Crossing the Buffalo

by Adrian Greaves

  At first sight a soldier’s pay appeared to be reasonable but, from the daily shilling, official deductions ensured his continued poverty. A married soldier could have maintenance deducted from his wages and paid to his wife or family though no official help, other than charity, was available to the widow of a soldier killed in action or who died of disease on campaign. It was not until after 1881 that any form of widow’s benefit became payable.

  The British Army of the 1870s was still absorbing the reforms implemented by Gladstone’s Secretary for War, Edward Cardwell, a solicitor with no military experience. Besides such humanitarian acts as abolishing flogging during peacetime, the main reforming object was to save money. The Army Enlistment Act of 1870 shortened a soldier’s active service from twelve to six years with the following six on the Reserve. For the first time in its history this gave the British Army a large, well-trained reserve and, with the short service, had the potential of attracting a better calibre of recruit. Although the number of recruits increased during the 1870s, the army’s strength by 1879 was only 186,000 compared with the Prussian Army of 2.2 million.

  For the British Army’s privileged upper-class officer corps, Cardwell’s abolition of the purchase system appeared to open the door to an unwelcome influx of non-élite officers from a more modest background. In fact the social composition of the officer class hardly altered even following the Cardwell reforms. Low pay, coupled with the disproportionately high cost of being an officer, meant those without private means could not afford to become officers – indeed, senior officers effectively subsidized the army. Also, with the establishment of the Staff College, the quality of officers from the wealthy class improved although it was not until the Great War and the decimation of the old officer class that a commission was open to all those to whom it was previously denied.

  By the outbreak of the Zulu War the majority of British officers in South Africa were from the same social and educational background and had purchased their commissions prior to the Cardwell reforms. They enjoyed sports, particularly hunting, and many relished the prospect of going to Africa with the chance to hunt game and the native foe; once in South Africa emphasis was placed on fitness, loyalty, team spirit and physical bravery. On campaign there was also the opportunity to do something that would favourably catch the eye of the High Command and enhance promotion prospects. These motives prompted many officers from regiments not involved in the conflict to volunteer for any of the staff appointments available, ranging from transport and supply posts to serving with locally raised units. Officers from line regiments were generally taller and fitter than their men; they enjoyed the benefits of family wealth but, on campaign, officers were expected to display a high level of ability, loyalty and physical bravery.

  The average soldier, on the other hand, had no such motivation. Initiative was not expected or encouraged by the army; just blind obedience. Those who served in the Zulu War had little or no idea of any overall plan or why they were fighting. Rumour and hearsay were rife and little or no attempt was made to keep the men accurately informed. Their needs and ambitions were more basic: keeping as dry and comfortable as conditions would allow, finding a supply of liquor, playing cat and mouse with the NCOs and generally trying to keep a low profile was a behaviour pattern familiar to British soldiers throughout history.

  At the time of the Zulu War, soldiers who could write were often prolific letter-writers. An examination of their letters shows that they tended to concentrate on worrying about their families and friends at home rather than the conditions they were experiencing in Africa. Once the invasion of Zululand had begun, their life centred on staying dry and comfortable, an extremely difficult task during the heavy thunderstorms of the four-month rainy season. The older and more experienced soldiers knew how to look after themselves and their equipment; they knew to sleep among rocks rather than on damp ground to stay clean and dry, to dry out their wet kit when the sun shone and to swill out their boots daily with their own urine to fight athlete’s foot. Preventative medicine as such was not knowingly practised and so dysentery, enteric fever and tuberculosis all took their relentless toll, especially when the soldiers were coughing and spitting in squalid and overcrowded conditions. The inevitable close contact with infected animals and drinking contaminated milk resulted in tuberculosis spreading rapidly among the soldiers. Enteric fever also raged, and would continue so long as the common practice continued of drawing drinking water from the same source as that frequented by local people and their animals. Sick oxen and dying Zulus tended to make for these water sources, polluting them with decomposing carcasses, but water-collecting parties ignored this fact.

  Observing strict discipline and staying out of trouble were probably more important to the redcoats than the probability of disease; British soldiers quickly learned to obey every order instantly as flogging was still regularly practised. Of the 20,000 soldiers who took part in the two invasions of Zululand, 545 were flogged between 11 January and 4 July 1879; the standard punishment for insubordination or similar minor offences was twenty-five lashes; sleeping on duty or theft merited fifty lashes. It appears from their letters that soldiers mostly accepted corporal punishment, though a number described it as a sorry sight while the senior officers tended to view flogging as a necessity to maintain discipline. Following furious protests in the British press, flogging was eventually banned at the end of 1879, even for active service offences. Colonel Bray wrote:

  The discipline of the army suffered much from the difficulty of preventing the men from buying spirits. Flogging can never be done away with in wartime in the English army unless some equally efficient punishment can be discovered.2

  Prior to the Zulu War, communications and trade throughout Natal were so severely hampered by impassable roads, a complete lack of navigable rivers and the absence of a transport system that a government enquiry had taken place to examine the feasibility of creating a unified infrastructure. The enquiry considered developing an integrated rail and road network but due to lack of finance, the recommendations of the enquiry were never implemented. The commerce of Natal continued to depend on a network of dirt roads and inaccurate maps; and with regard to neighbouring Zululand, no reliable maps existed as much of the country remained unexplored.

  One of the main reasons for failure during the earlier Crimean War was the inability of the British to supply their front-line troops. Even as late as 1878 the army still lacked an established method of supplying or transporting supplies; supplying the troops was considered by many senior officers as incidental to the overall plan. Chelmsford was more realistic and, of necessity, he devised his own unofficial procedure. Even so, it was not until the middle of 1878 that plans were well advanced for the invasion of Zululand. The invasion force would amount to an estimated total of 12,500 fighting men who would need many hundreds of wagons with thousands of oxen, mule carts, mules and horses. Chelmsford requested the imposition of martial law so that his army could commandeer all the wagons, oxen and horses needed for the invasion but the civilian Governor of Natal, Sir Henry Bulwer, refused the request.

  Commissary General Strickland was duly appointed as the officer in charge of supplies. He originally had a peacetime establishment of twenty junior officers and thirty men under his command, a woefully inadequate staff for such an enormous undertaking. Chelmsford quickly realized his invasion could not take place without sufficient transport and appointed a Board, under Colonel Sir Evelyn Wood VC, to advise him. He also telegraphed the War Office for an urgent draft of experienced captains to be sent to Natal to supplement the commissariat. Then he ordered the unopened railway line that was still under construction from Durban to Pietermaritzburg, or ‘Sleepy Hollow’ as it was affectionately known by the British, to be made available.

  While the commissariat pondered the merit of purchase as an alternative to the hire of transport, Chelmsford threw caution to the wind and ordered the purchase of 200 wagons on the open market. This sudden decisio
n caused a dramatic increase in prices across the country and the army was soon at the mercy of speculative contractors. Chelmsford had even less luck with oxen and horses as Natal had only recently come through a two-year drought and healthy animals were already being traded at a premium. Horses in poor condition that would previously have sold for as little as £2 each were being traded for £40. Oxen could not be purchased at all but only hired at exorbitant rates as the owners realized they could levy monthly hire charges that were in excess of the animals’ actual value.3 The oxen suffered cruelly from the conditions under which they were worked, though they extracted a pyrrhic revenge when they were cooked for the troops, the beef being noted for its toughness. The cost of mounting the invasion soared by the day until an exasperated and frustrated Chelmsford took control of the commissariat and immersed himself in the task of resolving the situation. It was to his credit that, within weeks, he reversed the lack of progress and brought the profiteering back under control. Strickland’s commissariat team, shortly to be reinforced by the specially drafted officers now en route from England, took over.

  The Commissariat and Transport Department was still a young branch of the army, having only come into existence by royal warrant on 9 December 1875. Its officers held commissions identical to those of other army officers although their rank structure set them apart. On operations the senior officer was the commissary general; his deputy held the equivalent rank to a lieutenant colonel, a commissary to a major, a deputy commissary to a captain and an assistant commissary to a lieutenant. Sadly, other officers in the British Army looked down on their commissary brothers. Even Wolseley wrote that ‘to rely upon a Commissariat officer is to be destroyed, and so it must always be until the Commissariat men are gentlemen, or at least as much gentlemen as the average British Officer’. At Rorke’s Drift, Commissary officers were shortly to prove they were more than an equal match for their brother officers.

  Chelmsford ordered each unit to appoint its own officers of transport. These appointments were made from within the regiments and units preparing for the invasion and their role was to co-ordinate and take responsibility for their unit’s transport requirements, assisted by a subconductor for every ten wagons. It was an onerous task: each infantry battalion was allocated seventeen wagons, including one HQ wagon, while a battery of artillery had ten wagons and a squadron of mounted infantry had four. There was only one transport officer per invading column and he was responsible for keeping the whole column mobile.

  By September Chelmsford had created an effective and efficient supply system and advanced planning for the invasion was finalized. Fate then intervened: the two-year drought suddenly came to an end with incessant torrential rain and, within a matter of days, the dusty rutted tracks of Natal had become impassable quagmires.

  It soon became obvious to Chelmsford that there were simply not enough wagons available to carry the necessary stores, certainly not for five invasion columns. The list of stores was enormous and wide-ranging; it included tents, ammunition, cooking equipment, mobile hospitals and medicines, tools, spare boots and uniforms and food for the whole campaign. The regulatory ration allowance gives an indication of the logistical planning necessary just to feed the 12,500-strong invasion force. Each soldier’s entitlement was a minimum of 1 pound of fresh meat, 1.5 pounds of fresh bread or its equivalent in biscuits, plus fresh vegetables and fruit or lime juice and sugar in lieu. Chelmsford instructed that a series of supply depots were to be established at intervals along each column’s line of march; the column could then be ‘drip-fed’ on a daily basis from the nearest depot. For the Centre Column, which Chelmsford would accompany, depots were prepared and stocked with one month’s supplies at Helpmekaar and Rorke’s Drift. The Coastal Column’s supplies were all positioned at Fort Pearson on the Natal bank of the Tugela river; thereafter they were moved across the river to Fort Tenedos. The Northern Column originally used an existing Boer laager at Utrecht as their stores depot. Later they established a forward depot at Conference Hill. By 11 January when the invasion began, Chelmsford was satisfied that he had enough stores in place to sustain his columns. Each could theoretically store fifteen days’ supplies, enabling the columns to move at 10 miles per day. Chelmsford had achieved an impossible task.

  The timing of Chelmsford’s invasion was as unfortunate as it was deliberate. He was correctly informed that invading in early January would interfere with the Zulu harvest and demoralize the Zulu population. The recent rains would also provide natural grazing for the invasion force’s numerous oxen and horses, the absence of which precluded invading during the later dry season. However, what Chelmsford did not consider relevant was intelligence that the whole of the Zulu army would be assembling before King Cetshwayo at this time; the significance of the fact that the annual ‘First Fruits’ ceremony at Ulundi was imminent had escaped the notice of Chelmsford’s intelligence officers.

  Furthermore, the rivers forming the Natal boundary with Zululand would be in full flood from heavy rain and create a natural defence for Natal against Zulu attacks and it is curious that a military commander with Chelmsford’s experience would elect to invade at a time when the tracks and plains into Zululand were likely to be virtually impassable. Chelmsford soon appreciated the problem. As he wrote on 12 January, ‘The country is in a terrible state from the rain, and I do not know how we shall manage to get our waggons across the valley near Sirayo’s [Sihayo’s] kraals.’

  Unlike the Zulus, the majority of the British and Colonial officers and their troops were experienced in African warfare and it was perfectly understandable that Chelmsford anticipated a rapid defeat of the Zulu army; indeed, everyone’s main fear was that the Zulus would not fight. Boer leaders, remembering their own defeats at the hands of the Zulus, had met with Chelmsford to warn that he faced a skilled and powerful adversary. Chelmsford knew that his columns would be vulnerable to sudden attacks and he accordingly ordered a high state of readiness to be observed during the advance; he even issued a memorandum to senior officers of likely Zulu ploys to ambush the unwary.4 Following each day’s march, every camp had to be laagered and alert to the possibility of a sudden attack. In planning his strategy, Chelmsford had decided to leave the reserve column, under the command of Colonel Durnford RE, at the Middle Drift. Apart from this relatively small force, the border of Natal would be virtually unprotected while the columns advanced into Zululand. He believed that by advancing on Ulundi in a three-pronged attack, they would force the Zulus to attack one or all invading columns rather than Natal; Chelmsford also reasoned that the simultaneous advance would force King Cetshwayo to commit all his amabutho and leave himself without reserves.

  Although orders were issued by Chelmsford that no non-combatant Zulu, woman or child should be harmed, orders were nevertheless given by local commanders for every Zulu homestead and food-store in the path of the invasion force to be destroyed. This laying waste of Zulu homes and stores was intended systematically to remove supplies from any approaching Zulu force, to break the will of the Zulu people and thus provoke their army into attacking the invading column.5 And when they attacked, they would be no match for Chelmsford’s calm and experienced troops with their sophisticated firepower: well-aimed rifle volley fire supported by rockets, artillery and Gatling guns, which would, in Chelmsford’s opinion, ensure the swift defeat of such an unsophisticated adversary. He accordingly gave priority to the implementation of regulations relating to the availability of ammunition. Each artillery battery of two guns carried 68 rounds together with 12 rockets with additional reserves readily available in accompanying carts and wagons. Rifle ammunition was calculated at 270 rounds per soldier, 70 in the possession of each man and 200 rounds in easily recognized colour-coded ammunition wagons. All column commanders had received written instructions that ‘a commanding officer would incur a heavy responsibility should required supplies fail to arrive in time, through any want of foresight and arrangement on his part’ – words that would soon hau
nt Chelmsford.6

  The proposed route to be taken by the Centre Column, from Greytown to Helpmekaar and then on to the Zulu border, had already been inspected by Chelmsford during October. He noted that there were two routes from Helpmekaar, a ‘good one which makes a wide detour and may be considered as two days’ march distant’ – this is the modern road now used by local people and battlefield visitors – ‘and a bad one which takes a direct line, and could easily be accomplished in one day’. Chelmsford gave orders for the ‘bad road’ to be improved ‘as its importance for both offence and defence, would be very great’. From his meeting with Natal blacks along the route, he became so convinced that the Zulus would shrink from his force that he also considered the establishment of camps to deal with Zulu refugees.7

  By November the store depots along the border were stocked to the extent that supplies for the front line could begin to be forwarded to the advance supply depot once the invasion began. All ranks settled down to await the expiry of the ultimatum and, in order to retain harmony within the growing camp, commanding officers decreed that while sports should be encouraged, all games involving physical contact would temporarily be banned from Christmas Day onwards. In reporting the ban, the Natal Witness reporter wrote from Helpmekaar:

  At sports, as is not unusual, disputes arise, and partisanship will be demonstrative; the consequences might be a quarrel, which under the present circumstances for which the forces are collected, would prove a most unhappy and untoward event. If the prohibition of sport is attributed, therefore, to severe military discipline, there is a very good reason and excuse for it.8