II.—The Halt at Bloemfontein.
There was a pause of seven weeks in the British advance after the capture of Bloemfontein. Reinforcements of all arms, remounts, transport, supplies, were collected in great volume. The supply system and hospital system were reformed, communications strengthened, garrisons organized. During a large part of this period the mounted troops in the central theatre were at little more than half their effective strength from lack of horses.
One small forward movement only was made: that to Karee Siding, twenty-seven miles north of Bloemfontein, a movement deemed necessary for the purpose of safe-guarding the passage over the Modder at Glen. Three thousand five hundred or 4,000 Boers with 8 guns held a line of low hills astride of the railway, with a level plain behind them. French and Tucker, who seem to have held a joint command, attacked with 9,000 men and 32 guns. Of the mounted troops present, 650 were regular Cavalry, 880 regular Mounted Infantry and Colonials, numbers which should have been sufficient to turn and hold the enemy effectually enough to give the Infantry their full chance. In principle the Poplar Grove tactics were employed, with variations of detail. The mounted troops, riding well in advance, were to turn both hostile flanks, and, when the Infantry attacks had been driven home, cut in upon the retreat. The engagement was a dull example of the now too common type. Both flanks were duly turned without opposition, and in good time (10 a.m.), by the mounted troops, but then a sort of paralysis set in. The Cavalry brigade, which was now somewhat behind the Boer right flank and within eight miles of the railway, was inactive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., though still unopposed, while the Mounted Infantry on the Boer left were held up by a small outlying detachment. Meanwhile the Infantry attacks, spirited enough, though not very well directed, ran their course, the Boers making a fairly steady stand, and yielding only between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. to threats of the bayonet. But there was nothing to intercept or hamper their retreat. Both mounted corps had eventually begun to move on, but were checked by slight flank guards. Our casualties were 189, almost entirely in the Infantry; those of the enemy 34.
This was emphatically a case where the professional mounted arm, which was separately brigaded, should have set an example of vigour to the younger and improvised corps. There seems, from the official and other narratives, to have been no valid reason against attempting an interception, though we must make allowance for the division in the higher command which may have had ill-effects. Such inaction was very unlike either French or Tucker. The poor condition of the horses is no explanation.
From Karee Siding (March 29) we turn to its anti-type, Sannah’s Post (March 30). With the exception of De Wet’s raid on the main army’s transport at Waterval, this was the first genuine feat of independent aggression on the part of the Boers which the war had as yet produced. The same leader was again the guiding spirit, and he began a career of aggression just when most of his countrymen were thinking more of surrender than resistance, and in several districts were actually handing in their arms.
De Wet, with 1,500 men and 7 guns, made a swift and secret expedition against the Waterworks, twenty-one miles due east of Bloemfontein, and then in British hands. Arriving within striking distance on the evening of March 29, he learnt that there was bigger game afoot, in the shape of an independent British force under Broadwood, who was retiring westward before a greatly superior force of Free Staters under Olivier and others. Broadwood was safely ahead, however, and his pursuers do not come into the story. De Wet resolved to ambush him and to that end posted 400 men in the bed of the Korn Spruit, which Broadwood would have to cross, and the rest, under his brother Piet, three miles away behind the British camp, on the high ground bordering the Modder River.
Broadwood’s was an exclusively mounted force, numbering 1,700, with 12 Horse Artillery guns. There were two regiments of regular Cavalry, together only 330 strong, and Alderson’s brigade of mounted riflemen, 850 strong, and composed of regular Mounted Infantry and Colonial riflemen. In fact, it was a typical mixed force of all the various classes of mounted troops then in the field. The gist of the story is well known. Breaking camp early on the 30th, without prior reconnaissance of the ground before them, the head of the transport and one of the two batteries marched into the ambush, and were captured. “Q” battery managed to escape, with the loss of a gun and many men. Piet de Wet meanwhile began his attack upon the rear, though as yet only with stationary fire upon the troops holding the Modder drifts. Broadwood acted with coolness and resolution. While the greater part of Alderson’s brigade kept Piet de Wet in check, the regular Cavalry and two companies of Mounted Infantry were sent across the Korn Spruit to take the 400 Boers who lined it in reverse. Dangerous as Broadwood’s own position was, the position of those Boers was for some little time almost equally dangerous. They were separated by three miles and by the Modder River from their main body, which, moreover, was being briskly engaged by the Mounted Infantry. Cramped in their narrow gully, they were being attacked in front by the five guns of “Q” battery, and threatened in flank and rear from rising ground which overlooked the spruit by the superior force of Cavalry and Mounted Infantry. They had no guns, and were much weakened in numbers by the detachment of the necessary guards for the captured British guns and waggons.
As the Official Historian remarks, everything depended on the execution of the Cavalry turning movement. But again the paralysis sets in, as at Dronfield, Poplar Grove, and Karee Siding—a paralysis not due in the remotest degree to moral weakness, and certainly not in this case to weak horseflesh. There is nothing that we need talk about with bated breath or tactful reticence: neither our men nor their officers were to blame—only the habits and disabilities imposed by an obsolete weapon. A party of riflemen thrown out by De Wet from the spruit brought the attack to a standstill.
Disappointed on this side, Broadwood had no other course than to order a retreat of Alderson’s Mounted Infantry and the guns from the other side of the spruit (10.30 a.m.). As in so many similar actions in South Africa, everything hinged on the extrication of a badly crippled battery. The rescue of “Q” by the heroism of its own gunners and its mounted escort forms a brilliant little episode by itself. When the guns were out of immediate danger, the general retreat began. Piet de Wet’s men instantly poured across the Modder drifts and pursued hotly. The behaviour of Alderson’s brigade—Colonials and Englishmen alike—in this their first defensive engagement was very steady, though they suffered greatly from inexperience in manœuvre and fire. The retirement, conducted by successive movements of units, was orderly and cool, New Zealanders and Englishmen in combination having the honour of constituting the ultimate rear-guard. Eventually Broadwood’s force was concentrated safely on the farther side of the Spruit, having lost seven guns, most of its transport, and a third of its strength in casualties and prisoners.
Broadwood should have received help from other forces in the neighbourhood, including some Mounted Infantry, who were very feebly handled; but there is no need to enter into that lengthy and controversial topic.
We have to note certain points of interest:
1. The Boer Pursuit.—Except for the Stormberg case three months back, this was the first example of a Boer mounted pursuit. All narratives agree in saying that it frequently took the form of charging on horseback up to close quarters, accompanied in some instances by a wholly new practice—fire from the saddle. Sometimes the burghers dismounted, and, with the rein over the arm, fired. Here we see the germ of important later developments. A year afterwards De la Rey or Kemp in similar circumstances would have used the same methods with more system and audacity.
2. Conversely, and again with the exception of Stormberg, this was the first example of a really critical rear-guard action for British mounted troops. We note remarkable proofs of improvement in general efficiency, together with several faults: indifferent marksmanship; lack of adroitness in the handling of led horses; lack of judgment in deciding upon the right moment to retire (several detachments were cut off through holding on too long); and a general insufficiency of that individual skirmishing capacity which enabled the Boers in similar predicaments to make one skilled man go as far as five unskilled men.
3. The contrast between the arme blanche and the rifle is unusually marked. Nomenclature is immaterial. All the work on the field was Cavalry work, not only in the broad sense of the term, but by the regular Cavalry’s standards. In essence, De Wet’s intercepting ambush in the Korn Spruit was the same kind of work as that done by the Cavalry themselves on the day before Paardeberg, and the same as that which they should have tried to do at Karee Siding. The projected, but abortive, counter-stroke upon the ambuscaders was Cavalry work. Piet de Wet’s rear attack and pursuit, and Alderson’s resistance to them, were both Cavalry work. The terrain was open.
We may add that De Wet’s whole enterprise and the rapidity, secrecy, and nerve with which he carried it out were a good example of the true Cavalry spirit. Whether we call De Wet a “partisan” or not makes no difference. If his good qualities constitute partisanship, every Cavalry officer, from the highest to the lowest, should be a partisan.
4. The absence of reconnaissance on the morning of the battle needs no comment. There were some exceptional reasons, which I need not go into, for a relaxation of normal precautions, but no valid excuse.
De Wet, in his characteristically impulsive style, wasted no time after his victory, but dashed off south, and on April 4 snapped up a post of 600 men at Reddersburg. Then, instead of raiding the communications of the main army, which would undoubtedly have been his best course, he succumbed to the Boer craving for sieges, and wasted more than a fortnight in investing Wepener with a force which increased to more than 7,000 men. Wepener, defended by 1,900 men, who were mainly mounted troops belonging to Brabant’s Colonial Force, made an excellent and successful defence until relieved by Hart and Brabant himself.
De Wet’s activity, however, had changed the whole military situation. The south-eastern Free Staters were up in arms to the estimated number of 10,000, and Roberts was compelled before proceeding farther to clear this flank. His design, however, was not merely to clear it, but to make the relief of Wepener the starting-point for an enveloping movement of great magnitude, and with overwhelming force. Three Infantry divisions joined directly or indirectly in the operations and large numbers of mounted men of all classes. First came some ill-knit and overcautious preliminary operations, which I need not describe; then French, with an Infantry division and two Cavalry brigades immediately under his hand, assumed general control over the British forces from April 22 onwards.
The critical day was April 24, when he endeavoured to surround and crush a force of 6,000 Boers posted near Dewetsdorp. The scheme on that day, as French planned it, was in general form a repetition of the Poplar Grove and Karee Siding schemes, and was made to hinge on the intercepting action of the two Cavalry brigades upon the Boer line of retreat. Inevitably, and from the same unvarying cause, the intercepting movement came to nothing, the Cavalry being easily checked by small Boer parties. Again and again, in reading of such incidents, we feel how unfair it was to brave men to have given them an armament and training which prevented them from showing their best qualities.
In the course of the earlier operations detachments of the newly-raised Yeomanry, brigaded under Rundle, were for the first time in action. They did tolerably well, considering their rawness and inexperience, and I think it is generally agreed that Rundle, in his original attack upon Dewetsdorp on April 20, with a greatly superior force, might have relied somewhat more on their aid, in association with his other mounted troops.
De Wet now ordered a general retreat north of all the south-eastern Free Staters. By the end of April that portion of the country was wholly in British hands, and on May 3 Roberts was able to begin the grand advance for which he had been so long preparing.