I asked, would the Imperial Light Horse, if they had not been used for the fire-fight, have been capable of an equally effective pursuit without the use of steel weapons? The speculation, of course, though instructive, is largely academical, the crucial point being that they had been used for the preceding fire-fight. However, for the sake of argument, we must vest them with favourable condition No. 5, “Fresh horses and men.” Nos. 2, 4, and 6 would have been equally applicable to them; No. 1 is irrelevant. There remains No. 3, “Failing light.” This would have been distinctly adverse to the accurate use of the rifle, but at the same time let us remember the fundamental distinction between the rifle and the steel—that is, range. Posted, for the sake of argument, in the spot where the Cavalry were posted (threatening the enemy’s right rear), the Imperial Light Horse would at once have had the first bodies of retreating Boers well within the range of vulnerability: 500 yards is the official estimate. Yes, but fire at this moment would no doubt have meant delay, and caused less damage to the Boers than the undelayed steel-armed Cavalry. Granted; a point to the Cavalry. Let us go on. After routing a first batch in a long gallop, the Cavalry turned on their tracks, met a second batch, and scattered and harassed these men also. Would not the Imperial Light Horse meanwhile have had a good chance of intercepting these men? Finally, picture the irregular corps as capable of fire from the saddle, and keep that point in your mind for future illustration.
All this is the veriest sketch, suggestive of the factors inherent in mounted combats, but utterly unreal, because it is utterly impossible to postulate identical circumstances for steel-action and fire-action. The essence of the matter is that the Imperial Light Horse, by aptitude, training, and equipment, were capable of joining effectively in the Infantry assault of the main position, and that the Cavalry, by aptitude, training, and equipment (they carried the short carbine), were neither capable of, nor designed for, similar intervention. If the Colonials had not been used for the main assault, the course of the battle might have been changed. The assault might have failed (in the penultimate phase there was an exceedingly critical revival on the Boer left flank, checked by the Gordons and Imperial Light Horse combined), or the assault might have been consummated too late to give to the Cavalry the margin of light necessary for their pursuit. Or—and this is really the most pertinent and suggestive eventuality—the Imperial Light Horse used as their capacity deserved, might have operated actively on the enemy’s rear at an earlier period, when the Cavalry was still passive. Result, a change of battle conditions, which defies speculation. On the other hand, we can, to a certain extent, isolate our view of the Cavalry exploit. They did, under ideal conditions, exactly what they were trained to do, and I do not think they, or any other Cavalry similarly trained, could have done it better.
In dwelling so long upon the topic of pursuit we must remember that there was no question at any moment of a charge by Cavalry either upon unbroken riflemen or upon led horses. Nor (save in the case of the rush upon the station by the Imperial Light Horse) was there any attempt on the part of the mounted riflemen on either side, Boer or British, to carry aggressive mobility to the point of charging on horseback into point-blank range of riflemen on foot.[[18]] Developments of that sort were still a long way off.
I have enlarged so much on this small fight in order to focus the reader’s attention upon the principles it illustrates. Let him study it in conjunction with the action of Talana, which preceded it, and with all the multitude of fights which followed it, in the next two and a half years. Let him begin at once to picture parallels in European warfare, on a bigger scale or smaller scale, and ask whether they tell for or against the arme blanche, and why? Imagine the 900 Boers as a German force, either of Cavalry or of the three arms in normal proportion, and without anything in the least degree resembling either our Imperial Light Horse or the militant burgher. Should we have won more or less easily? Or imagine 3,500 Germans, constituted as before, tackling the 900 Boers. Instead of moderately open ground, suppose ground diversified with copses, walls, hedges, a sunk lane or two. Make any permutations or suppositions that you please, and test each by South African facts.
Finally, ask yourself at every step, on which method, that of the arme blanche or the rifle, will it pay best in the long-run to train mounted troops?
CHAPTER V
FROM ELANDSLAAGTE TO THE BLACK WEEK
October to December, 1899.
In these two opening combats of the war the steel weapon had had its first rebuff and its first success. What was to happen now?
Immediately after Elandslaagte, French’s force, having disposed of Koch, was recalled by White to Ladysmith (October 22). On the same night the Dundee force, now in a situation of great and growing peril from Joubert’s united commandos, was forced to retreat hurriedly and secretly to Ladysmith. White sent out 5,300 men to cover the last stage of the retreat against any possible interruption from the 6,000 Free Staters who were threatening Ladysmith from the west. Hence the action of Rietfontein (October 24), a desultory fire-fight, for the most part at very long ranges, against an invisible and intangible enemy; in its proof of the mysterious, far-reaching potency of the rifle, a pregnant contrast to the close encounters at Talana and Elandslaagte.
But it was six days later, at the battle of Ladysmith (or Lombard’s Kop), that the most definite and substantial proof was given of the superiority of the rifle over the steel. Joubert had closed on Ladysmith with 12,000 men. White, also with 12,000 men, of whom 3,000 were mounted, conceived a bold and elaborate plan of attack designed not merely to drive the Boers back, but to inflict a crushing defeat. To his two mounted brigades (each composed of two Cavalry regiments and a corps of Colonial mounted riflemen) White assigned functions which were typical of the military theory of that day. One was to co-operate with the Infantry attack on the right, wheeling wide round the flank, and getting behind the enemy’s left. The other, held in reserve behind our left Infantry attack, was designed, when both attacks had succeeded, to cut in upon the Boer line of retreat (which lay towards the left or north), and pursue the beaten burghers. In order to facilitate the scheme of pursuit, an Infantry force had been detached by night to seize a pass—Nicholson’s Nek, of evil memory—which the Cavalry would have to surmount before debouching upon the plain. Since the force so detached suffered disaster, and the whole of White’s attack, here and elsewhere, failed, the left mounted brigade had very little to do. The right mounted brigade, whose work began with daylight, failed to effect the purpose assigned to it. Fire-tactics were immediately imposed upon it by the enemy’s mounted riflemen operating on rocky, bushy ground, and in fire-tactics the Mauser, in the words of the “Official History,” at once “dominated the carbine.” Advance was impossible; proper flank support to the Infantry was scarcely less difficult; even the retreat at the end of the day’s fighting was far from an able performance. French, who led the brigade, was not the French of a fortnight later, when the horse and the steel weapon were beginning to be dissociated after their long traditional partnership. For the present the fact was painfully obvious that the only professional troops endowed with the mobility of the Boers were the least capable of grappling with the Boers in action.