IV.—The Advance to Komati Poort.
President Steyn’s safe arrival in the north about the middle of August, after this perilous series of adventures, brings us somewhat prematurely to the last scene in the first great phase of the war. He came too late to be of use in averting the final dissolution of the Transvaal forces before the advance of Lord Roberts up the Delagoa Railway to the Portuguese frontier. But we must retrace our steps a little before we reach that point.
Since Diamond Hill (June 12) the Transvaal leaders had gradually abandoned all serious intention of defending the Delagoa line to extremities. Botha soon seems to have resigned himself to the eventual necessity of guerilla warfare, and during June sent off most of his commandos to their own districts, there to fight for their own homes, reserving for the defence of the Delagoa Railway only those burghers through whose districts it passed, together with the Police and most of his Artillery. For a month he held the Tigerpoort range of hills, fifteen to twenty miles east of Pretoria. Meanwhile the south-eastern men opposed Buller’s advance from the Natal border to Heidelberg, the northern men prepared to defend the Pietersburg Railway, and De la Rey organized the first of many formidable offensive revivals in his own district, the Western Transvaal, culminating on July 11 in the capture of the post at Zilikat’s Nek, in other small attacks, and in a general threat to Pretoria from the west. Botha, who had just been driven off the Tigerpoort range by a well-managed movement of mounted troops under Hutton and French (July 5 to 11), now saw a chance of an effective combination with De la Rey by a counter-attack upon the position just lost. Viljoen, with 2,000 men (against about 4,000 on our side), carried out this enterprise with considerable spirit on July 16, and came dangerously near success on our left at Witpoort. The situation was saved in this quarter by what the Official and Times narratives call a “charge” of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, though how near it came to being a mounted charge I am unable to discover.
These events, together with De Wet’s escape from the Brandwater Basin, further delayed the eastward British advance, which was eventually begun on July 23. Middelburg was captured with little difficulty on July 27, and then there was a halt of another three weeks, rendered necessary by the hunt of De Wet and many other minor elements of disturbance. During this period French, with several thousand mounted troops (his own Cavalry and Hutton’s mounted riflemen), held a semicircular outpost line fifty miles in extent to the eastward of Middelburg, and showed the same kind of skill and activity as he had exhibited at Colesberg in sparring with the Boer forces in front of him.
Buller, in the meantime, was marching northward from the Natal border with 9,000 men (including two mounted brigades) and 42 guns, and effected a junction with French on August 15. Belfast fell to the joint forces a few days later, and on the 27th, reinforced by an Infantry division to a total strength of nearly 19,000 men (of whom 4,800 were mounted), Roberts fought the last pitched battle of the regular war at Bergendal. Strange and characteristic climax it was! Exceeding all previous records in extension, Botha, with about 7,000 men, on an extreme estimate, and 20 guns, held a line of difficult mountainous country no less than fifty miles in extent from end to end, reaching from the approaches to Lydenburg on the north to the approaches to Barberton on the south. No more than twenty miles of this front, however, held at the most by 5,000 men, was concerned in the action.
Upon the extreme right of this position French, with two Cavalry brigades, together about 1,600 strong, made the normal wide turning movement against strong but lightly-held positions, and made it very vigorously and successfully; but it took him all day, so that he could not make the further projected sweep round the Boer rear.[[49]] Buller meanwhile assaulted the key to the Boer position—Bergendal Hill, on the left centre. This was a truly extraordinary episode in its proof of the terrific power of the modern rifle in the hands of disciplined men. The summit of the hill, about 200 yards by 100 yards in extent, was crowned with boulders, which made it a natural fort. It was bombarded with lyddite and shrapnel for three hours by thirty-eight guns, including heavy naval pieces and howitzers, until, as an historian puts it, it looked like Vesuvius in eruption. Then it was assaulted in the most intrepid style by a brigade of Infantry (1st Inniskilling Fusiliers and 2nd Rifle Brigade), who, before storming the crest, lost 120 officers and men, mainly, but not wholly, from the fire of the Bergendal burghers; for two or three other small detachments co-operated at long-range from neighbouring hill-tops. When all was over, it was found that the hill had been held by seventy-four men of the Johannesburg Police—mounted riflemen, be it noted. Thirty got away on their horses, twenty were captured alive, and the rest were killed or wounded. As an example of the truth that defensive and offensive power are correlatives of one another, it may be remarked that these same “Zarps,” under at least one of the same leaders (Pohlmann), had taken a leading part in the assault and capture of Nicholson’s Nek ten months earlier. The Police, we must remember, were the only regular disciplined force (gunners excepted) which the Boers possessed.
This cardinal success in the centre brought the battle—if battle it may be called—to an end. French could not pursue, and the pursuit of Buller’s Cavalry was ineffective.
This was Botha’s last resolute stand. His own and Steyn’s efforts together could not prevent the subsequent disintegration. Indeed, it is a remarkable proof of their ability and moral courage that during the next fortnight, with the help of some minor leaders like Kemp and Viljoen, and with the support of the most sturdy and patriotic burghers, they were able to present a decent show of resistance on the immense front from Lydenburg to Barberton and onwards; to avert anything in the nature of a decisive defeat in the field; and finally, when the crash came on the Portuguese frontier, to concentrate, and by perilous and exhausting flank marches to save from the wreckage, not only the acting executive Governments of both Republics, but substantial bodies of resolute men—the nucleus, in short, for nearly two more years of strenuous resistance.
It was here that the now inveterate habit on our part of overrating the importance of winning positions and of underrating the importance of defeating the Boers in person led to its most unfortunate results. The Portuguese frontier was the “touch-line.” Short of incarceration (and a large number of horseless and destitute men chose this course), there was no alternative but a wide flank march to the north across the British front, at first over the fever-stricken “low veld,” then over precipitous mountains whose spurs for a long distance were already held by our troops. Steyn, travelling light with 250 men, and starting on September 11, got through with ease. Botha and Viljoen, with 2,500 men, starting on the 17th, only just rounded Buller’s extreme left flank at a point thirty miles from the railway on September 26. All eventually arrived at Pietersburg, which became henceforth a workshop, a recruiting-ground, and an administrative centre whence plans for future hostilities were hatched. One of the young leaders present—Kemp of Krugersdorp—was in later days the first to put in systematic use those formidable charging tactics which did so much to prolong the war.
It is one of the ironies of the campaign that, with all the elaborate and extensive flank movements of mounted troops—often far too extensive and elaborate—which had characterized our operations in the past, we had not ready at this crisis, when its presence was of vital consequence, a compact, independent mounted force for the interception of these important Boer detachments.
But, in truth, in spite of a week’s explicit warning of Botha’s intended march, his escape and that of Steyn passed almost unnoticed. All eyes were fixed on a spectacle of seemingly irreparable ruin; of abandoned guns, stores, and rolling-stock; of burghers flying into foreign territory; of Kruger and his officials flying to Europe. The army, from Roberts downwards, and the whole outside world, seems to have interpreted these phenomena as signs that the war was practically over. At the time this was very natural, and this we should not forget when criticizing the error of judgment by the light of after-events.
Nor would it have been easy, even had the warning of our political agents received full attention, to arrange for the interception of Botha in addition to the other pre-occupations of the time. Buller had two Cavalry brigades on the northern flank, but they were scattered over a long series of posts. A few hundred mounted riflemen were with the central Infantry column on the railway; but most of the remaining mounted troops, in two columns composed of 1,000 mounted riflemen under Hutton, and 3,000 Cavalry and mounted riflemen under French, both well supplied with guns and auxiliary troops, had been employed since the 8th in marching on parallel routes through the mountains on the southern flank in order to clear this side for the central advance of the Infantry up the railway. On September 13 both arrived at their respective goals—Hutton at Kaapsche Hoop, French at Barberton, the terminus of a small branch railway. Both these marches, but especially the southernmost—that of French—though they met with slight opposition, merit high praise, and were a worthy culmination of the efforts of the mounted troops during the regular war. It is true that they scarcely raise our special issue, or raise it only to afford us new evidence against the arme blanche, for the terrain—steep, wild, and intricate mountains—was as unsuitable for the exercise of that weapon as the hedge-bound plains of England. But we can afford for a moment to forget our immediate issue in admiring the staunch endurance of all the troops alike, the nerve, energy, and self-reliance of French, and the admirable staff-work which, by assuring supplies and communications, enabled him to give full rein to his soldierly instincts.
CHAPTER X
THE GUERILLA WAR
September, 1900, to May, 1902.
Note.—For actions and operations mentioned in this chapter (part of which covers ground not yet dealt with by our Official Historians), the reader is referred to the Times History, vol. v.
So ended what is usually known as the “regular war.” In South Africa the expression had no precise significance. Regular war had been melting imperceptibly into guerilla war for some time past. The Boers were not dependent, as thickly peopled industrial communities are dependent, on their railways, capitals, and principal towns. The vast majority lived on the land, and the land was theirs, very little ravaged as yet, and, as to vast areas, still even unvisited. The guerilla war may truly be said to have begun in the Free State in March, 1900, after the capture of Bloemfontein, and in the Transvaal not later, at any rate, than July, when Botha, from necessity rather than from choice, sent most of his burghers to their own districts. Nor was the crash at Komati Poort followed by anything more than a partial lull in hostilities.
Over both the newly annexed Colonies we exercised no authority outside the range of our guns. In the greater part of the Transvaal, it is true, there were two months during which the burghers, like wasps, stung rarely unless they were disturbed; but in the sister state, De Wet’s return at the end of August, after the first “hunt,” had roused his countrymen to fresh offensive efforts. After some weeks of propaganda and reorganization he took the field on September 20, just when Roberts was approaching Komati Poort. A month later he was laying formal, though unsuccessful, siege, to a fortified town in the Transvaal—Frederikstad—and in Mid-November, undeterred by a sharp reverse at Bothaville (November 6), he was marching south through the Eastern Free State, besieging and, this time, capturing another fortified town—Dewetsdorp—and endeavouring to invade Cape Colony. By a great concerted effort, organized by Kitchener, and known as the second “De Wet hunt,” he was checked, but not before he had succeeded, early in December in throwing across the border bands under Kritzinger and Hertzog, which lit an inextinguishable flame of rebellion among the Dutch colonists.
Certain incidents in this period (September to November, 1900) call for special notice.
1. The march of 173 miles made by French’s Cavalry division, about 3,000 strong, across the Eastern Transvaal in October, with the object of “clearing the country.” This march revealed with startling clearness both the nature of the campaign which was beginning, and the incapacity of the Cavalry, armed and equipped as they were, to cope with it. Bands, which never exceeded a third and rarely exceeded a fifth or sixth of French’s strength, harassed the column all the way with vicious little attacks, which were repelled, but which met with no punishment, nor with any adequate tactical retaliation. The expedition achieved nothing, encouraged the enemy, and was attended by enormous losses of oxen and horses. It is true that numbers of other columns (the majority composed mainly of Infantry) were tramping about the country at this time with scarcely better results, and nearly all suffering from the disability imposed by heavy ox-transport. It is true also, that the country traversed by French presented peculiar difficulties in its remoteness from railways, and in the pugnacity of its burghers. But, with allowance for these considerations, the marked feature of the expedition, from the point of view of our inquiry, was the failure of the Cavalry to reap advantage, tactically, from occasions when the enemy sought a conflict.
2. A more hopeful omen for the future was afforded at about the same time in the Free State, by the action of Bothaville[[50]] (November 6, 1900), at the end of a long chase of De Wet by some columns of mounted riflemen under Charles Knox, after the Boer leader’s retreat from Frederikstad, and before his attempt to invade Cape Colony. His laager and guns were surprised and attacked at close range in brilliant style by a small advance-guard composed of only sixty-seven regular Mounted Infantry, who held their ground until reinforced, and brought about the capture of several guns, much transport, and 100 men, after a fiercely contested fight of some hours’ duration. This exploit was something wholly new. Nothing exactly like it had been done by our mounted troops since the war began. Some excellent work, too, though never quite good enough for the purpose, was done by the same and other mounted columns in the subsequent hunt of De Wet, arising out of his attempted raid on Cape Colony (November 24 to December 13, 1900). Co-operation was far better, and tackling power higher than in the “hunt” of the preceding August.
3. Charges.—We note the Boer mounted charge occurring—
(a) On at least one small occasion during the march of the Cavalry division referred to above. I have no details, only a bare mention of the circumstance in the “Official History” (vol. iii., p. 432). The movement was repelled.
(b) On November 6, at Komati River, in the course of some operations under Smith-Dorrien, near the Delagoa Railway, where Boers, firing from the saddle, charged clean through a rear-guard of Canadian mounted troops (Times History, vol. v., p. 51; “Official History,” vol. iii., p. 442).
(c) In the second “De Wet hunt.” This, I think, was the first example in the war, on the Boer side, of what I may call the penetrating charge, after the Klip Drift pattern, that is, designed to pierce a screen for ulterior purposes, not to inflict immediate loss on the enemy. It occurred at the close of the hunt, when, at Springhaan’s Nek (December 14, 1900), the Boers, accompanied by a mass of waggons, burst through the Thabanchu line of fortified posts, which had been strengthened at the point attacked by small detachments of mounted riflemen. It is worth while, though I have not the space, to examine the incident side by side with the Klip Drift charge, noting relative numbers, size of target, ground, and the effect of fire upon men and animals in rapid movement (Times History, vol. v., pp. 40–42. Not mentioned in “Official History”).
(d) A successful little charge, this time by Britons, occurred on the same day in another part of the field, at Victoria Nek, where a detached Boer force was attacked and very roughly handled by the Welsh Yeomanry and the 16th Lancers. The “Official History” makes no mention of the episode, and my own information is scanty. Some of the Yeomanry, it is said, used clubbed rifles. Whether the Lancers used their swords I do not know. As to clubbed rifles, contrast the Boer plan of firing from the saddle (Times History, vol. v., pp. 41–42).
(e) On the British side again, Bothaville (referred to above) was certainly on the border-line of charges. The advance-guard dismounted at something like point-blank range. So few in numbers, they would have gained little by riding home, and might have defeated their own object. As it was, they achieved their object, and that is all that matters, whether it is Infantry, Cavalry, or mounted riflemen who are charging.
My digression has run to greater length than I intended. There was no pause in the current of Boer aggression. No sooner had De Wet turned his back on the Orange River than the long-prepared offensive revival in the Transvaal was carried into effect. Viljoen’s enterprises against the Delagoa Railway towards the end of November had heralded the storm, which, during the early part of December, broke with violence in the western district, where the Buffelspoort convoy was destroyed (December 2, 1900), and De la Rey defeated Clements at Nooitgedacht (December 13, 1900). The revival spread to the south-east, where several towns on the Natal border were attacked, and culminated in the north-east, with Viljoen’s capture of Helvetia, on December 31, and Botha’s simultaneous midnight attacks of January 5 upon the garrisons of the Delagoa Railway, one of which, that on Belfast, came perilously near success.
Kitchener, who had assumed the chief command in South Africa on November 29, 1900, just when the Free State revival was declining, and the Transvaal outbreak was beginning, was faced with an extraordinarily difficult and complicated problem. He had to cope with a new national spirit among the Boers, emanating from men who were wholly unconnected with the old Kruger régime, and gathering strength from the elimination, by surrender or voluntary exile, of the supporters of that régime. The new national spirit took practical shape in a new military spirit, one of vigorous offence, conducted by men who represented what, beyond all question now, was the most formidable type of soldier in the world—the mounted rifleman—men who were equally at home in defending or assaulting entrenched positions, and in attack or defence in the open field.
Our own resources for dealing with the situation were manifestly inadequate. It was not only that there had been visible in some of the recent events disquieting signs of feebleness in defence, leading to unjustifiable surrenders. This evil was largely due to the lassitude and staleness which affected the army in general. The really grave feature was our inability to retaliate effectively against these aggressive enterprises, an inability strikingly illustrated by the long but futile operations which were set on foot in the Western Transvaal after Nooitgedacht. The truth came like a flash, pitilessly illuminating past shortcomings, that all along we had been conquering the country, not the race, winning positions, not battles. Psychological causes apart, our cardinal military weakness had always lain in the mounted arm, not in numbers, except at the very first, but in quality. Unless we carry self-deception so far as either to eliminate from the calculation the great masses of Infantry who had borne the main brunt of the regular campaign and had suffered far the heaviest losses, or, on the other hand, to count the enemy twice over, once as opponents of the Infantry, and again as opponents of our mounted troops; unless we perpetrate one of these errors, we must candidly admit that we had had our full chance of securing decisive victories through the semi-independent agency of mounted men. The figures and facts to which I drew attention in sketching the main operations from Paardeberg to Komati Poort prove this conclusively. We had missed our chance, and the consequences of missing it, obscured at the time by a long record of successful invasion and occupation, were now apparent. The war, obviously, was to be a mounted war. In the last resort nothing but efficiency in the same formidable type which the Boers represented could enable us to conquer them. Infantry would still perform the task of holding the ground won; they would also perform many valuable subsidiary duties in the field, but always of a defensive or semi-defensive character. For offence, whether for finding the enemy and forcing him to action, or for beating him when he sought action himself, mounted riflemen, good enough and numerous enough, were an indispensable necessity. In this respect, what were our prospects?
We had evolved our type of mounted rifleman, which, in essentials, followed the Boer type, but in practice fell short of the ideal. The Cavalry, who from the first should have inspired and furthered the educational process, were only just beginning to substitute the rifle for the carbine, a change which must, I imagine, have been finally prompted by the experience, alluded to above, of their divisional march across the Eastern Transvaal, in October, 1900. So far as I know, the first occasion on which any considerable force of Cavalry carried rifles in the field was in the great driving operations which began in that same district, and again under French, at the end of January, 1901. The lance was already discarded, and eventually the sword also was discarded, but not until many months later. There seems to have been no simultaneous abandonment of swords by all Cavalry regiments alike. The change was gradual. In dwelling once again upon the backwardness of Cavalry training, I must explain once again, for fear of misunderstanding, that I am criticizing them by a standard special to themselves, the only standard appropriate to a professional force which had been in the field for more than a year. I need scarcely say that their record in the guerilla war, as in all the war, is honourable, and in many respects admirable; but by contrast with what they might have become without the arme blanche habit and training, it is comparatively negative and tame. With a few trifling exceptions they escape the reverses which so often befell their less disciplined and less experienced irregular comrades, but they do not stand out pre-eminent in that aggressive energy which was the great tradition of their arm. In the matter of leadership we find them supplying many excellent column commanders—men like Byng, Briggs, Scobell, and Rimington, to name only a few—but on the whole they can scarcely be said to have surpassed other arms of the service in the production of good leaders. Needless to say, good leading never came from any other source than oblivion of steel methods and unreserved reliance on the rifle.
The regular Mounted Infantry had made rapid strides in efficiency, in spite of the extraordinary difficulties with which they had to grapple—inexperience in riding and horse-management, dearth of officers, hurried organization, absence of common tradition and esprit de corps. But they had been worked with great severity, had shrunk greatly from the ordinary wastage of war, and could only be reinforced by the same unscientific and wasteful methods by which they had been raised—that is, by abstraction from Infantry battalions, which, in their turn, lost in efficiency from the process.
The prospect was even worse with the irregulars, Home and Colonial. All had worked hard, and most had done exceedingly well, considering their inexperience and the faults inseparable from improvised unprofessional corps. In sheer fighting efficiency the best of the seasoned Colonials, South African, Australasian and Canadian, had undoubtedly excelled all other mounted troops. Like the self-made soldiers of the American Civil War, they had seemed by intuition to grasp the possibilities of a union of the rifle with the horse. But the irregular mounted army was dissolving in Kitchener’s hands. Enlisted for limited terms, the various corps, Yeomanry included, had reached, or were soon to reach, their limit. It was necessary to forego their accumulated experience, to issue fresh appeals for volunteers, and to reconstruct this part of the army from top to bottom. The thing was done, but the stamp of new men enlisted (for there were many re-enlistments), whether from Home or the Colonies, and in spite of higher pay, was never again so good as of old. This deterioration was especially noticeable in some of the minor South African corps, whether raised for general purposes, or for the special purpose of acting as a local militia for the defence of Cape Colony. There was one marked exception to the general rule. The South African Constabulary, recruited from all parts of the Empire, and designed to be a permanent force, obtained the cream of the recruits.
Kitchener’s first reconstruction of the volunteer mounted army was not final. Limited terms again ran out, as the war dragged on, and fresh contingents replaced time-expired men. But the sources never ran dry, and on balance the strength tended to increase.
The constant changes and fluctuations make it exceedingly difficult to obtain accurate numerical estimates of our total mounted strength (regular and irregular) at any given time during this period. But we may say with approximate accuracy that in June, 1901, when all the volunteer mounted troops first appealed for in December, 1900, were in the field, and when the professional element had been reinforced, the total mounted strength was about 80,000, of whom 14,000 were regular Cavalry, and 12,000 regular Mounted Infantry (now divided into 27 battalions). The new contingent of Yeomanry numbered about 16,000; the South African Constabulary 7,500, and the Australasian contingents 5,000. Exclusive of the Cape Colony militia (District Mounted Troops and Town Guards), South Africa itself provided about 24,000 men enrolled in active corps. These are the full nominal figures. The effective fighting strength of the same units, on June 19 (according to an official state), was, within a man or two, 60,000.
The total strength of the whole army at the same period was about 244,000; “effective fighting strength” (according to the same official state), 164,000.
During the last year of the war, from June, 1901, to June, 1902, the regular Cavalry increased, in round numbers, to 16,000; the regular Mounted Infantry to 15,000; the Australasian and Canadian contingents to 13,000; and the South African Constabulary to 9,500; while in the last five months a wholly new mounted corps, eventually 2,300 strong, was formed from the personnel of the Royal Artillery. By this time the second contingent of Yeomanry had dwindled considerably, and a third was formed, 7,000 strong, most of whom did not arrive in time to fight. At the end of the war, with the active South African corps and the District Mounted Troops reckoned in, there must have been 100,000 mounted men in the field, without counting the Boer levies, known as National Scouts and Orange River Colony Volunteers. The whole army numbered about a quarter of a million.
While this progressive increase went on in British strength, and predominantly in mounted strength, the Boers steadily diminished. Here, too, periodical estimates are extraordinarily difficult. Within the two annexed states, not only enrolled burghers of fighting age, but every surviving male, except boys below, say, fourteen, and infirm old men, now had to be reckoned as potential enemies. The rebel element in Cape Colony was an indeterminate quantity. The foreign element gradually disappeared. If we accept the calculation of the Official Historians, that from first to last in the whole war, with the inclusion of rebels and foreigners, a grand total of 87,365 persons took arms against us at one time or another; if, at the other end of the scale, we bear in mind the number of men who laid down their arms at the conclusion of the war—namely, 21,256, and if we examine the intermediate statistics of surrenders, captures, and casualties, the rough conclusion may be drawn that at Christmas, 1900, we had still about 55,000 potential enemies to reckon with, and in June, 1901, about 45,000. During the last year the average monthly reduction was about 2,000.
But, apart from estimates of potential strength, the numbers actually on a war-footing at any given moment were very small—rarely more than 15,000—and sometimes as low probably as 9,000. No single body of men larger than 3,000—and this figure was exceedingly rare—ever again took the field.
The reduction in total numbers was one of quantity, not of quality. The weakest, morally or physically, were weeded out. The fittest survived and became continuously more formidable. That is what gives such extraordinary interest to the mounted operations of the guerilla war. How the small nucleus of veterans with limited resources and without external help managed to hold out for a year and three-quarters after the crash at Komati Poort against an Empire drawing upon inexhaustible resources of men, money, and material, and how, though losing their independence, they succeeded in obtaining terms which ensured to them in the near future political equality with their conquerors, is a story I have endeavoured elsewhere to take my share in telling. In these pages I have to confine myself, as closely as possible, to my own narrow issue. But it is necessary, once more, to say a few words on the larger aspects of the campaign.
First let us rid our minds of the fallacy that guerilla war is a wholly distinct thing in kind from regular war. It is nothing of the sort. War is a science whose fundamental principles are constant, however wide and numerous the variations of circumstance under which it is conducted. Perhaps I may be allowed to quote what I wrote on this point in my preface to vol. v. of the Times History:
“Whether the enemy be based on rich and populous towns, linked by a network of railways, or on nomadic knots of waggons, filled from half-ravaged mealy fields, whether he draws ammunition from well-equipped arsenals, or gleans it from deserted camping-grounds, whether he manœuvres in armies 100,000 strong, or in commandos 500 strong, the problem of grappling with that enemy and forcing him to admit defeat is in essentials the same. Moreover, it is the peculiar interest of guerilla war that it illuminates much that is obscure and difficult in regular war. Just as the Röntgen rays obliterate fleshy tissues, and reveal the bony structure, so in the incidents of guerilla war there may be seen, stripped of a mass of secondary detail, the few dominant factors which sway the issue of great battles and great campaigns. Subjected to close analysis, one of Kitchener’s combinations may be perceived to have succeeded or failed from the same causes which dictated the success or failure of Marlborough’s combinations. It is equally true that in many of the short and sharp actions described in this volume there may be distinguished, following one another with kinematographic rapidity and vividness, the same phases through which long struggles on historic battle-fields have passed.”
I repeat these words here because, among the many perversions of history for which the arme blanche school is indirectly responsible, none is more widespread than the vague idea, for it cannot be called a reasoned opinion, that the guerilla war may be ignored for instructional purposes. This is only an insidious extension of the proposition that the whole war was so “peculiar” as to afford no condemnation of the arme blanche; but the guerilla war is supposed to lend itself especially well to the propagation of that fallacy. So mercurial and intangible was the enemy (the suggestion is), so incalculable and irresponsible his movements, so numerous and safe the lairs from which he could gather, and to which he could disperse, so complete his independence of bases and communications, that it is useless to look for strategical, much less for tactical and technical lessons. To speak plainly, all this is pernicious nonsense. Every soldier knows in his heart that no success in action was ever gained on either side but by high individual efficiency in the men, by clever and spirited leading, and by putting into practice ordinary military principles. When we compare the Boers, in the way of legitimate metaphor, to wasps or mosquitoes, do not let us vainly imagine that their tactical methods were no more highly developed than those of that class of insect. A fortiori let us reject Mr. Goldman’s strange delusion that they practised evasion so perpetually and successfully as not to give our Cavalry—to say nothing of our mounted riflemen—a fair chance for the “discharge of Cavalry duties.” Neither sporadic sniping nor persistent evasion would have enabled the Boers to maintain their long resistance. They needed victories, however small, not only to replenish their ammunition, but to sustain their spirit and they could only obtain them by careful preparation, bold execution, and disciplined tactical methods. In war you can get nothing for nothing. However familiar the ground to you, and however great the disabilities under which your enemy labours, if you are going to do damage of any consequence you must concentrate a disciplined force, however small; feed it when concentrated; make plans, often concerted plans needing accurate co-operation; scout boldly and intelligently; hold your force well in hand and in close order up to the limit of prudence; and when the hour for action comes, rely on the valour and skill of your men to execute a definite tactical scheme in a coherent, disciplined fashion. In this way only—a way old as war itself—were actions, small or great, won in South Africa either by ourselves or by the Boers.
As to the arme blanche, whatever opportunities, if any, the past had afforded, those opportunities still existed. If it had been possible to exert shock in the past, it was equally possible now. That the numbers engaged on either side in any given action were on the average smaller made no difference. Nor did the Boer way of fighting, though it improved greatly in vigour, change in any essential particular. They had always fought and still fought in such a way as to make the rifle absolute arbiter of tactics. The secondary characteristics which lend such peculiar difficulties to guerilla war had not the remotest bearing on this question of weapons for horsemen. What bearing could they conceivably have? The problem still was to thrash the enemy whether he sought action or declined action. If it was a case of finding and forcing to battle an evasive foe, the weapon which inspired most ardour and nerve in the search was the best weapon. If the foe chose to accept action, or himself forced an action, the weapon which decided the issue was the best weapon. Combat is the one and only test, and combats were innmerable. Whether the Boers came to the scene of combat by train, or from some base-town, or whether they had been summoned suddenly from the farms of a certain limited district, was immaterial to the efficacy of weapons. In accepting combat, whether with little or great ardour, they accepted all the risks and penalties of combat. That is the only healthy way to look at the matter if we are to gain true instruction from the war, and not merely to drug our minds with the complacent thought that the difficulties were immense, and that on the whole we did as well as we could be expected to do.
The whole of the South African War, and the guerilla war in particular, was a superb school for mounted troops. It was an exceedingly hard school, but hard schools are the best. Our soldiers, and above all our Cavalrymen, ought to thank Providence on their knees for having given them this unique and unrivalled opportunity for practice in their art within a ring-fence, so to speak, subject to no external disturbance, and against an enemy who, however formidable in quality, could never be reinforced, and were bound to dwindle in numbers.
Did we tackle the guerilla war in such a way as to make the most our schooling? I am afraid we did not. I am not at all sure that, by the time we had reached that stage, we had the power to do so; but however that may be, when we are looking for lessons, let us ruthlessly eliminate bad or doubtful precedents, and fix our eyes on good precedents.
Our principal weakness was not a new one, though it assumed a new shape. We had always aimed too much at the positions and possessions of the enemy, and too little at his personnel. It was the same now. His new base henceforward was the land, and we made it one of our principal endeavours, if not our primary endeavour, to cut off that great and fruitful source of supply. Roberts, as early as September, 1900, had enjoined the destruction of crops, and, under certain conditions, of farms, though comparatively little had been accomplished when he quitted the command. Kitchener initiated a plan of systematic devastation, with its corollary, the systematic deportation of non-combatants to concentration camps. With the ethical and political aspects of this measure we are not now concerned. Its military result was to retard the education and restrict the fighting efficacy of our mounted troops by setting before them two incompatible aims: that of grappling with the enemy, and that of destroying his crops and cattle and deporting his families. The latter aim, which was secondary, too often tended to become primary, simply because it was the easiest to put into practice, and human nature is prone to follow lines of least resistance.
Another doubtful precedent, closely allied with the last, and only to be justified as a pis aller to meet an immensely difficult case, was the system of “drives”—the system, that is, of sweeping defined tracts of country with large groups of columns, according to formal plans worked out in a central staff department, and controlled in execution from that department. This, broadly speaking, was Kitchener’s method of dealing with the guerilla war. He varied it with other methods, with concerted movements of a minor and less centralized character, with the night-raid system, the constabulary post system, and with the work of independent columns, while periodical eruptions of spontaneous Boer activity often compelled him to retaliate with any rough-and-ready means that came to hand. A vast amount of good independent or semi-independent work was done in one way or another by enterprising British leaders, but on the whole it is true to say that the drive was our principal weapon. Now, the spirit of the drive was diametrically opposed to the spirit which should actuate ardent mounted troops. It sacrificed dash to symmetry, and it gave no scope for surprise, the soul of mounted effort. Designed to cope with evasion, it bred habits which reacted on enterprise just when enterprise had its best opportunities—that is, when the Boers took the offensive. Except in weeding out weak-kneed burghers and in facilitating devastation, it proved sterile until reinforced by its complement, the block-house system. This system added physical barriers to human barriers and provided a far-flung network of communications and supply centres, by the aid of which, in addition to the railways and base-towns, enormous numbers of men could be manœuvred in driving lines, fifty or sixty miles in length, with mathematical precision and speed. But the system was not ready for application in its complete form until February, 1902, after sixteen months of guerilla war, and even this huge and elaborate mechanism, although by a throttling, starving process it eventually brought the Boers to their knees, failed to achieve the supreme object of war, the defeat of the enemy in the open field. To the last, veterans who still possessed horses and the will to escape, overleapt the strongest barriers, whether animate or inanimate, and to the last, wherever pressure was relaxed, dealt biting blows at isolated columns.
It is easy to point out the drawbacks of Kitchener’s military policy. But it is difficult to see how, with his professional mounted troops still so backward, and with the raw levies which constituted so large a portion of his mounted army, he could have adopted any other policy. As it was, he took great risks and incurred substantial penalties in throwing prematurely into the field untrained troops. The fact, about which there can be no question, that during the last year of the war the enemy replenished his ammunition almost entirely from British sources, and at the end had largely re-armed himself with Lee-Enfield rifles, is proof enough by itself of the penalties incurred. The most we can say in criticism of Kitchener is that he might have done more, as the troops gained confidence and efficiency—and they did gain both, rapidly and continuously—to temper the rigidity of his excessively centralized system. Even here we are on debatable ground. His genius was for organization; his countrymen profited by that genius, and it ill becomes them to cavil at the defects which were its inevitable accompaniment. A weaker man, actuated by the theoretically higher aim of educating his mounted troops on ideal lines, at whatever cost, might very well have failed miserably. We can obtain a rough criterion of what this education meant by a study of the guerilla war in Cape Colony, where devastation and deportation were out of the question, where drives were barely feasible, though they were sometimes tried, and where the single object of finding and fighting the rebel bands stood out unobscured. With full allowance for the immense difficulties of the problem, the results cannot be regarded as satisfactory.
In summing up the whole matter we must remember that two great factors—one military, the other moral—exercised an influence upon events which Kitchener, beyond a certain point, was powerless to modify. The military factor was simply the initial inferiority of our troops to the Boers as mounted riflemen. At bottom, the excessive driving tendency was promoted by the same cause as the tendency during the regular war towards disproportionately wide turning movements, as opposed to direct aggressive tackling. The idea was to circumvent, not to attack; to trap, not to pierce. Similarly with reconnaissance. This, by the time Kitchener took the command, had become almost a lost art. To revive it, in the exacting conditions, was beyond the power of a Commander-in-Chief. We came to rely almost wholly on outside agencies—natives and Boer spies—for our intelligence, and on central agencies for the diffusion of this intelligence. This was a fatal precedent for our Cavalry in future wars. Naturally, the effect was to favour centrally organized drives and to discourage that highest form of enterprise which inspires men who use their own eyes to secure opportunities for their own weapons. What is the weapon which not only decides the combat but aids the scout to use his eyes? Everywhere and always, in Manchuria as in South Africa, the rifle.
I touched on the moral factor in my last chapter. The Boers had the highest possible moral stimulus—that of defending their homes and nationalities. We had no motive so stimulating. Racial hatred would have been the only stimulus correspondingly strong, but we had none. The Boers improved on acquaintance. We had taken up arms to secure the political equality of our countrymen, and we had already secured that object beyond question, and annexation as well. To go farther, and aim at so cowing the Boer national spirit as to gain a permanent political ascendancy for ourselves was an object beyond our power or will to achieve, and beyond the power or will of any free democracy or confederation of free democracies of the British Imperial type to achieve. Peaceable political fusion under our own flag was the utmost we could secure. That meant a conditional Boer surrender, on a promise of future autonomy. The unconditional surrender which Lord Milner was anxious to obtain, however long and bitter a struggle it entailed, could scarcely have led to peaceable fusion. The only other alternative, feasible possibly, but outside discussion or contemplation, was the permanent expatriation of all the most vigorous elements in the two Boer races. Kitchener grasped the truth as soon as he took command. That his own spontaneous instinct as a soldier was towards sharp, mercilessly decisive blows in the field he had shown clearly enough at Paardeberg. But that opportunity and many others had been lost, never to return. From a soldier’s point of view he saw the insuperable difficulties at this hour of attempting, with the material now at his command, to deal blows sharp and heavy enough to destroy the Boer national spirit. Hence his rather mechanical military system, aiming at slow attrition rather than fierce aggression; hence his schemes for dealing with the civil population; and hence his political policy, which was to obtain at the earliest moment, but without the least relaxation of strong military effort—indeed, with a daily intensification of those efforts—a settlement on agreed terms. The Boers, clinging desperately to their independence, held out against any settlement whatever, conditional or unconditional, until May, 1902. Meanwhile the task of inducing them to recognize the inevitable was not one which evoked, or could be expected to evoke, any marked degree of military enthusiasm. There was a great deal of very natural caution among commanders in the field, increased by the ever-present impression that the war was on the point of ending and by a well-grounded reluctance to make a bold use of new troops against veterans. It was useless for Kitchener to enjoin daring and enterprise if he could not get his subordinates to accept the necessary responsibility. There is no doubt that some of his genuine efforts in this direction met with inadequate reply. But, again, we cannot blink the fact that the responsibility, as events showed, was very heavy, and from purely military causes. The net result was that the strongest will in South Africa exerted its full and legitimate influence, and produced a military system based mainly on organization and numbers, rather than on expert capacity in normal field operations.
Raids.—It was natural, therefore, that during the guerilla war sound lessons for the future should come mainly from the Boer side. In strategy—so far as the word is applicable to the guerilla war—they had little to teach us; but that little is not unimportant. Beyond the simple policy of distracting our efforts and alleviating their own distress by outbreaks timed so as to relieve one harassed district at the expense of another less harassed, they had only one consistent strategical object—that, namely, of feeding the rebellion in Cape Colony by successive small invasions. The instinct was sound. Infinite embarrassment came of it and a drain on our mounted troops, which was constant and severe. The principal raids by which this policy was carried out—(1) that of Hertzog and Kritzinger, December, 1900, to January, 1901; (2) that of Christian de Wet, January to March, 1901; (3) that of Smuts, August to September, 1901—are well worth careful study as examples of what small numbers of determined mounted riflemen can do, even when burdened, as De Wet was, with heavy transport, in traversing great tracts of country through hosts of enemies for a strategical purpose. No. 2 led to the third and greatest “De Wet hunt”—an episode packed with excitement and dramatic interest from beginning to end. No. 3—the ride of Smuts with 340 men from the Gatsrand (West Transvaal) to Cape Colony—merits even closer attention.
We must add to the list of raids Botha’s attempted invasion of Natal—September to October, 1901—which was also an instructive example for future wars, regular or irregular. Botha failed in what from the first was a hopeless undertaking, but he showed audacity and nerve, not only in tactical aggression, but in extricating himself from envelopment by immensely superior forces on his return journey. Both for making and checking such raids—and we must include under the same general heading the previous “hunts” and De Wet’s early raids upon the railway—rifle-power is everything. In Chapter XIV. I shall contrast the abject failure of the Russian Cavalry in similar enterprises owing to lack of rifle-power with the rare but brilliant Japanese successes. Kimberley and the American Civil War drive home the same lesson.
Night Attacks.—These were numerous, and prove conclusively that in this class of enterprise small, thoroughly disciplined forces have good chances of success against troops who fall short in the slightest degree in vigilance and sound outpost work. We may divide the attacks roughly into two classes—those against mobile forces encamped for the night, and those against more or less permanently fortified posts or towns. Of the former class, one of the most brilliant, because it was undertaken against the wariest of wary veterans, was that of Colonel Scobell upon Lotter’s rebel commando at Bouwer’s Hoek (Cape Colony) on September 4, 1901. A Cavalry regiment—the 9th Lancers—and the Cape Mounted Rifles shared in the assault, which led to the only complete and unqualified success we ever obtained in Cape Colony. Another plucky exploit was that of Major Shea and a detachment of South Australians, who attacked Smuts at Grootvlei on the night of August 1, 1901, just as that clever young leader (for once caught napping) was beginning his ride to Cape Colony.
The chief Boer successes of the same type were at Wilmansrust (June 12, 1901), Quaggafontein (September 20, 1901), and Tweefontein (December 24–25, 1901). Careless outpost work by irregular troops was responsible for all three reverses. On the first two occasions camps on the level were rushed and overpowered instantaneously; but Tweefontein, besides illustrating stratagem and stalking skill, is also suggestive of the risks taken by a force which attacks in the dark. De Wet’s men scaled a precipitous cliff to storm the British camp, and, in doing so, overlooked a strong picket ensconced below the crest on the opposite side. It is possible that if reinforcements to the hill had come as promptly as they might have come, this picket, which was eventually discovered and overpowered, might have served as a useful point d’appui for a counter-stroke. At night, in the confusion of a sudden assault, the slightest stand made by a handful of determined men is likely to bewilder and daunt the enemy.
Lake Chrissie (February 5, 1901) and Moedwil (September 30, 1901) were finely conceived and finely executed night attacks by Botha and De la Rey respectively against columns under Smith-Dorrien in the one case and Kekewich in the other. Both were repelled in the most spirited fashion, but in both there were moments of extreme danger. At Langerwacht (February 23, 1902) there was a very dramatic and exciting night combat, when De Wet, to avoid envelopment in one of our great drives of the latest model type, burst through the cordon of entrenched pickets with a horde of waggons, carts, cattle, and non-combatants. There were several other episodes of the same type at that period.
Nooitgedacht (December 13, 1900) may also be placed in the category of night attacks. De la Rey’s first and unsuccessful attack was delivered in pitch darkness; the subsequent assault of Beyers in the grey of early dawn.
All the above night attacks were upon the camps of mobile forces, but there were many others upon fortified posts and towns. Helvetia (December 29, 1900) and the small post at Modderfontein (January 30, 1901) were stormed in darkness. At Vryheid (December 11, 1900) an outlying post and the Mounted Infantry camp were rushed under the same circumstances, though the main position held out gallantly. Belfast (January 7, 1901) had a similar, but a more dangerous, experience, losing a strongly held outlying post and two entrenched posts, all defended with great tenacity, shortly after midnight and in misty weather. But the mist and darkness eventually favoured the defence. Viljoen and Botha, in endeavouring to unite their forces against the inner defences, lost their way, and had to retire baffled. The six other attacks on the garrisons of a section of railway forty miles in extent, made simultaneously on this same night, were carried out with marvellous punctuality, but were all gallantly repulsed. In the Western Transvaal, at a later date, De la Rey’s unsuccessful attack on Lichtenburg (March 2, 1901) was begun and carried on for several hours in the dark.
One of the most thrilling episodes of this class was at Itala (September 25, 1901), the frontier post under Colonel Chapman, which Botha struck at when he was trying to raid Natal. An outlying post on the peak of Itala Mountain was taken by a sudden coup de main at midnight, and the fight, fiercely contested on both sides, raged round the central position until dawn and throughout the following day. At nightfall there was a lull, during which each side concluded that the other was irresistible, and both retired! Prospect, a neighbouring frontier fort, was also attacked on the night of the 25th, but held its own with ease.
Columns on the march were very rarely attacked in complete darkness. The only case I know of is that of Yzer Spruit (February 24, 1902), where De la Rey ambushed a convoy, beginning his attack before the dawn. Attacks in twilight were common.
Scrutinizing these incidents with a view to our special inquiry, let us note three points:
1. This is of general application—that is, to day or night attacks. All mounted troops should, in the art of entrenchment, be as nearly as possible the equals of Infantry. Though regular Cavalry were not, I think, concerned in any of the above incidents, the kind of work involved, whether in attack or defence, was work which normally falls to Cavalry in all modern war. Troops who cannot make entrenchments will never be able to storm them.[[51]]
At this moment the regular Cavalry are supposed to be able both to attack and defend entrenched positions. “There are certain difficulties in modern war,” admits “Cavalry Training” on page 186, “which cannot be overcome by mounted action”—that is, by shock action. This action, it is explained, “is precluded against an enemy posted behind entrenchments or occupying intersected or broken ground,” or “an extended position,” etc. In other words, the Cavalry are expected to be able to do the same offensive work as Infantry. Can they do it? How far could they do it in South Africa? Similarly in defence. They are “to deny important points to the enemy” by fire-action (and presumably to deny them effectively), and on page 215 (“The Defence”) they are “often to be called upon to occupy localities for defence, especially in small bodies.... Whenever time and means permit, the position should be put into a state of defence; the preparations, however, should be limited to those of the simplest kind.” The italics are mine. It is thus that, after South Africa and Manchuria, we persist in ruinous error. One thinks of Majuba, of Spion Kop, of Nicholson’s Nek, Dewetsdorp, Nooitgedacht, and only too many other examples of the Nemesis which attends “defences of the simplest kind,” no matter by what class of troops they are made and used. The compilers of the section entitled “Dismounted Action” should have taken to heart the lesson of Zilikat’s Nek (July 11, 1900), where regular Cavalry were concerned, both in defence and in attack. Of course, behind all the compromise which pervades the section there lies the fatal obsession that openings for shock action must at all costs be allowed for, and that, in defence, entrenchments should not be so good as to encourage Cavalry to rely on them, to the prejudice of “mounted action,” which in Cavalry language means shock. This is to disregard the facts of war. Why did not the Cavalry execute shock charges at or after the Boer assaults on Wagon Hill? They were there, fighting bravely enough on foot in defence, but the counter-charges were made by Infantry and irregular horsemen acting dismounted.
2. Nothing, not even the strongest entrenchments, can replace vigilance. Here the Cavalry showed an excellent example to their irregular comrades. Cavalry outposts were rarely surprised, and, I think, there was only one case of any consequence of a homogeneous Cavalry force being completely surprised in daylight.
3. Mark the skill and confidence with which the Boers arranged for the disposal of their led horses in their night attacks, whether on columns or posts. Of the cases I have quoted, in no instance that I can discover did they suffer any appreciable loss in horses, or fail, if repulsed, to get away safely on horseback. One of the many fallacies dissipated by the South African War is the idea that mounted riflemen can never have full confidence in attack, because, if they dismount, they perpetually think too much about the line of retreat to their horses. In darkness, one would think, this feeling, if it existed, would be particularly strong. But whether by day or night, this was neither a Boer nor a British weakness.
Night Raids.—These were a British speciality, and must come under a separate heading, for they were not strictly night attacks, but long nocturnal expeditions designed to culminate in a surprise attack at dawn upon a Boer laager. Fond themselves of night enterprises, the Boers were also very sensitive to attack while in laager. This weakness began to be exploited by some of our mounted leaders in the early part of 1901. The first noteworthy night raid was on April 13 of that year at Goedvooruitzicht, where Sir Henry Rawlinson surprised the laager of Wolmarans at dawn, and captured his transport and a gun, though it is true that the Boers retaliated with some effect later on in the day. Other small raids followed in various quarters, and in August and September Colonel Benson, R.A., with the assistance of Colonel Woolls-Sampson, operating with a single column in the Eastern Transvaal, brought the system to high perfection. After his death in the unhappy reverse of Bakenlaagte, General Bruce Hamilton successfully carried on the same system in the same district, though with very much larger forces.
These raids supply most valuable instruction as to the best way to transport a mounted force with speed and secrecy over long distances of hostile country at night. Immense distances were sometimes covered with unerring exactitude of direction. Nerve in leadership and the highest standard of discipline among all ranks were required, both for the march across country and for the deployment at dawn for attack. Ability to imitate these marches would be invaluable in any sort of war. But there are reservations to be made. Accurate information and skilled guides were absolutely essential to success. Both, in the case of these raids, came from extraneous sources—namely, Boer spies and native scouts. These are luxuries which we are not likely to get in future wars. We shall have to rely mainly, if not solely, on our own eyes and wits. Nor were the material results of the raids commensurate with the efforts put forth—at any rate, in the later period when very large forces were used. Much transport was captured, but most of the prisoners taken were horseless men, who formed a proportion of every commando in the field. There was rarely any fighting. If a thorough surprise was effected, all who could fly fled; but it was noticeable that all through the raiding period, and in the raided district, the Boers were a match for us in ordinary daylight actions. On the other hand, the nervous worry and exhaustion caused by the raids had a very powerful moral effect upon the burghers.
Artillery with Mounted Troops.—I pointed out in Chapter VII. the disadvantages of allowing mounted troops of any class, acting independently, to rely too much on the support of Artillery. Guns weaken surprise, which is the soul of mounted effort. This truth came out with increasing clearness during the guerilla war. The Boers, having exhausted all their ammunition and resources for repair and upkeep, learnt, perforce, to do without guns altogether, with immense advantage to their tactics. When they obtained them by capture, they soon abandoned them. We ourselves, in offence, obtained little, if any, value from guns, and were apt to lose in vigour by the ever-present temptation of shelling before attacking. In defence they were often useful, but often, magnificently efficient as the gunners were, a source of tactical embarrassment. How vulnerable guns are to the assaults of bold mounted riflemen the record of losses in South Africa shows with painful clearness. The truth is, that the conditions created by the smokeless magazine rifle are highly unfavourable to the use of artillery in exclusively mounted warfare. When both sides are mounted, and acting freely, the game should be “loose” and “fast,” to borrow football metaphors. The battery has no target worth speaking of, and is itself a very substantial and a highly sensitive target, whose mobility is liable to be destroyed in a few moments by rifle-fire. The team is the vital point, and the team alone, in the vulnerable surface it presents, is six times more extensive than a single troop-horse, and twenty times more extensive than a rifleman skirmishing on foot.
As I have already suggested, the gun, while it calls for the skilled co-operation of a number of individuals, is essentially an impersonal weapon. No amount of courage and dexterity in its handling can compensate for this inherent defect. When used with independent mounted troops it should be as small, light, in a word, as “personal” as possible. The bearing of these observations on the arme blanche question is obvious. No superficial peculiarities of the guerilla war in any way lessen the force of the physical and moral principles involved. If mounted men, in defiance of physical facts and the inexorable laws of the modern game, use shock formations—and shock is the fundamental condition for the use of the steel—they reduce the personal factor to its lowest point, and play into the hands of the hostile gunners. As a matter of fact, the steel-charge upon guns was never tried in any form, dense or loose, in South Africa, and that, surely, is a sufficiently conclusive circumstance in itself, when we recollect the numerous cases in which guns were successfully attacked by mounted riflemen. If most of these exploits were performed by the Boers, and if they afford undoubted proof of the superior efficiency of the Boers as mounted riflemen, we must, none the less, bear in mind the fact that our men had not the same chance of performing them. The Boers, as they lost both their faith in Artillery and their resources for maintaining it, grew callous to its loss, and were wont to abandon guns without a qualm. With ourselves it is always a point of honour to defend guns à outrance. That is an admirable rule, but it carries with it the obligation on the one hand of using Artillery only in strict accordance with its positive tactical utility, and on the other of making sure that its escort is absolutely efficient.
Attack on guns brings me naturally to the consideration of mounted charges, and to that important topic I must devote a separate chapter.
CHAPTER XI
MOUNTED CHARGES IN SOUTH AFRICA
From time to time in recent chapters I have noticed cases where the Boers showed unusual boldness in pressing on horseback, where the nature of the ground permitted, into decisive rifle-range, sometimes firing from the saddle as they came, and sometimes actually mingling with our men. I have noted similar cases of bold mounted aggression in our men, though without saddle-fire. I purpose now to treat the subject as a whole, taking the Boers first.
Faint symptoms of this were observable as early as Graspan (November, 1899). Sannah’s Post (March, 1900) was the first occasion, I believe, where they rode into close quarters in the course of pressing a rear-guard. The same tactics appear again in November of the same year at Komati River and elsewhere in the Eastern Transvaal at the dawn of the Boer renaissance, if we may so term the burst of offensive vigour which signalized the end of 1900. They are not much in evidence in the height of that outbreak, because the Boer offence took the form mainly of attacks (often by night) on fortified posts, where they were neither necessary nor feasible; but signs of increased boldness in submitting horses to rifle-fire are visible in all the fights of that period. From the middle of 1901 onwards, when combats in the open field were the rule, this tendency took shape in a definite system of tactics. Curiously enough, these tactics, on their aggressive side, were confined mainly, though not wholly, to the Transvaal. The Free Staters used the semi-aggressive or “penetrating” charge freely enough, in order to escape from drives, but rarely in direct offence. This may have been due to the influence of De Wet, who nearly always preferred stalking to rushing. From the point of view of instruction, however, both types are equally interesting. They differed only in object, not in method.
On March 22, 1901, at Geduld, in the Western Transvaal, three squadrons of the Imperial Light Horse, under Colonel Briggs, of the King’s Dragoon Guards, were engaged in a reconnaissance, when, with very little warning and to the blank astonishment of all who witnessed the scene, several hundreds of De la Rey’s Boers, under the young General Kemp, in good order, and firing from the saddle, galloped down upon the extended skirmishing line of two squadrons. Our men just had time to mount, retire to a flank, and receive the support of the third squadron, when the enemy swept over the vacated position, swerved, and disappeared. This appears to have been a sort of rehearsal for future occasions. The charge inflicted no loss, but it is also significant that it incurred no loss. It was not repeated, though the Imperial Light Horse were followed back for several miles to their camp with vehement attacks, which they repelled with great coolness and gallantry. This may be noted as an excellent example of a steady retirement under difficult circumstances (Times History, vol. v., p. 224).
Twice on later occasions, at Reitz (October, 1901) and at Tigerkloof Spruit (December 18, 1901), the Imperial Light Horse had to sustain something in the nature of real mounted charges, in the first case of a serious character. They repelled them well (Times History, vol. v., pp. 393 and 428–431).
Two months after Geduld, at Vlakfontein[[52]] (May 30, 1901), operating against a column of all arms under General Dixon, Kemp used the same tactics with deadly effect, this time employing stratagem to heighten surprise. A rear-guard of 150 Yeomanry, 100 Infantry, and 2 guns, was beginning a retirement towards camp. While feinting against other portions of the columns, Kemp concentrated several hundred men against this rear-guard. The Boers, having fired the grass to windward, in order to mask their approach and bewilder their foes, burst through and rode down the Yeomanry screen, cut to pieces the company of Infantry, and the gun detachments, and took possession of the guns. No less than 150 of our men fell killed or wounded in a very short space of time, while the Boer losses were slight. There was a prompt and vigorous counter-attack by the rest of the column, which the Boers scarcely waited to receive, and the guns were recaptured. But the balance of success was with Kemp. Our column was crippled and Dixon had to retreat by a forced night march to his base.
Let us note certain points, some of general, some of local interest:
1. The Yeomanry engaged on this occasion were inexperienced troops—the Infantry and gunners, veterans.
2. The Boers, for the most part, remained in the saddle and fired from it, until they reached close quarters. The terrain, which was open and unobstructed, permitted this. After dismounting, some dropped the rein altogether, and some advanced firing, with the rein over the arm. The same plan was adopted in most of the subsequent charges.
3. There was no “shock,” nor any idea of shock in this or any other instance of the charge. The lean, undersized Boer ponies were incapable of it. Shock is incompatible with the destructive use of the rifle, and this was a massacre with the rifle, short, sharp, and murderous. Even if it had been possible for a body of steel-armed horsemen using shock formation to reach close quarters under similar circumstances—and such a thing was never done or attempted in the whole course of the war—their destructive power would not be a tithe of that possessed by mounted riflemen, and their exposure to retaliation infinitely greater. Think of the physical incidents of the two types of charge, remembering that shock requires the steel-armed horsemen to remain on horseback, bursting through the enemy at the first onset, and doing what damage they can en route, and rallying from their disarray at some more or less distant point for a second charge. Think of the opportunities for retaliation if a spark of spirit lives in the defence: and the Infantry and gunners in this case were as firm as rocks.
But, even in making this imaginary contrast—for neither South Africa nor Manchuria provides any historical contrast—beware of assuming too much. The Boers had first to drive back and overthrow an extended skirmishing screen of mounted troops. They could not have done this in dense formation. Nor could steel-armed Cavalry have done it. Beware, then, of assuming that these latter, in virtue of their hybrid character, could effect a tactical transformation in the midst of a rapid, loose action, where each second was of importance, and close up for shock at the psychological moment. This is not even practised in peace manœuvres. It was never done in war, and never will be done in war, not so much from the purely mechanical difficulties as from the sudden and total change of spirit required. Wrangel, whom I have quoted before on this point, is right.[[53]] The modern horseman cannot serve two masters so different as the rifle and the steel weapon. He must serve one faithfully or fail towards both. We profess to secure “thorough efficiency” in both, an unattainable ideal.
4. Fire from the Saddle.—This, for the most part, was unaimed or but roughly aimed, and probably did but little damage to the stationary part of the defence, though the Yeomanry, who had 60 casualties out of 150 men, must have lost appreciably in the course of their rout from more or less aimed saddle-fire. But the moral effect, in this case, and in all cases, was the best justification of the practice. Contrast the “terror” of cold steel, which has so little reality in actual war. Here was the moral effect of a really terrible weapon, materializing, before the phase of contact, in bullets which sang over or impinged among the defence, confusing aim and sighting.
In regard to the purely physical effect, note, especially for future reference, the opening for aimed or unaimed saddle-fire against horses, whether in the course of a pursuit of mounted men like the pursuit of the screen at Vlakfontein, or against groups of “held” horses in rear of a position, when a few chance bullets may cause a stampede.
5. Formation.—We have no special details as to Vlakfontein, but I infer from the narratives that the Boers charged in a very rough line with fairly wide intervals. Second and third lines were a later development. Formations, intervals, speed, points for dismounting, etc., were dictated, and always must be dictated, by local circumstances. They admit of no rigid rules.
To resume our historical survey, we find the Boers of the Eastern Transvaal charging again under Viljoen at Mooifontein (May 25, 1901), against a convoy column, very ably and steadily handled by Colonel Gallwey. Though Viljoen’s attacks failed, it is to be noted that he suffered little loss.
Then comes a long gap of four months, during which the drought of the South African winter compelled the Boers to remain for the most part on the defensive. At the end of September, 1901, with the first spring grass, Botha took the field for the raid on Natal to which I have already alluded. His first contact with British troops came at Blood River Poort (September 17), near the Natal frontier, and 100 miles from his starting-point in the Eastern Transvaal. Here by a skilful stratagem he decoyed into an exposed position[[54]] a body of 300 mounted riflemen, and then, charging down on their flank in one lightning stroke, put out of action nearly 50 men, captured 3 guns, and forced a general surrender within ten minutes. Curiously enough, our own force, when the calamity happened, had just attempted something in the nature of a charge, in order to overwhelm the small Boer detachment which was acting as decoy—not a charge “home,” but a rapid ride over open ground into close range. They had just dismounted to open fire when Botha fell on them. The incident shows how useless mere audacity and dash are, unless founded on careful reconnaissance.
We paid dearly for the hesitations and delays which marked our attempts to envelop Botha on his long and perilous return journey from Natal. He had held from the first, and maintained to the last, a moral ascendency which took effect at the end of October (a fortnight after his return), in one of the most remarkable Boer successes of the guerilla war, and in one of the chief examples of the charge. This was at Bakenlaagte on October 30, 1901.[[55]] At this time Colonel Benson was operating independently in the midst of the “high veld” of the Eastern Transvaal. His vigorous night raids upon laagers (alluded to in the previous chapter) had exasperated the burghers to the last degree. Long on the look-out for vengeance, they seized upon Botha’s return to make an appeal to him for co-operation. Botha, at the moment, was seventy miles away to the east. By forced marching, rapid and thoroughly screened, he appeared on the field of Bakenlaagte at exactly the right moment, bringing a reinforcement whose strength must be regarded as doubtful, but which, at the utmost, did not exceed 500.[[56]] Probably the whole Boer force on the field was about 1,000. Benson’s total strength was 1,600 riflemen, of whom 650 were Infantry, and 6 guns.
The tactical and topographical conditions were closely similar to those of Vlakfontein. At 2 p.m. a rear-guard of 380 mounted riflemen (this time seasoned soldiers of the regular Mounted Infantry, Scottish Horse, etc.), a company of Infantry, and 2 guns, were retiring towards camp. Other mounted detachments and guns were still out on the flanks. The main body of Infantry were either in camp or on their way to it. The weather was wet and misty, the terrain open and undulating. While demonstrating vigorously all round the perimeter of defence, Botha ordered a charge against the rear-guard. The Boers, shouting and firing from the saddle, swept over a mile and a half of ground, overwhelming the company of Infantry, catching and capturing the rearmost, or “covering” sections of mounted riflemen, and stopped just short of the crest of an elevation, afterwards known as Gun Hill, where the guns and the remainder of the mounted riflemen had hurriedly taken post. Here the Boers flung themselves from their ponies, and engaged our men at close quarters (barely thirty yards distance) on foot. The resistance they met with was magnificent. The defending force had to be almost literally exterminated before the hill was won and the guns captured.
This action reveals in a pointed way the gulf which divides arme blanche charges from rifle charges. In the former you must charge home, at all costs, and whatever the nature of the ground. There is no place in the arme blanche scheme for an assault like that at Bakenlaagte, where the Boers, with instinctive dexterity and rapidity, converted themselves in a flash from horsemen into footmen at the right place and moment, using the dead ground at the foot of Gun Hill for the protection of their horses during the fire-fight. When the charge began I do not suppose that one of them knew under what conditions of ground it would end. The ridge was of gentle gradient and of unobstructed surface, but, supposing that it had been of a sharp gradient and encumbered with boulders, these conditions would have made but little difference to the efficacy of the foot-attack, and might very well have assisted it. To an arme blanche charge they would have been fatal. (Cf. the Dronfield incident, p. 113.) The same principle will hold good in every sort of future war, and particularly in European wars, where open, undulating plains like those of the “high veld” are extremely rare. To one opportunity for an arme blanche charge there will be a hundred for rifle charges.
An intermediate example of charging, which illustrates this point about ground, was given at the small, but sad episode of Tafel Kop in the Free State (December 20, 1901), where the crest of the hill on which our troops (90 men and 3 guns) were posted, was in fact steep, boulder-strewn, and impracticable for horses.[[57]]
The Eastern Transvaalers are found charging again with damaging effect in the actions of Holland (December 19, 1901), and Bank Kop (January 4, 1902).[[58]] The latter was the case of a counter-charge under circumstances very similar to those of Blood River Poort. Their last exploit of this nature was on April 1, 1902, at Boschman’s Kop, the only occasion, I think, during the guerilla war where regular Cavalry (though unequipped with steel weapons) were concerned. The regiment, 312 strong, with 40 National Scouts, in the course of a night raid, stumbled upon a concentration of about 800 Boers (I cannot guarantee the numbers, but give the maximum estimate), who had gathered together to discuss the question of peace. The surprise for the moment was complete, and the Boers scattered in all directions; but rallied later in considerable force and engaged the Cavalry, who had retired to a position about a mile away. The attack was vehement, with frequent charges into close range, which were repelled with equal gallantry. At last the Cavalry flank was turned, and our men had to retire. As long as defensible positions were available the retreat was steady and methodical, but the last few miles to camp were a dead-level plain, over which pursuers and pursued rode as hard as they could, until reinforcements and Artillery fire from the British camp checked the Boers. In the whole affair, which was galling, but not in the least discreditable to the Cavalry, they had seventy-seven casualties, and there is no question that a considerable number of men succumbed to saddle-fire during the pursuit whom no steel weapon could have reached. The complaint, it is said, was raised by some of those present that they had been crippled by the removal of their swords, and that if they had carried them the result would have been different. The regiment had only recently arrived in South Africa: otherwise the mere hint of such a complaint would make one despair of reform. During something like a year and three-quarters of war the Cavalry had had countless opportunities—if they existed—of showing the superior value of the arme blanche in first producing and then taking advantage of circumstances tactically similar to these. The point is, that it was impossible to force the Boers to accept combat on the terms required by steel. It was the rifle which settled the nature of combats. The Boers had conducted the original fire-fight in loose formation, and they pursued in loose “swarm” formation. Consider the futility of our endeavouring, at any phase, to mass into shock formation, with nothing whatever upon which to exert shock, only to present a helplessly vulnerable target. If we did not form close shock formation, we abandoned, as I have repeatedly pointed out, the whole raison d’être of the steel weapon. Individual swordsmen, separated by wide intervals, are outmatched by capable riflemen, mounted or dismounted. It is a cruel injustice to our Cavalry to teach them otherwise.
De la Rey’s district, the Western Transvaal, may be considered as having been the true birthplace of the charge, and it was here, during the last period of the war, that it reached its highest development. At Kleinfontein[[59]] (October 24, 1901) Kemp galloped down upon the centre of a column on the march, threw the convoy into confusion, and captured a dozen waggons, then whirled down upon the rear-guard, and inflicted severe loss upon it, taking temporary possession of two guns, which, for lack of teams, the burghers were unable to remove. The remnants of our men made a splendid resistance, and reinforcements eventually drove the Boers off. In this action we find the first mention of the use of successive lines of horsemen for charging.
At Yzer Spruit (February 25, 1902) De la Rey ambuscaded and captured entire a convoy-column, using the mounted charge freely at the crisis of the action; and ten days later, at the sad disaster of Tweebosch (March 7, 1902), the same General (using three successive charging lines) routed Methuen’s mounted troops, who in this case were of a very heterogeneous and unstable kind, and forced a general surrender of the column. In the stirring action of Boschbult (March 31, 1902), the defeat of part of our flank screen by a determined Boer charge caused for a short time an exceedingly critical situation. Later in the day, when Cookson’s force was concentrated and entrenched, Liebenberg led a plucky charge against some farm-buildings adequately held by riflemen. This was a daring departure from the rules governing such attacks, and Liebenberg paid for it in a sharp repulse.[[60]]
But the most dramatic and interesting of the Boer charges was reserved for the last important action of the war, that of Roodewal (April 11, 1902). It failed, but the cause, manner, and results of its failure are full of instruction. I wish I had space to recount the episode in full; but I can only sketch what happened, and ask the reader to refer for a full account to chapter xix. (section iv.) of the fifth volume of the Times History.
One of our great mobile driving lines of the latest model, organized in three divisions, each about 4,000 strong, under the command of General Ian Hamilton, was sweeping on an immense front across the Western Transvaal. On the early morning of April 10, the right division, under Colonel Kekewich, about 4,000 strong and composed of two columns under Colonels Grenfell and Von Donop, was changing ground to the right (or west) in accordance with orders to widen the front of the driving line prior to the day’s operations. The columns were still in closed-up route formation, Von Donop’s leading, Grenfell’s following, with an advanced screen of 280 mounted riflemen thrown out to the front. Terrain, a level, open plain rising almost imperceptibly for about two miles to a gentle elevation on the farm-lands of Roodewal. Kemp had concentrated in the course of the night behind this elevation, and at about 7.30 a.m. was sighted, by our foremost scouts, marching parallel. Whether, when the action first began, he knew of the massed British columns, is not clear. Probably he did not. There is ground for the view that he had mistaken our advanced mounted screen for the flank of a driving line already fully deployed for the day’s drive in the manner then customary, and had resolved to roll up part of this supposed line by a flank-charge.
However this may be, he deployed and put into motion a number of men variously estimated from 1,000 to 1,500, who, in widely extended order, trotted slowly forward in two very long, arc-shaped lines. As they approached our advanced scouts, they broke into a canter, and began to fire from the saddle. Our screen and the pompom with it retired hastily upon the main body, some forty men being caught and overpowered. The crest of Roodewal once topped, the main British forces, in column of route about a mile and a half away, became visible to the Boers and the Boers to them. Grenfell executed a hurried but fairly orderly deployment to meet the attack, which was directed mainly against his column. The South African Constabulary, Scottish Horse and Yeomanry—about 1,200 mounted men in all—were thrown out in a rough defensive line. Von Donop was slower in deployment, but had to meet only the northerly part of the Boer line, which split off and attempted a wider and more normal and deliberate attack. The centre and right—estimated roughly at 800 men—closed in, corrected the convexity of their line with wonderful precision, and with the brave Commandant Potgieter at their head, charged straight upon Grenfell. In an episode lasting so few minutes, and crammed with such breathless excitement, it is impossible to ascertain relative strength, positions, and formations with positive accuracy; but it may be taken as fairly correct to say that when the charge reached a point 600 yards from the British front, it was exposed to the fire of some 1,500 rifles and 6 guns, and that the Boer formation—at any rate, in portions of the line—was now very close—some say almost solid, or “knee to knee”—and from two to four deep. The pace at this stage, we infer, was the best the small Boer ponies could ever attain to, and that amounted to little more than the canter of a Cavalry horse. The plain would not have sheltered a mouse, and it was a clear day with a bright sun. Under these conditions it would have been strange if the charge had not been checked, high and wild as much of our fire was. It faltered appreciably within 300 yards, and stumbled on in fragments to within 100 yards. Potgieter was shot dead only 70 yards from our line.
The significant thing was not the failure of this piece of brilliant recklessness, but that it came so near success, and met with so little punishment. The Boers retired without disorder, carrying some of their wounded with them, and leaving on the field fifty dead and thirty badly wounded men. Our own losses, besides prisoners taken from the advanced screen, were seven killed and fifty-six wounded, mainly by fire from the saddle, and from those figures the reader may judge of the moral effect of this form of fire, coupled with the spectacle of the charge, in baulking the aim of the defence. It is safe to say that one casualty inflicted in this way has as much moral effect as three inflicted by men on foot. But in the physical sphere there was another important effect of saddle-fire. Grenfell’s column lost, partly from this cause, no less than 150 horses. Many more stampeded. In other words, the column for the time being was demobilized, and deprived of any possibility of a counter-stroke, though a more fruitful opportunity for a counter-stroke can scarcely be imagined.[[61]] The weak points in this charge are apparent. The cardinal factor—surprise—high as it was, was not high enough to counteract the vulnerability due to comparatively low speed, in good light, over a bare plain; and the excessively close formation aggravated this vulnerability. Formation, of course, admits of no dogmatic rules. There is no insuperable objection to a dense line, if the surprise is great enough to justify it, and if, when close quarters are reached, the line is not so dense as to strike too small an area or impede that free use of the rifle on foot which is the object of the charge.
It is never easy to picture an arme blanche charge in direct analogy to any given rifle charge, because the arme blanche never creates for itself the opportunities which the rifle creates; but so far as we can picture an analogy at Roodewal, the advantage is overwhelmingly on the side of the rifle. Saddle-fire, with its power of demobilizing the defence long before contact, is a decisive advantage. But would an arme blanche charge ever have taken place? It is very doubtful. “Cavalry Training” appears to make provision for a charge over a distance as great as 1,800 yards, but that is for a shock charge against “Cavalry,” who are assumed to be in their saddles (pp. 125–128). What of a charge against Infantry? In the ten lines devoted to that subject (p. 129) there is a very natural silence on this and many other points. But were these men of Grenfell’s to be regarded as Cavalry or Infantry? They had horses, deployed with them and dismounted from them. Suppose them Cavalry (in the Cavalry sense) who at the last moment declined to engage in the conventional “shock duel,” and, having brought the charge to a standstill by rifle-fire, and having retained their full mobility owing to the absence of hostile saddle-fire, retaliated with a counter-stroke? But that is not the only perplexity. How were the leaders of the shock charge to know in advance which course the defending troops would take? They must decide before starting, for there is no provision in “Cavalry Training” for changing while in rapid movement from dense shock formation to the “extended formation” recommended for a charge upon “Infantry.” If a charge is not a steel-charge they are bound by the rules of “Dismounted Action,” under which heading, of course, this rifle charge of the Boers would have to be included. One of these rules is that extra ammunition is to be served out when such action is contemplated. Another point: Whichever formation, dense or extended, was adopted at the outset, Grenfell’s advanced scouting screen, whose inrush was accountable for a good deal of wild firing in the defence, would have had little to fear against horsemen using only a steel weapon. They had only to transform themselves into “Infantry,” and let the storm blow over. Acting as skilfully as the Boers at Poplar Grove and many other actions, they would have stopped the charge altogether. For the rest, whatever the weapon relied on in the charge, the vulnerability of the surface exposed was the same and the chance of obtaining contact, judged on a purely physical estimate, no better or worse. On possibilities after hypothetical contact I need scarcely again enlarge. There would have been nothing in the firing-line on which to exert true shock, and palpably men who are doomed to stay in the saddle and execute complicated and difficult “rallies” are worse off than riflemen on foot. The latter, taught not to fear cold steel, and acting as directed in “Infantry Training,” are in the superior position. My argument is not academical. It is based on the living facts of modern war.
Such were the principal examples on the Boer side of the mounted charge. But they do not exhaust the list. There were numerous cases—in the Free State especially (as I remarked above)—of charges for the purpose of piercing driving lines or block-house lines, interesting, if only for the light they throw on the effect of fire upon horsemen in rapid movement. Nor must it ever be forgotten that, in the parlance of mounted riflemen, the “charge” is only a relative term, which does not necessarily imply contact. The more rapid the tactical approach, by a more daring use of the horse, the greater the approximation to the fully developed charge.
These incidents have received far too little attention. Cavalry writers have generally ignored them, or alluded to them in terms of indifference, as curious phenomena in a class of war which scarcely concerns Cavalry. Mr. Goldman, in the 1909 edition of his translation of Von Bernhardi’s “Cavalry in Future Wars,” in the course of a gentle rebuke to his author for venturing to admire these charges, disposes of them in a footnote as the work of mere “Mounted Infantry,” and reveals his imperfect acquaintance with the facts by speaking of the “one or two occasions” on which Boers “brought about a decision by rifle-fire from their horses” (p. 56). He adds, with unconscious irony, that “he can recall no instance where they actually charged—i.e., endeavoured to decide the action by shock.” Those few words, embodied in their complacent little footnote, supply a complete revelation of the mental attitude of the arme blanche advocates towards the tactics of mounted riflemen. Names are everything, results nothing. Attach the label, “Mounted Infantry,” and that disposes of the charges, Boer and British, such as they were, and, since they did not involve “shock,” what were they, after all? It is true that throughout the whole war there was not one solitary instance of “shock” in Mr. Goldman’s implied (and, in this single case, perfectly correct) interpretation of that term. But what matter? In his view, the Boers never gave the Cavalry a chance of “discharging Cavalry duties.” Was I wrong in suggesting that the arme blanche theory dwells in a mental shrine, sacrosanct, unapproachable by argument?
Of a diametrically opposite character, and no less harmful than this contemptuous indifference, is the idea—often enough expressed by those who have never studied them—that these charges were non-military exploits, comparable only to the onslaughts of wild dervishes, a blend of fanaticism and luck, and no model for sensible, serious soldiers. In spite of the fact that saddle-fire is officially enjoined at this moment for “picked men” of the Mounted Infantry, I have heard it spoken of as though it were on a par with the beating of tom-toms, the throwing of stones or poisoned arrows and such unsoldierly pranks. For ignorance of this sort no condemnation can be too strong. Even fanatics may teach us lessons. But the Boers were no more fanatics than the American troopers of Forrest and Morgan. They were shrewd, sober, white men, valuing their lives, parsimonious of their ammunition, for fresh supplies of which during the guerilla war they had no domestic resources, and by no means inclined to extravagance or foolhardiness. Their charges demanded not only dash, but high tactical discipline, a sure instinct for ground and skilled preparatory scouting. Fire from the saddle requires good horsemanship and great manual skill. If these be symptoms of fanaticism, the more fanatics we have in our army, the better.
And what were the results of these charges upon the progress of the war? Whether for their tactical lessons we dismiss them in footnotes or study them seriously, let us remember that they, like other aggressive Boer exploits, cost us many lives, many guns, many prisoners, and an amount of treasure at which we can only dimly conjecture—probably scores of millions of pounds.[[62]] Sannah’s Post in March, 1900, changed the whole outlook of the Free Staters. To Vlakfontein, coupled with the night attack at Wilmansrust, can be definitely traced the decision of the joint Council of War (held on June 20, 1901), to continue hostilities throughout the winter of that year. But for Bakenlaagte, the Transvaalers, always the most inclined to peace, might have forced their will on the sister state, while De la Rey’s successes in the early months of 1902 imperilled gravely the hopes of peace. Had the Roodewal charge, made during the progress of negotiations, succeeded, there might well have been a delay of several more months.
We on our side never succeeded in carrying the charging principle to the point to which the Boer veterans carried it. Saddle-fire was not, I think, in any instance practised. But in aggressive tactical vigour all our mounted men made remarkable strides during the guerilla war, in spite of the somewhat deadening effect of the driving system. The rifle was the inspiration. There was only one instance of an arme blanche charge during that period of the guerilla war in which the Cavalry carried steel weapons. This was at Welgevonden (February 12, 1901), in the course of French’s great drive in the Eastern Transvaal, when Colonel Rimington’s Inniskilling Dragoons got home among a Boer rear-guard, and disposed of some twenty Boers by death, wounds, or capture.[[63]] With this exception, every success we obtained was due to the dashing use of horse and rifle in combination. I have already mentioned the cases of Victoria Nek and Bothaville. Wildfontein (March 24, 1901) was an excellent example of an energetic galloping pursuit, leading to the capture of guns, waggons, and a good many Boers. Roodekraal (February 3, 1902) led to similar results, and was distinguished by several genuine mounted charges of the Boer type, in which New Zealanders and Queenslanders, under Colonel Garratt, took part.[[64]] The systematized night-raids described in the previous chapter generally ended in something of the nature of a charge, in widely extended order, upon the Boer laager. Other small raids, pursuits and encounters, in which our men learnt to ride more boldly into rifle-range, were innumerable.
As I have often pointed out, this bold riding into a fire-zone is the principle which lies at the back of the charge. It is a question of tactical mobility, pure and simple. How far the ride can be carried rests on local circumstances, on the degree of surprise, on the nature of the ground to be traversed, on the quality of the enemy’s troops, on their tactical disposition, and on the character of their defences, if any. But the whole scheme of offensive tactics is one; the object, however attained, is always the same—to use the horse as the means of closing with the enemy as effectively as possible and as quickly as possible. Infantry, without the horse, pursue the same object. They move more slowly, but present less vulnerable surface. The horseman’s problem is to neutralize greater vulnerability by greater speed and a larger measure of surprise. If we review the war as a whole, we cannot escape the conclusion that until the last year of hostilities the vulnerability of horses in rapid movement was exaggerated by both sides, and the effect produced upon the sighting, aim, fire-discipline, and equanimity of the defence underestimated. In our own case the error was aggravated by the fact that we came to the field possessing the tradition of a mounted charge, but in an obsolete form, inspired by the wrong weapon, and incapable of being associated with the right weapon—the rifle. This tradition was destroyed, and never adequately replaced. Outside the charmed circle of the Cavalry it was often too readily assumed that a principle had been discredited, not merely the false application of a right principle. Inside the Cavalry, whatever the various impressions of the time, the net official result now is to regard the tradition of shock as intact, and its failure in South Africa as a negligible incident of an “abnormal” war. The Boers started the war with no tradition, with a strong prejudice, indeed, against the exposure of the horse and an exaggerated reliance on the spade for passive defence and on stalking for offence. Their discipline, moreover, was not good enough for a form of tactics requiring exceptional discipline. Circumstances, moral and military, drove them to develop tactical discipline, and with it a charging tradition, and they attained it in a perfectly healthy, normal way. Our mounted men, Cavalry included, in so far as they approached the Boer standard, worked on the same lines of natural evolution.
Perhaps I ought to say one word more in regard to one of the strangest of the many paradoxical arguments which the defence of the arme blanche has evoked. I mean the complaint which I commented on à propos of Boschman’s Kop—that the Cavalry were deprived of steel weapons just when the Boers were developing the charge, the assumption being, presumably, that but for this modification of armament the Cavalry would then for the first time have developed equally effective, if not more effective, arme blanche charging tactics of their own. I have never seen this view put forward in general terms by any high Cavalry authority, or, indeed, by any Cavalryman; but it figures among the nebulous popular arguments upon which the arme blanche thrives, and it sometimes finds accidental public expression. In July, 1909, an anonymous correspondent of the Times propounded it as a final and crushing answer to those who ventured to see something instructive and important in the Boer charges. Now, in the first place, the view is in conflict with the facts. The Boers began to charge long before the steel weapons were discarded. They charged at Sannah’s Post as early as March, 1900, and within view of the Cavalry engaged in that action. They charged mounted riflemen and attacked Cavalry with great pertinacity in the Eastern Transvaal during October, 1900; and although no body of Cavalry was, so far as I know, itself charged on horseback by Boers during the year 1901, the steel weapon outlived the period of Vlakfontein, and had not, I think, been more than partly abolished at the period of Bakenlaagte. But dates are not material. The discouraging feature of the argument is its total failure to grasp the real nature and origin of the rifle charge, the elementary physical and moral principles which distinguish it in tactical form, and, above all, in tactical spirit, from the shock charge. And behind it, I am afraid, we recognize an echo of Mr. Goldman’s complaint that the Boers, owing to fear of the steel, declined to “give battle” with Cavalry on “open ground.” I cannot pause now to discuss that.[[65]]
We need not exaggerate, as assuredly we must not minimize, the importance of the mounted charges in South Africa. We must allow for the fact that the Boers for the most part were veterans in the mounted rifleman’s art, and that the men against whom they were matched never reached the same degree of excellence. What we should do is to grasp the principle, and apply it to the training of our mounted troops, especially to our professional troops, who are competent to learn anything to which they apply their minds and wills. Shock, at any rate, is gone. South Africa gave it its death-blow, and Manchuria, as I shall show later, buried it for ever. The rifle charge, whether on foot, mounted, or in any intermediate stage up to direct riding into contact, remains as a proved, tangible fact. Since 1870 and up to the present day (1910) shock has been pure theory.
CHAPTER XII
A PECULIAR WAR?
Such are the facts of the South African War, our only great war since the Crimea, and the first serious test for the whole world of the smokeless magazine rifle. What results can we place to the credit of the arme blanche?
1. The pursuit at Elandslaagte (October 21, 1899), on the second day of hostilities: Boers killed, wounded, and prisoners, say fifty. (No figures are forthcoming, but I think fifty is on the safe side.)
2. Klip Drift (February 15, 1900): A “penetrating,” semi-aggressive charge, in widely extended order, by a very large force, with a big backing of Infantry and Artillery, through a gap in a small hostile skirmishing screen. Boer casualties about fifteen.
3. Diamond Hill (June 11, 1900): Two brave but insignificant little charges, which received as much punishment as they gave. Boer casualties about seventeen.
4. Welgevonden (February 12, 1901): A small charge in the open. Boer casualties and prisoners about twenty.
Not a single example of true shock.
This gives a record of about a hundred casualties and prisoners due directly to the arme blanche. There may, no doubt, have been a few others in unrecorded episodes. To be well on the safe side, let us put the total at 200. All the other damage inflicted by the Cavalry, whether in offence or defence, was inflicted through the agency of the carbine or rifle. The opportunities lost through over-training in the steel and inexperience in the firearm are beyond computation.
With the exception of an unknown, but certainly small, proportion of casualties caused by Artillery, all the other losses in action, British and Boer, during the war were caused by the rifle, and all of our own casualties, close upon 30,000 in number, were (with the same exception) inflicted by mounted riflemen.
From the first to the last day of the war the rifle dominated every encounter, small or great, Elandslaagte and the rest included. Awaking finally to this fact, but at least a year too late, we converted our Cavalry into mounted riflemen. Every possible function and every possible species of encounter which mounted men can conceivably undertake in any war was illustrated again and again. In reconnaissance, in raids, in protective work and independent work, in pursuit and retreat, in battle and out of battle, acting as divisions, brigades, regiments, squadrons, troops, patrols, or as single scouts, the Cavalry were submitted to every sort of test during more than two and a half years. All our other mounted troops and all the Boer troops were submitted to similar tests. Out of it all emerges the single type of mounted rifleman, competent to do all duties alike, and incapable of doing any of them well unless he is as skilled in the rifle as he is on the horse—competent, too, if required, to perform functions never before dreamt of by any European Cavalry—to make, hold, and storm entrenchments, and to take his place in the main line of battle.
Here is a mass of evidence, vast, various, cogent. For the last time, I ask, was the war “peculiar”? Of course it was peculiar. Every war is peculiar. Terrain differs, races differ, degrees of civilization and stamps of military organization differ, quarrels and aims differ, aptitudes and temperaments differ, and, lastly, with the progress of science, weapons differ. That brings us to the point—the only point relevant to our inquiry: Were the peculiarities of the Boer War such as to invalidate the conclusions developed in its course as to the armament and tactics of mounted troops?
Even that way of putting the question is a little too wide. In Great Britain, at any rate, one big conclusion is admittedly valid for all future wars—namely, that the Cavalry must carry a good rifle, not a bad carbine, and must be able to use it with far more freedom and skill than they ever dreamed of before the war. We have got that far, and stopped. Shrinking from anything radical, taking refuge in compromise, we have fashioned in theory, and only in theory, an ideal hybrid, perfect both in shock and the rifle, and given him the formula for a hybrid “Cavalry spirit,” which is quoted at the beginning of this volume. But—and this reservation is vital—we have taught him in “Cavalry Training” to rely mainly on shock and the “terror of cold steel,” which “nothing can replace.”
That settles the final form of our question: Were the peculiarities of the war such as to justify the re-establishment of the lance and sword in their old position as the dominant weapons of Cavalry? Remember the proved penalties of error, if error there be—the extra weight and extra visibility of equipment, when every additional ounce of weight and every additional inch of vulnerable and visible surface tells, to say nothing of the complications, moral and physical, caused by allegiance to two diametrically opposite tactical ideals and tactical systems.
The answer we shall give to the question carries with it answers to many more. Are we justified in reverting to exactly the same old view of “Mounted Infantry” as existed before the war, and which the war, regarded as an episode by itself, reduced to ridicule? Was the war so abnormal that we are still in our handbook of “Mounted Infantry Training” to lay down, foremost among the purposes for which that arm is to be employed, the purpose of “forming a pivot of manœuvre for Cavalry, of supporting them generally with their fire, and ... of giving to the Cavalry such Infantry support, when they are acting at a distance from other troops, as will prevent the necessity of the Cavalry regiments being employed in any other capacity than that of their purely Cavalry rôle.”[[66]] Prodigious indeed must be the abnormalities which would warrant the fresh enunciation of such a "general principle"! Note the words “Infantry support,” both in their context and in connection with the opening paragraph of the handbook, to the effect that “Mounted Infantry are Infantry soldiers governed in their tactical employment by the principles of Infantry training.” Substitute the synonymous word “riflemen” for “Infantry” in the three cases where the latter word is used, and there is, indeed, a substratum of very sound truth in the proposition. But it is truth which would be heresy to the authorities. For them, apparently, it was Infantry who, under British leading, relieved Mafeking, charged at Bothaville and Roodekraal, pursued at the Biggarsberg and Wildfontein, saved the guns at Sannah’s Post, and scouted, raided, and screened everywhere. It must have been Infantry, moreover, disguised as Cavalry, who held the Colesberg lines, intercepted Cronje on the Modder, and ran to earth Lotter; Infantry, under Boer leading, who captured a third of the main army’s transport at Waterval, intervened brilliantly at the climax of the battle of Paardeberg, ambuscaded and pursued at Sannah’s Post, raided Cape Colony, Natal, and the railway communications, and charged at Bakenlaagte and Roodewal. Was the war really so peculiar as to warrant such grotesque inferences as these? Was a war which produced not a single example of true shock so peculiar as to justify the vague and unintelligible instructions to Yeomanry—namely, that they are to be “so trained as to be capable of performing all the duties allotted to Cavalry except those connected with shock action”? And what of our mounted forces overseas? Suppose a war on Colonial soil against a European army—to my mind a far more likely contingency than a war on European soil—suppose (merely for the sake of argument) such a war in South Africa, where we should be aided both by Dutch and British mounted troops. Was the great war of 1899–1902 so peculiar as to warrant our telling the Boer troops or the Imperial Light Horse that they are not fit “to discharge Cavalry duties”?
There is a big case, an authoritative case, an overwhelmingly convincing case, founded on a reasoned analysis of the campaign, to be made out here by the advocates of the arme blanche if they are to justify existing practice. When, where, and by whom has this authoritative case been presented? I am at a loss to say. Directly we begin to grapple with this allegation of abnormality we find we are fighting with phantoms, with nebulous, elusive, and often mutually contradictory arguments held, some by one person, some by another. I scarcely know how far I need engage in this ghostly conflict. I have exhorted the reader from the first, in following my review of the war, to picture for himself parallel situations in a European war, distinguishing relevant from irrelevant peculiarities, and, without being led astray by mere names and labels, to test weapons and the tactical theories based on them by facts. I have endeavoured to assist him by analysis and comment, and I believe at one time or another I have dealt with every abnormality which is alleged to quash the verdict against the arme blanche. But I am not sanguine enough to hope that I have carried conviction, and I venture now to deal once more in a separate chapter with the allegation as a whole. In order to narrow the controversy within incontestably sound and fair limits, I will take the three powerful advocates of the arme blanche to whom I alluded in my first chapter, and from whom I have since frequently quoted—General Sir John French, Mr. Goldman, and General von Bernhardi. The last we may regard as the most powerful of all, since his book, “Cavalry in Future Wars,” translated by Mr. Goldman, and furnished with an introduction by General French, is not only described by the latter officer as being the last word of logic and wisdom on all Cavalry matters without exception, but has been largely drawn upon in practice by the compilers of our own “Cavalry Training.”
In General French’s long and warmly written introduction, levelled avowedly against the “misleading conclusions” of those who criticize shock, only one short passage is to be found in which the South African War—our own great war—is so much as alluded to, and then only to be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders as almost irrelevant to the controversy. Both the allusion and its context are, I am afraid, rather obscure, so I give the paragraph in full:
“In dwelling so persistently upon the necessity for Cavalry being trained to the highest possible pitch to meet the enemy’s Cavalry, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I agree absolutely with the author in the principle he lays down that the Cavalry fight is only a means to an end, but it is the most important means, and I have thought it right to comment upon this because it is a principle which in this country, since the South African War, we have been very much inclined to overlook. To place a force of Cavalry in the field in support of a great army which is deficient in the power to overcome the opposing Cavalry, is to act like one who would despatch a squadron of war-vessels badly armed, badly trained, and ill-found, to blockade a distant coast-line defended by a powerful fleet. What is the naval fight in the open sea but a means to an end? It would be as sensible to dwell on the inutility and waste of a duel between hostile fleets as to lay down the principle that the ‘Cavalry battle’ in no way affects the mutual situation of hostile armies” (p. 26).
Sincerely desirous of understanding the General’s meaning, I confess that this passage baffles me, and I scarcely know what it would convey to a reader fresh from the study of our war. Do the words which I have italicized imply that the non-Cavalry portion of our “great army,” the Infantry and Artillery, were not worthy of the “support” of our Cavalry, and denied that arm a chance of distinguishing itself in the “Cavalry fight”—that is, presumably the shock fight? That cannot be the sense intended, for the imputation not only would never be made by General French, but is in itself indefensible. I need not argue that proposition again. If any narrative of the war does not disprove it to the most cursory reader, my previous narrative and comments would add no further conviction.
We must arrive at some other interpretation; and yet there seems to be no other that does not involve the writer in self-refutation. Read literally, the sentence compares “a force of Cavalry” (sent out under the circumstances described) to a squadron of war-vessels badly armed, badly trained, and ill-found, while the unequal naval fight with the “great fleet,” which results, is intended surely to be analogous to the “Cavalry fight.” Both are “means to an end”—in the one case to landing and invasion, in the other to the destruction of a hostile army. In the last sentence the simile becomes more precise, the “duel” between hostile fleets being expressly likened to the “Cavalry battle,” and very aptly likened, if we do not assume with General French that the Cavalry battle must inevitably be a shock battle. It is true that in the case of the South African War the simile is impaired by the fact that the “opposing Cavalry,” constituting as they did the entire hostile force, cannot be regarded as the counterpart of our Cavalry. But, disregarding that material point, where does the simile lead us? To the conclusion that our Cavalry were badly armed, badly trained, and ill-found. That is admittedly true of armament and training; for the rifle has been permanently substituted for the carbine, and “thorough efficiency” in its use officially enjoined ever since, while the steel weapon, during the war, failed. “Ill-found” might refer to horses. But the General, as the context shows, does not mean to take this dangerous line of argument. Who, then, were the troops referred to? No part of the army was “ill-found” by comparison with the Boers, who in most of the resources possessed by great and wealthy nations were miserably ill-found, and were reduced for the last year to destitution. “Badly armed,” except in the case of the Cavalry, is another misnomer. The Infantry were armed with the best modern rifle, and although the Artillery at first found their guns outranged, they soon received the aid of naval and other heavy guns, and always had an overwhelming numerical superiority over the Boers. “Badly trained” does, indeed, apply in a certain sense to the whole army, particularly to its practical organization for war. But it applies, too, to the Boers, and in the latter respect far more pertinently.
I have no desire idly to split straws. If the passage I have quoted formed part of a reasoned argument for the abnormality of our great war, I agree that it would be unfair to make too much of a case of obscure exposition. But it stands alone, and I am justified in criticizing the attitude of mind which permits so high a Cavalry authority as General French, in an essay part of which is explicitly directed against the advocates of mounted riflemen, to treat so vaguely and superficially the great national struggle which, for the time being, at any rate, did confirm their views. My justification is the greater in that such an attitude of mind is strictly typical of a great number of the adherents of the shock system. Pressed, they are altogether unable to put into precise language their reasons for disregarding the Boer War. In a later chapter, when dealing with the Manchurian War, I shall have to refer to General French’s equally inadequate treatment of the theme of another case of abnormality.
In the meantime I can do no better than take two propositions from the paragraph quoted above, about which there can be no doubt. (1) A “Cavalry battle” without shock is inconceivable to General French. There must be either shock or no battle, for surely no opponent of shock would go so far as to argue that, shock being a thing of the past, it was “inutility and waste” for opposing sets of mounted troops to fight with one another at all, in any way? We have here, in an unusually extreme form, that theory of the inevitable shock duel between opposing Cavalries to which I alluded in my second chapter. It occurs again on page xxii of the same Introduction.
“How, I ask, can the Cavalry perform its rôle in war until the enemy’s Cavalry is defeated and paralyzed? I challenge any Cavalry officer, British or foreign, to deny the principle that Cavalry, acting as such against its own arm, can never attain complete success unless it is proficient in shock tactics.”
Here is the case complete, but, alas! strangely qualified by the words I have italicized. Is there some arrière-pensée here? What if the hostile Cavalry, like the Boers, do not believe in shock? Surely, the case thus stated begs the whole question at issue. Observe that the underlying axiom is that the steel can always impose tactics on the firearm. Contrast this axiom with the facts of the Boer War, where the Boers were the “opposing Cavalry,” and were admittedly strong enough, though in what way we are not told, to throw into prominence the many defects of the great army sent to overcome them. And, by the way, we may remind the General that it did overcome them in the end, mainly through the improvisation of mounted riflemen (whom he ignores altogether), and through the assimilation of the Cavalry to that type.
(2) The other clear deduction from the paragraph is this, that the Boers were, on the whole, from whatever cause, a formidable enemy. They are compared to a powerful fleet, and we are represented, in whatever capacity, as suffering from certain weaknesses. That is the general colour of the argument, and I draw the reader’s attention to it, because the gist of Mr. Goldman’s argument is of a precisely opposite character; and this contradiction, in one form or another, runs through all the hazy generalizations that one hears expressed in public or private on the topic of abnormality.
To the best of my belief, Mr. Goldman is the only writer who has had the courage to set forth categorically, in the form of a reasoned argument designed expressly to prove the superiority of Cavalry over mounted riflemen, the various grounds for regarding the South African War as abnormal. He does this in his Appendix A. to “With French in South Africa” (1903), and again in his preface to Von Bernhardi’s “Cavalry in Future Wars.”
Before examining these grounds it is essential to know what Mr. Goldman means by a “mounted rifleman.” Here is his appreciation, on page 408 of the former book: “... the horseman armed only with a rifle. We may assume that he has received the special Cavalry training aforesaid, and that in every way he is qualified to perform the duties of Cavalry.” (I do not know what to make of this curious admission.) “But he is equipped solely to fight on foot. Hence, no sooner does it become necessary for him to assume the offensive than he is forced to dismount, and from that moment his rate of progress depends solely upon the pace he can walk.”
Truly, a poor creature! But we think of South Africa and rub our eyes. Was this the figure cut by mounted riflemen, Boer and British, in South Africa? It may be said without exaggeration that all the “offensive” mounted work was done by mounted riflemen or by Cavalry acting as such. And think of the charges—Bakenlaagte, for example. At what moment did Botha’s men begin to “assume the offensive”? According to Mr. Goldman, when they “dismounted.” And when was that? Within point-blank range of our guns, after a charge of a mile and a half.
To proceed with the quotation: “Moreover, he has given hostages to fortune. His led horses being an easy prey to a handful of mounted horsemen, he cannot leave them far behind, for, should he lose them, his usefulness for reconnoitring purposes is gone; the opposing Cavalry will merely push on and through the gap he has left in his screen.” We rub our eyes again. When did Boer led horses fall a prey to Cavalry, acting as “Cavalry”? Not in a single instance. As for the idea that the mounted rifleman is handicapped for “reconnoitring purposes”—after all the bitter losses and humiliations from which we suffered in South Africa through imperfect reconnaissance, one can only regard the suggestion with respectful amazement. Similarly with the suggestion about “pushing through gaps in screens.” This, as I have repeatedly pointed out, is what the Cavalry could not do. Their inability to do it was the predominant characteristic of all the fighting in which they were engaged—with one only apparent exception—the Klip Drift charge, where the screen was not a screen, but an isolated skirmishing line of 900 men and 2 guns, which was pierced without shock, and almost without bloodshed, by 5,000 horsemen, covered by the fire of 56 guns, and supported by a division of Infantry.
To proceed: “It must be remembered that the mounted rifleman cannot fight on horseback. He has no weapon for that purpose, so that his only means of taking the offensive is to act on foot.... If in open country, the mounted rifleman cannot hope to meet the Cavalryman mounted. In these circumstances he is practically unarmed; for the firmest believer in the rifle will scarcely maintain that the rifle-fire of mounted men is a serious quantity; anyone who has experienced it knows how perfectly ineffective it is.” Well, I leave the reader to judge of the soundness of all this, in view of our experiences in South Africa. It reads like a dream. Is it, to say the least, an adequate treatment of the theme? Surely it would be wiser to make some overt reference to the fine examples of aggressive mobility shown by our Colonial irregulars, or to the Boer charges, if only for the sake of proving their negligibility. This particular passage may have been written before Mr. Goldman (whose narrative of the war ends at Komati Poort) had had full opportunity to study final developments, but his book was published in 1903; he was cognizant when he wrote, at any rate, of Sannah’s Post, and in his preface to, and notes upon Bernhardi (1906 and 1909), he maintains an equally icy silence upon the achievements of mounted riflemen in South Africa, until a passage of warm praise from Bernhardi himself extorts from him the footnote, inaccurate as to facts and mistaken in criticism, which I quoted in the last chapter (p. 254).
I need not pursue this quotation further. The writer eventually admits that in an “enclosed country” (what of the South African terrain?) the mounted rifleman has a certain value, but the most he will yield is that here the “mounted rifleman and the Cavalryman are on an equality.” Truly, an astonishing conclusion! Surely part of this Appendix must have been written before the war and left unrevised? Even then the writer was old-fashioned, for the Mounted Infantry Regulations of 1899, while warning that arm in a general way that they “needed the assistance of Cavalry,” told them that when they cannot get this assistance, their “best security was to be keeping in broken, intersected, woody, or marshy ground, where they would have a great advantage over Cavalry.” It is indisputable that men who spend their whole time in practising rifle-tactics, must be more efficient than men who spend half or more than half their time on shock-tactics. The strange thing is, that Mr. Goldman, in another connection, himself quotes the official warning with approval, as putting the mounted riflemen in their right place. Yet, we may well ask, when in South Africa did mounted riflemen ask for the assistance of Cavalry—that is to say, of Cavalry “as such,” to use General French’s expression? How often, on the other hand, did Cavalry, as such, ask for the support of mounted riflemen, as such?
And these mounted riflemen of ours, who came in so many thousands from so many lands, to do such splendid and such absolutely indispensable work for the Empire? Not a single allusion to them either in this essay or in the Preface to Bernhardi. Boers alone are used for illustration. Anyone without knowledge of the war would infer that the whole of the mounted work on our side had been done by Cavalry. Nor is the conversion of the Cavalry themselves into mounted riflemen mentioned.
One further question of definition before I proceed to the “peculiarities” of the war. What does Mr. Goldman mean by “shock”? He does not define it, nor does “Cavalry Training,” wisely enough, attempt a definition; but under the heading “Shock Action” (p. 410), he adduces as an example of shock the Klip Drift charge, where the Cavalry files were eight yards apart, and the immediate objective of the charge was a sprinkling of extended skirmishers. I should weary the reader if I again exposed this fallacy at length. Shock means impact. This charge was not shock, by any interpretation of that word, nor in the sense in which Bernhardi or any European Cavalry understands it. It was the right pattern of charge, but, as after experience proved, it was essentially the pattern of charge appropriate to mounted riflemen, and it was through blindness to this fundamental difference that the Cavalry never made another like it.
Now for Mr. Goldman’s “abnormalities.”
1. Terrain.—To take this point first, as the least important. Indeed, I scarcely know whether to take it seriously or not. It is rarely expressed elsewhere, and I think Mr. Goldman himself regards it as a desperate resource. After saying, broadly, that “certain physical and local conditions go far to explain why the Cavalry were not more effective with the lance and sabre,”[[67]] he complains that the “boundless plains” were “seamed with ridges and watercourses,” while “the shock-tactics of Cavalry require open ground free from large obstructions like rocky kopjes, thick bush, and strong fences” (i.e., wire fences, which, as he admits, were easily cut, and in time became no hindrance). But, while condemning, apparently, the whole of the Transvaal, he cautiously admits that in the Free State “the conditions were favourable.” Was there ever a more remarkable example of under-statement? What does he expect? Where is his ideal battle-ground of the future? Taken as a whole, South Africa, though its rolling plains were not quite so flat or so free from fences and dongas as the plains of Northern Manchuria, may be regarded as one of the most perfect manœuvring grounds for Cavalry which the civilized world contains. Of course, there were “obstructions” even in the most favourable areas, and, of course, these obstructions had a way of coming into prominence when fighting was afoot. Battles are not fought on billiard-tables. One side or the other usually seeks defensible positions. And why should Cavalry complain of irregularities? How effect surprise on a dead-level plain? It was by using irregularities that mounted riflemen won their most brilliant successes in South Africa. Shock is extinct, precisely because the ground which it imperatively demands makes Cavalry most vulnerable to fire and least capable of surprise.
2. Bad Condition of Horses and Poor Remounts.—I dealt with this point in Chapters VI. and VII. The difficulties of the long voyage and acclimatization, and the imperfections of the remount system, are well known. A preventable cause of wastage, careless management and riding, is also scarcely disputed. On the debatable point of over-weight,[over-weight,] Mr. Goldman, in a separate Appendix, contends that the horses were needlessly over-loaded. All causes together do not explain away tactical facts covering two years. The more closely these facts are scrutinized—even those of actions like Poplar Grove, where the excuse has been most loudly raised—the less adequate the explanation. On inspection it always turns out that the enemy’s skill with the firearm, and our own deficiencies in that respect, are the principal cause of imperfect achievement. Where the Cavalry showed skill with the firearm there they obtained their tactical successes, irrespective of the condition of their horses. In the excellent Colesberg operations no complaint was raised about the horses. When were sabres drawn? Once, but without result, owing to delaying rifle-fire. In the arduous operations for the relief of Kimberley, when the horses were at their worst, the Cavalry achieved their most important success, by intercepting and containing Cronje. On the strategical aspect of these operations, the use of lance and sabre, as combatant weapons, had no bearing whatever. Men do not ride better or quicker for carrying steel weapons; on the contrary, the extra weight and the habits instilled by the shock theory are a hindrance to mobility. Tactically, the Cavalry succeeded or failed in proportion to their skilful or unskilful use of carbine and horse combined; succeeded signally at the Drifts, where they held up Cronje; failed signally in the pursuit north from Kimberley. On the Natal side, the Cavalry horses were as fresh at Talana, a case of failure, as at Elandslaagte, the solitary case of a successful charge. As for Poplar Grove, which Mr. Goldman singles out for illustration, let me give his own words: “How could horses pursue a fleet and mobile enemy after a long day’s engagement, in which they had covered forty miles, and had turned the Boers out of position after position?” How indeed? Does Mr. Goldman seriously expect or demand that in our next war, after four months of hostilities we shall be provided with super-horses capable of the kind of feat suggested—that is, of beginning a galloping pursuit after fighting over forty miles of country? But this is a case where the reading of facts makes such a difference. In point of fact the conditions of pursuit began to be present after twelve miles. The full forty miles can only be arrived at (as I pointed out in my narrative) by counting the unnecessary détours and countermarches caused by failure to break down or ride past trivial flank and rear-guards. In these and many other later operations I have pointed out the intimate connection between horse-wastage and deficiency in direct aggressive power.
From the capture of Bloemfontein to the end of the war the complaint about horses has less and less force. The remount system, of course, was greatly improved. Although the difficulty of acclimatizing foreign animals was never properly overcome, owing to the ceaselessly voracious demands of the field-columns, horses poured into South Africa from all quarters of the globe at an enormous rate, while no less than 158,000 native South African ponies (exclusive of large numbers captured on the veld) were supplied by the Remount Department. Whatever the condition of the horses from time to time, the tactical incidents are of the same general character. Nor, it need scarcely be added, was the disability confined to the Cavalry. All our mounted troops were similarly affected, and the Boers, in spite of their possession of the hardy native pony, must be regarded as being on the whole in a worse position. From first to last they were confined to their domestic supply, and, as I have pointed out, from Paardeberg onwards they suffered considerably from shortage of horses.[[68]] Their advantages were a light load and good horsemanship.
Lastly, let me remind the reader of what I believe to be the real gist and essence of this complaint about horses. The theory of shock among several other rigorous conditions presupposes the presence at any and every moment of fresh horses capable of bearing down upon their objective at a gallop, and during the last fifty yards at the “charge,” and in perfect formation. This condition alone is enough to make shock a negligible factor in future wars—if, that is, Cavalry are going to play the great part in war which they should play, but which they have not played for the last forty years. Mounted riflemen are subject to no such conditions, and would lose half their value if they were. Picture a Boer charge—the little grass-fed ponies breaking from their “trippling” trot to what would correspond in European Cavalry to a moderate canter.
3. Lack of Opportunity.—From ground and horses we pass to the more important part of Mr. Goldman’s case for “abnormality.”[[69]] Though he never admits that Cavalry work fell short in any respect in South Africa, he is evidently conscious that this perfection needs much special proof, and he falls back on the proposition that they did not have a proper chance of distinguishing themselves in their own special line. Two absolutely distinct causes—the one domestic, the other external—are represented as having produced this lack of opportunity:
(a) They were not employed properly—i.e., as the context shows, by Lord Roberts in particular, though he is not named.
(b) That the Boers, owing to their habit of retiring without “fighting to a finish,” did not permit the Cavalry to “discharge Cavalry duties.”
I have alluded in previous chapters to both these points. Let me add a word more.
As to (a), Mr. Goldman’s argument is vitiated from beginning to end by that old confusion between strategy and tactics, between mobility and combat, which lies at the root of arme blanche doctrine. The express point he is arguing, remember, is the relative value of Cavalry and mounted riflemen, of the steel weapon and the firearm, or, to be more accurate, the steel weapon plus the firearm, and the firearm alone. Now, the horse, whether used strategically or tactically, is common to both types. Weapons are used only in combat. We are concerned, then, purely, with a question of weapons and of combat. Strategy only concerns us in that the ultimate end of all strategy is combat. If there were to be no combat, equipment for a strategical errand would be vastly simplified. We should discard all weapons and all ammunition, and use the lightest men we could possibly find. In defending the steel weapon, therefore, and in showing that it had not its proper opportunities, we should expect to find Mr. Goldman dwelling on tactical opportunities. Quite the reverse. His complaint—both in the Appendix to his own book and in his Preface to Bernhardi—is that the Cavalry were denied strategical opportunities. If he proved this up to the hilt, he would not have furthered the arme blanche theory one whit. But does he prove it? “Strategical” is, of course, ambiguous, but let us follow his loose employment of the word in calling the Kimberley raid “strategical.” He would not—and, indeed, does not—contend that at that period Roberts denied the Cavalry independent opportunities. He begins with the general advance of May, 1900.
But, again, we must pause to define the terms we are using. Mr. Goldman’s definition of the “strategical use of Cavalry” is on page 412 of “With French in South Africa”: “The use of that arm in such a fashion that, without of necessity engaging in any tactical action, certain well-defined effects are produced.” Note the words I have italicized, for they prepare the way in advance for Mr. Goldman’s appreciation of the action of Zand River, which he gives as a “concrete case to explain his argument.” “At that action French’s Cavalry division was employed on the extreme left flank of the army to produce a purely tactical effect.... His operations could only, and did only, have the effect of causing the enemy gradually and in perfect order to withdraw from the position commanding the river.... The effect was purely tactical, for the early withdrawal of the enemy, unbeaten, undemoraiized, gave no chance to Cavalry shock action.” What is the inner meaning of this contempt for “purely tactical effects”? Simply this, that our Cavalry, owing to their armament and methods, were outmatched in combat by the Boers. Let the reader examine once more the facts and maps of this action in the “Official History,” the Times History, Mr. Goldman’s own narrative, or any other. He will see that “could only” and “did only” are synonymous terms to Mr. Goldman. Eight thousand Boers held a twenty-five mile front, with their main strength in the centre and left, against nearly 40,000 British troops, of whom 13,000 were mounted. Aiming at envelopment and destruction, Roberts gave the Cavalry a supremely important tactical object. Of the two turning forces employed, two brigades of Cavalry, supported by 2,200 mounted riflemen, were to make an extensive sweep round the Boer right flank, and gain an intercepting position at Ventersburg Road Station. The Cavalry got well round to the rear in very good time (for the movement was a complete surprise to Botha), but were subsequently checked by small flank-guards. One brigade was badly mauled, and the whole division was delayed long enough to enable Botha to withdraw his whole force in safety. The Lancer brigade, near the railway, and next in line to French’s division, though lightly opposed, showed no greater aggressive capacity (see “Official History,” vol. iii., p. 56, and map), and the same applies to the remaining Cavalry brigade on our extreme right. Mr. Goldman is content: there could not have been any “tactical effect.” The logical inference is that Cavalry can have no tactical value at all.[[70]] For he does not suggest any tactical alternative for them. One tactical retort to these immense Boer extensions was, as I indicated, a piercing movement; but Mr. Goldman makes no such suggestion, although in the same Appendix (under “Security and Information”) he expressly gives as one of many normal Cavalry functions that of “piercing the opposing Cavalry screen with a division or divisions cut loose from the main army.” As I have pointed out, for purposes of analogy, the Boer army on this, as on so many other occasions, did represent a Cavalry screen.
And what is his suggested strategical alternative? This, that the Cavalry division should have been, say, “100 miles to the north of the main army, moving south, while our main army moved north.” The effect on the “ill-disciplined Boer troops” would have been “incalculable,” and then, in some unexplained way, would have come the “opportunity for the shock tactics of Cavalry.” How wonderfully simple war seems to Mr. Goldman, and how carelessly he must have read his master, Bernhardi, who makes short work of this conception of miraculously easy and effective raids in modern war! But let us look a little closer. The Cavalry had arrived from Bloemfontein at Smalldeel, freshly remounted, on the 8th. On the 9th French’s two brigades covered twenty miles of their turning movement. On the 10th, the day of the battle, they covered upwards of thirty miles, and their horses were too tired for them to be able to act on the suggestion of Roberts for an enveloping march that same night round the Boer army and to the north of Kroonstad. Starting at 6.30 a.m. next day, they were too late to produce any important results.
The tasks set the Cavalry, whether we call them strategical or tactical, were as heavy and responsible as the most ardent leader could desire. This craving for grandiose strategical “effects” without combat is thoroughly unhealthy and distorted. I venture to lay down the proposition that no Cavalry has a right to complain of strategical mishandling until it has proved beyond question high combative capacity. With carbines and inadequate fire-training this high standard was beyond the reach of the Cavalry. It has been said that Roberts misused them in the Middelburg operations of July 23–25, 1900. Study the facts. French had planned a very extensive circuit. Roberts, who had no spare mounted troops for his main columns, prescribed a shorter curve. On the 24th both Cavalry Brigades, even with the help of Hutton’s mixed force of 3,000 men, were held up for four hours by a small rear-guard. Casualties, two men wounded. It is impossible to assume that a wider circuit against so mobile an enemy would have produced important results.
Genuine strategical independence for a purely Cavalry force, on the lines of the great Civil War raids, was never in question during this period, and would have been useless if feasible.[[71]] The nearest approach to such an expedition was the futile divisional march of 173 miles across the Eastern Transvaal in October, 1900, where some Infantry and a few mounted riflemen, besides masses of ox transport, accompanied the column. There was no mobility worth the name; the column became nothing more than an escort to its own transport. The Kimberley raid was not, of course, one of strategical independence. The division as a whole was never more than twenty miles from large portions of the main army, and was not rationed independently for a longer period than three days. Kimberley was a friendly town, and after the return of the main army, on which the force was dependent for all but temporary supplies, forage ran out owing to De Wet’s stroke at Waterval. Mounted riflemen were associated with Cavalry, and the Cavalry themselves won success by acting well as mounted riflemen.
Mr. Goldman’s idea that hundred-mile circuits would end in “opportunities for shock” is utterly chimerical. It is against all evidence, from this war and others, European, American, or Asiatic, and Bernhardi scouts it.[[72]] The ride from Kimberley on February 15, selected by Mr. Goldman as a case where for once “Cavalry” were used in a proper “strategical” manner, did not end in shock; on the contrary, it ended in tactical fire-action pure and simple. The chance for interception was of the same tactical character at Zand River. In point of fact, at one moment during the latter action an attempt was actually made at an open-order Cavalry charge, by a brigade against about 200 Boers.[[73]] It came to nothing. And the reason, as given by Mr. Goldman and the Official Historian? Horses too much blown. And yet Mr. Goldman cries out for hundred-mile expeditions which are to culminate—with fresh horses—in shock.
No one, of course, would go so far as to assert positively either of Roberts or of any Commander-in-Chief in any war that he never once missed an opportunity for the strategical use for mounted troops. That is a different matter altogether. The issue lies between steel-armed troops and the mounted riflemen, whom Mr. Goldman ignores. Why not a bare allusion to Plumer’s brilliant defence of Rhodesia, or to the relief of Mafeking—a strategical march of 250 miles in fourteen days, with fire-fights en route, by irregulars?
With regard to General Buller’s use of Cavalry I need add nothing to my criticisms in Chapters VIII. and IX. His fault was to carry disbelief in the steel for the Boer War to the extent of disbelieving in Cavalry altogether for that war, a wholly unwarrantable point of view, derived from an equally distorted conception of the utility of Cavalry.
(b) Refusal of the Boers to Stand.—The facts speak for themselves. Only by avoiding the whole topic of Boer aggression, and by treating Boer rear-guard skill as a non-Cavalry quality which “made pursuit practically impossible,” is the point even arguable. Indeed, I approach it again with the utmost reluctance; for Mr. Goldman’s idée fixe that the Boers were from first to last mortally afraid of the lance and sword carries him to lengths where no upholder of mounted riflemen who respects and admires the Cavalry and attacks only their weapons and methods can consent to follow him. I shall refrain from making controversial use of these passages, and shall confine myself, briefly, to less difficult ground.
Mr. Goldman is probably thinking mainly of the operations of Lord Roberts, though his proposition is general (p. 420). He would scarcely contend that the Boers did not “stand” from November, 1899, to March, 1900, on the Tugela heights, or that they did not show positively aggressive qualities and outmatch our Cavalry at Talana and the battle of Ladysmith. With all his belief in the steel, he would scarcely in set terms allege that regular Cavalry would have defended or attacked Spion Kop or Pieter’s Hill better than they were in fact defended and attacked. But these were tactical occasion, presumably with no “tactical effects” to be produced. What, then, of Elandslaagte?
As for the main operations under Lord Roberts, has Mr. Goldman ever seriously reflected upon the relative numbers engaged? Of course, the Boers frequently showed moral weakness—we ourselves were not exempt—but they did not fear the sword. Assuredly they “stood” at Paardeberg to their ruin; but was there shock at Paardeberg? Assuredly they may be said to have stood at Dornkop and at the two days’ battle of Diamond Hill, where Cavalry were hotly engaged, and at Bergendal, where seventy-four Boer Cavalry (though Mr. Goldman would never admit they were “Cavalry”) delayed an army and were ejected by Infantry. In the other actions of this period, as I have pointed out, their retreats were conducted in an orderly manner and with small loss.
Let me lay down another proposition, which I believe all Cavalrymen will agree to. No one on behalf of Cavalry has a right to make a general complaint of pusillanimity or insufficient resistance on the part of the enemy, unless (a) that enemy has had something approaching numerical equality; or (b) has been forced into disastrous retreats, with loss of guns, transport, etc.; or unless (c) the Infantry and mounted riflemen associated with the Cavalry have not been seriously engaged. On this latter point the facts of the war and statistics of losses are decisive. There is something that makes the brain a little dizzy about the first two conditions, but the whole case for the arme blanche teems with paradoxes which can only be met by the method of reductio ad absurdum.
Finally, I ask again, as I asked above, what is the real meaning of this complaint about lack of resistance? Simply this, that the Boers would not engage in shock and imposed fire-tactics on the Cavalry. In his remarks on terrain (p. 423) Mr. Goldman reveals the truth. “Favourable on the whole as the ground was in the Free State, in the presence of Cavalry operating on favourable ground the Boers refused to give battle.” Well, I can only ask the reader to study as one example among scores Mr. Goldman’s own example, Zand River, noting (1) that we were nearly five times superior in total strength, and in guns, and that the regular Cavalry, reckoned apart from mounted riflemen and Infantry, amounted to five-eighths of the whole Boer army; (2) that the terrain was as suitable for shock manœuvre as any Cavalry could expect to obtain, and such as they very rarely would obtain in any probable European battle-field; (3) the tactical incidents of the Cavalry turning movement, the offensive strokes by the Boers, and the failure of our charge. How could the Cavalry lose 224 horses and 161 men in casualties and prisoners and fail in their tactical task, unless someone “gave battle”? In other words, “battle” is synonymous with “shock.” Nothing but shock counts.
Time has convinced Mr. Goldman more and more strongly of this truth. In his Preface to Bernhardi he lectures the Boers in a vein of compassionate condescension on their ignorance of the “Art of War.” It is true enough that there was much in the art of war which the Boers did not understand, or understood fatally late. But what does their mentor, for the purposes of his argument in this Preface, mean by the “Art of War”? He means shock, though he gives it the customary name of “mounted action.”
“Had the Boers understood the Art of War and taken advantage of the openings which their superior mobility gave them, or had they been possessed of a body of Cavalry capable of mounted action, say at Magersfontein, they might repeatedly have wrought confusion in our ranks.”
This passage sets the crown upon the case for “peculiarity.” I leave it as it stands without further comment.
Such are Mr. Goldman’s reasons for regarding his South African War as a vindication of the arme blanche. I have not discussed them at excessive length. They are extreme views, but such views, if honestly expounded, as Mr. Goldman expounds them, must be extreme. Many people vaguely entertain similar ideas, but if they take the pains to work them out with facts and maps, they will either be forced to similar extremities or will abandon them altogether. In my next two chapters I shall give further proof of the astounding contradictions in which arme blanche doctrine abounds.
I come to the last of the triumvirate, General von Bernhardi himself. It is a relief. We begin to breathe fresh air after an atmosphere which, I believe the reader will agree with me, becomes sometimes almost unbearably close and enervating. When censure of the Commander-in-Chief, depreciation of a brave enemy, implied depreciation of our own mounted riflemen, complaints about ground, complaints about horses, complaints about anything and everything but the one thing which really merited complaint, when apology and insinuation are carried so far, we begin to long for something stimulating and straightforward, and in Bernhardi we get it. On his work I shall have to write more fully in the next chapter. At this moment I wish only to call attention to his view of the “peculiarity” of the Boer War. It is contained in half a dozen lines on page 56 of “Cavalry in Future Wars.” He has just been praising the Boer charges as having achieved “brilliant results,” in spite of “any kind of tactical training for this particular purpose.” (What a curious sidelight that latter remark throws on official views of "training"!) He adds:
“Certainly weapons and numbers have altered materially since the days of the American Civil War, and the experiences of South Africa, largely conditioned by the peculiar topographical conditions and the out-of-door habits and sporting instincts of the Boers, cannot be transferred to European circumstances without important modifications.”
That is all he explicitly says about the Boer War. But the reader will see at once that here is a totally different point of view from that of Mr. Goldman, whose thesis is that the Boers were not formidable enough to be fit adversaries for our Cavalry, that they would not “stand,” and that their great deficiency was lack of a steel weapon and shock power. The idea underlying Bernhardi’s vague words is much more akin to that contained in the passage quoted from Sir John French, and, of course, it is essentially the right idea. I pass by the “peculiar topographical conditions.” Without further elaboration, we need not take the words to mean in set terms that South Africa was less favourable for shock manœuvre than Europe. The kernel lies in the “outdoor habits and sporting instincts,” creating conditions which “cannot be transferred to European circumstances without important modification.” These words, read in connection with the “brilliant results” of the Boer charges, can only signify that town-bred Europeans cannot hope to imitate methods, excellent in themselves, but demanding outdoor habits and sporting instincts.
This idea, expressed in one shadowy form or another, of an element of superiority in the Boers, is very common; commoner, I think, on the whole than its antitype, the idea of inferiority, though I have more than once heard both propounded, unconsciously, in the same breath by the same person. But it is never in this country voiced authoritatively; and with good reason, for it shakes to its foundations the whole fabric of the shock system and opens up a line of thought which can end only in one way. Mr. Goldman does not even hint at it, except in connection with that strange faculty for fighting defensive rear-guard actions which he regards as quite outside the topic of Cavalry. General French, while implying that the Boers were formidable, is silent about the reason.
Let us face this shadowy argument for what it is worth. What does it mean? That we cannot train our Cavalry to become genuinely mobile mounted riflemen, with the rifle charge as their tactical climax instead of the shock charge, which is not a climax at all, but an isolated species of encounter in glaring conflict with real battle conditions? The contention, if it is really made, is absurd. If we cannot artificially create inbred instincts and habits so strong as those of the Boers, we have the advantage of moral and tactical discipline, acquired only too late by the Boers. We can work in the right direction on the magnificent material we have, and instead of imbuing the wrong spirit deliberately imbue the right spirit. We can teach our men to “fight up” to the charge and rely on one and the same weapon both for the process of “fighting up” and for the charge itself, when and where the actual mounted charge is necessary. The tactical form of the Boer and British rifle charge—that is, in successive lines and with wide intervals—was precisely the same as our own open-order steel charge as practised at Klip Drift and at the present moment. The crucial difference lay in spirit and object; the spirit leading up to the charge was that of the rifle, and the object was that of overcoming the enemy with the rifle, not necessarily in a mêlée unless by way of pursuit, but at decisive range.
Is saddle-fire an accomplishment our Cavalry cannot acquire—an accomplishment which at this very moment we inculcate for “picked men and scouts” of the Mounted Infantry, a force with not a quarter of the mounted training that the Cavalry receive? For professional troops it cannot be more difficult to acquire than skill with the steel weapon on horseback. That is an art which, as everybody knows, demands long and continuous drill and practice. Indeed, it must demand longer drill and practice, because true shock—that is, heavy impact—involves close, knee-to-knee formations, rigid, mechanical, symmetrical, not only difficult to attain in themselves, but exceedingly difficult to combine with the free and effective use of steel weapons. Obviously, neither saddle-fire nor the use of steel weapons can safely be enjoined in times of peace for volunteer troops like our Yeomanry, for example, who obtain at the most a fortnight’s continuous field training in the year.
I ask the reader seriously to follow out the train of thought suggested by those pregnant words “outdoor habits and sporting instincts.” Is it not common sense that these habits and instincts, fortified by drill and discipline, must be the very foundation of mounted success in war, and is not a system of tactics founded upon them likely to be a good system? Should it not be the aim of a highly-civilized industrial people to aim at approximating as far as possible to such a system? Or, taking as their starting-point indoor habits and urban instincts, are they to persist in working in the opposite direction? Was it not the possession of these habits and instincts by such a large number of Americans at the time of the Civil War that led to the brilliant achievements of Cavalry in that war, mainly through trained reliance on the firearm, imperfect weapon as it was? Was not our own possession of sporting and hunting aptitudes, embodied in Englishmen and Colonials alike, our very salvation in South Africa? Of course it was. Wherever these natural instincts were strong enough to burst the bonds of ancient tradition, there we obtained enterprising Cavalry leaders. The same instincts called into being many good leaders among Infantrymen, gunners, and sappers, and among ordinary civilians from every quarter of the Empire.
Do we not pride ourselves on this fact? Is it not a commonplace in every Englishman’s mouth that, hard and bitter as the struggle was, “no other nation”—and among other nations Germany is often instanced—could have engaged in it so successfully as ourselves? There is sound truth in the boast. But it is the emptiest and silliest of boasts if we do not recognize the meaning behind it, which is nothing but this—that we have a greater proportion of men in our Empire who possess those outdoor habits and sporting instincts which take shape in skilled mounted riflemen. And when we envisage a European war, are we to forget this boast and, ignoring not only our own priceless experience but our own innate capacities, revert to the antiquated European system?
If there are other arguments for “peculiarity,” I do not know them. But if I have carried my readers with me, they will agree that in this chapter and every other, in investigating and combating alleged peculiarities I have, in fact, been pursuing phantom arguments round the circumference of a vicious circle. Disguise it as we may, the real peculiarity of the Boer War was that the Boer horsemen did not carry steel weapons. European Cavalries do. Let us turn to Europe.
CHAPTER XIII
BERNHARDI AND “CAVALRY TRAINING”
There, indeed, is the grand paradox. Quite convinced as patriotic Englishmen that we did better in South Africa than the Germans could have done, we nevertheless turn to Germany for light and leading on the mounted problems of to-day. Though I name Germany in particular, and would be justified, for the purposes of my argument, in confining myself to Germany, it need scarcely be added that Continental practice in general has a fatally strong influence on British practice. One may argue interminably, and perhaps not without some success, against the alleged peculiarities of the Boer War, but in the last resort one meets that most exasperating, because most intangible and inconclusive, of all arguments—"other nations believe in the arme blanche. Germany, for example, believes in it. Germany has a large and magnificent army; therefore, Germany and the other nations must be right." As a moderate and sober expression of this view, I quote the following from a leading article which appeared in the Times of September 16, 1909—an article itself founded on the views of the able Military Correspondent of that journal, given after the manœuvres of 1909:
“Prominent among these”—i.e., erroneous schools of thought arising from South African experience—"is that which, in the campaigns of the future, assigns to Cavalry the rôle of Mounted Infantry. As our Military Correspondent points out, Continental nations, to whom our own records, as well as those of the Russo-Japanese War, are equally open, and who are among the most intelligent and experienced in military affairs, maintain large forces of Cavalry, and train them in a certain manner for a certain purpose. As our army is officially designed to fight a civilized enemy, it follows that we must not be deficient in a weapon possessed by potential foes. It is therefore necessary that the one Cavalry division we possess should compare favourably in quality with the squadrons that it may have to meet, whose numerical superiority is not a matter of doubt."
Although almost every word in this paragraph invites criticism, I need call attention only to those I have italicized:
1. “The rôle of Mounted Infantry,” in effect, begs the whole question. It instantly calls up the starved and stunted functions of that arm, as it is now organized and trained, and by innuendo suggests something utterly devoid of dash and mobility.
2. “Experienced.” Russia I shall come to later. When have Germany, Austria, or France had national experience, in civilized war, of the smokeless magazine rifle?
3. “Civilized.” Were the Boers not a civilized enemy?
4. “Numerical superiority.” The suggestion is that, having a small force of Cavalry, we should be all the more careful to obtain excellence in the arme blanche. This is, indeed, an amazing argument. Is our solitary division to court brute physical collisions with the Continental masses? Even “Cavalry Training” admits that the smaller the force, the greater the necessity of relying on the rifle. Think of South Africa—of Bergendal, for example, and scores of other actions! The admission, of course, gravely imperils the arme blanche, because it implies, what is the literal truth, that the rifle can impose tactics on the steel. But how escape the admission?
5. “It follows that we must not be deficient in a weapon possessed by potential foes.”
That will serve as a text for this chapter. Observe that the doctrine of mere imitation is put in its frankest form. Our Lancers already carry three different weapons. If Germany were to add a fourth or a fifth, in that case, too, it would “follow,” no doubt, that we must “not be deficient.” If we act on this principle at all, it was surely a pity that we did not act upon it when the Boer War was imminent. Our “potential foes” then possessed a weapon in which our Cavalry were lamentably deficient, and lacked a weapon which proved to be nothing but an encumbrance to our Cavalry. Did those circumstances prevent us from sending our Cavalry to the war equipped and trained on Crimean lines, more than forty years out of date? Do they prevent Mr. Goldman, even now, from denying that, even for South Africa, that equipment and training were wrong? What I want to lay stress on is the absence of any recognition that there are some general principles at stake. Votes are counted, selected foreign votes, given by “potential foes” to whom our “records are open,” being regarded as equal in value to our own. America, not being a “potential foe,” has no vote. Colonel Repington himself, in the Times of September 14, briefly disposed of the question in just this way. Yet he is too able a man not to know that imitation is not a principle, that counting votes is not decisive, and that the arme blanche must be justified by arguments based on the facts of modern war. Is he prepared so to justify it? I have never seen his full profession of faith. I always seem to detect in his writing the attitude of one who on this matter passively accepts the official doctrine as it stands, and who works with enthusiasm and vigour to make a success of an existing system. After all, I seem to hear him saying, we cannot go far wrong, because our potential foes believe in the same system. I may be in error, but I venture to issue the challenge to him to expound, illustrate, and justify the arme blanche theory; to declare for the “terror of cold steel,” for the dash which can only be inspired by the steel weapon, for the power of the steel to impose tactics on the rifle, for the inevitable shock duel; and to state whether he agrees with General French, or Mr. Goldman, or General von Bernhardi, as to the nature of the abnormalities which make the lesson of the Boer War negligible. If he will help with his keen logic to illuminate the maze of contradictions through which I shall thread my way in this and the next chapter, he will do a still greater service to the true interests of the Cavalry. He will admit that he has undergone conversion since 1904. At a time when he and all the world were under the hallucination that the Cossacks were good mounted riflemen, he wrote that the tactics necessary to destroy them would be the Boer tactics, and that they were “not to be beaten by serried ranks, classic charges,” and “prehistoric methods” of that sort (Times, April 2, 1904).
General von Bernhardi’s work, “Cavalry in Future Wars,” admittedly inspires British Cavalry practice. Is he, in the matter of the steel weapon, a trustworthy guide?
Let me first recall the attitude of the German General Staff towards the mounted problems raised by our war. The whole of the issue we are discussing is “taboo” to them. Indeed, the whole mounted question is “taboo” to them. In the rare comments on mounted action—comments confined mainly to the Kimberley operations, and referred to in my own Chapters VI. and VII.—the German Official Historian never so much as by a line even indirectly contrasts the relative powers of mounted riflemen and Cavalry. During the period covered by the History, he speaks of the Boers nearly always as though they were Infantry, and alludes in general terms to their “purely defensive powers,” in spite of incidents—rare, no doubt, in the early stages, but strongly suggestive of the future—like Talana Hill, Nicholson’s Nek, Wagon Hill, Spion Kop, Waterval, Kitchener’s Kopje, Sannah’s Post, all of which occurred within the period described. And just at the time of Sannah’s Post and De Wet’s raids, when the Boers were beginning a consistent development of aggressive mobility, not in the “regular” battles, where in numbers they were hopelessly outmatched, but in independent adventure; just, moreover, when aggressive mounted effort on our side was beginning to be more urgently necessary than ever before, the detailed narrative ends. After March, 1900, “the battles furnish in their details little instruction of tactical value,”[[74]] and the whole campaign from Bloemfontein to Komati Poort receives only a brief summary. The guerilla war—a wholly mounted war—obtains half a page.
Then comes a “tactical retrospect,” in which it becomes perfectly clear that for the writer the whole interest of the war centres in the development of fire-tactics for riflemen. Whether they have horses in the background or not seems to be immaterial, and for practical purposes he assumes that they have not. This assumption destroys the value of more than half his criticism. The whole point was that the Boer riflemen were mounted riflemen, able, by the rifle, to defend a position in small force against superior force, and, by the horse, to leave that position when it became too hot. Obviously these men, though they could be, and were, attacked vehemently by Infantry, could never, unless they courted suicide, be defeated and destroyed by Infantry, who walk and do not ride. Obviously, too, you cannot expect even the best Infantry under the best leaders eternally to sustain at the highest level the ardour of the fire-fight on foot unless they know that riflemen equal in mobility to the enemy—that is, mounted riflemen—are co-operating with equal ardour and efficiency for that defeat and destruction of the mounted enemy which mounted men can alone ensure. This sense of skilled and effective co-operation is exactly what our Infantry did not have, from causes I need not enter into again. The German critic is blind to the defect, because he is blind to the whole mounted problem. Regarding the Boers as Infantry, he regards our Infantry and the Generals who controlled them as solely responsible for the incompleteness of our victories, and goes to the monstrous length of attributing this incomplete achievement partly to the “inferior quality of a mercenary army.”
The writer of the retrospect knew that the Boers had horses, for in one passage he alludes to their “mobility,” and he knew that we had a large body of Cavalry and mounted riflemen, for in another solitary passage he casually alludes to their ineffective turning movements. But the “Infantry fight,” which in all war “decides the battle,” is the main theme throughout, and remarkably interesting the critic’s observations are. So far as they go, they apply just as closely to mounted riflemen as to Infantry, though the critic himself is wholly unconscious of the analogy and of the implied condemnation he over and over again makes on the theory underlying the steel armament of Cavalry.
If he had proceeded with a study of the war, and had thoroughly digested the fact that the Boers not only had horses, but could attack, what would have been his conclusions? If only he had thoroughly realized that our Infantry had not horses, he would, I am sure, have modified some of his strictures on the use of that arm, on the excessive “dread of losses,” and so on. Some inkling of the truth that mobility often transcends vulnerability, and that mounted riflemen can in the long run be thoroughly defeated only by mounted riflemen, would have dawned upon him. But who knows? So strange and persistent is his reticence about the arme blanche, so outspoken his surprise and delight when—for example, at Paardeberg—he finds Cavalry using the carbine with success, that one would almost imagine he had received the mot d’ordre for silence on the whole topic. However, let this be clear, at any rate: (1) That there is no explicit comfort for the arme blanche in any page of these two volumes; (2) that there is no suggestion of any peculiarity or abnormality in the Boer War which renders its lessons inapplicable to future wars. Mr. Goldman’s case for peculiarity crumbles in the light of this searching analysis of fire-tactics. Substitute “mounted riflemen” for “riflemen” in cases where the facts obviously demand the change, and the whole structure of “strategical mishandling” and slack Boer resistance falls to pieces. The idea that the Boers needed only the arme blanche to make them formidable is refuted a hundred times by implication.
And now let us turn to Bernhardi. Here, by a welcome contrast, we have an enthusiast for the mounted arm. Not a disproportionately ardent enthusiast by any means. Armament apart, not a word he says in support of the profound importance of Cavalry in future wars is exaggerated. On the contrary, he underrates their rôle, as I shall show. The Boers, in the one allusion to them, are not “Infantry” for him, but “Cavalry,” and he has evidently been deeply impressed by the bearing of our war upon Cavalry problems—how deeply impressed it is impossible to say. His first edition was published in 1899, just before the war began; the second, which Mr. Goldman has translated, in 1902, when it was barely over. His strong views on the great importance of fire-action were evidently inspired by the American Civil War and by the poor performances of the shock-trained European Cavalries, including those of the Prussian Cavalry, in the wars of 1866, 1870, and 1877. In his second edition he never illustrates specifically from our war, probably from lack of sufficiently full information. But his allusion to the remarkable character of the Boer charges is in harmony with the whole spirit which pervades his chapters on fire-action.
Any Englishman who is aware of the fact that our own “Cavalry Training” is based, sometimes to the extent of textual quotation, on Bernhardi’s work, and, on the recommendation of General French, resorting to that work not merely as the most complete and brilliant exposition of modern Cavalry theory, but as a refutation of the opponents of shock, must be struck at the very outset by two singular circumstances:
1. The dominant feature of the book is insistence on fire.
2. So far from representing German practice, Bernhardi writes avowedly as the revolutionary reformer of a dangerously antiquated system, upheld by authorities whom long years of peace and the memories of a war far too easily won have drugged into unintelligent lethargy. In 1899, when, without a suspicion of our own defects, we were complacently beginning a war which threw Cavalry defects into the strongest possible light, Bernhardi was fiercely combating these very defects in the face of a strongly hostile professional and public opinion. In the preface to his edition of 1902, when our war was ending, he complains that “of the demands which I put forward concerning the organization and equipment of the [German] Cavalry, none have as yet been put into execution,” though he concedes that the “necessity of reforms” has “made progress.” Organization is of no immediate concern to us. By equipment we find later that he refers (among other less important points) to the rearmament of the Cavalry with a firearm “ballistically equal in all respects to the rifle of the Infantry”—that is, to a reform adopted by us during the war, and retained ever since. Some of his recommendations for the education of Cavalry officers in the rudiments of fire-tactics would make our youngest Yeomanry subaltern blush. On the importance of fire for Cavalry there is nothing in the book which has not been commonplace to all intelligent critics of the American Civil War of 1862–65.
Now I want to give the reader a warning and a suggestion. The warning is not to assume that Bernhardi is representative of “other nations.” The German Cavalry is now only just about to be equipped with a good firearm. Count Wrangel is preaching to the Austrian Cavalry a doctrine in flat contradiction to Bernhardi’s. The French Cavalry, General de Negrier tells us, s’obstinent dans leur rêve of classic charges and contempt for fire-tactics.[[75]] My suggestion is this—that we should measure Bernhardi’s views by the reactionary views which he set out to fight. He is a German, writing exclusively to Germans, ruthlessly exposing German defects, and making his remedies conform to these defects. His only allusion to British Cavalry is when he speaks, on page 185, of “Anglo-maniacs and faddists” in connection with a question of breaking horses. After all, the most passionate reformer must limit himself to more or less feasible aims. I do not mean for a moment that the General consciously refrained from giving overstrong meat to babes; but when we remember the milieu in which he lived, the influence to which, during his whole life, he was subjected, and the mountains of prejudice which he had to surmount, it seems marvellous, not that he should go no farther than he does go on the path of intelligent reform, but that he should have gone as far. As a matter of worldly wisdom, de Negrier is probably wrong in telling to a yet more backward Cavalry the full, logical, scathing truth about the archaic absurdities of shock.
Read Bernhardi in the light of these circumstances. The early chapters must, I think, have fairly horrified our arme blanche school. He runs amok among all the cherished traditions which held good from the Crimea to Talana Hill.
“The Art of War has been revolutionized (inter alia) by ‘arms of precision’” (p. 1).
Compare Mr. Goldman’s definition of the Art of War, in so far as that art was misunderstood by the Boers.[[76]] On page 9 Bernhardi says:
“As far as the Infantry are concerned, it will be quite the exception to encounter them in closed bodies; generally we shall have to ride against extended lines, which offer a most unfavourable target for our purpose.”
Absolutely correct, if we remember that by “our purpose” he refers to the steel weapon, showing at the outset that he does not realize the nature, as he certainly does not contemplate the adoption of the mounted rifleman’s charge.
“Thus, essentially the Cavalry has been driven out of its former place of honour on the battle-fields of the plains, and has been compelled to seek the assistance of the cover the ground affords in order to carry its own power of destruction into immediate contact with its enemy, and only under most exceptionally favourable conditions will it still be possible to deliver a charge” (he means an arme blanche charge) “direct across the open” (pp. 9, 10).
He should add, of course, what South Africa proved, and the Japanese Cavalry confirmed on the plains of Mukden—that mounted riflemen have taken the “place of honour” vacated by Cavalry. But his instinct about terrain is sound at bottom. Contrast the demoralizing doctrine of “Cavalry ground,” and Mr. Goldman’s complaint that even South Africa was not “open” enough for Cavalry. Contrast his view of “obstructions,” and his failure to perceive what Bernhardi clearly perceives—that inequalities and obstructions, so far from being a hindrance to mounted troops, are in modern war increasingly necessary for effective action in surprise, and ought to be a matter of rejoicing, not lamentation.
“The possible participation of the civilian inhabitants of the invaded Nation in the War will hamper most severely all forms of Cavalry action other than on the battle-field” (p. 10).
This, of course, is an allusion to the francs-tireurs of 1870, who made it unsafe for the Prussian Cavalry to go about alone. I commend it to those who regard our guerilla war in particular as of no concern to Cavalry. The implication, of course, is that the steel is useless in these conditions. And the same is implied elsewhere of all the duties of scouting and reconnaissance, save alone for the gigantic preliminary shock duel which is to clear the road for reconnaissance, and to which I shall have to recur later.
On the steel in pursuit, Bernhardi is almost ironical. Only when
“troops of low quality, beaten, without officers, weary and hungry, lose all cohesion, when with baggage, wounded and stragglers, they are driven back over crowded roads, and then, no matter how well they are armed, they are an easy prey to a pursuing Cavalry. The man who throws his rifle away, or shoots in the air, will not find salvation either in clip-loading or smokeless powder against the lance in the hands of a relentless pursuing Cavalry” (p. 15).
We may add—and I am sure he would admit—that men who throw their rifles away are an easy prey to any form of physical compulsion. They will surrender to a riding-whip. For sheer rapid killing just conceive of the frightful efficacy of the rifle, as proved by our war! If the horsemen insist on remaining on their horses among these terrified sheep, and if they do not use rifle-fire from the saddle, would not a revolver be at least as effective as a sword or lance? Of course the whole conception of such a pursuit with the steel on any considerable scale is the old Cavalry chimera so rarely seen in practice, never seen in the European wars from 1866 onwards, never seen in the Boer War, never seen in Manchuria. In other passages Bernhardi himself practically admits that it is a chimera.
“The same holds good for the fight itself. We cannot attack even inferior Infantry as long as it only keeps the muzzle of its rifles down and shoots straight; but once it is morally broken and surprised, then the greatest results are still to be achieved even on an open battle-field” (p. 15).
The amazing thing is that in passages like this, where he is thinking mainly of the deficiencies of the steel, Bernhardi seems for the moment to forget that pure mounted riflemen, and even the hybrids, perfect in both weapons, who represent his own ideal, have the same defensive power as Infantry, to say nothing of the additional offensive (and defensive) power conferred by the horse. When, in other passages, he is thinking mainly of the excellence of the firearm, he is fully alive to the close analogy with Infantry, and goes to the extreme length of insisting that Cavalry shall actually be as good as Infantry at their own game of fire. They can be as good, he says, and if they are not as good, for Heaven’s sake, don’t tell them so, or you will destroy their dash! (p. 249). And they should have a firearm superior even to the Infantry rifle (p. 176). These three passages, on pages 15, 176, and 249, read together, give us in one more form the reductio ad absurdum of the steel weapon. Postulating equal fire-efficiency for Cavalry and Infantry, read the first passage over again, substituting “Cavalry” for “Infantry.” “We cannot attack [i.e., with the steel] even inferior Cavalry [much less inferior mounted riflemen of the pure type] as long as it only keeps the muzzles of its rifles down and shoots straight.” The rest is a truism: morally broken troops of course get beaten. And now postulate superior Cavalry, or, better still, superior mounted riflemen of the pure type, with their full aggressive powers. What becomes of the steel? In Bernhardi part of the confusion is due to the fact that he does not recognize the pure type of mounted rifleman at all, not even in the half-developed form of our Mounted Infantry. Having started from the a priori unreasoned dogma that however reduced the opportunities for the steel, it must be retained, he is continually endeavouring to obtain the benefit of both worlds, and involving himself thereby in palpable contradictions and inconsistencies. Our own authorities are more careful in avoiding the direct reductio ad absurdum. In borrowing from Bernhardi for the purposes of “Cavalry Training,” they eschew passages like those I have quoted hitherto, which to English ears would mean the downfall of the steel, and rely on less compromising matter.
In Chapter IV, “Increased Importance of Dismounted Action” (note in “dismounted action” the old, ineradicable assumption that “mounted action” is only associated with the steel), he is in the height of what I may call his “fire-mood,” and is very reticent about the arme blanche. The firearm, which, remember, should be a better weapon, if anything, than the Infantry rifle, is given many offensive as well as defensive rôles. Pursuits, for example, must not be “frontal,” because “Cavalry can easily be held up by any rear-guard position in which a few intact troops remain.” But who, we wonder, are these “intact troops”? Why not Cavalry, or mounted riflemen, as in South Africa? Is not rear-guard work a conventional and normal function of Cavalry itself? And if it is a case of Cavalry versus Cavalry, why not shock, at the compulsion of one side or the other? On the next page the General himself is demonstrating the value of Cavalry in rear-guard work, and insisting on the paramount importance of the firearm in it.
His further views on pursuit have been incorporated in “Cavalry Training.” Pursuits are to be on “parallel lines” and on the enemy’s flanks, or by way of anticipation, on his extreme rear—circumstances where the “principal rôle falls to the firearm, for only in the fire-fight is it possible to break off an attack without loss in order to appear again at some other point.” This passage, of course, is another implicit abandonment of the whole case for the steel. Think it out, and you will see that I am not exaggerating. It is transferred textually to “Cavalry Training” (p. 229), but, wisely enough, it appears at the respectful distance of forty-two pages from the general remarks on the “Employment of Cavalry,” where, among opportunities for the use of the firearm (pp. 186, 187), pursuit is not mentioned, and where the whole tenor of the instruction is that fire-action is only to be used when “the situation imperatively demands it.” Think this matter out in the light of “fire-fights” in South Africa (Roodewal, for example) or anywhere else, including, of course, fire-fights between or against Cavalry or mounted riflemen. What is the use of a weapon which admits of no tactical elasticity, for that is what it comes to, which can be used only when you are so certain of complete and final success that you need not even contemplate another attack at another point? This, of course, is the real reason for that idleness on the battle-field, that strange lack of dash which, by the admission of their own military authorities from Von Moltke downwards, characterized the Cavalries engaged in the wars of 1866 and 1870. And then there were no magazine rifles. Cavalry dash in South Africa was sapped by faith in the steel, and only partially restored by faith in the rifle. It is the old story: the charge must be the climax of a fire-fight, and therefore it must be inspired by fire. Under modern conditions you cannot mix the two sets of tactics; they are antagonistic and incompatible.
The passage goes on: “The charge, then, will only secure a greater result than dismounted action when the tactical cohesion of the enemy has been dissolved and his fire-power broken—that is to say, generally it will be of greater service in tactical than in strategical pursuits” (pp. 51, 52). We know from the passage quoted on page 302 what Bernhardi means by “dissolved tactical cohesion.” He means circumstances in which any weapon and any charge will secure surrender. In the next words he falls accidentally into the old error of confusing combat with mobility. What difference does it make to the efficacy of a weapon whether combat has been brought about tactically or strategically?
But, taking the words as they stand, what a light they throw on South Africa and the complaints of strategical mishandling and lack of opportunity! How in the world does Mr. Goldman reconcile them with his contempt for “tactical effects” and his conception of vast strategical circuits ending in shock-tactics? I need scarcely remind the reader that in all the actions on the main line of advance from Paardeberg and Poplar Grove to Bergendal, from February to September, 1900, the conditions of pursuit may be truly said to have been present from the very outset, owing to the great disparity of forces. Roberts was continually endeavouring to do exactly what Bernhardi recommends, to initiate for his mounted troops, not frontal but parallel pursuits, or anticipatory pursuits on the enemy’s extreme rear. He failed because (1) the enemy were themselves skilled mounted riflemen, who were able to hold very extensive fronts with very few men; (2) because our Cavalry were deficient in the very quality which Bernhardi says is essential—fire-power. And now let us read a little farther and see what Bernhardi says in contemplating this very contingency of wide fronts on pages 53, 54, under “Turning Movements Impracticable.” Here he strongly censures the fallacious idea that Cavalry “possesses in its mobility the infallible means of circumventing points of resistance.” “Width of the (enemy’s) front” (and the reader will remember the prodigious extent of the thinly-held Boer fronts) is one of the first obstacles named. Others are summarized in the following paragraph, which I commend particularly to Mr. Goldman:
“The theory that Cavalry, thanks to its mobility, can always ride round and turn the positions it encounters, breaks down in practice before the tactical and strategical demands upon the arm, partly by reason of the local conditions, and partly because of the consideration which has to be given to time, to the endurance of the horses, and the position of the following columns” (p. 54).
Apply these remarks to battle-fields, such as Diamond Hill and Zand River, upon which I commented in Chapters IX. and XII. The logical alternative to circumventing tactics was, as I pointed out, piercing tactics, not the still wider circumventions which French favoured. But piercing tactics signified fire-tactics, and, since the enemy was mounted, swift, aggressive fire-tactics, either into decisive range or through the whole of a fire-zone, with a wheel back from the rear, should the enemy hold their ground. Bernhardi’s alternative is of precisely the same nature. “The actual assault remains necessary now,” and it is the assault by fire. Only, alas! it is always the wholly “dismounted” assault.
Two pages later, after censuring another error, which I have several times alluded to—namely, that of “overrating the power of Horse Artillery to clear the road for Cavalry” (pp. 54 and 178), we come to his allusion to the Boer charges on horseback (p. 56). Surely these must have given him, after all he has said, furieusement à penser. But no. What have “habits and instincts” to do with immemorial official creeds? A page later he is qualifying his remarks about Horse Artillery for the express purpose of admitting that guns are very necessary indeed for covering Cavalry fire-tactics, which, by his hypothesis, must be “dismounted.” I would give much to know exactly what effect upon his mind was made by Mr. Goldman’s deprecatory footnote to the effect that the Boer charges were not “Cavalry” charges, but Mounted Infantry charges; for, remember, he does not recognize Mounted Infantry at all. The real truth is, of course, that when Bernhardi wrote his second edition he knew very little about the last half of our war. No foreign observers were there, and the German official witnesses had decided that there was to be no “tactical interest” after March, 1900. It is doubtful whether the greater number of the charges had even taken place when Bernhardi went to press. Mr. Goldman takes pains to assure him that there were only “one or two” after all. And the whole of our Cavalry school has been assuring him ever since that the war, and especially the guerilla war, was so abnormal as to be quite uninteresting to Cavalry. So error propagates error.
We are prepared, then, for the inevitable. Since for Bernhardi Cavalry must have some “mounted” tactics, clearly those mounted tactics must be derived from the steel. Yet, by the end of Chapter iv., what a chasm seems to have intervened between the firearm and the steel! For the latter weapon he has, explicitly or implicitly, eliminated every combative opportunity save those of complete demoralization in the enemy. The General leaps the chasm with splendid intrepidity. Hitherto the natural inference from his writing is that the firearm has far surpassed the steel in importance, and in several later passages, after leaping the chasm, he speaks of its importance as “equal.” But in the first lines of Chapter v., “Tactical Leading in Mounted Combats,” when his revolutionary instincts must be curbed, all he admits is that dismounted action has “increased considerably in importance.” Then follows the explicit recantation, the confession of the true faith:
“It nevertheless remains the fact that the combat with cold steel remains the chief raison d’être of the Cavalry, and when the principles have to be considered according to which troops have to be employed upon the battle-field, the actual collision of Cavalry ‘masses’ remains the predominant factor.”
The logical hiatus, so familiar in all writers on shock, is complete. There is no attempt made to bridge it. One can almost hear the ghost of Frederick the Great whispering in the impious General’s ear: “What is all this despicable talk about dismounting? Betray the steel? Never!”
Remark that in making this sudden transition the General passes instantly from a general consideration of the uses of Cavalry in war, mainly fire-uses (where any weapon is mentioned at all), to the specific consideration of the “collision of Cavalry masses,” which I will assume for the moment to mean the inter-Cavalry shock fight, the absence of which, from modern battle-fields, he, like General French, seems to regard as unthinkable. “Battle-field,” in its context, evidently means “general battle-field of all arms.” Previously, in Chapter ii., he has referred to that other opportunity for the “Cavalry duel”—namely, in strategical reconnaissance by the independent Cavalry, where, also, I take him to assume that the duel is a shock duel. This battle-field “collision” is the “predominant factor,” and it is here, if I read his real inner meaning aright, and, for practical purposes, here only, that the steel weapon will find its opportunity.
‘If I read his real inner meaning aright;’ I am bound to make that reservation. One has to make such reservations in criticizing all “shock” literature at the present day, because the irruption of the unruly firearm into the sacred precincts of shock results in obscurities the task of unravelling which can only be compared to the elucidation of a difficult Greek text. Two incompatible things have to be reconciled, and it is beyond the wit of man to depict their reconciliation in clear and logical language. How easy it would have been for Bernhardi (if he really meant it) to say early in his book, “For Cavalry the predominant factor is the collision (i.e., the mutual collision) of Cavalry masses. In this inevitable class of encounter the steel is, and must be, supreme; therefore the steel must be the dominant weapon for Cavalry. Otherwise, and for all other purposes (except, for example, the pursuit of utterly demoralized Infantry and one or two other very rare opportunities) the firearm has usurped its place,” and then arrange his treatment of the subject frankly and clearly from this point of view. Then—if one only could extort from him his definition of a “mass”—one would have something concrete and definite to deal with. But such a course would have compelled him to rewrite his entire work, and to open his eyes to the inconsistencies with which it teems, just as the same course would compel the compilers of “Cavalry Training” to court self-stultification. It is ludicrous first to vest Cavalry with the full fire-power of Infantry, who are to have no fear of Cavalry, and then to say that the steel weapon must decide the mutual combats of Cavalry, who are riflemen plus horses. Even as it is, the jar of the ill-locked points (if I may change my metaphor) is audible as Bernhardi passes from one set of rails to the other. By the time he has reached this Chapter v. he has already, thanks to fire, almost banished the “battle-field” from consideration. “Cavalry has been driven out of its former place of honour on the battle-fields of the plains” (i.e., from the only terrain fit for shock). But surely the collision of Cavalry masses on the battle-field, this “predominant factor,” must involve a “place of honour.” What can there be more honourable than the defeat of the enemy’s mounted troops? In South Africa such a defeat would have signified the defeat of the whole Boer army on any given occasion. But I do not want to cavil over words. Take the General’s summary at the end of Chapter ii., “Duties during the War.”
“If, after this short survey of the many fields of action open to horsemen in the future, we ask the decisive question, ‘Which tasks in the future will need to be most carefully kept in mind in the organization and training of this arm in peace-time?’ we shall not be able to conceal from ourselves that it is in the strategical handling of the Cavalry that by far the greatest possibilities lie. Charges even of numerically considerable bodies on the battle-field can only lead to success under very special conditions, and even for the protection of a retreat our rôle can only be a subordinate one. But for reconnaissance and screening, for operations against the enemy’s communications, for the pursuit of a beaten enemy, and all similar operations of warfare, the Cavalry is, and remains, the principal arm. Here no other can take its place, for none possesses the requisite mobility and independence.”
The meaning of this is plain, if we remember that Bernhardi contemplates only one type of horsemen, Cavalry, which are the only troops with the “requisite mobility and independence” to reconnoitre, screen, and pursue. It is a truism that horses facilitate these objects. Their weapon is a distinct question, and all that precedes is an implicit condemnation of the steel, at any rate for anything in the nature of mixed combat. The reader will bear in mind the passages on pursuit.
Now, in the light of this passage and all that precedes it, read the chapter on “Leading in Mounted Combats.” Combats against whom? Surely against mounted Cavalry? Surely “collision” must, in its context, mean that? Yet for twenty full pages we read on, more and more bewildered, through passages more and more suggestive of mixed general combat, until on page 83 we come with a shock to the isolated consideration of “Cavalry duels,” which he declares to be “essential,” though he admits that they led to “mutual paralysis” and “deadlock” during the war of 1870. A moment later, and for the rest of the chapter, he is deep once more in fire and all that appertains to fire on the modern “battle-field.” And he ends with an eloquent purple patch on the “real work” of Cavalry being in pursuit.
Happily, in the case of Bernhardi, one is dealing with what au fond is not a complex mental structure. He does not arrange his subject with any ulterior purpose. He does not seriously attempt to reconcile faith with science, the arme blanche with the firearm. He passes from one to the other with complete insouciance, instinctively locking the thought-tight door which divides them, and bestowing on both the enthusiasm of an ardent nature. But the enthusiasm is of significantly different qualities. For the firearm it is predominantly technical and scientific; for the arme blanche it is romantic. In this very chapter, having delivered himself of the raison d’être, he enlarges on the difficulties of manœuvring and leading masses of Cavalry for shock, and shows himself acutely alive to the artificiality of the whole system, to its liability to fall to pieces under stress of a few rifle-shots, and to the absolute impossibility of effecting a sudden tactical transformation to fire-action under pressure of unforeseen conditions, after an advance has begun. The steel is treated poetically. For some reason it has always been regarded as a poetical element in war. In these days of scientific brutality, the less poetry unfounded on hard science and hard facts the better. It is better to be busy in battle with a prosaic weapon than to be idly weaving dreams which never come true. In Bernhardi, the poetry being on the surface, the profound physical and moral fallacies, underlying the arme blanche for Cavalry, become the more patent.
Take, for example, this conception of the indispensable inter-Cavalry shock fight, which, as I say, I think he really believes to be the only serious rôle of the steel, though, by the way, he never explicitly says in speaking specifically of the Cavalry duel, that it must be a shock duel (p. 83). I suspect that such a categorical axiom would revolt his common sense. Remember once more that he regards the ideal Cavalry qua riflemen, as the equals of Infantry, technically and morally. Read back, or forward, and see what he says about the steel versus Infantry, about Cavalry having been driven out of their place of honour on the battle-fields of the plains, about the revolution in conditions caused by arms of precision, etc. Then recollect that Cavalry, unlike Infantry, have horses, allow for country which is not a plain, and construct your own picture of the duel. Lastly, test your picture by South African experience, where the duel, without a trace of shock, lasted for two and a half years, and include, as the finishing touch, the fact, which Bernhardi only once dimly adumbrates and has not seriously envisaged, that mounted riflemen can charge.
One searches the whole of his volume in vain for light upon the profoundly difficult questions which arise from this intermixture of steel-tactics and fire-tactics in one Arm. Though in spirit the whole book is a recognition of the fact that the firearm is absolute arbiter of modern combats, directly he regards the steel in isolation he becomes completely absorbed in “mass” formations, and in every species of drill and manœuvre which is antagonistic to, and abhorrent to, fire-tactics. In this steel mood there is no confusion in his mind about the meaning of “shock.” There is no compromise toward “extensions.” For Cavalry charging against Cavalry (pp. 221, 222), “it is a vital article of faith that only the closest knee-to-knee riding—jamming the files together by pressure from the flanks—will guarantee victory or their personal safety.” Against “Infantry” (and why not against dismounted Cavalry?) the utmost he concedes is that the “files must be loosened, and every horse go in his normal stride,” but perfect cohesion and symmetry must be maintained. In other words, the essence of true shock—heavy impact—is retained without any qualification. The General, from his own point of view, is perfectly right. Unlike Mr. Goldman, he would have ridiculed the idea that there was shock at Klip Drift with the troopers many yards apart.
And now contrast the directions of our own “Cavalry Training,” whose compilers, more sophisticated than the innocent Bernhardi, cannot proceed too far in defining shock and the purposes of shock for fear of falling into transparent solecisms. Section 103 (p. 125) is entitled “Instruction in the Attack against Cavalry.” (Note the tacit assumption that Cavalry are always on horseback and always on plains, for on any other interpretation the section is meaningless.) The charge, it is laid down, must have “rapidity and vehemence ... firm cohesion, highest speed, and determination to win, ...” but “cohesion” is only further defined as “riding close.” If this is a symptom of compromise, it is fatal compromise from the point of view of shock; for I noticed that in criticizing inter-Cavalry charges at the Cavalry manœuvres of 1909, the Military Correspondent of the Times repeatedly censured the lack of cohesion and “boot-to-boot” riding as likely to cause failure against “the best foreign horsemen.”[[77]] What a satire on our imitative policy! But in Section 104 (p. 129), “Instruction in the Attack against Infantry and Guns,” a reason appears for some anticipatory tinge of compromise. “The troop will usually attack in an extended formation.” And here, too, according to Colonel Repington, the Cavalry in 1909 were not up to the mark, this time from excess of cohesion.[[78]] Again we see the fatal results of compromise.
All this would be anathema to Bernhardi, who by a singular irony is the model of our Cavalry School. He knew what shock was, and however flagrant the inconsistencies he was drawn into, clung honestly to that true conception. Our authorities know perfectly well that these extended formations are utterly incompatible with shock, and ought to know from South African experience that they are only strictly compatible with a fire-object and a fire-spirit. Then, indeed, they are formidable.
Had I space I could multiply examples of inconsistency in Bernhardi’s book. How, after war experience of our own, the arme blanche school in this country had the courage to enlist under his banner was a mystery to me on first reading his book, until I came to that blessed formula on page 90, which I had better repeat once more.
“Moreover, in the power of holding the balance correctly between fire-power and shock, and in the training for the former never to allow the troops to lose confidence in the latter, lies the real essence of the Cavalry spirit.”
This is his solitary attempt at verbal reconciliation. It is, of course, only verbal. The counsel of perfection is never fortified by practical instruction. There is scarcely an attempt to show that it is humanly possible to create the ideal hybrid, or to show, even if it be created, how to combine harmoniously the two sets of incompatible functions in one scheme of tactics. On the contrary, the deeper he gets into the topic of training the more patent becomes the impossibility of performing this miracle.
The Austrians are more logical. Count Wrangel says:
"The ideal would perhaps be for them [i.e., Cavalry] to do each equally willingly—i.e., to be equally efficient with the carbine as with the arme blanche; in this we include, besides sword and lance, horsemanship. The attainment of this ideal is, in our opinion, practically impossible. Not only on account of the short service, which scarcely is sufficient to make a man at one and the same time a clever rider, swordsman, and shooter, but also because the sword and the carbine are such different masters that the Cavalryman simply cannot serve both with the same love.
“It requires quite a different temperament to ride to the attack with drawn sword at the gallop than it does to wait for hours placidly aiming in a fire position.” (Observe that Wrangel has never heard of rifle charges, and thinks that both sides in South Africa sat out the war “placidly aiming.”)
"As long as we lay principal stress on good dashing horsemanship and the clever handling of the arme blanche, and relegate training with the rifle to the second place, so long shall we foster the offensive spirit of our Cavalry" (“Cavalry in the Russo-Japanese War,” p. 55).
Wrangel is wrong, but he is frank. De Negrier is both frank and right in dismissing the steel save for occasions when "la panique saisit les troupes en désordre." Right, too, are the Americans.
Bernhardi’s book is a crushing refutation of Wrangel, and a vindication of de Negrier. Indeed, in his heart of hearts I believe he suspects his formula of balance to be only a counsel of perfection, for in the lines which immediately precede it he implies that only a leader of very rare genius will be capable of combining both systems. As for the men—silence. The formula, moreover, must be read in its context. At the moment he is in his fire-mood, addressing remarks on the “tactical conduct of dismounted actions” to a Cavalry of whose abysmal ignorance and incapacity in that branch of war he cannot speak too strongly. He is sweetening the pill to the refractory patient.
Our own soldiers refuse to follow Lord Roberts and de Negrier, and cannot officially say what Wrangel says, because there are still some memories of South Africa left, and Wrangel’s opinion is simply pre-South African opinion as embodied in the pre-war Manual. So they have taken Bernhardi’s formula (“Cavalry Training,” p. 187), add on their own account that “thorough perfection” in both weapons is necessary (Wrangel’s impossibility), and by an ambiguous mixture of contradictory counsels manage to save their face in the matter of fire while actually insinuating the full truth of Wrangel’s view as to the paramount importance of the steel. The formula of balance is sandwiched between two passages on the same page which reduce the idea of “balance” to a nullity, and which I must now repeat again. The first is:
“Squadrons must be able to attack on foot when the situation imperatively demands it.”
The second is:
“It must be accepted as a principle that the rifle, effective as it is, cannot replace the effect produced by the speed of the horse, the magnetism of the charge, and the terror of cold steel. For when opportunities for mounted action occur, these characteristics combine to inspire such dash, enthusiasm, and moral ascendency that Cavalry is rendered irresistible.”
And we may add that immediately before this latter passage comes another which suggests Wrangel’s idea that fire-action is mainly defensive. “Experience in war and peace teaches us that the average leader is only too ready to resort to dismounted action, which often results in acting defensively.” It is true that the compilers add that it is important to lay stress on offensive tactics for Cavalry, even when fighting on foot, but what chance has that little proviso when they are told in the next breath that dash comes from the steel?
That assertion is far more sweeping and positive than anything to be found in Bernhardi, who would stultify himself if he spoke in such a general way of the “imperative demands of the situation,” of the “defensive” function of the firearm, or of the “terror of cold steel.” His whole work is a demonstration, not only of the pressing importance of dash in aggressive fire-action, but of the fact that “even inferior” riflemen, unless in a state of abject panic, do not and need not have the smallest fear of the sword and lance, and to say in so many words that the only persons terrified by those weapons are the Cavalry themselves (who are also riflemen) is more than he could do. I have pointed out that he does make a belated attempt to define, at any rate inferentially, the function of the steel. “Cavalry Training” makes none. Hence “terror” is permissible.
Of course, our official drill-book, in spite of its struggles for compromise, cannot hide the old reductio ad absurdum. Here is its list of occasions (pp. 186, 187) which demand fire-action: (1) Enemy entrenched; (2) enemy occupying “broken or intersected ground” (e.g., most of England and much of Europe); (3) enemy’s convoy marching under escort; (4) enemy occupying extended position (in other words, the enemy in his normal position in all modern war); (5) covering a retreat; (6) enabling a scattered force to concentrate with a view to “decisive mounted action”; (7) in the case of numerical inferiority in Cavalry; to which we must add (8) (from p. 215) “occupying localities for defence”; (9) patrol work (where combat is necessary); and (10) (from p. 229) in pursuit, (where, following Bernhardi, the method is to be by fire, except in case of complete demoralization of the enemy). And yet, in the face of this exhaustive list, Cavalry are only to act by fire when the “situation imperatively demands it!” I think, perhaps, that of all the list No. (3) is the one which appeals most to the sense of humour—if it were a case for humour. It is the only unmistakable allusion to the Boer War in the whole handbook. Otherwise that war might never have been fought, for all the direct recognition it obtains. The idea is, I suppose, that reverses were specially associated with convoys, so that some special concession to fire is needed in that connection to lull the doubts of questioning minds. Unhappily the concession, if it is to be reconciled with the efficacy of the steel weapon at all, cannot possibly be expressed in intelligible language. Why in the world should “mounted attack” on a convoy involve abnormally “wide outflanking operations” (p. 188)? The escort, pinned more or less closely to a mass of transport, is, on the contrary, abnormally devoid of independent mobility, and abnormally open to direct attack at the will of the aggressor. And what is the meaning of this implied distinction between the “outflanking” character of a “mounted attack” and the direct character of a fire-attack? Cannot shock charges be direct, frontal? Observe the revenge which overtakes timid concession. Here is one more implicit betrayal of the steel, one more case of confusion between mobility and combat. Whether you attack the advance-guard, or rear-guard, or flank-guards of a convoy makes no difference to the weapon. If your shock charge is of any use, use it. And the bitter irony of it all is that it was in the attack upon convoys, or columns hampered by a large transport, that the Boers used the “mounted attack” with the most effect. But it was not the mounted attack meant by “Cavalry Training.” It was the rifle charge, as at Yzer Spruit, Kleinfontein, Vlakfontein, etc. (Chapter XI. above).
Bernhardi, in many other respects, is a sounder guide to the value of fire-action than “Cavalry Training.” He insists, for instance (p. 176), on the vital point that the firearm should be carried on the back, “as is the practice of all races of born horsemen,” not attached to the saddle, as our Cavalry carry it, and shows thereby that he is more alive than they are to the real spirit of fire. Although, regardless of consistency, he blurts out truths about fire which cut at the root of the steel theory, he generally succeeds in avoiding statements about steel which would nullify his conclusions about fire.
To illustrate this, let me return once more to the “shock duel,” as between (1) independent Cavalries operating strategically, (2) on the general battle-field. The former case is dealt with in “Cavalry Training” on pages 193, 194, and in Bernhardi on pages 29–31; the later case on page 206 of our Manual, and on pages 82–84 of the German book. Bernhardi talks always in vague terms of the Cavalry duel, without mentioning shock, though I grant that he assumes it. But I am perfectly sure that he would not go so far as to say what “Cavalry Training” says on page 194: “On such occasions dismounted action will at the best have but a negative result,” and within the space of a few lines to contrast this “dismounted” action (so limited) with a “vigorous mounted offensive.” Even with his non-recognition of mounted fire-action, this is just the kind of proposition which he seems, by a sane, if unconscious, instinct, to avoid. In point of fact, on page 267 he uses the epithet “negative” for exactly the opposite purpose, applying it to the “results obtained by our Cavalry in 1866 and 1870 ... simply and solely because in equipment and training they lagged behind the requirements of the time,” a passage which must be read with page 83, where he deplores the “mutual paralysis” of the duels of 1870. And all this, let it be remarked, while still believing, with “Cavalry Training,” that fire-action is of an essentially dismounted, semi-stationary character, in spite of the lessons of South Africa. If his pen had begun to frame the word “negative” in the sense intended by “Cavalry Training,” he would in that instant have been converted.
The solemn discussion of the indispensable shock duel in modern war reminds one of the polemics of medieval schoolmen. It is carried on in vacuo, without the remotest application to the facts of war, without even one backward glance at South Africa, without support even from the wars of 1866, 1870, and 1877, and without a gleam of encouragement from the Russo-Japanese War. Bernhardi on page 83 makes a pathetic effort to explain its failure at Mars la Tour, and the consequent absence of any decisive effect of the Prussian Cavalry upon the battle-field, in spite of their superiority, by saying vaguely that “neither their training nor the comprehension of their duties was on a level with the requirements of the time.” For the real reason turn to his chapters on fire-action and to the passage I have just quoted from page 267, noting “equipment.” The truth is that their training for shock was too good, and the comprehension of their shock duties so rooted as to be paralyzing. Why should the Cavalry, of all arms, have lacked dash when the rest of the Prussian army was afire with dash, when Infantry commanders had so often to be blamed for excessive rashness? Why, indeed, save that Cavalry dash was founded on the wrong weapon? As usual, when hard pressed, Bernhardi relapses into poetry, and urges his Cavalry to “stake their souls” and “risk the last man and the last horse” (p. 84). How strangely these antique dithyrambs ring! Do not Infantry stake their souls, and risk their last man, and all the rest of it? Not a whit braver than the Cavalry, did not they, simply because they had a good weapon, show more aggressive tackling power in South Africa than the Cavalry? It is cruel to brave men to give them a bad weapon, tell them to found their dash on it, and then to blame them for lack of dash; doubly cruel and doubly absurd to tell them that they are par excellence an arm of offence, as “Cavalry Training” tells them on page 187. They are not a more offensive arm than Infantry or Artillery. Defensive soldiers are a contradiction in terms. How explain the mechanical repetition, decade after decade, in spite of all disillusionment, of this axiom—that it is peculiarly the province of Cavalry to sacrifice their last man in winning victories? As a fact, all arms, in honourable rivalry, must and do make supreme sacrifices for supreme ends. The explanation is that the arme blanche is solely a weapon of offence, which has lost its utility and kept its fascination. The idea, I think, can be traced to the days when the duties of reconnaissance were relatively light, and when Cavalry were reserved on the battle-field for special steel functions, such as pursuit, or some desperate assault. All that is changed, by universal recognition. Reconnaissance is infinitely more difficult, exhausting, and important. On the battle-field special opportunities for the steel never, in fact, arise. But Cavalry must be busy, and busy with the rifle.
A last word on the “Cavalry duel.” That it must be one of the grand objects of Cavalry to overcome the enemy’s Cavalry is a truism. Whether, in the strategical action of independent Cavalry for the purpose of discovering hostile intentions and dispositions, it is best to pursue from the beginning a policy of wide dispersion, or to concentrate at the outset and drive the enemy’s independent Cavalry off the field, has often been debated, and is settled now by Bernhardi and “Cavalry Training” in favour of concentration. It is all pure theory, unsupported by any facts either from Manchuria or from South Africa, where our reconnaissance was very bad. Let us, however, for the sake of argument, follow them. But that this collision, either of the concentrated independent Cavalries, or of concentrated Cavalries, in whatever capacity, on the battle-field, must take the form of shock, and can only be decided by shock, is, surely, a preposterous thing for serious men to waste time in proving. De Negrier, with the simplest illustrations from modern war, kills it with ridicule. In England, at any rate, you cannot get conditions of shock for large masses of Cavalry without deliberate selection from a small choice of areas. In practising as independent units, so as to represent rival strategical Cavalries, we choose suitable areas, and arrange for shock ground adaptable to it. In practising for the general battle-field we can obtain the conditions for shock between large masses of opposing Cavalry only by arranging friendly appointments between the two sides, as at Lambourne Downs on the third day of the general Army manœuvres of 1909. And in all cases, of course, we carefully impress upon both Cavalries that collisions without shock are “negative.” Perhaps war in England is another “peculiar” war, like the Boer War. But in regard to terrain every war in Europe will be “peculiarly” bad for shock, as compared with South Africa.
Probe to the bottom this delusion about the “negative” effect of fire-action, and you will find for the hundredth time the confusion between mobility and combat. Suppose that one of the Cavalries consists at a given moment of Infantry, a paradoxical state of things which often happened with the Japanese in Manchuria. The action of this Infantry will not be negative, as against Cavalry using shock and only shock. Consult “Infantry Training” and the Manchurian War, and you will find that Infantry, averagely well led and trained, can go where they please, both in reconnaissance and combat, without fear of the lance or sword. Where they fail is in mobility, and that is why we use horsemen for all the duties of war which require high mobility. If the horsemen have Infantry rifles, and use them well, in conjunction with the horse, then, indeed, in combat as well as in speed, in tactical as well as in strategical mobility, they outmatch Infantry, and impose negative action on them. Not otherwise, and precisely the same thing applies a fortiori to mounted combats.
Another point: What are “masses”? I take the word from Bernhardi, who seems not to contemplate shock without great masses, the greater the better. Between the mass and the patrol, where is shock to come in? The patrol, where combat is necessary, according to “Cavalry Training,” acts chiefly with fire, and Bernhardi says the same. For what size of unit does shock begin to be specially applicable? “Cavalry Training” is dumb. Bernhardi, more frank, as usual, seems to imply that it is really applicable only to very large masses. But why this mystery? Why should not even patrols use it? Shock is silent, and therefore suitable. Does it make any difference whether the unit is 10, 50, or 100 strong, or 500, or 1,000, or 5,000? From the arme blanche point of view it is wiser to leave the question unanswered. The answer would throw a flood of light on the “peculiar” conditions of South Africa, where during a great part of the war the numbers engaged were comparatively small.
Once more I commend this topic to those Yeomanry officers who are asking for the sword, not with the ambitious dream of using it in “mass,” but with the idea that for small casual combats it is a necessity. It was never so used in South Africa, and if they realized what inexperience with the rifle involved for the Yeomanry in that war—what miserable humiliations and losses—they would be silent. But why should they be silent, as things are? High authorities tell them the war was peculiar, and recommend them to study German books. It is difficult to speak with restraint on this matter.
Let the reader study closely “Cavalry Training” and “Mounted Infantry Training” in the light both of Bernhardi and of the South African War. Without undervaluing their many excellences, let him apply the searchlight to all parts which have any bearing on weapons, and ask himself whether that point has been thoroughly thought out, and brought logically into line with modern experience. I have said little about “Mounted Infantry Training.” I wonder what Bernhardi would think of it. Tantalizing speculation! Would he give them “the place of honour on the battle-fields of the plains” which he denies to Cavalry? Would he give them or deny them reconnaissance and pursuit? How would he class them? What would his feeling be when he found them exhorted in one breath to use saddle-fire in the manner of the Boers (with their congenital “habits and instincts”), and in the next to form square to repel Cavalry—a form of defence abandoned even by Infantry?
I now leave Bernhardi, whom, if he be intelligently read, with an eye to the Cavalry for which he wrote, I venture to regard as one of the most serious enemies the steel has ever had, and one of the best advocates of the rifle.
But when we compare him, in his two diverse moods, with the German Official Historians with the Austrian Count Wrangel, with the British “Cavalry Training,”[“Cavalry Training,”] with the French system of training, with Colonel Repington, General French, and Mr. Goldman, and with the facts of modern war, what irreconcilable contradictions, what a tangle of self-refutation and mutual refutation!
And what is our grand motive in following this enfant terrible? I repeat the words which were my text: “We must not be deficient in a weapon possessed by potential foes.” Probably the same motive dimly influences our potential foes. Who knows how far this imitative instinct extends? It must strike foreigners as a very remarkable fact that in spite of a three years’ war without shock we have reverted to shock. To whom do they probably look for the explanation? No doubt to distinguished soldiers now in high authority, and so the process of mutual mystification goes on, the blind leading the blind. But the proverb scarcely applies to the case of Bernhardi’s influence upon our own Cavalry. That, it seems to me, is the case of a guide with a sure instinct, but short sight, leading one who knows the way, but has wilfully bandaged his eyes.
Of European nations we alone know the full truth, because we alone have evolved the first-class mounted rifleman, and we alone know his supreme value. England bought that secret with two hundred millions of money and twenty thousand lives. Why not make use of it?
CHAPTER XIV
THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR
Soon after Bernhardi published his second edition of “Cavalry in Future Wars,” the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 broke out. Like the Boer War, it fulfilled to the letter all his prognostications as to the value of fire for Cavalry and belied all his theories as to the “collision of Cavalry masses.” Whether he regarded it as abnormal, I do not know. But here, to our own arme blanche school, as we might have expected, is another “peculiar” war.
It was the second great land war between civilized races since the invention of the smokeless, long-range magazine rifle. It was attended by many circumstances which were absent in South Africa. Both armies were constructed on the European model; both were regular, not volunteer; both were in very large force; both possessed steel-armed Cavalry. The war, in shorts, may be said to have been the complement of the Boer War in illustrating all those conditions which were not present in South Africa, but which are likely to be present in a European war. Much of the terrain was even better than South Africa for shock-tactics. Though from the Yalu to Liao-yang the campaign was fought in a mountainous area, from the Tai-tse-ho northward vast open plains, unfenced, unobstructed, of a character not to be met with in any likely European war-area, were the rule.
What happened? No shock. That is not quite literally true of inter-Cavalry combats, for history records one almost laughably trivial case of pseudo-shock. There are said to have been others between patrols in the early days.[[79]] Not a single charge against riflemen on foot. The lance and sword were nowhere. In combat the rifle was supreme, banishing the very thought of the sword even from the minds of those who carried it, and inspiring the only effective action for Cavalry as for Infantry.
I ventured to describe the Boer War as presenting a mass of evidence, vast, various, cogent, against the steel, and in favour of the rifle. Here is another mass of complementary evidence, equally vast, various, and cogent, drawn from the very type of war which our soldiers now envisage—namely, one waged between European armies—in a temperate climate, at any rate in the matter of heat, and in which both Cavalries possess the arme blanche.
Before he begins even to think about explanations, I want the reader to grasp the broad facts in all their naked simplicity. Four years of war in all in South Africa and Manchuria, under every imaginable condition. No shock. In our war a few small cases of pseudo-shock, which belong strictly to the realm of the rifle. Numerous rifle charges, some very deadly. In both wars the rifle supreme, the steel negligible. What miraculous combination of circumstances could warrant our calling the Manchurian War in its turn “peculiar”?
In England, the arme blanche theory for a moment seemed to be in great danger. Some prompt and decisive counter-stroke was indispensable. There could be no compromise here, nothing but a bold lunge straight at the heart would suffice to fell the now formidable heresy. What form did the stroke take? I give it in the words of General Sir John French:
“That the Cavalry on both sides in the recent war did not distinguish themselves or their arm is an undoubted fact, but the reason is quite apparent. On the Japanese side they were indifferently mounted, the riding was not good, and they were very inferior in numbers, and hence were only enabled to fulfil generally the rôle of Divisional Cavalry, which they appear to have done very well. The cause of failure on the Russian side is to be found in the fact that for years they have been trained on exactly the same principles which these writers” (i.e., advocates of mounted riflemen) “now advocate. They were devoid of real Cavalry training, they thought of nothing but getting off their horses and shooting; hence they lamentably failed in enterprises which demanded, before all, a display of the highest form of the ‘Cavalry spirit’” (Introduction to Bernhardi, p. xxvii.).
It is true that these words were published in 1906, when information was still limited; but they appear unmodified in the edition of 1909, and they are in strict accordance with the theory on which our Cavalry are at this moment trained. To bring them into line with the facts as now known would be to declare the arme blanche theory a myth, and to shatter the system based on it.
But before approaching the facts, I propose, as in Chapter XII., to criticize the attitude of mind which permits a high Cavalry authority to brush aside with such confidence another great war in which the sword and lance fell into complete oblivion. It seems to be perfectly useless for critics of those weapons to heap up masses of modern evidence against them and to prove that there is not a tittle of evidence for them, if we cannot also show to the public the kind of way in which the problem is viewed by those responsible for their retention.
General French held high command in a long, mainly mounted war. Explain away the result as we may, this war did, in fact, produce by long evolution, under exacting stress, a certain type of soldier common to both belligerents—the mounted rifleman. It was a splendid type on both sides, and if we combine the best qualities of Britons and Boers we can, if we please, construct from it an ideal type. At any rate, what these troops did is on record. The greater their excellence in combining, for strenuous practical work, the rifle and the horse, the better the results. This was the criterion of success. Herein lay “dash”; herein, to borrow General French’s words, lay the “highest form of the ‘Cavalry spirit.’” It was by approximation to this standard, and by oblivion of all methods directly associated with the steel, that the regular Cavalry acquitted themselves best. It was our glory, not our shame, that we were able to produce this type, and to make it attain, even in the case of raw volunteers, to such a high standard. It was the glory of our brave enemies that, by virtue of progressive excellence in this type, they were able to make the task of the stronger nation so long, costly, and laborious.
How does General French represent this type when he is deploring the failure of the hybrid type in Manchuria? The Russians, he says, “were devoid of real Cavalry training. They thought of nothing but getting off their horses and shooting,” and had no “Cavalry spirit,” and these, the General says, were “exactly the same principles” which admirers of mounted riflemen advocate. No wonder he resents such advocacy, if such are the “principles,” and no wonder he objects to mounted riflemen who are taught to regard their horses as checks, not helps, to mobility and dash. So far from being his opponents’ “principles,” these are the very principles upon which, under the blighting influence of the arme blanche school, our fine force of existing Mounted Infantry is starved—theoretically, at any rate, into a sort of humble subservience to the steel.
Now, would it not be more natural and normal if, knowing what he knows by war-experience of what mounted riflemen can do, General French were to approach this Manchurian question from a somewhat different standpoint? Should he not consider the possibility that the Russian Cavalry, which was armed “on exactly the same principles” which he advocates—and was not, as he seems to imply, trained only in the firearm—might have failed through lack of excellence in the whole-hearted union of the rifle and the horse, as the joint constituents of that aggressive mobility which constitutes the “spirit” of the mounted rifleman? But no. He rushes at once to the conclusion least capable of proof, the conclusion for which there are no positive data since 1870, and very little then, since there were no smokeless, long-range rifles, nor any type of mounted rifleman to force the issue into prominence.
And to what strange conclusions his contemptuous definition of the mounted rifleman brings him! In the admirable Colesberg operations, when the steel did nothing and inspired nothing, we know that his own Cavalry, under his own direction, were “continually getting off their horses and shooting.” After their thirty-mile ride from Kimberley (and the steel did not help them to ride) to intercept Cronje, the same Cavalry did well only through forgetting their “real Cavalry training,” and taking what he regards as the discreditable step of “getting off their horses to shoot.” So did De Wet’s men in their equally long rides to the fields of Paardeberg and Sannah’s Post. It is true that on many occasions the Cavalry, when in superior force, were too ready, not through lack of spirit but through inherent faults of training, to dismount prematurely and take to the carbine. But at whose compulsion? That of mounted riflemen. And why? Precisely because they had not grasped “the highest form of the ‘Cavalry spirit’”—reliance on horse and firearm in combination. The rifle charge, taught us by the Boers, is, to say the least, not described in an illuminating way by the words “getting off their horses to shoot.” Saddle-fire apart, the words, nevertheless, are perfectly accurate. But the Boers shot to more terrible purpose than the Cavalry shot. Historical truth compels us to add that many of our own mounted riflemen excelled the Cavalry in this respect. The handful of Mounted Infantry, who after a chase of many days pounced on and pinned down De Wet at Bothaville, were working, I submit, on the right “principles.” So were the Australians who hung on the same leader’s heels in the desperate hunt of February, 1901.
If this is General French’s mental attitude towards the Manchurian War, I am afraid we cannot expect to find him expressing himself lucidly and cogently on the subject. Turn back to the passage I quoted. The Japanese, he says, indifferently mounted, indifferent riders, and inferior in numbers—drawbacks, be it noted, which are as serious for genuine mounted riflemen as for Cavalry—did very well, but only as Divisional Cavalry. The meaning is not very plain (for they never did well with the steel), but I take it to be this: In our own army the Divisional Cavalry consist, not of Cavalry, but of Mounted Infantry. Their duties, as officially laid down, are “to assist the Infantry in the immediate protection of the division by supplying mounted men for divisional patrolling in connection with the advanced, flank, and rear guards and outposts; to maintain connection with the protective Cavalry,” and other small duties. Proceeding from this analogy, the General means, I gather, to convey that the Japanese Cavalry, acting in those minor capacities, did very well as mounted riflemen. That is all to the good, and presumably they would have done better still with better horses, better riding, and greater numbers.
Is there not also a presumption that with these added advantages they would have done better still in larger rôles as mounted riflemen? But where is the argument leading us? Here are the Russians. No praise for them, even in minor rôles, and even with their better horses, better riding, immense numbers, and, above all, their “years of training” as mounted riflemen. Surely the latter characteristic alone would have enabled them, qua mounted riflemen, to overcome the few and badly equipped Japanese Cavalry acting as mounted riflemen? Overcome them, I mean, not merely in minor capacities, but in all the large and important functions of Cavalry?
The General tacitly admits that neither side made use of the steel. And yet, why not? One can understand that with these manifold sources of weakness which he details they did not attack Infantry with the steel, but why not attack one another? Was the mutual “terror of cold steel” so great as to neutralize the steel? The two Cavalries frequently met in different capacities and in different shades of numerical strength, strategically and tactically. Surely when both sides carry steel weapons this second total disappearance of the “shock duel,” officially held to be an inevitable feature of modern war, both in the strategical and tactical phases, needs further explanation.
Pursuing our scrutiny with an eye trained to detect the arme blanche bias in its myriad fleeting forms, we detect a clue in the word “enterprises” near the end. This suggests neither the battle-field nor reconnaissance, but distinctly the big raid. We recall Mr. Goldman’s complaint of the strategical mishandling of the Cavalry in South Africa, and his assumption that big raids must end in shock-tactics.
I do not know if this was in the General’s mind when he wrote of “enterprises[“enterprises] which demanded before all a display of the highest form of the ‘Cavalry spirit.’” If it was, I can only respectfully repeat my view, expressed frequently elsewhere, that there is here a radical confusion of thought between combat and strategy, between mobility in its broadest sense and tactics, and Bernhardi would be the first to tell him so. Fortunately, this question of raids is as open to positive demonstration by Manchurian facts as any other point of Cavalry practice. But before even approaching the Manchurian facts, and taking my stand purely on South African lessons, I have shown, I hope, that prima facie the General’s reason for the comparative failure of the two Cavalries is open to the strongest suspicion. The facts themselves dispose of the reason altogether.
It was never part of my scheme to deal in detail with the Manchurian story. I believe that for Englishmen, their own great war should be sufficient evidence. And yet, having reached this point, I feel inclined to regret that I did not begin with the Asiatic war, hardly complete as the material still is, and briefly summarize our own, so exaggerated seems to be the craving in many minds for foreign precedents and foreign models, so reckless the disregard for British experience, even when that experience is most stimulating and glorious. Happily, the Manchurian data are simple, uniform, and as absolutely free from complications or apparent contradictions as the South African data whose lessons they confirm.
What is the salient point? With all respect to General French, the salient point for Englishmen, who know by bitter experience that shock training has failed them, is not whether the Russians or Japanese were good shock horsemen, but whether they were good mounted riflemen. Our own Cavalry in South Africa were good shock horsemen, but that did not save the friends of shock from the necessity of finding elaborate reasons for the disappearance of shock during that war. Now for our salient point. Were the Russian Cavalry, who were far the most numerous and in some ways the better equipped of the two Cavalries, good mounted riflemen, by our proved standard of what is good? The answer, from all critics and observers, comes unanimously and emphatically, “No.” In the first place, they were of the hybrid type, carrying swords and, in the great majority of cases, lances as well. Their legendary skill in fire-action proved to be a myth. The Boers would have laughed at them. Our own mounted riflemen would have regarded them as inefficient and ignorant. To the surprise of many people, they had none of the “habits and instincts” for modern war that the Boers had, nothing of the stalking power, the scouting power, the genius for ground and surprise, much less the charging power developed. The Historians of our General Staff (part i., p. 29) supply the explanation: “The system of tactical training was not unlike that of other European armies. Thus the Cavalry was trained both for mounted and dismounted combat, but the musketry training necessary to make it efficient when on foot fell short of the requirements of modern war. The Cossacks, who formed the greater part of the Russian mounted force, were trained on lines similar to the regular Cavalry, but did not attain to the standard laid down for the latter.”
We must allow, of course, for general causes. The whole Russian army, by the testimony of its own leaders, was in a backward state, and the Cavalry was as backward as other arms. Its morale, by comparison with the Japanese morale, was low. In every arm the officers—that vitally important element—were ill-educated; in every arm, together with much splendid devotion and zeal, some of the officers were neglectful of duty. The Cavalry suffered as much as any arm. Wrangel, the Austrian critic, describes the greater part of the Russian Cavalry engaged in the Manchurian Field Army, especially those Cossack organizations which consisted of troops of the second and third class of reserves, as being in the general sense “inefficient mounted troops.”[[80]] Our own Official Reports, however, give a more favourable impression. The older reserve men were, no doubt, unfit for the field, but among the Don, Orenburg, and Trans-Baikal Cossacks there seems to have been some very good material.
Mr. McCullagh, in his book, “With the Cossacks,” gives an interesting description of the great variety of religions, races, languages, colours, and military types which were embodied in the troops known broadly as Cossacks. The Caucasians, though they carried carbines, appear to have been by tradition and choice steel horsemen pure and simple. But whatever the training, there is no dispute about the incompetence of all the Cossacks as riflemen. Captain Spaits gives a distressing account of their failures.[[81]] McCullagh says: “They had no skill whatever in attacking entrenched Infantry. Once dismounted, they are lost.” (p. 182). Both these writers accompanied them in the field. On manœuvre and general employment there is an equally general agreement. Unlike the Japanese, they were maintained for the most part in large independent bodies, in dim homage, we may presume, to that “collision of Cavalry masses” which is the basis of the shock theory. So massed, they were generally idle, just as the Cavalries of 1866, 1870, and 1877 were too often idle, by the admission of Bernhardi, Kuropatkin, and Von Moltke. There never appears a trace of talent for fire-tactics, or an attempt to play either the aggressive or the delaying rôle of the riflemen in South Africa.
What effect had that War had upon Russian Cavalry? None. No more effect than the brilliant performances of the Civil War leaders had upon the Austrian, Prussian, and French Cavalries in the wars of 1866 and 1870, or upon our own Cavalry in 1899. How many Cossack privates had heard of our war? How many of their officers had studied it? Truly those words, “trained for years on the very principles these writers advocate,” are a little hard on those Cavalry leaders in South Africa who led mounted riflemen with distinction. They are very hard, if he only knew it, on General French.
Kuropatkin (vol. ii., p. 151) is cruelly illuminating. It is true he never mentions armaments or the tactics derived from it. Nor did Von Moltke in his equally hard censure of the Prussian Cavalry of 1866 for the same grave delinquency—timidity on the battle-field. It was left for Bernhardi to disclose the true cause and the true remedy. Kuropatkin dwells on “training” and on commanders, most of whom he accuses of cowardice; for “the material of which our Cavalry was composed was excellent” (with certain exceptions afterwards named). What “training” and “command” meant becomes apparent. The Cavalry should have fought as “obstinately as Infantry,” and by way of contrasting the two arms he gives pitiless statistics of relative casualties at the battles of Mukden and Telissu, where no observer or historian has ever suggested that there was any reason for or sense in shock. The single example he names of a good performance, that of the Cossacks at Yen-tai Mines, was one of defensive fire-action pure and simple, where the Cavalry “fought with greater bravery than some of Orloff’s Infantry.” Surely it was knowledge, not courage, that the rest lacked.
Look at the only large “enterprise” undertaken by the Russian Cavalry—Mishchenko’s great raid, with 8,000 men and 34 guns, upon Ying-kou in January, 1905. No better example could be found for proving the fallacy of associating the success of independent strategical enterprises with the steel weapon. Of the conditions of success, one category has nothing to do with combat, but purely with mobility. The distance was 80 miles, as compared, for example, with the 100-mile raids imagined by Mr. Goldman for South Africa. There was a slow-moving millstone of a convoy, requiring protection and limiting speed, exactly our own difficulty when our mounted troops, Cavalry included, cut themselves completely adrift from their communications, exactly the difficulty which Bernhardi insists on when dealing with the limitations to Cavalry raids. Scouting was bad. Contrast the Boer scouting. Scouts, at any rate, do not have shock duels. Passing to combat, we find no shadow of a suggestion in any narrative that there was the remotest opportunity for shock (except for a case mentioned by McCullagh, where a Cossack brigade charged a few Chinese brigands). The Japanese troops met with were always Infantry, and were always in great numerical inferiority. Until actually reaching Ying-kou, they were met with in the shape of small detachments guarding villages or railway-bridges. Result, small fire-actions, in which the Cossacks showed incompetence. Contrast De Wet’s skill in raiding similar posts. One of the three Russian columns, several regiments strong, was kept back, says Captain Spaits, for three hours by half a company of Infantry, which occupied a small trench—the history of Dronfield and Poplar Grove repeating itself in Manchuria. Another column was defied by a handful of Infantry at Niu-chuang. Finally, at Ying-kou, after the repulse of one Russian column by a precipitately de-trained batch of Japanese Infantry, Mishchenko, with 1,500 men, made a night attack on the railway-station, held by 300 Japanese Infantry. His dispositions were painfully crude; he was repulsed with heavy loss, the retirement, says Colonel Shisnikoff, was “an utter rout,” and that was the end of the raid. Contrast the Boer night attacks, so rarely, even when unsuccessful, suffering serious loss, so often highly successful. The results of the raid, a few transports burnt and some trivial demolitions on the railway, may be regarded as nil. The retreat to the base was precipitate, headlong, and what was the reason for the retreat? The rumour that a force of Japanese Infantry was preparing to block the line of retreat. In view of what had happened, Mishchenko was right not to risk that contingency. But is not all this a pitiful satire on the theory of hybrid training? Observe that the conditions were strictly normal. Raids on communications always have to meet stationary dismounted detachments of the enemy. What, then, is the use of a Cavalry which cannot attack and defeat Infantry by Infantry methods? The only abnormality was the absence of any hostile Japanese Cavalry throughout the whole course of the raid. And we are asked to believe that the grand raison d’être for elaborate and perfect training in the steel is to overthrow the enemy’s Cavalry, who are also, by our official hypothesis, “thoroughly efficient” in the rifle, and who, on this occasion, were not present at all! And after overthrowing them by shock, then there is to be, in General French’s words, “a brilliant field of enterprise for Cavalry as mounted riflemen.” Brilliant! “The story of the raid,” says Colonel Shisnikoff, “is a memory of shame to those who took part in it.” And to crown all, it is General French’s warning to our Cavalry that the Cossacks failed in the war owing to overtraining as mounted riflemen! Quo non mortalia pectora cogis, ferri sacra fames?
These are the Cavalry who, he suggests, were trained on our heretical principles. “Continually getting off their horses!” Is it a disgrace to dismount? Does he regret that Scobell’s Lancers at Bouwer’s Hoek did not use shock with the lance in storming Lotter’s laager? Would Mr. Goldman have had these Russians charge loop-holed buildings on horseback? Once in the course of this raid, they are said to have charged a wall, and one account of the night attack on Ying-kou represents some of the Cossacks as having advanced on foot, “sword in hand.” The true fighting moral of this enterprise was that the Cossacks should have been better riflemen. Contrast the great raids of the Civil War, when the firearm, although so imperfect, was the governing factor. Why were there never any great raids in the Franco-German War? Study Bernhardi, that unconscious satirist of the steel, and you will guess why. Lastly, contrast the Japanese raid (described fully in our “British Officers’ Reports,” ii.)[ii.)] by 172 men, under Colonel Naganuma, who, in the course of an expedition round the Russian rear, beginning on January 9, 1905, lasting more than two months, covering a vast distance, and including several hotly contested fire-actions, achieved the substantial result of blowing up by night the great railway-bridge at Hsin-kai-ho on February 12. The result was to cause Kuropatkin to divert 8,000 men, including a division of Cavalry, from the imminent battle of Mukden for the defence of his communications. This raid and its fellow under Hasegawa were in the style of Stuart and De Wet. Compare, too, the ride of Smuts to Cape Colony, and its subsequent results in diverting troops to that quarter and in actual damage to our forces and communications.[[82]]
Few as the achievements of the Russian Cavalry were, whatever they did achieve was through fire-action. Kuropatkin and all critics praise Samsonoff’s defence of the Yen-tai coal-mines during the battle of Liao-yang, when he checked by fire the Japanese pursuit of Orloff’s beaten division. Rennenkampf, another leader of Cavalry who showed signs of ability, in the course of the great battle of the Sha Ho, led 1,500 Cossacks against the Japanese communications on the upper Tai-tse-ho (October 8 to 12, 1904). Wrangel commends his enterprise, but admits his complete failure. Our “British Officers’ Reports,” vol. i., pp. 664–668, give a full account of the whole episode, and describe the brilliant success of the Second Japanese Cavalry Brigade under Prince Kanin, first in anticipating Rennenkampf at Chaotao, which had been defended by only seventy Infantry for two days, then in driving the Cossacks back and forcing them to uncover one of their own Infantry brigades, which was attacking Pen-hse-hu, on the northern bank of the Tai-tse-ho. Prince Kanin, unmolested by the Cossacks, proceeded to surprise the reserve battalions of this brigade, and in the space of a few minutes killed many hundreds with his six Maxims. The result was the retirement of the Russian left and Stackelberg’s eventual retreat. Needless to say, there was no question of shock between the two Cavalries, nor any suggestion from any quarter that there was any reason for it or possibility of it.
Wrangel credits the Russians with having “adequately solved some strategical tasks”—for instance, the guarding of the passes of the Fen-shui-ling Mountains against Kuroki and Nodzu, and the discovery, but nothing more than the bare discovery, of Kuroki’s flank movement at Liao-yang, and of Nogi’s terrible turning stroke at the battle of Mukden. In other respects they showed the most pitiful weakness at that last great crisis. No less than 25,000 strong, they were outmanœuvred and outfought by two brigades of Japanese Cavalry acting with Infantry. Of course no shock duel, and yet was the effect of the Japanese Cavalry “negative,” in the words of “Cavalry Training”? On the contrary, it was tremendously positive, and with larger numbers might have been as decisive as Sheridan’s interception of Lee in April, 1865. Wrangel gravely remarks that if the Cossacks had first overthrown the Japanese Cavalry a great rôle would have been open to them in resisting Nogi’s main force—not, he goes out of his way to say, with the arme blanche, but with fire-action. The old story! If they could not overcome even the Japanese hybrid Cavalry with fire, how could they overcome Japanese Infantry? As for shock, it is cynical levity to breathe the word in connection with that Titanic fire-struggle of March, 1905.
Wrangel himself throws some light on these perplexing conundrums. It is on page 24. He has just been deploring the fiasco of Mishchenko’s raid, and has added that throughout the war the Russian Cavalry showed none of that “desire for action” which “we recognize as the first and most important attribute of our arm.” (As though, forsooth, it was not the first attribute of Infantry and Artillery!) We await resignedly the usual Cavalry dictum—that they were ill-trained for shock, and were “continually getting off their horses.” Not a bit of it. He goes on thus:
“On the other hand, a just critic, without any further ado, must admit that the prevailing conditions made it extraordinarily difficult for the Cavalry masses of Kuropatkin to play the part of Cavalry in battle. Indeed, we do not mind openly declaring that, in our opinion, no other European Cavalry, supported by the principles of the Cavalry tactics of the day, would have been in a position to perform anything of note on the Manchurian battle-fields” (“Cavalry in the Russo-Japanese War,” p. 23).
He goes on to say that Cavalry cannot attack “Infantry masses” (but there were no masses during Mishchenko’s raid) unless utterly demoralized, and that “as long as the two battle-fronts are struggling with one another, the Cavalry arm is obliged to respect unrestrained the emptiness of the modern battle-field, ... which is ruled by the magazine rifle.”
Really, what are we coming to? It was something of a shock to hear Bernhardi saying that Cavalry had been driven from their place of honour on the battle-fields of the plains, but that this arm, whose soul is offence, is to respect unrestrained the emptiness of the modern battle-field is surely a counsel of appalling levity. Mounted riflemen, at any rate, do not carry respect for the dangers of the battle-field to this length. If they had, there would have been no war in South Africa at all. Our foes would have respected the emptiness of the veld from Pretoria to Cape Town.
Wrangel marches cheerfully on towards the inevitable reductio ad absurdum:
“As the lion-hearted Japanese Infantry never gave the Russian dragoons or Cossacks the pleasure of retreating in disorder to exemplify the last-mentioned principles, it remained only for the latter to seek out the hostile Cavalry. This also the Russian Cavalry divisions did not succeed in doing—whether through their own fault remains for the present undecided” (ibid., p. 29).
This is not sarcastic; it is the sincere thought of a serious Cavalry soldier, who believes in the arme blanche. Here is the admission, frank and unabashed, that Cavalry, because they are deficient in fire-power, are only formidable to Cavalry, who are equally deficient in fire-power; that nobody cares a snap of the fingers for the lance or sword but those who, choosing to carry those weapons, agree to fear them. Clearly, even this exception is no exception, because one or both parties may by caprice or design break the compact and take to the firearm, which will then “rule the battle-field.” In another passage on page 17, when commenting on the failure of the Russian Cavalry to use an “active screen” in the phase of strategical reconnaissance—i.e., in non-battle-field encounters of the rival Cavalries—he gives as a cause the fact that the “Japanese Cavalry seldom committed themselves to shock tactics”—precisely the opposite cause alleged by General French—namely, that the Russians themselves were “continually getting off their horses.” Wrangel perceives that the steel weapon is lost if this sort of thing goes on; so in his final conclusion, quoted in my last chapter (p. 316), he urges his own Cavalry to remain deaf to the “so-called” intelligence of the advocates of fire training, which is impossible to combine with shock training, but to give the carbine an emphatically secondary place, and concentrate on shock. If all Cavalries agree on this self-denying ordinance, then, he implies, ground permitting, and far from the unseemly fire-scuffles of the battle-fields, we shall have, if both sides play fair, some grand spectates of shock. There is less mental chaos in Wrangel than in most exponents of shock, because he ignores the historical achievements of mounted riflemen, and therefore feels no need for compromise; but he cannot altogether escape self-contradiction. In order to proffer an illustration of the theory that shock should decide inter-Cavalry combats, he instances the first in the war—at Tschondschu (Tiessu) on March 28, 1904 (pp. 51–53)—a small affair where six squadrons of Cossacks were driven away from a walled town by the fire-action of three squadrons of Japanese Cavalry. We read that the Russians, being in larger force, should have “obtained a brilliant result” with the arme blanche, and also that the Japanese, after forcing the Russians to accept fire-action, should have charged and defeated the Russians. At the end we discover that the writer has no knowledge of the terrain beyond the fact that the town was situated in a “mountainous district,” from which fact he infers that there must have been “ground over which the Japanese could have advanced unseen” for their charge. Truly a startling variation of the usual complaint of lack of “Cavalry” ground!
It is greatly to be regretted that Count Wrangel’s ignorance of the attainments of British Cavalry permits him to class them among other European Cavalries as equally incompetent to have succeeded better than the Russians on the Manchurian battle-fields. Like de Negrier’s biting criticism of the French Cavalry, the pronouncement throws a strange light on our own theory of imitating the armament of Continental armies. Our Cavalry have very good firearms, and are, so far as time allows, trained to use them a good deal better than the Austrians permit. And they can use them well, as they showed in South Africa, where they did engage in the “battle,” and as they have shown in our recent manœuvres. But, that point made clear, I make no apology whatever for quoting at length the Austrian critic in a chapter starting originally from an appreciation of Manchurian problems by our foremost Cavalry authority, General French. The fundamental line of reasoning in both cases is precisely the same, but Wrangel is ruthlessly logical and careless of the logical consequences. General French’s reasoning leads him inexorably to precisely the same conclusion as Wrangel—namely, that steel-armed Cavalry can be formidable only to steel-armed Cavalry. Both men believe in the indispensable shock duel, both underrate the rifle as a source of dash—for Cavalry. General French sneers at it in the words “continually getting off their horses”; Count Wrangel does not sneer at it. He respects it so much as to banish Cavalry from the sphere of fire altogether, for clean and decent encounters with a less formidable weapon. This is the inevitable tendency of the present reaction in England. “Cavalry Training” and Bernhardi’s book admit, no doubt, of the most liberal interpretation in the right direction by officers who resolutely work out to their logical conclusion the directions given for fire-action, and ignore the conflicting directions for the steel. But whence is to come this liberal interpretation, when high Cavalry authorities denounce leanings towards fire as a betrayal of the “Cavalry spirit,” and, so far from depreciating the sword, add the lance?
Let us turn to the Japanese Cavalry. They were a very small force. Outside the thirteen, and eventually seventeen divisional regiments of 420 men apiece, which seem to have been in excess of divisional requirements (for Infantry did much of the work required), there were only two independent brigades of three regiments apiece—2,300 sabres together. The troopers carried good firearms, though of too short a range, but were trained principally for shock, and used the antiquated German drill-books denounced by Bernhardi. Lances wisely had been left at home, and only swords taken to the war. The men, constitutionally, were bad horsemen. Their horses were poor and were overloaded.[[83]] The astonishing thing is that they did so well under these conditions. As soon as they grasped the fact that fire governed action, the talent for fire which they shared with the Infantry, coupled with great keenness, was their salvation. Enormously outmatched in numbers, they overawed and outfought the enemy’s Cavalry; they fulfilled sufficiently well, at any rate, in conjunction with the Infantry, the task of reconnaissance, both protective and offensive—and, in short, took a substantial part in enabling Japan to win the war. Needless to say, they were just as “lion-hearted”—to use Wrangel’s expression—as other arms, but, having been trained and armed on false principles, naturally did not win laurels as great as those of the Infantry. Nevertheless, there is truth, I believe, in what Wrangel—always frank, at whatever cost—says in the following passage:
“The Japanese Cavalry, scarcely without exception, carried out their performances with the carbine, and in close touch with their own Infantry. To this circumstance, without doubt, we have to ascribe the principal reason why there has been hesitation among military critics in giving full recognition to their activity. A certain narrow-mindedness obstructs the means used to gain the end, which in no way is inclined to further the interests of the arm” (pp. 49, 50).
Extraordinary the words seem, in the face of Wrangel’s ultimate conclusion about the arme blanche; but the topic breeds paradox. Still stranger is what follows:
“‘To be victorious is the chief thing.’ Under all circumstances this will remain our motto. If we do not succeed with the sword or lance, then let us try firearms. If we are too weak to gain success alone, then let us only be too thankful and accept without scruple the help of our Infantry. Accordingly, on these principles the Japanese Cavalry consistently acted. To reproach them because of this is extremely unjustifiable” (p. 50).
Then, forgetting that he has previously explained the absence of shock in the Russians by the Japanese adoption of fire-tactics, he adds:
“Besides, it must not be forgotten that they (the Japanese), as the weakest force, had the manner of fighting dictated to them by their opponents.”
A whimsical side-light on all of which is thrown by General Sir C. J. Burnett (“British Officers’ Reports,” vol. ii., p. 543), who thinks the “much-maligned” Japanese Cavalry, “with their thorough knowledge of shock-tactics,” must have found it “gall and wormwood to hang on to the skirts of their Infantry,” instead of “riding straight at the opposing Cavalry whenever the opportunity offered.”
Wrangel adds that men on “fast-galloping horses,” and on “not too unfavourable ground,” will be able to enjoy the “irresistible pleasure of charging home with the sword” against dismounted Cavalry. Elsewhere he speaks, in a passage I have quoted before, of the necessity of “eternally galloping.” Our minds go back to the vast destruction of British horseflesh in South Africa, to the wild chimera of the “eternally galloping” horse in any war, to the hard incessant work imposed on scouts and patrols (who have somehow to combine scouting and patrolling with battle duties), and lastly to the charges at the canter made by the ill-fed, undersized Boer ponies. Again, I make no apology for quoting these passages. Wrangel is another of the enfants terribles, like Bernhardi. He betrays his own case, and the more fatally because he does not seem to have studied our war at all; but his case au fond is the same as that of our own Cavalry school.
Among the achievements of the Independent Japanese Cavalry I have mentioned the case of Naganuma’s raid, of Prince Kanin’s important success at Pen-hse-hu, and of the energetic co-operation with the Second and Third Armies at Mukden. In this latter case Wrangel credits them with having pushed forward “in an extraordinarily quick and energetic manner,” driving the Russian Cavalry before them. That the praise is well deserved is shown by the “British Officers’ Reports” (vol. ii.). The Russian Cavalry are estimated at 25,000, the Japanese at 3,240. The latter, both in obtaining information and in action, did extraordinarily well, especially with Nogi’s Third Army. The information is not wholly complete. Exactly how near the Cavalry came to interception does not appear.
Wrangel also gives high praise to the work of the First Cavalry Brigade at the battle of Telissu on June 14–15, 1904. Sir Ian Hamilton (vol. ii., p. 330, etc.) conveys the same impression in regard to the battle, though he, like Kuropatkin, dwells principally on the feebleness of the Russian Cavalry in not using plain opportunities for delaying fire-action against Oku’s turning force. A preliminary combat of advanced guards on May 30 had led to the only recorded case of an arme blanche charge in the war, when two squadrons of Cossacks charged one Japanese squadron and, not having room to gather speed, used their lances as quarter-staves. Would not revolvers have done better? The squadron was defeated, but the “general results of the engagement were indecisive.”[[84]] In the culminating battle of the 15th the Japanese Brigade checked a critical counter-attack by Glasko’s Thirty-fifth Infantry Division, freed the flank of the Third Japanese Division, and took an energetic part in the pursuit of the Russians, driving back the rear-guard by fire.
All critics and historians mention the splendid behaviour of the Second Japanese Cavalry Brigade and of other divisional detachments at the battle of January 26 to 29, 1905, called by the Russians Shen-tan-pu, and by our historians Hei-kou-tai (see “British Officers’ Reports,” vol. ii., pp. 45–58). It was a vehement attack of four divisions against the left of the Japanese entrenched line, held by the Second Army, forty miles south of Mukden. The Japanese Cavalry brigade occupied a cluster of villages near the junction of the Hun and Taitsu Rivers, and in the course of a bitterly contested battle, lasting three days, had to take their share, sometimes with Infantry support, in meeting attacks by greatly superior forces. In this case the work they had to do was precisely the work of Infantry, and our minds go back once more to the directions of our “Cavalry Training”—that Cavalry may be called upon to “occupy localities for defence,” but that their defences are on no account to be otherwise than of the “simplest description,” so as not to weaken the offensive instinct of an essentially offensive arm—in other words, so as not to compromise the steel weapon. This is to organize defeat. If the Japanese had thought so lightly of fire and the concomitants of fire, they would never have had the offensive instinct which they showed at Pen-hse-hu, Telissu, and Mukden.
Everywhere the same moral. In screening, raiding, and battle, fire is master. No observer suggests on any definite occasion any definite opportunity for the use of steel by the Cavalry engaged. Sir Ian Hamilton, the senior of the large staff of British officers who watched the Manchurian War, himself a successful leader in South Africa, has given his opinion officially (“Reports,” vol. ii., p. 526) and in his published diary. He does not miss or evade the point; he grapples with it directly, and is constantly contrasting South African mounted men and methods with Manchurian men and methods, and his conclusion is unreservedly in favour of the rifle. His opinion began to be confirmed at the first battle of the war, the Yalu, where neither Cavalry had any effect on events. His Japanese friends, he tells us, were very much surprised, and naturally, for they held German theories. But “the warmest advocate of shock must allow, when he follows the course of events on this occasion over the actual ground, that there was no place or opportunity where the horse could possibly have been of any value except to bring a rifleman rapidly up to the right spot” (vol. i., p. 137). Throughout the Manchurian campaign “the thought never” but once “occurred to him to long for Cavalry to launch at the enemy during some crisis of the struggle. Neither Infantry has the slightest idea of permitting itself to be hustled by mounted men, and it has been apparent ... that the Cavalry could not influence the fighting one way or another, except by getting off their horses and using their rifles.”
Nevertheless, two of the officers who were present do succeed in concluding that the war proves the supreme value of the steel weapon; and if my readers wish to gauge the tyranny of a blind faith over the minds of accomplished practical men, whose Reports on any other point are lucid and convincing, let him read, in close connection with Count Wrangel’s two contradictory explanations of the absence of shock, the remarks on the Japanese Cavalry by General Sir C. J. Burnett and Colonel W. H. Birkbeck (vol. ii., pp. 542–545). It would be a comedy, if such comedies did not have tragic consequences. Colonel Birkbeck seeks an interview with General Akiyama. That vigorous employer of aggressive fire-action states that his Cavalry learnt to draw their “greatest confidence” from the firearm. Wincing, however, under a reminder from Colonel Birkbeck of the religious “cult of the sword” in Japan, he pleads defensive necessities against the enormous numerical strength of the Russians, who, however, were "incapable of forcing an issue at close quarters"! If they had been Cavalry" truly trained as such," besides being enormously superior, then—but the General is too clever to court the reductio ad absurdum—then “the case would have been different.” General Burnett’s comment I quoted on page 347, and to complete the comedy, Colonel Birkbeck, in a separate report (No. 10), has conjecturally attributed the inaction of the 25,000 Russian Cavalry at the battle of Mukden to their lack of training for shock! In his interview with the more tactful Colonel McClernand, of the United States army, Akiyama speaks the plain, unvarnished truth.
Let the reader now take a bird’s-eye view of the historical chain of authoritative comment on the performances of Cavalry.
Here is Von Moltke reporting to the King of Prussia, after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866:
“Our Cavalry failed, perhaps not so much in actual capacity as in self-confidence. All its initiative had been destroyed at manœuvres ... and it therefore shirked bold, independent action, and kept far in the rear, and as much as possible out of sight,” etc. (“Taktisch-Strategische-Aufsätze”).
General French, in his Introduction to Bernhardi (p. xxvii), actually quotes this view as a warning to our Cavalry of the present day against “ultra-caution” with the steel in the presence of Infantry fire; quotes it, I repeat, in the beginning of a volume whose central thesis is the futility of the steel in opposition to fire.
It may be added that an “Austrian officer of high rank,” who is quoted in the French translation of the Austrian Official History of that same war of 1866, attributed what he calls the “success” of the Prussian Cavalry to their reliance on the support of Infantry—that is, on fire. His compatriot Wrangel, forty years later, says the same of the Japanese Cavalry.
Bernhardi reminds his countrymen that in the war of 1870 their own Cavalry, and in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 the Russian Cavalry, only obtained the poor success they did obtain because “not even approximately equal Cavalry” opposed them, criticizes their performances severely, and passionately advocates perfection in the use of the rifle.
We come to the South African War, where the firearm inspires the best achievements of Cavalry and the steel weapon is discarded, and where we find even the most convinced upholders of the arme blanche forced to construct an elaborate and often self-contradictory scheme of explanation for the failure of the British Cavalry—qua Cavalry—in that campaign.
The Japanese Cavalry only approaches other arms in so far as it uses fire well. And we end with Kuropatkin, who has condemned the Russian Cavalry in the war of 1877, and who, in the war of 1904–5, almost in the identical words used by Von Moltke, deplores the lack of confidence and dash in the Cavalry, and regards them as having failed.
Unanimity. Censure and excuses always. Of what other class of soldiers is this invariable complaint made? And what is the common element in all these censured Cavalries? Inefficiency in fire-action. Of the wars prior to the invention of the deadly modern rifle, which is the war where Cavalry are least censured and most praised? The American Civil War, earlier than any of those I have named, where the Cavalries learnt reliance on the firearm, though their example passed unnoticed in Europe. After that invention, what type do we find winning its way to success in South Africa? The mounted rifleman. Which weapon succeeds in Manchuria? The firearm.
I have carried the reader of this volume through a very Wonderland of paradox. Let him collect the threads of one more paradox in our own domestic history.
In 1899, deaf to history and its most brilliant English exponent, Colonel Henderson, our Cavalry went to war equipped and trained like the present French Cavalry.
They and the nation suffered accordingly. After the war, Lord Roberts embodied in a preface to the “Cavalry Training” Manual of 1904 the ripe experience, not only of the South African War, but of a long life spent in military service. He inculcated reliance on the rifle as the principal weapon for all purposes of the Cavalry soldier. Two years later, although Manchuria had confirmed his words in every particular, the injunction was forgotten, and our Cavalry were sitting at the feet of a German writer who had nothing to tell them about the rifle which they had not already learnt by costly war experience, and who was addressing, not them, but a Cavalry ignorant of the ABC of modern fire-tactics. But, as a matter of theory, not of experience, he clung to shock, expounding it in terms irreconcilable with fire. Our Manual of 1904 was superseded by the Manual of 1907, with the directions of Lord Roberts expunged and Bernhardi’s self-contradictory counsels embodied. In the August number of the Revue des deux Mondes of 1908 many people were astonished to find set forth in full by General de Negrier, as a model to the “dreaming” French Cavalry, Lord Roberts’s preface to our Manual of 1904. That Manual is cancelled. So that to find in its living, authoritative form the verdict of our greatest living soldier, derived from facts, not from theory, on a technical and tactical question of vital importance, the student has to search the files of a French review.