Up they jumped, more or less cheerfully, and followed their General.15
A little earlier, Hart had observed, to his great annoyance, the behaviour of the COs of the two battalions on the left of his line. Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Thackeray, the CO of the Inniskillings, had led the men to form a single rank parallel to the river, instead of remaining, as Hart intended, in two ranks. They had also worked their way to the left of the loop. In fact, they were now close to the Bridle Drift, and it is possible that, even now, they might have found that way across the river. Although Botha’s men had apparently dug away part of the Bridle Drift, it was still probably fordable there; and the high banks of the river would have given some cover to the Inniskillings, who outnumbered the defenders and could themselves have been swiftly reinforced. Hart ordered back the Inniskillings into the loop.16 It was his final error, and now the repulse of the brigade was becoming a defeat and the defeat a disaster.
In his official orders, Buller had announced that he would be found during the battle on Naval Gun Hill, and there he had stood, as the sun rose, impassively watching the effects of the great bombardment through his telescope. The mushrooms of shrapnel and the spouts of red earth straddled the kopjes where Buller – with reason – had assumed the Boers would put their field-guns and many of their burghers. In both respects, however, the bombardment had proved ineffective, as Buller realized.17 When the Krupp howitzer had at last replied to the British gunfire, followed by a number of Creusot field-guns, it was the job of the much more numerous British artillery to seek out and destroy these adversaries. This was the first basic tactical principle of late nineteenth-century warfare – British, French or German. It was assumed that the field-guns would fight it out in the open. But Botha’s field-guns were not only concealed behind emplacements like regular siege-guns; they fired the new smokeless powder, only invented in the late eighties. Buller’s naval guns were quite unable to locate and hence silence them. By the same token, that storm of Mauser fire came from riflemen firing smokeless cartridges from invisible trenches. Buller believed they must have suffered heavily from the bombardment with the new lyddite high explosive; yet there was no sign of the Mausers being silenced by the heavy guns. (In fact lyddite shells proved almost useless against dispersed troops, even when accurate, as the blast was too concentrated.)18
Now invisibility, of course, was the characteristic of the new smokeless war, as Methuen and White had discovered to their cost, though it was the first time that Buller had had a personal taste of this. The failure of the lyddite-firing long-range naval guns threw a larger burden on the shrapnel-firing medium-range field artillery. With this, Buller realized at the very beginning of the battle, things were going seriously wrong.
Through his telescope, he had seen Hart’s column march off towards the Bridle Drift, and then suddenly blunder off to the right. The advance was premature, as there had been no preparation from the field-guns. It was also in the wrong direction. Buller sent a galloper to warn Hart to keep out of the loop.19 Meanwhile, the storm of rifle fire, sounding from Buller’s position like a distant drumming noise, greeted Hart’s impetuous advance. Buller had told Colonel Parsons, in command of the twelve guns on the left – six 15-pounders in either battery – to prepare the ground for the passage of the Bridle Drift a mile to the left of the loop. Parsons now did his best to help Hart in his new position, but there were no proper targets to aim at beyond the loop, any more for the guns than for the infantry; and some of his shells fell among Hart’s leading troops. Buller watched the confusion from Naval Gun Hill with increasing disquiet. He sent off a second galloper, his ADC, Captain Algy Trotter.20
Meanwhile, still more ominous things were happening three miles away at the centre of the plain, close to the village of Colenso. From Naval Gun Hill, Buller had watched Colonel Long ride off across the veld at the head of his impressive procession of field-guns: twelve 15-pounders and six naval 12-pounders. His instructions to Long the night before were, as we have seen, to come into action well out of rifle range from the Colenso kopjes – that is, at least two and a half miles back from the quarter-circle that the Tugela transcribes around Colenso. Buller remembered his actual words to Long, as he put his finger on the FID blueprint map to show him the position he had chosen. ‘It looks … too far for the 15-pounders, but I shall be quite satisfied if the naval 12-pounders [the greater length of whose barrels gave them greater range] only come into action.’ These were Long’s orders. Imagine, then, Buller’s astonishment about 7.00 a.m. when he heard Long’s batteries suddenly burst into life, apparently close to the river.21
‘See what those guns are doing,’ he shouted to a staff officer. ‘They seem to me to be much too close. If they are under any fire causing severe loss, tell them to withdraw at once. There is not the least reason yet for their being in action.’ The staff officer returned soon afterwards.
‘They’re all right.’
‘Surely they must be under rifle fire.’
‘They are a little, but they seem quite comfortable.’22
Soon afterwards Buller’s Military Secretary, Colonel Stopford, the only experienced staff officer he had with him, rode up and told Buller that Long’s guns were badly out of position. Buller said he knew that already. As soon as Trotter returned with the news that Hart’s brigade had been extricated from the loop, Buller intended to go and look at Long’s position for himself. Just then there was an ominous silence. Long’s batteries had ceased fire. Buller, more certain than ever that disaster had overtaken them, mounted his bay horse, Biffin. He sent a third emissary – Stopford – to order Hart to withdraw to safety. He himself rode off to see what he could do to rescue Long from his folly.23
The advance of Long’s twelve field-guns and six naval guns, which had so astounded Louis Botha half an hour earlier that morning, seen from the other side of the Tugela, indeed followed one of the great traditions of the British army: courage matched only by stupidity.24 To see those eighteen gun teams, riding out far ahead of the infantry battalions supposed to screen them, was to return to some scene from Balaclava; Long, like Hart, believed in the old virtues of close order and ‘keeping the men in hand’. Despite the protests of Lieutenant Ogilvy, the CO of the 12-pounder naval guns, Long, as we have seen, had brought the 15-pounders to within a thousand yards of the river bank before he allowed a halt. Fortunately for Ogilvy and his men, they had lagged nearly six hundred yards behind the 15-pounders, and when Botha had given the signal for that fusillade of shrapnel and Mauser fire, the naval guns were still comparatively safe. True, the African drivers, who drove the improvised naval gun teams, immediately bolted, like Hart’s African guide over in the loop. But it was possible to cut the oxen free from the naval guns, and bring all six guns into action against the kopjes a mile away across the river, from which most of the rifle fire appeared to be coming.25
A mile was extreme range for effective rifle fire. Botha’s single pom-pom and the field-gun and howitzer hidden farther back on the ridge were noisy enough, but too few and too dispersed to be dangerous. The naval gun detachment suffered next to no casualties. By contrast, the two 15-pounder batteries found themselves in the centre of something to which military textbooks had yet to give a name: in this zone of fire, the air crackled like fat in a frying-pan. There was no question of the Boers being brilliant marksmen. Indeed, one of the things that struck some survivors most forcibly was how poor was Boer marksmanship, supposed to be one of their great points of superiority to the British. It was the sheer volume of rifle fire – the emptying of a thousand Mauser magazines – that had the force of machine-guns and gave the British the impression that they were facing twenty thousand Boers.26
One of the first to be knocked down was Long himself, critically wounded in the liver; Lieutenant-Colonel Hunt, the second-in-command, was also wounded, as were officers from both batteries, including Captain Elton, who had helped make the gunners’ sketch-map. The 15-pounders continued firing – slowly and methodic
ally, the gunners counting out the intervals between shots, as they had been taught. The second line of ammunition wagons was brought up, and the first line of empty wagons calmly removed.27 The story was to be told of how the gunners now fought on till the last round of ammunition. In fact, the gunners were brave, but human. When a third of their number had been killed or wounded, flesh and blood could stand no more. The acting commander ordered the men to take shelter in a small donga – a stony hollow nearby. The second-line ammunition wagons, nearly full, were left with the twelve guns, abandoned in the open plain. Two of the officers then rode back out of the drumming Mauser fire to try to get help.28
It was these two officers, Captains Fitzgerald and Herbert, who met Buller as he rode down towards the firing-line. One pictures the meeting: Buller, foursquare on his bay charger; the two gunners, dazed and almost incoherent. They blurt out the news: their own guns out of action; need for the reserve ammunition column. They add (what was, in fact, quite untrue) that the gunners have fought almost to the last round, and are all killed and wounded; also that all six naval guns, as well as the twelve field-guns, are out of action.
Buller rode on to meet Hildyard, who was still waiting for the moment to deliver the main attack: the attack on the wagon bridge and the two fords either side of the bridge at Colenso. ‘I’m afraid Long’s guns have got into a terrible mess. I doubt whether we shall be able to attack Colenso today.’ This was the gist of what Buller told Hildyard. It was eight o’clock, and only one of the four infantry brigades had come into action. Buller had decided to call off the whole operation.29
Was Buller right to do so? Or had his nerve failed, as some of his critics later suggested – those who did not, like Leo Amery, pillory the whole plan of attack itself? Had the disaster to Long’s guns shaken Buller’s volatile morale?30 Now Buller was certainly an emotional man, but the emotion evoked by the news of Long’s guns, and of Hart’s fiasco on the left, was suppressed rage, not despair.31 And Buller now calculated the risks coolly enough. He decided he must call off the main attack – postpone it, at any rate, until he had pulled Long’s chestnuts out of the firing-line.
He had a number of reasons. The plan for the main attack on Colenso depended on Hildyard being supported from one or more sides: on the left, by Hart forcing his way across the Bridle Drift and moving his brigade down the left bank of the river; on the right, by Dundonald seizing enough of Hlangwane to install there a battery of field-guns which could enfilade the Colenso kopjes; overhead, by the eighteen guns commanded by Long and supposed to soften up the ground beyond the bridge; from behind, by the two reserve brigades, Lyttelton’s and Barton’s. As far as Buller knew, Hildyard’s attack, if it proceeded as planned, would have support from not one of these four sources. Dundonald had made no progress. Indeed, he, too, seemed to be in trouble. Far from supporting Hildyard’s attack, Hart, Long and Dundonald all required help themselves, which meant drawing on both the reserve brigades. So Buller decided that to attack Colenso now would be utter recklessness. Even if, at the cost of most of his brigade, Hildyard established a bridgehead across the river, the victory might prove Pyrrhic. For the worst fighting would be ahead: in those ten miles of hill country across the river. On the other hand, the price of failure was out of all proportion to the value of success. If Buller broke the weapons in his hand, smashed and demoralized his own army, he could lose not only Ladysmith, but, what would be still worse, the whole of south Natal.
These were the reasons that made Buller decide to call off Hildyard’s attack on Colenso before Hildyard had fired a shot. They do not seem, in the light of events, unduly alarmist. As it was, Buller had his work cut out in the attempt to rescue Hart and Long. With his personal doctor at his side, Buller rode on towards the small donga where Long’s men were sheltering.32
‘Hart has got into a devil of a mess down there. Get him out of it as best you can.’ Buller used almost the same language to Lyttelton about Hart as he had used to Hildyard about Long. Lyttelton pushed forward four companies of the Rifle Brigade and prepared to give supporting fire. At first, it appeared that the loop had swallowed up Hart’s brigade. Then hundreds of stragglers and wounded came stumbling back out of the loop, followed by Hart himself and many of his men, falling back in confusion. ‘The men have all fallen back. We’ll form up in the rear,’ Hart told Lyttelton. Hart was wrong. Lyttelton could see the plain ahead dotted with figures. Some were wounded; others, it turned out, had simply collapsed from the heat or were lying flat to avoid the enemy’s fire. After Hart had gone, Lyttelton saw seventy of the brigade rise up suddenly out of the long grass. They were as suddenly shot down. Lyttelton doubted if twenty got safely back. Lyttelton’s men could not themselves fire a shot to help them, as the stragglers blocked their field of fire. At the same time, Parsons’s two batteries, which had found it impossible to give proper support to Hart, now opened up inadvertently on Lyttelton. Lyttelton was sheltering from the Mauser fire at the time, behind the wall of a sheep fold, when he was perplexed to find the wall was under fire from both directions. Fortunately, the British gunners’ fire was, as usual, ineffective.33
The predicament of the men of the brigade at the end of the loop was now serious, marooned in the open within a few hundred yards of the enemy’s trenches, which enfiladed them on three sides, and within easy range of two Creusot 75-mm field-guns concealed on the kopjes below Grobelaar’s Kloof. Their ordeal was not unlike that of the Highland Brigade at Magersfontein, with the extra spice of Botha’s field-guns. ‘We caught pepper,’ was how Lyttelton described the fusillade he witnessed from the Rifle Brigade’s firing-line, a full mile in the rear. The air was a good deal spicier where Colonel Thackeray lay beside the African kraal near the end of the loop. It was here, apparently, that Hart’s African guide lived, and to the ford here that he had been conducting the brigade with such disastrous results. To cross the muddy, swirling water, at least breast-high, under such rifle fire, was out of the question. Thackeray’s men took cover behind the stone walls of the huts. Others used the twenty-foot-deep banks of the river as shelter, and engaged in a furious duel across the water with the still invisible Boers. Behind them, the rest of their own brigade was equally invisible, owing to a rise in the ground.34
Meanwhile, Buller’s orders to evacuate the loop, relayed by Hart, and by a brave young lieutenant of the Connaughts who volunteered to go forwards, had at length reached the rest of the brigade. Slowly the firing diminished. Most of the Border Regiment and the Connaughts marched back to their camp in tolerable order, though the Connaughts continued to suffer casualties from shell fire while holding the line of the Doornkop Spruit in the rear of the loop. At the camp, the men pitched tents again – everything had been packed up ready to take across the river – and drank gallons of water. Then they flung themselves down, dead beat after the ten-hour ordeal. They had suffered as much from old ‘McCormick’ (Tommies’ slang for the sun) as from old Kroojer. It was all over at last.35
Thackeray’s ordeal continued. About three o’clock a party of Boers splashed across the river and sealed off the loop. This was not, in fact, the great counterattack, by way of Robinson’s Drift, that Botha had proposed for Fourie and the fifteen hundred men on Botha’s west flank. Those men had failed to seize their opportunity, and perhaps it was as well for them; Lyttelton had two battalions eager to parry this thrust. The Boers who cut off Thackeray’s retreat were merely a small party, who had crossed when they saw the British ambulance men go forward into the loop under shelter of the Red Cross flag. In the confusion, Thackeray saved himself with a flash of Irish wit. Called upon to surrender, he accused the Boers of sneaking up behind the Red Cross flag. It would be unsporting of the Boers to capture him. ‘If you don’t like it,’ he added, ‘go back to where you’ came from and we’ll begin the battle over again.’ The victors saw the comic side of this suggestion. ‘Well, I won’t look at you while you take your men away,’ came the Boers’ reply.
So the story was told,
at any rate, in the regimental mess that night, after Thackeray and some of his men staggered back to camp. When the roll-call was taken that night it was found that the Irish Brigade had lost heavily enough.36”
In the meantime, Buller had ridden down to the firing-line and started his attempts to rescue Long and his twelve guns. About half a mile to the west of the guns was Colenso station and the railway line, running north and south. Beyond these were about a dozen brick-and-tin houses of Colenso village and the road leading down to the wagon bridge. This was the only available cover from Botha’s trenches to the north, apart from the two shallow dongas Long’s men had taken refuge in: the front donga about a thousand yards from the river; the rear donga roughly a mile away. The trouble was that the smaller loop of the Tugela enclosed Colenso village on two sides. So both the village and the stranded guns were enfiladed from the Boer rifle pits on the river bank to the west. Buller gave part of Hildyard’s brigade the job of neutralizing these latter positions. His orders were on ‘no account to commit his men to an engagement’ – to extricate the guns with the least casualties to his own brigade. Hildyard had trained his brigade at Aldershot that summer under Buller’s eye, and there was mutual confidence between the two men.
Hildyard now lined out his men in half-companies, with six to eight yards between each man, and fifty to eighty yards between each half-company. In this exceptionally open order, the Queen’s Regiment and the Devons successfully weathered the storm of rifle fire. By nine o’clock the forward companies had reached Colenso village. Intelligently handled, by contrast to the Irish Brigade, Hildyard’s men had suffered few casualties. Now the Queen’s cheerfully dug themselves in behind the stone walls and gardens of Colenso. On their right were some of the Devons, led by Lieutenant-Colonel G. M. Bullock. All these men were under cover – sheltered in the eye of the hurricane.37
The Boer War Page 37