SOUTH AFRICA AND THE
TRANSVAAL WAR
CHAPTER I
THE SITUATION
“The wave that breaks against a forward stroke
Beats not the swimmer back, but thrills him through
With joyous trust to win his way anew
Through stronger seas than first upon him broke
And triumphed. England’s iron-tempered oak
Shrank not when Europe’s might against her grew
Full, and her sun drunk up her foes like dew,
And lion-like from sleep her strength awoke.
As bold in fight as bold in breach of trust
We find our foes and wonder not to find,
Nor grudge them praise whom honour may not bind:
But loathing more intense than speaks disgust
Heaves England’s heart, when scorn is bound to greet
Hunters and hounds whose tongues would lick their feet.”
—Algernon Charles Swinburne.
A week of disaster had terminated woefully. Three British Generals in succession—Sir William Gatacre, Lord Methuen, and Sir Redvers Buller—had advanced against strongly fortified Boer positions and suffered repulse. The hearts of the miserable loyalists, who hung in dire suspense on the result of British action, sank in despair—their dismay and their grief were pitiful. Great Britain echoed their sentiment. Disappointment was universal. General Gatacre had failed through lack of caution and mischance; the other Generals had come to grief owing to the circumstances which forced them willy nilly to hurry to the assistance of beleaguered towns in the face of overwhelming disadvantages, notably the lack of cavalry and the inefficiency of the guns. Lord Methuen had been unable to bring home his early victories owing to the absence of mounted men. Sir Redvers Buller had failed to dislodge the enemy from his strong, naturally fortified positions owing to the weakness of his artillery in comparison to that of the enemy, who had Nordenfeldt and Hotchkiss quick-firing guns in every available position. He had made a glorious attempt—owned to be magnificent; but it was not war, and in his failure he recognised that it was not the game of derring-do, but the game of “slim” warfare as played by his brother Boer which must claim his attention. Now was verified the prophecy of the Polish apocalypse: “The war of the future will be a war of sieges and entrenched positions. In the war of the future the advantage will always rest with the defensive. In the war of the future, frontal attacks, without immense superiority in numbers, will be impossible.”
Every campaign, they say, has its lessons. This one we now find to be full of them, so full indeed that it has necessarily taken our Generals some time to become acquainted even with their grammar. When the war was forced upon us by the Pretoria oligarchy for the long-cherished purpose of ousting Great Britain from South Africa, many of the authorities were of opinion that a rabble of undisciplined farmers would be incapable of offering any formidable resistance to the superior military system of Great Britain. Not a hint of doubt as to the success of our arms and the effectiveness of our war apparatus was entertained. When Colonials in the summer of ’99 volunteered their services, the Government received the offers with a sniff. Later they accepted them with grateful thanks. It was never imagined that colonists could know anything of the art of war, or that they might teach a lesson or two even to that august institution the Staff College. Those who knew ventured to suggest that in South Africa the same cast-iron principles that existed in European warfare would be valueless, and that the lessons of Ingogo and Majuba in ’81 might be repeated in ’99 in all their dire and dismal reality. But these pessimists were scoffed at. They therefore waited, and hoped against hope. Now and then they feebly wondered by what process infantry, arriving two months late, when the enemy had had time to entrench the whole country at various naturally strong strategic points, would be able to overcome the disadvantages attendant on immobility. But they were silenced by a look. British pluck and endurance might be calculated upon to surmount everything and anything—some said! No one seemed to care to tackle the problem of how men on foot would be enabled to compete creditably, in anything like equal numbers, with a mounted enemy possessing more than ordinary mobility.
A mounted enemy has many advantages in his favour. He can select his own position, he can place all his force en masse into the fighting line, he can so pick his positions that one man on the defensive can make himself the equal of three men of the attacking force; and, besides, he can occupy a length of position which must extend his flanks far beyond those of the attackers on foot. These in consequence are either forced to extend to equal length, at almost certain risk of being unable to reinforce any weak point developed during the attack, and thereby cause the attack to be broken at points; or they have to “contain” only a portion of the enemy in position, and perhaps leave his wings—or one wing—free to execute an outflanking movement. It is impossible when a line extends for miles, and the enemy’s strength is not discoverable before the heat of the engagement, for infantry to come from a great distance to the assistance of weak points; and by reason of this immobility it is equally impossible for infantry in the heat of action, and when the front is extended for miles, to suddenly change a plan of attack in time to save a situation.
The task set before our Generals was, therefore, almost superhuman: they were expected to make up for want of mobility with superior strategical qualifications; but, as has been said, no committee of Generals could at this juncture have decided on a strategy applicable to the complicated situation. That the Boer was a born strategist, and had able advisers, was amply proved. The amalgam of Boer methods, with Zulu theories and modern German tactics, was sufficient to try the most ingenious intelligence. For instance, the Boers in early days selected positions on the sides and tops of kopjes, and at the commencement of the campaign, at Talana Hill and at Elandslaagte, they were so perched, in accordance with the primitive principles of their race. They ignored the fact that such positions were the worst they could select against artillery fire with percussion fuses. Even for their own rifle practice such positions were also the worst, as, firing down at an angle, their bullets as a rule ran the chance of ploughing the earth without ricocheting, and served only to hit the one man aimed at. They worked, and still work, on the old Zulu principle of putting their whole strength into the fighting line, acting on the Zulu axiom, “Let it thunder—and pass.” A sound principle this, no doubt, but one which our ponderous military machinery would not allow us to adopt. To these early methods, and to his native “slimness” and cunning, the Boer now added some German erudition. The influence of German officers and German tactics began to work changes curious and inexplicable. The Boers built scientific entrenchments, no longer on the kopjes alone but also below them, thus reducing the effect of hostile artillery, save that of howitzers, and permitting their sharpshooters to sweep the plain with a hurricane from their Mausers. In addition to this they built long castellated trenches, perfect underground avenues, to allow of the invisible massing of troops at any given point. They were also provided with ingenious gun-trenches, quite hidden, along which their Nordenfeldt gun, that pumped five shells in rapid succession, could be removed swiftly from one spot to another, and thereby defeat the efforts of the British gunners to locate it.
Thus it will be seen a new complexion was put upon Boer affairs. Novel and trying conditions were imposed on those who already had to cope with the problem of how to match in mobility a rival who brought to his support six legs, while the British only brought two. Whole armies consisting merely of mounted infantry and artillery had never before come into action, and it began to be understood that a war against bushwhackers, guerillas, and sharpshooters, plus the most expensive guns modernity could provide, was a matter more serious than any with which the nineteenth century had hitherto had to deal. We had to learn that sheer pluck, endurance, and brute force were unavailing, and that strategy of the hard and fast kind—the red-tape strategy of the Staff College—was about as unpractical as a knowledge of the classics to one who goes a-marketing. There is no finality in the art of war, and nations, be they ever so old and wise and important, must go on learning.
One of the newer questions was, how far personal intelligence might be distributed among a body of men? The General as a head, the Staff Officers as nerves that convey volition to the different members, we had accepted, but how far individual acumen was needed to insure success now began to be argued. Certain it was that in this campaign we had opportunities for studying the comparative value of individual discretion versus “fighting to order.” The Boers, every one of them, were working for themselves, absolutely for hearth and home, though perhaps under a general plan which certainly served to harass and annoy and keep the British army in a dilemma; while we laboured on a consolidated system which, if not obsolete, was certainly inappropriate. However, as there was no use in bemoaning our reverses, we began to congratulate ourselves on having discovered the cause of them. It was decided that first there must be more troops sent out to meet the extended nature of our operations, and that these troops must be accompanied by a sufficient number of horses to insure the necessary mobility, without which even the brute force of our numbers would be useless.