CHAPTER VI
AFTER WITHDRAWAL—BOER COMMENTS
On the morning of 25th January Sir Redvers Buller went over to see Sir Charles Warren and decided to assume command and to withdraw to the south side of the Tugela. Then General Warren ‘made his retirement memorable for speed and orderliness,’ and by 8 A.M. on 27th January ‘the force was concentrated south of the Tugela, without the loss of a man or a pound of stores.’ That the retirement was effected without molestation by the Boers is evidence that the capture of Spion Kop had surprised them and the week’s fighting and bombardment had demoralised them.
But if the retirement from Spion Kop was a surprise to Sir Charles Warren and to Sir Redvers Buller, it was equally so to the Boers. Mr. Bennet Burleigh tells us:
‘In the morning, after daybreak, the enemy could scarcely credit their senses that our soldiers had left the hill-top. “Where are the soldiers?” the few Boer scouts who rode forward under the white flag asked our surgeons and ambulance men. “Gone!” “What for?” And subsequently it leaked out from several of them that they had thought the position was lost and they had begun trekking.’
It is interesting to note the views of those on the Boer side. For instance, in the article in the ‘United Service Magazine,’ giving the diary already referred to of a Boer officer, we find the following observations:
‘The English had employed the night (23rd to 24th January) in making some wide but low shallow trenches, with corresponding parapets of stones, earth, and sods to shelter behind.... These trenches had been established more or less in the centre of the plateau, which was a fatal blunder, this being the very spot where, in the circumstances, a concentrated artillery fire would tell with the deadliest effect.
‘The fight dragged on until the evening, and the position was not recaptured. Those Federals who left the hill at dark thought that the effort to dislodge the English had been a failure—that the fight was lost. It seemed a Platrand fiasco over again, notwithstanding the fine work done by the Federal artillery, and the fact that the retaking of a position like Spion Kop was an easier task than the storming of a defence like Platrand.
‘The night of the 24th to the 25th was one of confused and chaotic panic, which strongly savoured of the beginning of a rout. In the estimation of many the hour of hasty retreat had no doubt sounded, and horses’ heads were turned Ladysmithwards without waste of time. It was expected that the English would make an attack in force next morning, or perhaps in the night, but the demoralisation was so great that no regular watches were kept all along the line of defence in the proximity of Spion Kop. Here and there, it is true, some determined fellows clubbed together with the resolve to have one more trial the next morning, but there is no doubt that if the British had attacked that night the Federals would have made but poor resistance at the utmost, and that their rout would have been a matter of course. Had the English only held the Spion Kop in force until the morning, a second struggle, weakened as the Federals were, would have meant an heroic effort, a short fight, and the success of the English.