The Spion Kop Affair
After the battle of Colenso, and before the successful storming of Pieter's Hill, the public attention was excited and fixed with intensity for some days on the fighting about Spion Kop—the key to the Boer position which was assailed by General Buller, January 21st and 23d. The Kop was carried by a night attack which was a very daring and hardy movement, and abandoned only after a long and bloody conflict. The British began to climb the mountain an hour after midnight, and at 3 o'clock were challenged by a Boer sentinel. When this was done, they, as had been ordered to do, threw themselves flat on their faces and the Boer picket not more than fifteen in number and only thirty yards away, emptied their magazines into the darkness and fled for their lives. "One brave man alone remained" and was killed as the British flung themselves into the trench, "with a cheer that was heard by those who were anxiously listening in the camp below."
The Boers soon yielded their second line of trenches and the British attempted, having gained this much ground, to prepare themselves for the assault that they knew was coming with the daylight. It was very dark and, though they worked hard to protect themselves, found they had laid out their trenches so that they afforded very little shelter. Indeed they were enfiladed and raked on all sides; and it appeared the Boers had six guns ready for them. Two of them Maxim-Nordenfeldts and four other guns on a ridge, completely concealed from our batteries, but able to command them, as was shown by their dropping shells among them periodically during the day. The Boer riflemen followed their usual tactics. They were scattered all over the hill, lying wherever they found cover, and firing coolly and steadily all the time. "To our men they were as usual, practically invisible, and they were far too widely scattered for shell fire to have much effect upon them. At 8 their attack began. It was a most vigorous infantry attack, supported by a converging shell fire from three directions. For the first time in this war the Boer artillery was as deadly as their musketry. The Maxim-Nordenfeldts scoured first one side of the hill and then the other, raising great clouds of dust, and shell after shell bursting where our men lay thickest.
A Fierce Struggle
"This condition lasted three hours when the Boers advanced closer and closer, without giving our men a chance, and drove them out of their first line of trenches, but did not stay there long; for the second time we drove them back again at the point of the bayonet, and in one of the trenches this happened three times.
"Two British battalions came up as re-inforcements, and all the way up the men were under fire from the top and from sharpshooters in trenches and behind rocks on the flanks, yet they never wavered once. The climb took over two hours, and when they at last reached the summit they surrounded it and went up the last part with a rush and cheer. It was a stirring sight, and to those who watched it seemed that now, at any rate, the hill was ours. The only ominous thing was that not a Boer left the hill, and the ceaseless fire went on without even a break. This was 5.15, and things were not going well with the main attack."
Information had been given the British that there was a supply of water on the Kop, but that was a mistake, and the troops suffered greatly from thirst, and the rifle fire of the Boers never slackened. There was unusual energy and resolution on the part of the British, notwithstanding their disadvantages and losses, to adhere to the position they had gained in the night, and many valorous efforts, all in vain, to clear the Boers out of the way and overcome their fire, so that at last the various regiments and companies and battalions of the British force engaged, were very much mixed up. They were resolute, but between the darkness and the rough ground and the changes of position there was no little confusion. Six hundred Royal Engineers received orders to go up after nightfall in order to intrench the position, and a part of General Hildyard's Brigade bivouacked under Three Tree Hill, with orders to advance against the main ridge of Taba Myama at dawn. Colonel Thorneycroft, who was in the most critical position, was in ignorance of all this. The condition, in which his force was, has already been described, but besides this his men were suffering considerably from the effects of the day. "The losses had been heavy; his own men had lost 122 out of 194 who had climbed the hill, and the men, who had been under fire all day, although not in the slightest degree demoralized, were yet considerably shaken, and it was exceedingly doubtful whether they would be able to stand another such day's shell fire."
The Kop Retaken by The Boers
Each hour's fighting added evidence that the British could not sustain themselves on the Kop and retirement was judiciously ordered and began at 8.30 P.M., January 24th, and as the leading troops went down they met the sappers coming up. The descent was conducted with the utmost order and dispatch, but it was early morning before the last man was off the hill. With the failure to retain Spion Kop failed General Warren's attempt to cross the Spion Kop Taba Myama range, so, on the 25th, a withdrawal across the Tugela was ordered. It took the heavy transport wagons all day to cross the pontoons, and in the night the troops followed them.