Not only the inconvenience, but also the danger of suddenly conferred local rank were illustrated on January 24. Buller, hastily concluding from a garbled message that Crofton was incompetent, asked Warren to put Thorneycroft in charge. Thorneycroft heard of his appointment orally through an officer who had chanced to be at the signalling station, and the written message which never reached him was, it is said, picked up next day by a Boer! If the exigencies of war should ever require the sudden promotion of a junior officer to a position of great responsibility, it should not take effect until all concerned are notified. The defence of Spion Kop was, during the greater part of the day, conducted by a syndicate of officers acting severally.
The curtain had fallen, the drama was over, and the critics took up their pens. With Thorneycroft's report on the retirement from Spion Kop began a controversy which lasted for more than two years. Warren enclosed it in his own report to Buller, with the suggestion that a Court of Enquiry should be held to investigate the circumstances of the unauthorized withdrawal, and in succession each grade of the military hierarchy passed censure on the grades below. In Buller's covering despatch of January 31 with which he forwarded to the War Office, through Lord Roberts, Warren's Spion Kop report, he commented very unfavourably on Warren's arrangements and disposition of troops; and said that Thorneycroft had "exercised a wise discretion, and that no investigation was necessary": while to Warren's general report on the whole operations of January 17-27, he attached a memorandum to the Secretary of State for War, "not necessarily for publication," in which he not only blamed himself for not having taken command on the 19th, when he saw "that things were not going well," but also said that he could "never employ Warren again in an independent command"; as his slowness had allowed the enemy to concentrate and to increase the force opposed to him more than twenty-fold.
With this accumulation of censure Lord Roberts dealt in his despatch to Lord Lansdowne of February 13, written at a drift on the Riet River during the advance on Kimberley. The Commander-in-Chief confirmed all the censures passed by his subordinates and added some of his own. Buller was rebuked for not having intervened when he saw that a most important enterprise was not being "conducted in the manner which in his opinion would lead to the attainment of the object in view with the least possible loss of life on our side"; Warren was reproved because he did not visit Spion Kop during the crisis, and had instead ordered Coke to come to him; and while Thorneycroft's gallantry and exertions, without which the troops would probably have been driven off the hill during the day, were acknowledged, his action in ordering the retirement without endeavouring to communicate with Coke or Warren was pronounced to be a "wholly inexcusable assumption of responsibility and authority."
Never before had such an inconvenient batch of despatches been laid upon the desks of Pall Mall. To publish them and to proclaim to the world that the Natal Generals, when they were beaten by the enemy, had began to fight among themselves, was impossible. If they were withheld from publication, many awkward questions would be asked. The War Office temporized, and endeavoured to steer a middle course. Would Buller kindly substitute a simple narrative for his despatch? This Buller refused to do, and in April, 1900, the War Office published the despatches, imperfectly sterilized. As they now appeared, they were neither a simple narrative, nor a full revelation. Lord Roberts' criticisms on Buller were cut out. The memorandum, "not necessarily for publication," in which Buller reflected severely on Warren's incapacity was withheld. Only the censure passed upon Thorneycroft was allowed to appear. The junior officer was made the scapegoat of his superiors' mistakes. Of all the officers concerned, he alone had failed. The War Office had taken a politic but not straightforward course. The blame must be laid upon some one, and if it were laid upon Thorneycroft alone it would affect public opinion less mischievously.
It soon became suspected, however, that certain things were being kept back, and the controversy dragged on for two years; Buller to the end maintaining that as he was not present at, nor in command of, the Spion Kop operations, it was not incumbent on him to write a simple narrative of them; and that his duty was to write a critical account of the affair, such as would be sent in by an Umpire in Chief during peace manoeuvres.
Not until April, 1902, did the Epilogue of the Tragedy of Errors appear. The despatches, with the memorandum "not necessarily for publication," were published in full, as well as the "Secret Orders" given to Warren at Springfield, which were its Prologue.
Footnote 26:[(return)]
A detachment numbering about 600 only was sent.
Footnote 27:[(return)]
In the Fog of War some of the British soldiers thought that the Boers were coming up to surrender themselves, and acted in this belief for a brief period.