Sir Charles Warren and Spion Kop: A Vindication

by Defender

ADVANCE TO VENTER’S LAAGER AND ATTACK OF THE RANGEWORTHY HILLS

At the end of Chapter II we left Sir Charles Warren across the Tugela with all his force, including his wagons, on the night of 18th January and ready to march to Venter’s Laager on the following morning.

As the wagons marched on the morning of the 19th in four or five parallel columns, in length about three miles or so, the brigades commanded by Major-Generals Hart and Woodgate also kept pace with them until opposite Fair View, where the right of the line was to rest in the attack of the Rangeworthy hills. The two brigades then occupied the slopes of the adjoining hills. This march was a very remarkable one, and it is to be doubted whether there is another instance on record of such a force, forming a length of three or four miles, with wagons four or five deep on the column’s reverse flank, being successfully led by a flank march right along the face of commanding hills held by an enemy strongly intrenched and provided with long-range guns, on a road just out of range of effective rifle fire, and with a rapid river on its reverse flank. It was in accordance with the instructions, but it was a most hazardous proceeding, and it was owing to the careful management of Sir Charles Warren, as well as the want of initiative or military instinct on the part of the Boer commander, that there was no disaster.

General Warren had reconnoitred the Fair View-Groote Hoek road, and found that it led within effective rifle range round the west flank of Spion Kop, and was therefore an undesirable road so long as Spion Kop was held by the enemy. He then crossed the Venter’s Spruit, near Venter’s Laager, and examined the other road by Acton Homes. He ascertained that it led through a strongly defended pass at the water-parting, and that on both sides it was held by the Boers, while it was twice the length of the first road. The length was the great defect. There was only one road leading to it, and the wagons could only go singly. The force could not possibly watch a front of fifteen miles occupied by the enemy. The result would be that each day’s march must be limited by the length of road that could be watched. The force was to be provisioned for only four days, and, even if everything went successfully, it would take three days to get from Venter’s Spruit by Acton Homes to the point near Groote Hoek. It was therefore evident that the road could not be used, even if it were not so strongly held by the enemy.

In the evening Sir Charles Warren assembled his General and Staff Officers and the Officers Commanding Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, and pointed out to them that there were only two roads by which the wheeled transport and guns could proceed: (1) by Acton Homes, and (2) north of Fair View by Rosalie or Groote Hoek. He informed them that he rejected the Acton Homes road because time would not allow of it, and his subordinate commanders concurred unanimously. He then pointed out that the only possible way of all getting through by the road north of Fair View would be by taking three or four days’ food in their haversacks and sending all their wagons back across the Tugela; but before this could be done the position in front of them must be captured.

Although Sir Redvers Buller does not mention in his despatches what information he possessed, either as to the routes to Ladysmith or as to the measures taken by the Boers to prevent them to him, he quotes incidentally, and in quite a different connection, the following message which Sir Charles Warren telegraphed to him the same evening:

‘(Sent 7.54 P.M., received 8.15 P.M.) Left flank, 19th January.

‘To the Chief of the Staff

‘I find there are only two roads by which we could possibly get from Trichard’s Drift to Potgieter’s, on the north of the Tugela—one by Acton Homes, the other by Fair View and Rosalie; the first I reject as too long, the second is a very difficult road for a large number of wagons, unless the enemy is thoroughly cleared out. I am therefore going to adopt some special arrangements which will involve my stay at Venter’s Laager for two or three days. I will send in for further supplies and report progress.

‘C. Warren.’

This is not the sort of message he would have sent if he had been ordered to take the Acton Homes-Ladysmith road, and it shows unquestionably that, as to the roads and the country, very little was known.

The reply to the message was that three days’ supply was being sent.

It has been supposed by some writers on the subject—and the popular notion at the time certainly was that the mountainous country suddenly ended at the western slopes of the Rangeworthy hills to the west of Spion Kop—that Acton Homes was situated on a level plain, and that Sir Charles Warren had only to march round by Acton Homes, keeping the Rangeworthy hills and Spion Kop at a respectful distance, and he would be able with little delay to take the lines opposing Potgieter’s Drift in reverse. It does not appear whether Sir Redvers Buller entertained this idea; if he did, he gave no definite instructions, apparently, in that sense to Sir Charles Warren; but if he did not, then he must have supposed that the Boer right flank rested on the Rangeworthy hills and could be turned, and was unaware that it extended to Acton Homes and the roads to the Orange Free State. We can hardly suppose that when he wrote of sending Sir Charles Warren to turn the Boer flank he expected Sir Charles Warren to accomplish on the Rangeworthy hills, with 12,000 men and no long-range guns, what he himself had been unwilling to attempt a week before at Potgieter’s Drift with 20,000 men and long-range guns. If he did, he was sending him on a hazardous undertaking, and yet this was what opening the Fair View and Rosalie road practically meant—an attack on the centre of the Boer position.

We have already alluded to the prejudice created against Sir Charles Warren by the unfortunate suggestion that while Sir Redvers Buller desired him to go by the Acton Homes road, he preferred the nearer road to Groote Hoek and Rosalie. It is now clear that, if Lord Roberts had not alluded to Acton Homes in this connection, the idea would never have entered any one’s head, because such a route in the circumstances was impossible. It might have been the conception of a military genius to have thought that the best way of relieving Ladysmith would be to strike at the communications of the Orange Free State Boers on the Harrismith and other roads; but this we need not consider, as it certainly did not suggest itself to Sir Redvers Buller. Had Sir Charles Warren’s force been composed mainly of well-trained mounted troops, and had the country been less hilly, possibly the aspect of affairs would have been changed, and he might have made a real wide turning movement; but he had hardly any mounted troops, and the country was very hilly. He was, in fact, told to do an impossible thing—to turn a flank at a point where there was no flank to turn. As Mr. J. B. Atkins observes in his ‘Relief of Ladysmith’: ‘It had been discovered that after all there was no way round to the back of Spion Kop through open country. The hills in which the Boers were are, in fact, a spur of the Drakensberg mountains: wherever Sir Charles Warren might go, he must go through mountains.

Sir Charles Warren was not consulted as to the plan of operations, or as to the supplies, or impedimenta to accompany him, and it was generally understood that on his arrival at Frere he had advocated the attack of the Boers intrenched on the south of the Tugela at Colenso, and proceeding on the lines which were eventually successful. But, if the suggestion was made, it was not approved. Instead, Sir Redvers Buller proposed to break through the Boer line at Potgieter’s, just as he had tried to do at Colenso. On 11th January his force, assembled at Potgieter’s, was stronger by two brigades of infantry and a brigade division of artillery than it was at Colenso, and yet he hesitated, after the experience of Colenso, to attack the Boer positions. Nevertheless, he seems to have expected to be able to relieve Ladysmith by sending Sir Charles Warren with 12,000 men and thirty-six field guns to attack the Boer position in the Rangeworthy hills west of Spion Kop, while he held a certain number of Boers in front of him by making a demonstration at Potgieter’s.

With the map before us there is but one solution to Sir Redvers Buller’s directions. He assumed that the Boer right rested in the vicinity of Bastion Hill, a spur of the Rangeworthy hills, and he wished Sir Charles Warren, pivoting on Spion Kop, to sweep round his left to overlap that position.

Sir Charles was given no long-range guns with which to reply to those of the Boers. He had to deal with an enemy already confident with the victory gained at Colenso, and he was doomed to failure if he attempted to advance before he had demoralised the enemy by a continuous and effective artillery fire.

Had Sir Charles Warren been so ill-advised as to try to advance by the Acton Homes road to Ladysmith, it is not difficult to prophesy what would most probably have occurred. The Boers had strongly fortified the hills all round the Acton Homes basin, pom-poms and guns were in position along the western slopes of the Rangeworthy hills, and guns and rifles on the road to the Harrismith pass. Any force attempting to proceed by that route would no doubt have been allowed by the Boers to enter the basin, and then would have been cut off from Trichard’s Drift by the closing of the road below Bastion Hill. The column, thus hemmed in and caught in a trap, would have been compelled either to fight its way down to the Middle Drift or to surrender. In either case Natal would have been at the mercy of the Boers.