‘(Sent 7.54 P.M., received 8.15 P.M.) Left flank, 19th January.
‘To the Chief of the Staff
‘I find there are only two roads by which we could possibly get from Trichard’s Drift to Potgieter’s, on the north of the Tugela—one by Acton Homes, the other by Fair View and Rosalie; the first I reject as too long, the second is a very difficult road for a large number of wagons, unless the enemy is thoroughly cleared out. I am therefore going to adopt some special arrangements which will involve my stay at Venter’s Laager for two or three days. I will send in for further supplies and report progress.
‘C. Warren.’
This is not the sort of message he would have sent if he had been ordered to take the Acton Homes-Ladysmith road, and it shows unquestionably that, as to the roads and the country, very little was known.
The reply to the message was that three days’ supply was being sent.
It has been supposed by some writers on the subject—and the popular notion at the time certainly was that the mountainous country suddenly ended at the western slopes of the Rangeworthy hills to the west of Spion Kop—that Acton Homes was situated on a level plain, and that Sir Charles Warren had only to march round by Acton Homes, keeping the Rangeworthy hills and Spion Kop at a respectful distance, and he would be able with little delay to take the lines opposing Potgieter’s Drift in reverse. It does not appear whether Sir Redvers Buller entertained this idea; if he did, he gave no definite instructions, apparently, in that sense to Sir Charles Warren; but if he did not, then he must have supposed that the Boer right flank rested on the Rangeworthy hills and could be turned, and was unaware that it extended to Acton Homes and the roads to the Orange Free State. We can hardly suppose that when he wrote of sending Sir Charles Warren to turn the Boer flank he expected Sir Charles Warren to accomplish on the Rangeworthy hills, with 12,000 men and no long-range guns, what he himself had been unwilling to attempt a week before at Potgieter’s Drift with 20,000 men and long-range guns. If he did, he was sending him on a hazardous undertaking, and yet this was what opening the Fair View and Rosalie road practically meant—an attack on the centre of the Boer position.
We have already alluded to the prejudice created against Sir Charles Warren by the unfortunate suggestion that while Sir Redvers Buller desired him to go by the Acton Homes road, he preferred the nearer road to Groote Hoek and Rosalie. It is now clear that, if Lord Roberts had not alluded to Acton Homes in this connection, the idea would never have entered any one’s head, because such a route in the circumstances was impossible. It might have been the conception of a military genius to have thought that the best way of relieving Ladysmith would be to strike at the communications of the Orange Free State Boers on the Harrismith and other roads; but this we need not consider, as it certainly did not suggest itself to Sir Redvers Buller. Had Sir Charles Warren’s force been composed mainly of well-trained mounted troops, and had the country been less hilly, possibly the aspect of affairs would have been changed, and he might have made a real wide turning movement; but he had hardly any mounted troops, and the country was very hilly. He was, in fact, told to do an impossible thing—to turn a flank at a point where there was no flank to turn. As Mr. J. B. Atkins observes in his ‘Relief of Ladysmith’: ‘It had been discovered that after all there was no way round to the back of Spion Kop through open country. The hills in which the Boers were are, in fact, a spur of the Drakensberg mountains: wherever Sir Charles Warren might go, he must go through mountains.
Sir Charles Warren was not consulted as to the plan of operations, or as to the supplies, or impedimenta to accompany him, and it was generally understood that on his arrival at Frere he had advocated the attack of the Boers intrenched on the south of the Tugela at Colenso, and proceeding on the lines which were eventually successful. But, if the suggestion was made, it was not approved. Instead, Sir Redvers Buller proposed to break through the Boer line at Potgieter’s, just as he had tried to do at Colenso. On 11th January his force, assembled at Potgieter’s, was stronger by two brigades of infantry and a brigade division of artillery than it was at Colenso, and yet he hesitated, after the experience of Colenso, to attack the Boer positions. Nevertheless, he seems to have expected to be able to relieve Ladysmith by sending Sir Charles Warren with 12,000 men and thirty-six field guns to attack the Boer position in the Rangeworthy hills west of Spion Kop, while he held a certain number of Boers in front of him by making a demonstration at Potgieter’s.