THE SCENE ON SPION KOP—MAJOR THORNEYCROFT’S DESPERATE SITUATION.
Drawing by Frank Craig from a Sketch by a British Officer.
On the 25th the battle dragged on, the artillery barking and rifles snapping at each other, while the transport slowly prepared to retrace its winding way whither it had come, across the Tugela. The most gallant and perhaps the most melancholy feature of the war was at an end. General Warren’s right flanking movement had failed, and the Commander-in-Chief decided that there was no alternative but to again concentrate in the neighbourhood of Potgieter’s Drift. The movement was conducted, under the personal direction of General Buller, with admirable precision and skill, and though there were weary and disgusted hearts among the bitterly disappointed troops, they bore their trial with dignity. The return was orderly, and no further misfortune happened. The enemy made no attempt to interfere. They, too, though successful in their defence, were hard hit.
The following casualty list represents the cost of the great flanking movement:—
Killed:—Staff—Captain Virtue, Brigade-Major. 3rd King’s Royal Rifles—Lieut.-Colonel Buchanan Riddell, Lieutenant R. Grand, Second Lieutenant French-Brewster. 2nd Cameronians—Captain F. Murray, Captain Walter, Lieutenant Osborne. 17th Company Royal Engineers—Major Massey. 2nd King’s Royal Rifles—Lieutenant Pope Wolferstan. 1st South Lancashire—Captain Birch. 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers—Captain Stewart, Lieutenant J. Mallock, Lieutenant Fraser. Imperial Light Horse—Lieutenant Rudall, Lieutenant Kynock. 2nd Middlesex Regiment—Captain Muriel, Second Lieutenant Lawley, Second Lieutenant Wilson. 2nd Lancaster Regiment—Major Ross, Captain Kirk, Lieutenant Wade. Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry—Captain Hon. W. Petre, Captain Knox-Gore, Lieutenant Grenfell, Lieutenant Newnham, Lieutenant M’Corqudale, Lieutenant Hon. Hill-Trevor. South African Light Horse—Major Childe. 2nd West York—Captain Ryall. Wounded:—Staff—Major-General Sir E. Woodgate[5] (since dead), Captain Castleton, A.D.C. 3rd King’s Royal Rifles—Major Thistlethwayte, Major Kays, Captain Beaumont, Captain Briscoe. 2nd Cameronians—Major S. P. Strong, Major Ellis, Captain Wanless-O’Gowan, Lieutenant H. V. Lockwood, Second Lieutenant O. M. Torkington, Second Lieutenant F. G. W. Draffen. Indian Staff Corps—Major Bayly. Bethune’s Horse—Captain Ford. 17th Company Royal Engineers—Lieutenant Falcon. 1st South Lancashire—Lieutenant Raphael. 1st Border Regiment—Captain Sinclair-M’Lagan, Second Lieutenant Andrews. 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers—Lieut.-Colonel Blomfield (taken prisoner), Major Walter, Lieutenant Griffin, Lieutenant Wilson, Lieutenant Charlton. Royal Engineers—Captain Phillips. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers—Captain Maclachlan. 2nd West York—Lieutenant Barlow. 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers—Captain Wolley-Dod, Captain White, Captain Ormond, Lieutenant Campbell. 1st York and Lancaster—Lieutenant Halford, Lieutenant Duckworth. 2nd West Surrey—Captain Raitt (since dead), Captain Warden, Lieutenant Smith, Lieutenant Wedd. 2nd Middlesex Regiment—Major Scott-Moncrieff, Captain Savile, Captain Burton, Second Lieutenant Bentley. 2nd Lancaster Regiment—Captain Sandbach, Lieutenant Dykes, Lieutenant Stephens, Second Lieutenant Nixon. Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry—Captain Bettington, Lieutenant Foster, Lieutenant Baldwin, Lieutenant Howard. Missing:—2nd Lancashire Fusiliers—Captain Elmslie (taken prisoner), Captain Hicks, Captain Freeth. 2nd Middlesex Regiment—Lieutenant Galbraith. 2nd Lancaster Regiment—Major Carleton. Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry—Lieutenant Power-Ellis.
THE THIRD GREAT EFFORT—VAAL KRANTZ
At this time it seemed as though the word “As you were” had been spoken by the military authorities. But it was, alas! no longer possible to believe that the position was as it had been; for it was now a case of melancholy experience plus previous melancholy experience. Nearly six weeks before, the great frontal attack at Colenso had failed—failed partly by reason of the tremendous strategical position taken up by the Boers, with the river Tugela as a natural moat for its protection, and partly on account of the disaster to the guns, which completely upturned the plan of Sir Redvers Buller’s calculations.
Now a great flank movement had been attempted, and had failed as signally as the first frontal effort. It was really discovered that a flanking movement, truly interpreted, was impossible, for there is no flank to a circle, and the Boer lines were found to be equally strong all round from Colenso to Ladysmith.
This horrible discovery naturally made the situation very grave indeed. The effect on the garrison of Ladysmith—the terrible rebound from delighted anticipation to amazed despair—may be partly imagined. None, indeed, save those who had so valiantly endured the terrible changes in the barometer of expectation could entirely gauge the sensitivity of those ill-fed, debilitated thousands, ravaged by disease, privation, and warfare, who hung oscillating day after day between salvation and destruction. They now knew that their saviours, Sir Charles Warren and his force, were withdrawn to the south of the Tugela. This was done because the river forms a species of natural rampart, beyond which the country—a species of South African Switzerland—offered no facilities to an attacking force. It was found that the Boers had carefully fortified every position already well formed by nature for purposes of defence. It was the same as Colenso. The theatre of war was margined by fortifications, regular galleries, rising tier upon tier on originally favourable positions. The opportunity to occupy these favourable positions the Boers owed entirely to us—to the procrastination and pacific tendencies of the British Government. It was now owned that Sir Alfred Milner should have gone to the Conference with a forest of rifles at his back, an army of mounted Colonials at his elbows, and some big guns “up his sleeve.” As it was, while he talked and the Government spent its money on telegraphic palaver, the Boers, assisted by their German mercenaries, were marking out the choicest positions, not for their own defence, but for the defence of Natal (which they were allowed time to seize) against the “magnanimous” Briton. Yes, the Boers from the beginning had decided to talk the British into delay, and had profited gloriously by their strategy. In our first volume, a letter on “Boer ignorance” candidly showed the Dutchman’s hand—too late, of course, for then the trick was bound to be taken. The Dutchmen conferred with Sir Alfred Milner to suit their own ends and to further their main objects; firstly, to keep the war outside their own territories, and secondly, to confine it to soil that, geographically and by a species of hereditary instinct, they knew to perfection. They, boy and man, loved those kopjes. In those semi-circular windings, those almost inaccessible peaks and cones, those boulders which afforded eternal cover to the sniper, those vast arenas of open veldt where an approaching enemy might be stormed upon by a deluge of leaden hail—they had mentally played hide-and-seek for eighteen years. Now the reality of the game was come. From the early days when Sir Harry Smith found them prospecting the fair land of Natal, they had learnt its intimate geography. We, to whom the fair land belonged, had barely heard of the Tugela or the region around it. To us it was superficially known only at the cost of dire experience. The Boers had been aware that the British advance northwards through the Free State would lie across flat fair country, and knowing this, had decided that during the month taken to land the British army they must take up their positions beyond and around it; and so excellent was their cunning, so amicably pacific the temper of the British nation, that they were enabled to follow their strategic programme in its entirety, and plant themselves in firmly rooted masses to await our arrival!