3. Mark the skill and confidence with which the Boers arranged for the disposal of their led horses in their night attacks, whether on columns or posts. Of the cases I have quoted, in no instance that I can discover did they suffer any appreciable loss in horses, or fail, if repulsed, to get away safely on horseback. One of the many fallacies dissipated by the South African War is the idea that mounted riflemen can never have full confidence in attack, because, if they dismount, they perpetually think too much about the line of retreat to their horses. In darkness, one would think, this feeling, if it existed, would be particularly strong. But whether by day or night, this was neither a Boer nor a British weakness.
Night Raids.—These were a British speciality, and must come under a separate heading, for they were not strictly night attacks, but long nocturnal expeditions designed to culminate in a surprise attack at dawn upon a Boer laager. Fond themselves of night enterprises, the Boers were also very sensitive to attack while in laager. This weakness began to be exploited by some of our mounted leaders in the early part of 1901. The first noteworthy night raid was on April 13 of that year at Goedvooruitzicht, where Sir Henry Rawlinson surprised the laager of Wolmarans at dawn, and captured his transport and a gun, though it is true that the Boers retaliated with some effect later on in the day. Other small raids followed in various quarters, and in August and September Colonel Benson, R.A., with the assistance of Colonel Woolls-Sampson, operating with a single column in the Eastern Transvaal, brought the system to high perfection. After his death in the unhappy reverse of Bakenlaagte, General Bruce Hamilton successfully carried on the same system in the same district, though with very much larger forces.
These raids supply most valuable instruction as to the best way to transport a mounted force with speed and secrecy over long distances of hostile country at night. Immense distances were sometimes covered with unerring exactitude of direction. Nerve in leadership and the highest standard of discipline among all ranks were required, both for the march across country and for the deployment at dawn for attack. Ability to imitate these marches would be invaluable in any sort of war. But there are reservations to be made. Accurate information and skilled guides were absolutely essential to success. Both, in the case of these raids, came from extraneous sources—namely, Boer spies and native scouts. These are luxuries which we are not likely to get in future wars. We shall have to rely mainly, if not solely, on our own eyes and wits. Nor were the material results of the raids commensurate with the efforts put forth—at any rate, in the later period when very large forces were used. Much transport was captured, but most of the prisoners taken were horseless men, who formed a proportion of every commando in the field. There was rarely any fighting. If a thorough surprise was effected, all who could fly fled; but it was noticeable that all through the raiding period, and in the raided district, the Boers were a match for us in ordinary daylight actions. On the other hand, the nervous worry and exhaustion caused by the raids had a very powerful moral effect upon the burghers.
Artillery with Mounted Troops.—I pointed out in Chapter VII. the disadvantages of allowing mounted troops of any class, acting independently, to rely too much on the support of Artillery. Guns weaken surprise, which is the soul of mounted effort. This truth came out with increasing clearness during the guerilla war. The Boers, having exhausted all their ammunition and resources for repair and upkeep, learnt, perforce, to do without guns altogether, with immense advantage to their tactics. When they obtained them by capture, they soon abandoned them. We ourselves, in offence, obtained little, if any, value from guns, and were apt to lose in vigour by the ever-present temptation of shelling before attacking. In defence they were often useful, but often, magnificently efficient as the gunners were, a source of tactical embarrassment. How vulnerable guns are to the assaults of bold mounted riflemen the record of losses in South Africa shows with painful clearness. The truth is, that the conditions created by the smokeless magazine rifle are highly unfavourable to the use of artillery in exclusively mounted warfare. When both sides are mounted, and acting freely, the game should be “loose” and “fast,” to borrow football metaphors. The battery has no target worth speaking of, and is itself a very substantial and a highly sensitive target, whose mobility is liable to be destroyed in a few moments by rifle-fire. The team is the vital point, and the team alone, in the vulnerable surface it presents, is six times more extensive than a single troop-horse, and twenty times more extensive than a rifleman skirmishing on foot.
As I have already suggested, the gun, while it calls for the skilled co-operation of a number of individuals, is essentially an impersonal weapon. No amount of courage and dexterity in its handling can compensate for this inherent defect. When used with independent mounted troops it should be as small, light, in a word, as “personal” as possible. The bearing of these observations on the arme blanche question is obvious. No superficial peculiarities of the guerilla war in any way lessen the force of the physical and moral principles involved. If mounted men, in defiance of physical facts and the inexorable laws of the modern game, use shock formations—and shock is the fundamental condition for the use of the steel—they reduce the personal factor to its lowest point, and play into the hands of the hostile gunners. As a matter of fact, the steel-charge upon guns was never tried in any form, dense or loose, in South Africa, and that, surely, is a sufficiently conclusive circumstance in itself, when we recollect the numerous cases in which guns were successfully attacked by mounted riflemen. If most of these exploits were performed by the Boers, and if they afford undoubted proof of the superior efficiency of the Boers as mounted riflemen, we must, none the less, bear in mind the fact that our men had not the same chance of performing them. The Boers, as they lost both their faith in Artillery and their resources for maintaining it, grew callous to its loss, and were wont to abandon guns without a qualm. With ourselves it is always a point of honour to defend guns à outrance. That is an admirable rule, but it carries with it the obligation on the one hand of using Artillery only in strict accordance with its positive tactical utility, and on the other of making sure that its escort is absolutely efficient.
Attack on guns brings me naturally to the consideration of mounted charges, and to that important topic I must devote a separate chapter.
CHAPTER XI
MOUNTED CHARGES IN SOUTH AFRICA
From time to time in recent chapters I have noticed cases where the Boers showed unusual boldness in pressing on horseback, where the nature of the ground permitted, into decisive rifle-range, sometimes firing from the saddle as they came, and sometimes actually mingling with our men. I have noted similar cases of bold mounted aggression in our men, though without saddle-fire. I purpose now to treat the subject as a whole, taking the Boers first.
Faint symptoms of this were observable as early as Graspan (November, 1899). Sannah’s Post (March, 1900) was the first occasion, I believe, where they rode into close quarters in the course of pressing a rear-guard. The same tactics appear again in November of the same year at Komati River and elsewhere in the Eastern Transvaal at the dawn of the Boer renaissance, if we may so term the burst of offensive vigour which signalized the end of 1900. They are not much in evidence in the height of that outbreak, because the Boer offence took the form mainly of attacks (often by night) on fortified posts, where they were neither necessary nor feasible; but signs of increased boldness in submitting horses to rifle-fire are visible in all the fights of that period. From the middle of 1901 onwards, when combats in the open field were the rule, this tendency took shape in a definite system of tactics. Curiously enough, these tactics, on their aggressive side, were confined mainly, though not wholly, to the Transvaal. The Free Staters used the semi-aggressive or “penetrating” charge freely enough, in order to escape from drives, but rarely in direct offence. This may have been due to the influence of De Wet, who nearly always preferred stalking to rushing. From the point of view of instruction, however, both types are equally interesting. They differed only in object, not in method.
On March 22, 1901, at Geduld, in the Western Transvaal, three squadrons of the Imperial Light Horse, under Colonel Briggs, of the King’s Dragoon Guards, were engaged in a reconnaissance, when, with very little warning and to the blank astonishment of all who witnessed the scene, several hundreds of De la Rey’s Boers, under the young General Kemp, in good order, and firing from the saddle, galloped down upon the extended skirmishing line of two squadrons. Our men just had time to mount, retire to a flank, and receive the support of the third squadron, when the enemy swept over the vacated position, swerved, and disappeared. This appears to have been a sort of rehearsal for future occasions. The charge inflicted no loss, but it is also significant that it incurred no loss. It was not repeated, though the Imperial Light Horse were followed back for several miles to their camp with vehement attacks, which they repelled with great coolness and gallantry. This may be noted as an excellent example of a steady retirement under difficult circumstances (Times History, vol. v., p. 224).