SOME CRITICISMS
If we inquire what was thought at home of the failure at Spion Kop after the high hopes which the advent of Sir Charles Warren in Natal had raised, we must look back for a moment to the beginning of the operations and note the great interest with which the news from Natal was day by day eagerly read by the public. The excitement caused by the second attempt of Sir Redvers Buller to relieve Ladysmith by a turning movement to the left of Potgieter’s Drift was greatly increased when his telegram, dated 23rd January, 6.30 P.M., was received, stating that General Warren held the position he had gained two days before, and that ‘an attempt will be made to-night to seize Spion Kop, the Salient which forms the left of the enemy’s position facing Trichard’s Drift and divides it from the position facing Potgieter’s.’
The public remained in suspense until the announcement came that Spion Kop had been captured and that Warren considered it tenable. Then there were loud rejoicings everywhere, too soon, alas, disturbed by sinister rumours of failure, coming in some mysterious way from the Continental Press, and then the brief telegram of 25th January: ‘Warren’s garrison, I am sorry to say, I find this morning had in the night abandoned Spion Kop’; followed subsequently by another exonerating Colonel Thorneycroft from all blame.
The position in consequence thus presented itself to the public: The attack on Spion Kop had for some unknown reason proved a failure, and the relief of Ladysmith had been thereby indefinitely postponed. Somebody was to blame. Sir Redvers Buller said Warren’s garrison had abandoned Spion Kop, but he exonerated Thorneycroft. The natural inference was that Warren was the man to be hanged. Then came the reaction, and the fickle public turned to rend the unsuccessful Generals. This state of feeling was not improved by the publication, after many weeks’ delay, of the despatches in which Sir Redvers Buller throws the whole blame upon Sir Charles Warren, and not only exonerates Thorneycroft but considers that he saved the situation; in which also Lord Roberts is of opinion that Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft’s assumption of responsibility and authority was needless, unwarrantable, and wholly inexcusable; that Sir Charles Warren should have visited Spion Kop during the afternoon or evening; that ‘there was a want of organisation and system which acted most unfavourably on the defence’; and that the failure of the attempt to relieve Ladysmith was probably in part due to errors of judgment and want of administrative capacity on the part of Sir Charles Warren; but that it must also be ascribed to Sir Redvers Buller’s disinclination to assert his authority.
With the dismay felt at the folly of the Government in making such a wanton exhibition to the world of the shortcomings of our commanders in the field there was mingled a grim satisfaction that in censuring all concerned the public disappointment was avenged. Lord Roberts had administered a rough sort of justice. There had been a failure, and all the leading actors in the business were blamed; but the one who came off worst was Sir Charles Warren. Sir Redvers Buller had thrown the blame on Sir Charles Warren, but had supported Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft. No one spoke for Sir Charles Warren, who was not allowed to speak for himself. Consequently the critics took up the parable, and Sir Charles Warren was blamed for everything that occurred.
We doubt very much whether, if Spion Kop had been held and the relief of Ladysmith had followed, we should have heard much of the criticism that has been freely used; its seizure would have been regarded as a brilliant tactical success, as indeed it was regarded at the time, and it is only necessary to point to the English newspapers and the letters of the Press correspondents before the abandonment was known to show this.
Now a tactical operation cannot be right or wrong merely because some subsequent action makes it futile. We have the evidence of the Boers that they considered Spion Kop the key of the position and that, had it been held, Ladysmith would probably have been won. Surely, then, the blame of failure should not be thrown upon the General who ordered it to be taken, but on the officer who abandoned it without sufficient reason and without consulting him.
Mr. Oppenheim has written a defence of this officer in the ‘Nineteenth Century,’ in which he says that Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft had to come to some decision, and that he had held on all day hoping for the presence or intervention of a superior officer. But Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft was himself a brigadier-general commanding the colonels in command of two brigades, and the only use he made of this position was to force them to withdraw; while Major-General Coke, his superior officer, was on the summit from half-past three to half-past six, and Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft does not appear to have made any effort to get instructions from him or to refer to him before ordering a retirement at dark.
Mr. Oppenheim states that Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft did not know that stores of ammunition, water, food, &c., were on their way up; but this is no excuse, because, if he had gone to his proper post of command, he would have known it; but he stuck to his own corps, and never really exercised the command until he decided to retire. He also states that all agreed it was impossible to hold the hill. But Colonel Hill and Major-General Coke evidently did not agree. Colonel Hill had made preparations for intrenching, and knew where the tools and sandbags were, although Colonel Thorneycroft did not.
Two great faults were committed on the summit of Spion Kop, for neither of which can Sir Charles Warren be held responsible. The one was the position of the intrenchments, with regard to which Sir Charles Warren had given special instructions. There are two methods adopted for intrenching a hill when attacked by an advancing force. The usual method is to intrench the crest nearest to the enemy, but this involves moving across the top of the hill without cover. The other method is to intrench the crest farthest away from the enemy in the first place, as this gives complete security to the attack, neither rifle nor shell fire being able to touch it, and when opportunity offers, after artillery cannonading, or at night, to advance to the other crest nearest the enemy and intrench there; but at Spion Kop, owing perhaps to the fog, neither one nor the other method was adopted, the trenches were placed in the middle of the plateau, and, as made, were not of much use—too little earth was thrown up, and a little earth will not resist a Mauser bullet. If earth is used it must be in considerable quantity, and there was not much available. There were, however, plenty of stones, with which the Boers soon construct their cover. Badly-made trenches placed in an absolutely wrong and a most exposed position, contrary to Sir Charles Warren’s instructions, constituted the first fault.
The second fault committed on the summit was crowding line upon line to give the firing line moral support. The result was carnage. The officers commanding brigades and Colonel Thorneycroft clamoured for reinforcements to give this moral support. Major-General Coke several times checked the upward move of reinforcements, but in the end gave way to urgent messages and let them go on until by 3.30 P.M. the small summit was crowded with five battalions besides details. Sir Redvers Buller, Sir Charles Warren, Major-Generals Coke and Lyttelton, and Colonel àCourt all thought two battalions on the top sufficient.
Both these faults were due to want of proper training of both officers and men.
We shall now consider Sir Redvers Buller’s despatches and memorandum of 30th January 1900 in some detail, and make some very adverse criticisms. It is with reluctance that we do so, but it must be remembered that Sir Redvers has no one but himself to blame that these despatches are before the public. It was his own doing that they saw the light in the first instance, and it is equally his own doing that the portions omitted in the first instance have lately been published too. It is only, therefore, in justice to Sir Charles Warren, who has not been allowed to reply, that we examine these despatches critically.
It will not be forgotten that a despatch written a month earlier on the Zoutspan Drift action was perused by critics at home with amazement and perplexity. The easy insouciance with which the late Adjutant-General of the Forces, who for seven years had been primarily responsible for the training of the officers and men of the army, referred to their want of training when tried in the field, it was felt, could not easily be surpassed.
‘I suppose,’ he wrote, ‘our officers will learn the value of scouting in time, but in spite of all one can say, up to this our men seem to blunder into the middle of the enemy, and suffer accordingly.’
But his despatches of 30th January throw this one into the shade in their complete detachment from all responsibility, and recall, more than anything else, the reports of an umpire at peace manœuvres, which praise this side and blame that, with the comfortable assurance that the writer is an independent observer, on whom no one can turn the tables.
In the first of the two despatches of 30th January Sir Redvers Buller gives no indication, as we have already pointed out, of what he intended Sir Charles Warren to do when he sent him across the Tugela. He merely regrets that an expedition, which he thinks should have succeeded, failed, and refers to Sir Charles Warren’s despatch for particulars. The only comment on Sir Charles Warren’s dispositions was that he had ‘mixed up all the brigades, and the positions he held were dangerously insecure.’
In the second despatch, while maintaining the same attitude of irresponsibility, he adopts the rôle of the captious critic. He objects to Sir Charles Warren’s statement that three and a-half days’ supplies were insufficient to advance by the left through Acton Homes, because, he says, he had promised to keep—and was actually keeping—Sir Charles filled up. As if this in any way affected the amount of provisions he could carry with him when once he had cleared the position in front and moved forward and away from the Tugela.
From this trivial and futile criticism Sir Redvers jumps suddenly to 23rd January, on which day, he says, he went over to see Sir Charles Warren and pointed out that he had no further report, and no intimation of the special arrangements foreshadowed in a telegram from him on the 19th. It might from this be supposed that since the 19th Sir Redvers had had no communication with Sir Charles Warren, was getting anxious, and thought it time after four days’ silence to inquire what he was doing; it would hardly occur to any one that he was in constant telegraphic communication with Warren, and that he had been with him both on the 21st and the 22nd of the month.
What were the special arrangements referred to in Sir Charles Warren’s letter of the 19th, and why is it suggested that they were kept, so to speak, up his sleeve, until his Commander could stand it no longer?
‘On January 20th,’ said Sir Redvers Buller in his telegraphic despatch of 27th January, ‘Sir Charles Warren, as I have reported, drove back the enemy and obtained possession of the southern crests of the higher tableland, which extends from the line Acton Homes-Honger’s Poort to the Western Ladysmith Hills.’ We may conclude, therefore, that on the 20th Sir Charles Warren was too fully occupied to telegraph what were the special arrangements he had mentioned in his telegram of the night before. On the 21st Sir Redvers Buller saw him and was able to discuss the matter verbally with him, and if he did not do so surely it was his own fault, as he might very easily have asked him anything he wanted to know.
These special arrangements were apparently three:
(1) Continual bombardment; then
(2) To advance on both sides of an arête or gully, outflanking the enemy on either side as he advanced; and finally
(3) To proceed without wagons when he had driven the enemy out.
They resulted, as we have seen, from the reconnaissances of the 18th, which impressed Sir Charles Warren with the difficulties of any advance with fifteen miles of wagons. He therefore proposed to keep the wagons at Venter’s Laager until he was able to advance, and then send them back across the river. There was no great secret about these proposals. With the first and second Sir Redvers apparently concurred, and with the third he did not. If he thought Sir Charles had anything else in view, why did he not ask him?
Sir Redvers Buller, in his despatch of 30th January, then goes on to say that he further pointed out to Sir Charles Warren ‘that for four days he had kept his men continuously exposed to shell and rifle fire, perched on the edge of an almost precipitous hill, that the position admitted of no second line and the supports were massed close behind the firing line in indefensible formations, and that a panic or sudden charge might send the whole lot in disorder down the hill at any moment. I said it was too dangerous a situation to be prolonged, and that he must either attack, or I should withdraw his force. I advocated, as I had previously done, an advance from his left.’
One has really to call to mind that it is Sir Charles Warren’s commanding officer who gives utterance to these observations, that he personally saw the troops under Warren cross the Tugela, that he issued to them the ‘no turning back’ order, that he addressed General Woodgate’s Brigade when it had crossed and gave that General instructions as to his attack, that from day to day he telegraphed home encouraging accounts of the operations being carried out, that he made no sign of disapproval, that he was in telegraphic communication with Sir Charles Warren all the time and many messages passed to and fro, that on three days out of the four—viz. on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd—he was personally present with the force and the dispositions of the troops were made subject to his approval, that he had himself given directions how the howitzers were to be disposed, and that in his telegraphic despatch of 27th January, when all was over, he had stated that ‘the actual position held was perfectly tenable but did not lend itself to advance.’ It was surely unfair to himself as well as to Sir Charles Warren to make out that for four days the troops remained in one position, and that a dangerous one.
But if the dispositions were those of Sir Charles Warren, and he alone was responsible for them, did they merit the disapproval with which his chief stigmatises them? Is not the attack of a hill, whose top is exposed to the enemy’s artillery fire and affords barely any cover, best undertaken by seizing and holding the near crest line—in other words, ‘perching on its edge’? If the attack intrench this near crest, their reserves can remain lower down under cover; any shell fire which does not hit the trench passes harmlessly over; reliefs, also, can be safely carried out, and supplies of ammunition, water, and food brought up to the firing line without exposure.
As we have already observed, and perhaps may be permitted to repeat in this connection, had Sir Charles Warren’s instructions been carried out at Spion Kop—and probably the fog made it difficult to do so—his firing line would have been on the outer edge of the hill, that farthest from the enemy, and not on the plateau, and what better position could it have had? A small body could have held it, which could have been relieved from time to time, and at nightfall the other crest nearest to the enemy could have been seized and intrenched. Then again reserves massed behind a hill are not in so bad a position as Sir Redvers Buller’s despatch would imply, and when he speaks of the danger of a possible sudden charge of the Boers driving the whole lot of our men in disorder down the hill, he does not appear to appreciate the distinctive qualities either of the foe or of our own men. What would Tommy Atkins have more warmly welcomed, or the Boers have more disliked, than a contest at close quarters with cold steel?
Unfortunately, the feeble intrenchments which were constructed on Spion Kop were too far advanced on the plateau of the hill, so that the approach to them from the edge of the hill was exposed to the shell and rifle fire of the enemy, and, equally unfortunately, neither mountain battery nor naval guns were sent over by Sir Redvers Buller in time to be of use in opposing the Boer fire.
In a previous chapter we noted that no sign of dissatisfaction with Sir Charles Warren’s conduct appeared in any of Sir Redvers Buller’s telegrams during the operations, and if these telegrams are compared with the despatches they will be found to be glaringly inconsistent.
We find, further, that while in large matters, such as the attack from the left, in which the strategy of the Commander-in-Chief might be involved, Sir Redvers Buller contented himself with advocating the course he preferred, and abstained from giving any order for its adoption, in comparatively small matters, which would more obviously lie within the province of the subordinate commander to determine, he, on several occasions, caused his own views to be carried out. Thus he substituted Major-General Woodgate for Major-General Coke in the command of the column for the assault of Spion Kop, because the one was able to climb better than the other; and he nominated over the heads of experienced colonels Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft, a young and inexperienced major of a year’s standing, holding the local rank of lieut.-colonel, to command on Spion Kop after Major-General Woodgate was wounded, because he was a good hard-fighting man. Neither physical strength and ability to climb nor the gallantry of a fighting man are, however, the main qualifications of a commander, and these efforts of the Commander-in-Chief to assert himself in minor matters had, it would seem, something to say to the failure of the enterprise.
That Sir Redvers Buller should endeavour to justify the retirement of Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft is not difficult to understand; that he should attempt to do so at the expense of his second-in-command is inexplicable. It was only human nature that he should wish to support the action of the gallant young officer, specially selected by himself to command over the head of his seniors, who had fought like a lion and had kept up the spirit of his men in depressing circumstances.
But had the same warm and generous sentiment animated him towards his second-in-command he could not have supported the retirement by disparaging the work done by Sir Charles Warren, and by belittling or ignoring altogether the efforts he had made to enable the garrison of Spion Kop to hold on to the position.
Probably the unkindest cut of all, though no doubt the result of thoughtlessness, was Sir Redvers Buller’s telegram of 25th January: ‘Warren’s garrison, I am sorry to say, I find this morning had in the night abandoned Spion Kop.’ He might have said ‘Thorneycroft’s garrison,’ and he could well have afforded to say ‘my garrison,’ but this would have been to abandon the rôle of the irresponsible critic.
So also he declined to hold any investigation into the circumstances of the withdrawal as proposed by Sir Charles Warren. He says in his despatch:
‘I have not thought it necessary to order any investigation. If at sundown the defence of the summit had been taken regularly in hand, intrenchments laid out, gun emplacements prepared, the dead removed, the wounded collected, and, in fact, the whole place brought under regular military command, and careful arrangements made for the supply of water and food to the scattered fighting line, the hills would have been held, I am sure.
‘But no arrangements were made. General Coke appears to have been ordered away just as he would have been useful, and no one succeeded him; those on the top were ignorant of the fact that guns were coming up, and generally there was a want of organisation and system that acted most unfavourably upon the defence.’
Such a string of inconsistencies and erroneous statements only shows that not only did Sir Redvers Buller not think it necessary to order an official investigation, but that he did not even think it necessary before writing his despatch to take the trouble to ascertain the facts for himself.
At sundown, before any defence could be taken regularly in hand, the abandonment had not only been decided upon by Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft, but the preparations for retirement were actually commenced. This he might have gathered from Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft’s report, in which he says: ‘When night began to close in I determined to take some steps,’ &c., and there must have been other reports, which have not been published, before him from which he could have known the precise time when the retirement was arranged.
After categorically enumerating the various arrangements that should have been made at nightfall in order to hold the position on the following day, Sir Redvers Buller writes: ‘But no arrangements were made.’ He does not say who should have made them, or who should have carried them out, but the inference from what he says is that as ‘General Coke appears to have been ordered away just as he would have been useful,’ he considers that Major-General Coke should have made them.
But Major-General Coke did not receive the order to go and see Sir Charles Warren until 9.30 P.M., some three hours after nightfall, and after the order for withdrawal had been given.
In refutation of Sir Redvers Buller’s assertion that no arrangements were made, in face of all the reports he had before him, some of which have been published, showing what arrangements were made, let us see if it can be ascertained what actually was done.