At noon a message arrived from Sir Redvers Buller ordering Sir Charles Warren to place Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft in command on the summit. Sir Redvers Buller says he telegraphed to Sir Charles Warren: ‘Unless you put some really good hard-fighting man in command on the top you will lose the hill. I suggest Thorneycroft.’ Sir Charles Warren, though so much nearer the scene of operations than Sir Redvers Buller, was in a much inferior position for seeing what was going on at the top of Spion Kop, and, astonished though he may have been at the selection of this gallant young officer to supersede the colonels commanding brigades and regiments, he regarded the intimation as an order—in fact, he says in his despatch it was an order—and he at once signalled to Colonel Crofton: ‘With approval of the Commander-in-Chief I place Lieutenant-Colonel Thorneycroft in command of the summit with the local rank of Brigadier-General.’
The confusion consequent upon this order will be considered further on.
At the same time Major-General Lyttelton, who had been bombarding all the morning with his artillery at Potgieter’s, apprised by Sir Charles Warren of Colonel Crofton’s telegram and asked to give assistance on his side of Spion Kop, demonstrated strongly by sending two squadrons of Bethune’s Horse and the Scottish Rifles to reinforce the extreme right on the top of the hill, while later the King’s Royal Rifles crossed the river and moved against a high point of Spion Kop. These troops did very good work, and in the afternoon Sir Charles Warren wired to Major-General Lyttelton: ‘The assistance you are giving most valuable. We shall try to remain in statu quo during to-morrow. Balloon would be of incalculable value.’
In the meantime all available sandbags and tools for intrenching were sent by the hands of the troops going up, each man carrying something. Two hundred gallons of water were well on their way, some springs near the top were developed by the Engineers, the zigzag pathway was completed, and coils of 3-inch cable got ready for hauling up the naval guns.
Then followed an anxious time for Sir Charles Warren. The rifle and shell fire of the Boers was extremely hot on the top, the signallers had been hit and some of their apparatus destroyed, and for some two or three hours he was unable to get any replies to repeated inquiries. There was no news of the mountain guns or the naval 12-pr. guns, which Sir Redvers Buller was to send across the river to him—in fact, the former only left Springfield at eleven o’clock that morning.
A little after two o’clock in the afternoon news of the situation was received, sent an hour or so earlier by Major-General Coke, who was then on the plateau of the slopes below Spion Kop. The report was that the top of the hill was crowded with men exposed to shell fire, but holding on well, that General Coke had stopped further reinforcements beyond the point where he was, at the same time letting the troops on the top know that help was close at hand, and ammunition being pushed up. From the report of Major-General Coke, recently published, it appears that on his way up he found the track very much congested with men, and, on hearing that the troops were crowded together on the top in a small space exposed to shell fire, very judiciously stopped the reinforcements that had not passed him; unfortunately he received urgent requests from the top soon after for more men, and allowed them to proceed.
Major-General Coke seems to have started from the plateau for the summit about three o’clock and to have reached it half an hour later, and was then de facto in command there over every one. For some time he was unable to find any one in command on the summit, or in touch with the signalling station at the Hospital Sangar. He was unaware that Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft had been placed in command on the summit with the rank of Brigadier-General, although on his way up he had received a report from that officer which he forwarded with remarks to Sir Charles Warren, and which will be referred to later. Failing to find any one in command he passed over to the right and met Colonel Hill, who with the leading companies of the Middlesex Regiment got to the summit about noon, and, understanding that Colonel Crofton had been wounded, told Colonel Hill that the command devolved upon him as the next senior officer, and gave him detailed instructions as to intrenching at sundown. An hour later, while still on the top, but separated from Colonel Hill, he received the following message from him, sent at 5.5 P.M.:
‘We have now plenty of men for firing line, but the artillery fire from our left (west) is very harassing. I propose holding out till dark and then intrenching.’
The selection of Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft to take command over his seniors in the heat of action was a signal example of the danger of a serious departure from precedent at such a time. The difficulty of making a selection known and understood by all concerned was enormous, and the risks of mistakes most serious. Lieut.-Colonel A. W. Thorneycroft was only a major of six months’ standing in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, who held the local rank of Lieut.-Colonel while in command of a special corps. Brave and active to a degree, he was selected by Sir Redvers Buller because he was known as ‘a good hard-fighting man,’ and right well had he maintained his reputation during that morning; but, just because he was such a man, he was at the front in the thick of the fight. ‘The fight was too hot, too close, too interlaced for him to attend to anything but to support this company, clear those rocks, or line that trench.’[7] But the commander on the top should have been out of the thick of it, able to direct the general conduct of matters and to keep in touch with his General below, leaving the actual fighting to his many able subordinates; this meant a man of some experience in command, and this Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft, whatever else he was, certainly was not. Thus, although both the Officers Commanding Artillery and Engineers at the top of Spion Kop knew about the arrangements for bringing up guns and intrenching at night, he seems to have heard nothing about it, and so also about water, food, ammunition, &c.