What, we may ask lastly, is the explanation of all this confused reasoning, and the strange conclusions to which it leads? Nothing but the fascination of the arme blanche. While giving unstinted admiration to the brave men who faced unknown dangers so steadily and resolutely in this ride at Klip Drift, we must look here for the comparative failure of their branch of the service during the war. They had felt what the training-book calls the “magnetism of the charge,” the exhilaration of swift, victorious onset under fire—sensations which they had always been taught to associate solely with the steel weapon and solely with the arm of the service to which they were proud to belong—the Cavalry. The old tradition, somewhat shaken by months of bickering with firearms and for the most part on foot, seemed at last to have been triumphantly justified. It was an error. They mistook both the causes and the extent of the triumph, and remained in the old groove of thought, which this charge, properly construed, should have taught them to discard. In reality the best part of their tradition lived in all its pristine splendour; the rest was obsolete. Clinging to the obsolete, they missed the vital part.
From this time onwards they were to do much hard and good work, not, in the Cavalry sense, as Cavalry, save on a few insignificant occasions, but as mounted carbineers, and, in the last phase, as fully developed mounted riflemen. But their hearts were never wholly in it. There were arrières-pensées; vain longings for situations which obstinately refused to recur; a tendency to throw the blame on the horses, on the higher command, on anything but their own inability to read the signs of the times and vitalize their own traditions by recognizing the uselessness of the steel weapon and the predominance of the rifle.
CHAPTER VII
PAARDEBERG AND POPLAR GROVE
February to March, 1900.
I.—Kimberley to Paardeberg.
The true factors of success in mounted warfare received the most convincing illustration in the events immediately following the relief of Kimberley.
The baneful influence of this town continued to react on British strategy. French, in an ardent mood, and with some justification from his original orders, resolved to pursue the investing commandos north with three brigades, two of Cavalry, one of Mounted Infantry and Colonials, and some of the Kimberley mounted troops, altogether something over 4,000 men and five batteries. Ferreira, with most of the Free Staters, had retreated east the night before, and was wholly out of reach. There remained on the route due north, and with eleven miles start, from 1,500 to 2,000 burghers under the Transvaaler, Du Toit, and a heavy convoy. It soon became evident that, in the weak condition of French’s horses, the capture of this convoy was the only feasible object, and to this object French eventually confined himself. But an extraordinary hitch arose. One small body of 150[[29]] Griqualand West rebels, with one gun, instead of evacuating the lines of investment during the night, had quietly remained at its post on the Dronfield ridge, seven miles north of Kimberley, and now acted as a sort of improvised rear-guard. One of the Cavalry brigades, about 1,200 strong, with three batteries, in the course of a sweep north-west in order to envelop the convoy from that side, stumbled upon the Griqualand men, and wasted several hours in a vain endeavour to dislodge them by fire-action. The delay destroyed whatever chance there had been of succeeding against Du Toit, and the Brigadier was blamed for the delay. But what followed? On his way back to Kimberley French attacked the Lilliputian force, now separated by nine or ten miles from its nearest supports, with all three brigades, several hundred Kimberley mounted troops, and all five batteries. Still no result. French gave it up, and under cover of a dust-storm the Griqualanders rode away safely, abandoning their gun and some killed and wounded.
This incident occurred on the day after the charge at Klip Drift, and it shows how completely the real significance of that episode had been lost upon the Cavalry. At Klip Drift there was no chance of testing weapons; it was a case of riding through fire for an ulterior end. Here was a real chance of testing the value of weapons. Where was the steel? Where, more pregnant question still, was the horse? What is the tactical purpose of a horse in attack if not to accelerate aggression and precipitate a crisis, using mobility to overcome vulnerability? The Boers, it is true, were entrenched, but from what we know now of the physical factors in mounted attacks we can say with tolerable certainty that even the single brigade in the morning, properly disposed and extended, might have ridden, even at a moderate canter, into close quarters with the enemy with less loss than that involved in a lengthy dismounted attack. In the evening, with exhausted horses, but with a thirty-to-one superiority in men and guns, the smallest exertion of aggressive mobility would have made an end of the impertinent handful on the ridge. Now, the Cavalry were as brave soldiers as ever stepped. What they lacked was imagination to connect together the horse and the firearm as joint constituents of aggressive mobility, a defect aggravated by the possession of an inferior firearm, and by inexperience in the use of it. The crack of a rifle transformed the action into what their training-book called a “dismounted” action, and converted them into indifferent Infantry. At whose compulsion? That of a few mounted riflemen, acting in defence, dismounted, virtually as a rear-guard for the main Boer force; but with their horses at hand, available for escape, counted upon for escape (for otherwise their owners would not have been there), and eventually used for escape.
Dronfield was an extreme case, and I do not wish to use it further than as a peg on which to hang an argument. With infinite variation of circumstance, the same root principles applied in every action of the war. Let me make one more point clear before leaving the episode, and passing to another equally interesting and far more creditable to the Cavalry. When I suggest a more rapid mounted advance, I do not, of course, mean that the horsemen should remain on horseback up to, during and after contact. That was the old Cavalry view, based on the use of a steel weapon, and its strength accounts for the extraordinary reluctance of the Cavalry to contemplate any other form of aggressive mobility. They could never get shock, because their adversaries willed otherwise, and could always impose their will; without shock they themselves were rightly conscious that a man on horseback with a sword or lance is not, except under very rare conditions, a match for a man on foot with a magazine rifle. But why, save for a valueless shibboleth, remain persistently on horseback? At Dronfield, though the maps and narratives do not warrant the supposition, the summit of the ridge may, for all I know, have been unsuitable for rapid movement on a horse. But, as I pointed out in Chapter II., physical contact is not necessary for a charge by mounted riflemen. A charge is just as much a charge—in the sense of a killing, winning advance—if its mounted phase ends within point-blank, or even within “decisive” range of the enemy. Each and every acceleration in the net rapidity of the whole movement makes it nearer to being worthy of the name of charge. Finally, if actual contact is both practicable and desirable, if the horsemen can ride right home, they must dismount when they get there. If they do not, they will lose two-thirds of their killing power. Their horses for the moment will be vulnerable encumbrances, but the men are better off dismounted than mounted, because they can use their rifles. I am premature now in discussing this point, but have thought it best to sketch the idea in advance. Illustration will come later.
To continue. That same evening (February 16, 1900) French received written orders from Roberts to march thirty miles to Koodoos Drift and cut off Cronje’s retreat.