(c) In the second “De Wet hunt.” This, I think, was the first example in the war, on the Boer side, of what I may call the penetrating charge, after the Klip Drift pattern, that is, designed to pierce a screen for ulterior purposes, not to inflict immediate loss on the enemy. It occurred at the close of the hunt, when, at Springhaan’s Nek (December 14, 1900), the Boers, accompanied by a mass of waggons, burst through the Thabanchu line of fortified posts, which had been strengthened at the point attacked by small detachments of mounted riflemen. It is worth while, though I have not the space, to examine the incident side by side with the Klip Drift charge, noting relative numbers, size of target, ground, and the effect of fire upon men and animals in rapid movement (Times History, vol. v., pp. 40–42. Not mentioned in “Official History”).
(d) A successful little charge, this time by Britons, occurred on the same day in another part of the field, at Victoria Nek, where a detached Boer force was attacked and very roughly handled by the Welsh Yeomanry and the 16th Lancers. The “Official History” makes no mention of the episode, and my own information is scanty. Some of the Yeomanry, it is said, used clubbed rifles. Whether the Lancers used their swords I do not know. As to clubbed rifles, contrast the Boer plan of firing from the saddle (Times History, vol. v., pp. 41–42).
(e) On the British side again, Bothaville (referred to above) was certainly on the border-line of charges. The advance-guard dismounted at something like point-blank range. So few in numbers, they would have gained little by riding home, and might have defeated their own object. As it was, they achieved their object, and that is all that matters, whether it is Infantry, Cavalry, or mounted riflemen who are charging.
My digression has run to greater length than I intended. There was no pause in the current of Boer aggression. No sooner had De Wet turned his back on the Orange River than the long-prepared offensive revival in the Transvaal was carried into effect. Viljoen’s enterprises against the Delagoa Railway towards the end of November had heralded the storm, which, during the early part of December, broke with violence in the western district, where the Buffelspoort convoy was destroyed (December 2, 1900), and De la Rey defeated Clements at Nooitgedacht (December 13, 1900). The revival spread to the south-east, where several towns on the Natal border were attacked, and culminated in the north-east, with Viljoen’s capture of Helvetia, on December 31, and Botha’s simultaneous midnight attacks of January 5 upon the garrisons of the Delagoa Railway, one of which, that on Belfast, came perilously near success.
Kitchener, who had assumed the chief command in South Africa on November 29, 1900, just when the Free State revival was declining, and the Transvaal outbreak was beginning, was faced with an extraordinarily difficult and complicated problem. He had to cope with a new national spirit among the Boers, emanating from men who were wholly unconnected with the old Kruger régime, and gathering strength from the elimination, by surrender or voluntary exile, of the supporters of that régime. The new national spirit took practical shape in a new military spirit, one of vigorous offence, conducted by men who represented what, beyond all question now, was the most formidable type of soldier in the world—the mounted rifleman—men who were equally at home in defending or assaulting entrenched positions, and in attack or defence in the open field.
Our own resources for dealing with the situation were manifestly inadequate. It was not only that there had been visible in some of the recent events disquieting signs of feebleness in defence, leading to unjustifiable surrenders. This evil was largely due to the lassitude and staleness which affected the army in general. The really grave feature was our inability to retaliate effectively against these aggressive enterprises, an inability strikingly illustrated by the long but futile operations which were set on foot in the Western Transvaal after Nooitgedacht. The truth came like a flash, pitilessly illuminating past shortcomings, that all along we had been conquering the country, not the race, winning positions, not battles. Psychological causes apart, our cardinal military weakness had always lain in the mounted arm, not in numbers, except at the very first, but in quality. Unless we carry self-deception so far as either to eliminate from the calculation the great masses of Infantry who had borne the main brunt of the regular campaign and had suffered far the heaviest losses, or, on the other hand, to count the enemy twice over, once as opponents of the Infantry, and again as opponents of our mounted troops; unless we perpetrate one of these errors, we must candidly admit that we had had our full chance of securing decisive victories through the semi-independent agency of mounted men. The figures and facts to which I drew attention in sketching the main operations from Paardeberg to Komati Poort prove this conclusively. We had missed our chance, and the consequences of missing it, obscured at the time by a long record of successful invasion and occupation, were now apparent. The war, obviously, was to be a mounted war. In the last resort nothing but efficiency in the same formidable type which the Boers represented could enable us to conquer them. Infantry would still perform the task of holding the ground won; they would also perform many valuable subsidiary duties in the field, but always of a defensive or semi-defensive character. For offence, whether for finding the enemy and forcing him to action, or for beating him when he sought action himself, mounted riflemen, good enough and numerous enough, were an indispensable necessity. In this respect, what were our prospects?
We had evolved our type of mounted rifleman, which, in essentials, followed the Boer type, but in practice fell short of the ideal. The Cavalry, who from the first should have inspired and furthered the educational process, were only just beginning to substitute the rifle for the carbine, a change which must, I imagine, have been finally prompted by the experience, alluded to above, of their divisional march across the Eastern Transvaal, in October, 1900. So far as I know, the first occasion on which any considerable force of Cavalry carried rifles in the field was in the great driving operations which began in that same district, and again under French, at the end of January, 1901. The lance was already discarded, and eventually the sword also was discarded, but not until many months later. There seems to have been no simultaneous abandonment of swords by all Cavalry regiments alike. The change was gradual. In dwelling once again upon the backwardness of Cavalry training, I must explain once again, for fear of misunderstanding, that I am criticizing them by a standard special to themselves, the only standard appropriate to a professional force which had been in the field for more than a year. I need scarcely say that their record in the guerilla war, as in all the war, is honourable, and in many respects admirable; but by contrast with what they might have become without the arme blanche habit and training, it is comparatively negative and tame. With a few trifling exceptions they escape the reverses which so often befell their less disciplined and less experienced irregular comrades, but they do not stand out pre-eminent in that aggressive energy which was the great tradition of their arm. In the matter of leadership we find them supplying many excellent column commanders—men like Byng, Briggs, Scobell, and Rimington, to name only a few—but on the whole they can scarcely be said to have surpassed other arms of the service in the production of good leaders. Needless to say, good leading never came from any other source than oblivion of steel methods and unreserved reliance on the rifle.
The regular Mounted Infantry had made rapid strides in efficiency, in spite of the extraordinary difficulties with which they had to grapple—inexperience in riding and horse-management, dearth of officers, hurried organization, absence of common tradition and esprit de corps. But they had been worked with great severity, had shrunk greatly from the ordinary wastage of war, and could only be reinforced by the same unscientific and wasteful methods by which they had been raised—that is, by abstraction from Infantry battalions, which, in their turn, lost in efficiency from the process.
The prospect was even worse with the irregulars, Home and Colonial. All had worked hard, and most had done exceedingly well, considering their inexperience and the faults inseparable from improvised unprofessional corps. In sheer fighting efficiency the best of the seasoned Colonials, South African, Australasian and Canadian, had undoubtedly excelled all other mounted troops. Like the self-made soldiers of the American Civil War, they had seemed by intuition to grasp the possibilities of a union of the rifle with the horse. But the irregular mounted army was dissolving in Kitchener’s hands. Enlisted for limited terms, the various corps, Yeomanry included, had reached, or were soon to reach, their limit. It was necessary to forego their accumulated experience, to issue fresh appeals for volunteers, and to reconstruct this part of the army from top to bottom. The thing was done, but the stamp of new men enlisted (for there were many re-enlistments), whether from Home or the Colonies, and in spite of higher pay, was never again so good as of old. This deterioration was especially noticeable in some of the minor South African corps, whether raised for general purposes, or for the special purpose of acting as a local militia for the defence of Cape Colony. There was one marked exception to the general rule. The South African Constabulary, recruited from all parts of the Empire, and designed to be a permanent force, obtained the cream of the recruits.
Kitchener’s first reconstruction of the volunteer mounted army was not final. Limited terms again ran out, as the war dragged on, and fresh contingents replaced time-expired men. But the sources never ran dry, and on balance the strength tended to increase.