It is to be sincerely hoped that Mr Churchill will not be shot. At the same time the Boer General cannot be blamed should he order his execution. A non-combatant has no right to carry arms. In the Franco-Prussian War all non-combatants who carried arms were promptly executed, when they were caught; and we can hardly expect the Boers to be more humane than were the highly civilized French and Germans.
The Daily Nation (also extinct) of December 16:
Mr Churchill’s escape is not regarded in military circles as either a brilliant or honourable exploit. He was captured as a combatant, and of course placed under the same parole as the officers taken prisoners. He has, however, chosen to disregard an honourable undertaking, and it would not be surprising if the Pretoria authorities adopted more strenuous measures to prevent such conduct.
Finally the Westminster Gazette of December 26:
Mr Winston Churchill is once more free. With his accustomed ingenuity he has managed to escape from Pretoria; and the Government there is busy trying to find out how the escape was managed. So far, so good. But whilst it was perfectly within the rules of the game to get free, we confess that we hardly understand the application which Mr Churchill is reported to have made to General Joubert asking to be released on the ground that he was a newspaper correspondent and had taken ‘no part in the fighting’. We rubbed our eyes when we read this – have we not read glowing (and apparently authentic) accounts of Mr Churchill’s heroic exploits in the armoured train affair? General Joubert, apparently, rubbed his eyes too. He replied that Mr Churchill – unknown to him personally – was detained because all the Natal papers attributed the escape of the armoured train to his bravery and exertion. But since this seemed to be a mistake, the General would take the correspondent’s word that he was a non-combatant, and sent an order for his release – which arrived half a day after Mr Churchill had escaped. Mr Churchill’s non-combatancy is indeed a mystery, but one thing is clear – that he cannot have the best of both worlds. His letter to General Joubert absolutely disposes of that probable VC with which numerous correspondents have decorated him.
When these comments were sent me I could not but think them ungenerous. I had been in no way responsible for the tales which the railway men and the wounded from the armoured train had told, nor for the form in which these statements had been transmitted to England; and still less for the wide publicity accorded to them there. I was a prisoner and perforce silent. The reader of these pages will understand why I accompanied Captain Haldane on his ill-starred reconnaissance, and exactly the part I had taken in the fight, and can therefore judge for himself how far my claim to be a non-combatant was valid. Whether General Joubert had actually reversed his previous decision to hold me as a prisoner of war or not, I do not know, but it is certainly an odd coincidence that this order should only have been given publicity after I had escaped from the State Model Schools. The statement that I had broken my parole or any honourable understanding in escaping was of course untrue. No parole was extended to any of the prisoners of war, and we were all kept as I have described in strict confinement under armed guard. The lie once started, however, persisted in the alleys of political controversy, and I have been forced to extort damages and public apologies by prosecutions for libel on at least four separate occasions. At the time I thought the Pro-Boers were a spiteful lot.
Criticism was also excited in military and society circles by a telegram which I sent to the Morning Post from Durban. I wrote:
Reviewing the whole situation, it is foolish not to recognise that we are fighting a formidable and terrible adversary. The high qualities of the burghers increase their efficiency. The Government, though vilely corrupt, devote their whole energies to military operations.
We must face the facts. The individual Boer, mounted in suitable country, is worth from three to five regular soldiers. The power of modern rifles is so tremendous that frontal attacks must often be repulsed. The extraordinary mobility of the enemy protects his flanks. The only way of treating the problem is either to get men equal in character and intelligence as riflemen, or, failing the individual, huge masses of troops. The advance of an army of 80,000 men in force, covered by 150 guns in line, would be an operation beyond the Boers’ capacity to grapple with, but columns of 15,000 are only strong enough to suffer loss. It is a perilous policy to dribble out reinforcements and to fritter away armies.
The Republics must weaken, like the Confederate States, through attrition. We should show no hurry, but we should collect overwhelming masses of troops. It would be much cheaper in the end to send more than necessary. There is plenty of work here for a quarter of a million men, and South Africa is well worth the cost in blood and money. More irregular corps are wanted. Are the gentlemen of England all fox-hunting? Why not an English Light Horse? For the sake of our manhood, our devoted colonists, and our dead soldiers, we must persevere with the war.
These unpalatable truths were resented. The assertion that ‘the individual Boer mounted in suitable country was worth from three to five regular soldiers’ was held derogatory to the Army. The estimate of a quarter of a million men being necessary was condemned as absurd. Quoth the Morning Leader: ‘We have received no confirmation of the statement that Lord Lansdowne has, pending the arrival of Lord Roberts, appointed Mr Winston Churchill to command the troops in South Africa, with General Sir Redvers Buller, VC, as his Chief of Staff.’ Unhappily this was sarcasm. The old colonels and generals at the ‘Buck and Dodder Club’ were furious. Some of them sent me a cable saying, ‘Best friends here hope you will not continue making further ass of yourself.’ However, my ‘infantile’ opinions were speedily vindicated by events. Ten thousand Imperial Yeomanry and gentlemen volunteers of every kind were sent to reinforce the professional army, and more than a quarter of a million British soldiers, or five times the total Boer forces, stood on South African soil before success was won. I might therefore console myself from the Bible: ‘Better a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king …’
Meanwhile the disasters of the ‘Black Week’ had aroused the British nation and the Administration responded to their mood. Mr Balfour, deemed by his critics a ladylike, dilettante dialectician, proved himself in the face of this crisis the mainspring of the Imperial Government. Sir Redvers Buller – though this we did not know till long afterwards – had been so upset by his repulse at Colenso on December 15 and his casualty list of eleven hundred – then thought a terrible loss – that he had sent a panic-stricken dispatch to the War Office and pusillanimous orders to Sir George White. He advised the defender of Ladysmith to fire off his ammunition and make the best terms of surrender he could. He cabled to the War Office on December 15: ‘I do not think I am now strong enough to relieve White.’ This cable arrived at a weekend, and of the Ministers only Mr Balfour was in London. He replied curtly, ‘If you cannot relieve Ladysmith, hand your command over to Sir Francis Clery and return home.’ White also sent a chilling reply saying that he had no intention of surrendering. Meanwhile, some days earlier the German Emperor, in a curiously friendly mood, had sent the British Military Attaché in Berlin to England with a personal message for Queen Victoria, saying: ‘I cannot sit on the safety-valve for ever. My people demand intervention. You must get a victory. I advise you to send out Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener.’ Whether upon this suggestion or otherwise, Lord Roberts was, on December 16, appointed to the chief command, with Lord Kitchener as Chief of Staff. Reinforcements, comprising the entire British Army outside India with powerful volunteer additions from home and the colonies, were set in motion towards South Africa. Buller, strongly reinforced, was assigned the command in Natal with orders to persevere in the relief of Ladysmith, while the main army, marshalled on a far larger scale than originally contemplated, was to advance northwards from the Cape Colony to relieve Kimberley and capture Bloemfontein.
Buller was by no means overjoyed at his task. He knew the strength of the enemy’s positions on the heights beyond the Tugela, and si
nce the shock he had sustained at Colenso, he even exaggerated the high qualities of the Boers. After one of his series of unsuccessful attempts to force the Tugela, he unbosomed himself to me in terms of the utmost candour. ‘Here I am,’ he exclaimed, ‘condemned to fight in Natal, which all my judgment has told me to avoid, and to try to advance along the line worst of all suited to our troops.’
He now bent himself stubbornly to his unwelcome lot. I have no doubt that at his age he no longer possessed the military capacity, or the mental and physical vigour, or the resource and ruthlessness, which his duty required. Nevertheless he continued to command the confidence of his soldiers and remained the idol of the British public.
I am doubtful whether the fact that a man has gained the Victoria Cross for bravery as a young officer fits him to command an army twenty or thirty years later. I have noticed more than one serious misfortune which arose from such assumptions. Age, easy living, heaviness of body, many years of promotion and success in time of peace, dissipate the vital forces indispensable to intense action. During the long peace the State should always have ready a few naval and military officers of middle rank and under forty. These officers should be specially trained and tested. They should be moved from one command to another and given opportunities to take important decisions. They should be brought into the Council of Defence and cross-examined on their opinions. As they grow older they should be replaced by other men of similar age. ‘Blind old Dandolos’ are rare. Lord Roberts was an exception.
* * * * * * *
After Sir Redvers Buller had examined me at length upon the conditions prevailing in the Transvaal, and after I had given him whatever information I had been able to collect from the somewhat scanty viewpoint of my chink between the boards of the railway truck, he said to me: ‘You have done very well. Is there anything we can do for you?’
I replied at once that I should like a commission in one of the irregular corps which were being improvised on all sides. The General, whom I had not seen since our voyage had ended, but whom, of course, I had known off and on during the four years I had served in the Army, appeared somewhat disconcerted at this, and after a considerable pause enquired: ‘What about poor old Borthwick?’ meaning thereby Sir Algernon Borthwick, afterwards Lord Glenesk, proprietor of the Morning Post newspaper. I replied that I was under a definite contract with him as war-correspondent and could not possibly relinquish this engagement. The situation therefore raised considerable issues. In the various little wars of the previous few years it had been customary for military officers on leave to act as war-correspondents, and even for officers actually serving to undertake this double duty. This had been considered to be a great abuse, and no doubt it was open to many objections. No one had been more criticised in this connection than myself for my dual rôle both on the Indian frontier and up the Nile. After the Nile Expedition the War Office had definitely and finally decided that no soldier could be a correspondent and no correspondent could be a soldier. Here then was the new rule in all its inviolate sanctity, and to make an exception to it on my account above all others—I who had been the chief cause of it—was a very hard proposition. Sir Redvers Buller, long Adjutant-General at the War Office, a man of the world, but also a representative of the strictest military school, found it very awkward. He took two or three tours round the room, eyeing me in a droll manner. Then at last he said: ‘All right. You can have a commission in Bungo’s16 regiment. You will have to do as much as you can for both jobs. But,’ he added, ‘you will get no pay for ours.’
To this irregular arrangement I made haste to agree.
* * * * * * *
Behold me, then, restored to the Army with a lieutenant’s commission in the South African Light Horse. This regiment of six squadrons and over 700 mounted men with a battery of galloping Colt machine-guns had been raised in the Cape Colony by Colonel Julian Byng, a captain of the 10th Hussars and an officer from whom great things were rightly expected. He made me his assistant-adjutant, and let me go where I liked when the regiment was not actually fighting. Nothing could suit me better. I stitched my badges of rank to my khaki coat and stuck the long plume of feathers from the tail of the sakabulu bird in my hat, and lived from day to day in perfect happiness.
The SALH formed a part of Lord Dundonald’s cavalry brigade, and the small group of officers and friends who inspired and directed this force nearly all attained eminence in the great European War. Byng, Birdwood and Hubert Gough all became Army Commanders. Barnes, Solly Flood, Tom Bridges and several others commanded Divisions. We messed together around the same campfire or slept under the same wagons during the whole of the Natal fighting, and were the best of friends. The soldiers were of very varied origin, but first-rate fighting men. The SALH were mostly South Africans, with a high proportion of hard-bitten adventurers from all quarters of the world, including a Confederate trooper from the American Civil War. Barnes’ squadron of Imperial Light Horse were Outlanders from the Rand goldfields. Two squadrons of Natal Carabineers and Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry were high-class farmers and colonists of the invaded province, and the two companies of British mounted infantry were as good as could be found in the Army. The Colonists, of course, especially the Outlanders and the men from Natal, were filled with a bitterness against the enemy which regular soldiers in those days considered unprofessional; but all worked cordially together.
16 Colonel Byng, later Lord Byng of Vimy.
Chapter XXIV
Spion Kop
THIS is not the place to re-tell at any length the story of the Relief of Ladysmith: but a brief account is needed.17 Sir Redvers Buller abandoned his plan of forcing the Tugela at Colenso and advancing directly along the railway line. Having been reinforced till his army consisted of 19,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and 60 guns, he proceeded to attempt to turn the Boer right flank and to cross the Tugela about 25 miles upstream from Colenso. On January 11 Dundonald’s cavalry brigade by a rapid march seized the heights overlooking Potgieter’s and Trichardt’s Drifts or fords; and on the following day all his infantry, leaving their tents standing and covered by our screen of cavalry outposts along the river, marched by easy stages by night to Trichardt’s Drift. At daybreak on the 17th the whole of the cavalry crossed this ford without serious opposition, and continually reaching out their left hand reached by nightfall the neighbourhood of Acton Homes after a sharp and successful fight with about 200 Boers. Meanwhile the leading infantry brigade, having with some difficulty crossed the deep ford, had established themselves among the under-features of Spion Kop mountain and covered the throwing of two pontoon bridges. The bridges were completed during the morning, and the 2nd Division under Sir Charles Warren with an extra brigade and most of the artillery of the Army crossed safely during the night. The morning of the 18th therefore saw nearly 16,000 troops safely across the Tugela, and their cavalry not very far from the open ground which lies beyond Acton Homes and offers two easy marches into Ladysmith. It was the general belief among the fighting troops, including the experienced Colonials, that a continuance of the left-handed movement of the cavalry would have turned the whole line of heights west of Spion Kop mountain, and that the relief of Ladysmith could be effected by mere persistence in the movement so prosperously launched.
Buller, on the other hand, and his staff were not without reason fearful of their communications. They were making in fact a lengthy flank march around the right of a most mobile enemy. One British brigade held the crossings about Colenso, another, Lyttelton’s, was established opposite Potgieter’s Drift. The main army was drawn up with its right resting on the base of Spion Kop mountain with the cavalry stretched out still farther to the left. But this front of 30 miles was by no means continuous. At any moment two or three thousand Boers could have crossed the river in the intervals between the watching brigades, and riding south might have interrupted the trailing line of communications along which all supplies had to be carried. The nightmare which haunted the Commander-in-Chief was
of being cut off from the railway and encircled like Sir George White in Ladysmith without even an entrenched camp or adequate supplies to stand a siege. These dangers were rendered real by the leisureliness which marred all Buller’s movements. While we therefore in the cavalry were eager to press on in our wide turning movement, Buller felt it vital to shorten the route and for this purpose to pivot on Spion Kop mountain. Accordingly on the night of the 23rd–24th an infantry brigade and Thorneycroft’s regiment (dismounted) were sent to seize Spion Kop. The attack was successful. The few Boers on the mountain fled and morning saw General Woodgate’s brigade established on the summit, while the rest of the army lay drawn out in the foothills and ridges to the westward.
Meanwhile the Boers had watched for six days the incredibly slow and ponderous movements of the British. Buller had sauntered and Warren had crawled. The enemy had had time to make entirely new dispositions and entrenchments. They were able to spare from the investment of Ladysmith about 7,000 mounted men and perhaps a dozen guns and pom-poms. When, however, they found our cavalry aggressively threatening Acton Homes, a panic ensued, and large numbers of burghers, not only individually but by commandos, began to trek northwards. The spectacle of the British in occupation of Spion Kop caused surprise rather than alarm. General Schalk-Burger, gathering by his personal exertions about 1,500 men, mostly of the Ermelo and Pretoria Commandos, began within an hour of the morning fog lifting, a fierce rifle counter-attack upon Spion Kop, and at the same time he directed upon it from all angles the fire of his few but excellently served and widely spread guns.
Spion Kop is a rocky hill – almost a mountain – rising 1,400 feet above the river with a flat top about as large as Trafalgar Square. Into this confined area 2,000 British infantry were packed. There was not much cover, and they had not been able to dig more than very shallow trenches before the attack began. The Boer assailants very quickly established a superiority in the rifle duel. Shrapnel converging from a half-circle lashed the crowded troops. It would have been easier for the British to advance than to hold the summit. A thrust forward down all the slopes of Spion Kop accompanied by the advance of the whole army against the positions immediately in their front would certainly at this time have been successful. Instead of this, the brigade on the top of Spion Kop was left to bear its punishment throughout the long hours of the South African summer day. The General was killed at the beginning of the action, and losses, terrible in proportion to the numbers engaged, were suffered by the brigade. With equal difficulty and constancy the summit was held till nightfall; but at least 1,000 officers and men, or half the force exposed to the fire, were killed or wounded in this cramped space. In a desperate effort to relieve the situation Lyttelton sent two battalions across the river at Potgieter’s Drift. These fine troops – the 60th Rifles and the Cameronians – climbed the hill from the other side and actually established themselves on two nipples called the Twin Peaks, which were indeed decisive points, had their capture been used with resolution by the Commander-in-Chief. The rest of the army looked on, and night fell with the British sorely stricken, but still in possession of all the decisive positions.
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