boers had packed up and stolen away. When the CIV advanced they found only a young boy of thirteen or fourteen, shot through the head but still alive; with him was his father, who had refused to leave his son.

  A GALLANT TROOPER RESCUES A DISMOUNTED COMRADE JUST IN THE

  NICK OF TIME.

  Although Ian Hamilton maintained that the battle of Diamond Hill was “the true turning point of the South African campaign”8 because it proved that, “humanly speaking, Pretoria could not be retaken,”9 not much was accomplished and it was not a ferocious battle. Boer morale was shaky, and the burghers, as always, were careful not to lose too many lives, while Roberts in his orders to subordinate commanders stressed that they were to take no action that would result in heavy losses. In terms of dead and wounded, this cautious two-day battle resulted in only 200 casualties for the British. The Boers said they lost only 4 killed and 20 wounded; whatever their true losses, they were not high. As usual, although driven from the field, they were not defeated.

  It was in this action that the aristocratic and gallant Lord Airlie, commanding the 12th Lancers, was killed just after leading his men in a boot-to-boot charge. The Times History recorded that his last words were an order: “Troops, right about wheel!” Churchill reported the order as “Files about!” but according to Conan Doyle his last words were addressed to a cursing sergeant: “Pray moderate your language.”

  There was other fighting in other places, particularly around Lindley, and on 11 July there were three attacks by De la Rey’s commandos on British forces, all within 35 miles of Pretoria, but the most significant action occurred in the eastern Free State in an area called the Brandwater Basin, a huge horseshoe-shaped arena formed by the Wittebergen and Roodebergen mountain ranges and described by Erskine Childers as “an immense amphitheatre of rich, undulating pasture land, with a white farmhouse here and there, half hidden in the trees. Beyond rose tier upon tier of hills, ending on the sky-line in snow-clad mountain peaks.”10 It was into this beautiful country on the Basutoland border that the bulk of the Free State fighting forces, about 9,000 men, were chivied by relentless columns of British troops under the command of General Archibald Hunter. De Wet was here, and so were President Steyn and his cabinet.

  In the mountains surrounding the Brandwater Basin there are only four passes and a few smaller, difficult means of egress. The Boers had fled into this area as to a safe refuge, for they felt that they could defend the passes and keep the British at bay. Among the more credulous burghers it was believed that they had only to hold out until after the American elections, when they would be relieved by an American army, but many began to have doubts as to whether this sacrifice of their mobility for safety was really wise. Hunter was concentrating his forces around Bethlehem; if he blocked the passes they would be trapped. Steyn called a krygsraad to discuss the situation, and it was decided to break out of the basin and to do it by dividing the army into three parts which would leave separately.

  On 5 July Hunter moved to close the passes. That same evening De Wet, carrying Steyn and his government officials with him, left the basin with 2,600 men, 5 guns, and 400 wagons. This column, 5,000 yards long on the march, passed undetected within a mile of a sleeping British camp and escaped.

  Back in the Brandwater Basin De Wet had left General Paul Roux in charge. He was to have led the bulk of the Free State army out on the following day while the Wittebergen burghers under Marthinus Prinsloo held the passes. No sooner had De Wet left, however, than quarrelling broke out among the leaders. A number of commandants objected to Roux being in command and demanded that an election be held.

  Paul Hendrik Roux, thirty-eight years old and a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, was an educated man who had studied in Europe. Personally brave and a reasonably good general, he is said never to have fired a shot or even to have carried a weapon. Instead of facing down his rebellious officers and ending their bickering, he unwisely consented to the election they were clamouring for, and on 17 July Prinsloo by a bare majority was elected their leader.

  A prosperous farmer in the Winburg district and an elder of the church, Prinsloo had earned his military reputation in the Basuto War of 1866. He had a dignified look and a long white beard, but he was well past his prime as a military leader.

  By 26 July—three weeks after De Wet and Steyn had left—all of the major passes had been taken by the British and there was only one exit left, and that a difficult one. Two British columns were already inside the basin. Still the Free Staters quarrelled. Two commandos had been away when the voting took place, and as they had favoured Roux they demanded that a new election be held.

  Many of the burghers, convinced that it was useless to hold out any longer, were ready to surrender; many were just as ready to fight on. There were disputes about this while the wrangling over a choice of commander continued. This preoccupation with their internal problems in the face of the peril before them seems almost unbelievable. They even asked the British to give them a four- to six-day armistice, a holiday from fighting so that they could quarrel in peace, candidly admitting that they wanted to consult with Steyn and De Wet to resolve who should be in command and whether or not they should surrender.

  The request for an armistice was, not surprisingly, refused, but still the burghers argued. Wild rumours swept through the laagers, and even wilder schemes were proposed. There was no one capable of giving central direction, and neither Prinsloo nor Roux did anything constructive. An air of defeat hung over most of the laagers. Panic seized some. The British were all around them and they were trapped. Some still hoped for deliverance, a miracle. All lamented their fate. Brave men shed tears of rage.

  Prinsloo, under the pressure of the arguments of demoralised commandants, at last concluded that he had no choice but to surrender, and he set about seeing what terms he could get. As a further indication of the fatuity into which the Boer leaders had tumbled, they chose as their emissary to the British a man they had recently tried and condemned as a traitor. Frans Vilonel, the ex-commandant whom De Wet had reduced to the ranks for failing to obey his orders, had defected to the British and then had been caught in the act of trying to induce others to do the same. Instead of being shot, as he would have been later in the war, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment at hard labour; how
ever, as there was no prison, he was simply carried about from laager to laager. This was the man selected to represent the Free Staters in their negotiations with the British.

  Roberts, kept informed of developments by telegraph, dictated the terms of surrender: rifles, guns, horses, wagons, oxen, and mules were to be given up; the burghers could keep other personal possessions, but all were to be made prisoners of war.

  On the evening of 29 July Roux informed Prinsloo that a new election had been held and that he, Roux, had been elected. It was too late. The deed had been done. Prinsloo simply handed him Hunter’s acceptance of their surrender. Now came the final act in this extraordinary drama. Roux impulsively jumped on his horse and galloped off to the British lines to argue with General Hunter. Prinsloo was not really in command, he contended, and the surrender was unauthorized and illegal. Prinsloo had no right, no authority. It was all a mistake. As De Wet wrote later, “He acted like a child.”

  Word of the surrender spread among the scattered laagers. Most wearily resigned themselves to their fate, but several commandants, including such stalwarts as Olivier and Froneman, refused to accept defeat. Late that night they led their commandos out of the Brandwater Basin, taking them over seemingly impossible paths. They even carried out a pompom, two Maxims, and eight guns. When the paths became too narrow for the gun carriages, they jettisoned them, lashed the guns to logs, muscled them labouriously up slopes, and slid them down. About 1,500 burghers escaped.