Before leaving Poplar Grove, I wish to make an additional reference to two points:
1. Condition of Horses.—It must strike any impartial student of these operations that the argument from the condition of French’s horses, weak as they certainly were from unpreventable causes, is subjected to an intolerable strain. I do not wish to lay any undue stress on horse management, though we miss the acknowledgment that the horse is a possession whose good condition is one of the supreme tests of regimental efficiency. Gunners, from the Colonel to the driver, hold it a point of honour not to blame their horses as long as there is anything else left to blame, and the Cavalry have the same high ideal. It is only when the arme blanche is in danger of discredit that we find its advocates, official and unofficial, laying excessive stress on the condition of the horses, without even a suggestion that the Cavalry may have been partly to blame for it. But I want the reader to go beyond these operations, and inquire, What standard of speed and endurance have advocates of the arme blanche in mind when they represent the arm as tactically unfit? It must be inferred that the standard consists in ability at any moment to gallop a considerable distance at high speed—"everlastingly to gallop," as Count Wrangel, the Austrian authority, frankly puts it.[[33]] This standard is the logical result of the shock theory of which Wrangel is an uncompromising exponent; for, as I have pointed out, one of the four indispensable conditions of shock is capacity to gallop fast, partly because of the highly vulnerable target presented by mounted troops in mass, and partly because heavy impact is the essence of shock. If, as in our own present peace training, we reduce the standard of speed, in contradiction of our own Manual, we compromise fatally on shock. In South Africa, shock being already obsolete, the steel weapon was in reality obsolete too. This the Cavalry could not make up their minds to recognize, and, among other hampering associations, the idea of capacity for high speed as an ever-present essential for strong tactical offence lived on in a good many minds. We find it in correspondence and despatches; we can trace it constantly in field-tactics, and it was probably in the back of French’s mind during the whole of the Poplar Grove action, though it must have been clear that in order to overcome the sporadic opposition of the Boer rear-guard no such efforts were necessary. There is no question that the Boer horses were far fresher and stouter than ours. If the Boers to a man had fled from the field, we could not have caught them. But we should have captured their guns and transport.
The galloping idea in its extreme form is wholly foreign to the tactical action of mounted riflemen, for whom the “charge” is a relative term, denoting the climax of aggressive mobility, not an isolated exotic flowering in the midst of a dull waste known as “dismounted action.” If we consider mere physical effects, which are all that matter, the few mounted riflemen who snapped at Broadwood’s flanks as he marched towards the Modder, and afterwards held up two brigades and twelve guns for two hours, did just as much for their side as the Scots Greys at Waterloo, and, when they first made their attack, “charged” in as real and substantial a sense as the Cavalry at Klip Drift.
It is tolerably certain that the exaggerated claim for speed as a tactical sine qua non at all moments will do more in future wars to eliminate shock, and enthrone the rifle in its true position, than any other factor, even although the opposing Cavalries enter the war with the fixed conviction that they must join issue in terms of shock. The side which first breaks that compact will win. In future wars Cavalry will have far harder work to do than they have ever had before. In the thick of a hard-fought war the galloping horse will be a rarity, the regiment of galloping horses still rarer, the brigade or division a nine days’ wonder. Any unit whose power to deal decisive strokes in action can be exercised only by means of really high speed will be of little service. Manchurian evidence confirms this truth.
2. Horse Artillery acting with Cavalry.—This is a new point in our discussion, and I ask the reader to watch it carefully throughout the war. He will have been struck already by the large number of guns which accompanied the Cavalry in these operations, and the disproportionately small results which ensued. French had forty-two guns at Poplar Grove, and was never opposed by more than two at a time, and altogether, I think, by six. The question is, To what extent should mounted troops, acting independently, rely on the support of Artillery? The war proves, I think, that they should rely as little as possible on that form of aid. When, for strategical purposes, high mobility is required, the strain on the gun-teams is great, and may—though this rarely happened in South Africa—limit the strategical mobility of the mounted troops. But I am thinking more of field-tactics. Here the ill-effects of excessive reliance on Artillery were often visible, particularly in offence. The preliminary bombardment, a serious drag upon all offensive action in South Africa, was the curse of mounted action. Generally ineffective in its physical and moral results upon the enemy, it weakened the spirit of offence by weakening surprise, which, in one form or another, is the soul of aggressive mounted action. As events turned out, French would have done better, I believe, at Poplar Drift if he had had no guns at all. The problem which confronted him when he first sighted the Boer retreat could not then have been solved by a compromise in which a “pursuit with Artillery fire” figured as a prominent element. Such pursuits are useless; the Artillery fire during the whole day caused, I suppose, scarcely a dozen casualties, while a whole brigade of Mounted Infantry had to be told off as escort to the seven batteries. At every turn the possession of guns was a temptation to employ slow, formal methods, where rude, overmastering vigour was requisite. At Dronfield we can detect the same source of weakness. And at Klip Drift, would French have charged at all without the support of an enormous weight of Artillery?
The Boers, always weak in Artillery, do not seem at any time to have placed much moral reliance on guns as a support for aggressive action. Their weakness in aggression came from other causes. It was only when they had lost all their Artillery that they carried aggressive mounted action to its highest point.
It is true that in defence guns are often valuable to mounted troops. Since leaving Ramdam, the one occasion on which French’s guns were useful to him was on February 17, when he headed and contained Cronje, pending the arrival of the Infantry. The two batteries which he had succeeded in bringing with him, besides assisting to repel attacks on the Cavalry, covered the drift which Cronje’s transport had to pass, and made the crossing impossible. Later experience, however, proved with increasing force that, even in defence, guns, however well fought—and they were always magnificently fought—were often productive of more embarrassment than advantage to a mounted force. For the moment I am speaking of offence and defence as though they were distinct functions. Of course, they are not. They melt into one another, and may alternate half a dozen times in one day. The best defence is always tinged by offence. An independent mounted force must be equipped to meet all contingencies. Nevertheless, all things considered, I suggest that the mounted troops who rely least on Artillery at any rate, when they are given a distinctly aggressive task, will achieve most.
The reason, I think, is this: that their mobility and the surprise which is its fruit make the personal factor paramount. The rifle is eminently a personal weapon, the gun essentially an impersonal weapon. In that respect, let us note in passing, the gun bears a distant analogy to the sword. For the denser the mass of swordsmen and the greater the shock sought to be produced, the less personal is the weapon.
III.—The Final Advance to Bloemfontein.
March 10 to 13, 1900.