ELANDSLAAGTE
NOTE ON NOMENCLATURE.—Throughout the chapters dealing with the Boer
War I use the expression “Cavalry” to mean British regular Cavalry. I
use the expression “Mounted Infantry” to mean regular British Mounted
Infantry (_i.e._, drawn from Infantry battalions). I use the general
expression “mounted riflemen” to cover all mounted troops, Boer or
British, armed only with the rifle.
The campaign opened in Natal with the attempt of General Sir W. Penn
Symons, with 4,000 men and 18 guns, to hold the untenable Northern
position at Dundee against a greatly superior converging force of
Joubert’s Transvaalers. Sir George White, who only with reluctance had
consented to this attempt, was concentrating at Ladysmith, and facing
the Free Staters; while midway between White and Symons a detached Boer
force, 900 strong, under Koch, war about to plant itself upon the
railway connecting Dundee and Ladysmith. Symons’s mounted troops were
one regiment of Cavalry, three companies of Mounted Infantry drawn from
the three battalions which formed his Infantry brigade, a squadron of
Natal Carbineers, and a few picked Guides. Joubert’s southward advance
from the frontier was excessively slow—seventy miles in a week. Watched
and reported by Cavalry and other patrols, it nevertheless culminated in
a complete surprise of the British camp at dawn on October 20, 1899, by
Meyer’s force of some 4,000 men and 8 guns. The General’s overconfidence
was the principal cause of this surprise, and it is interesting to note
that his reason for not establishing more Cavalry pickets to supplement
the inadequate system of defence in the heights above the Dundee valley
was that he wished to keep the Cavalry fresh—fresh, that is, for shock
action. The battle of Talana was, from our point of view, an Infantry
fight, fought with splendid spirit and tenacity, and, for the moment, a
victory. From the Boer point of view, in this case, as in all others, it
was a mounted rifleman’s fight. Our own mounted troops were employed
with an aggressive purpose, that of turning the Boer right and
intercepting the Boer retreat. They consisted of Cavalry and Mounted
Infantry acting in concert, the latter, according to the regulations of
that period, being regarded as a “valuable auxiliary to the former.” The
movement began well. An admirable, but also a somewhat dangerous
position, was gained well behind the main Boer force, within range of
its led horses and commanding its line of retreat, at a moment when
retreat was just setting in. Stratagem and fire-action combined might
have produced great results. Shock was preferred. A few Boers were
sabred, some thirty prisoners were taken, and then the movement
collapsed. The Boers took the offence. The commanding officer on our
side lost his head, and, after much difficulty, half the Cavalry got
back without their prisoners to the British lines; the rest of the
force, after a running fight, in which the rifles of the Mounted
Infantry were the only effective means of defence, was surrounded and
forced to surrender. It would be unjust and undiscerning to make too
much of this opening episode. Nevertheless, in so far as the value of
the _arme blanche_ was concerned, not merely as a weapon, but as an
inspiration of resourceful and effective manœuvre, the incident was
of bad augury.
The next day, October 21, came Elandslaagte, fought on the line of
communication connecting Dundee and Ladysmith between Koch’s force of
900 men and 2 guns, planted astride the railway, and a mixed force of
3,500 men and 18 guns sent out by White from Ladysmith under command of
General French. Our mounted troops were three squadrons of Cavalry, five
of the Imperial Light Horse, and a few Natal volunteers. The fighting,
which ended brilliantly for ourselves, was highly honourable to both
sides. From the Boer point of view, it consisted in a magnificently
stubborn defence of a strong position by an inferior force of mounted
riflemen, fighting on foot up to the moment of actual contact, and under
crushingly superior Artillery fire. From our point of view, with one
interesting novelty, to which I shall refer later, it was a plain, hard,
straightforward fight with the three arms co-operating on thoroughly
conventional lines: the Infantry carrying through a well-planned frontal
attack with remarkable dash; the Artillery shelling the main position;
the Cavalry watching both flanks during the progress of the action, and,
just at dusk, after the final repulse of the enemy from the main
position, pursuing with the lance and sword. The pursuit, carried on for
about a mile and a half with vigour and enthusiasm, touched only a
portion of the retreating burghers, but, so far as it went, it was
effective: it struck the “terror of cold steel” into the pursued with
scarcely any loss to the two squadrons engaged; it caused casualties and
surrenders, though precisely to what extent is difficult to say. No
figures exist. In short, the Cavalry had performed with considerable
success the peculiar function traditionally assigned to their arm.
Now let us turn to the unconventional feature of this fight. The
Imperial Light Horse, early on the same morning, had made the
reconnaissance on which the battle scheme was founded, and had seized
and held necessary tactical points. They had rushed the railway-station
by a gallop in open order. Together with the Cavalry (who came out later
with the main force from Ladysmith) they had prepared the way for the
Infantry advance, and had helped to clear a flank during the early part
of the action. But in addition to these duties they dismounted and
joined with the Infantry in the assault of the main position, took a
prominent and, at one critical moment, a decisive share in the desperate
fighting which wrested it from the Boers, and suffered losses (including
that of their brave Colonel) heavier than most of the units engaged.
Mr. Goldman, in remarking on Elandslaagte, makes the strange comment
that the Imperial Light Horse were “trained as Cavalry,” and adduces
their exploits on this occasion as an example of the value of that arm
in South Africa.[17] This is the first of many misinterpretations upon
which I shall have to comment. For all practical purposes the Imperial
Light Horse were mounted riflemen, who used rifles, not carbines, and,
as far as I know, never in all their history made or attempted to make
an _arme blanche_ charge, yet were very effective in action, and were
very fair scouts. Used for the bloody assault at Elandslaagte, they
could not also be used for the pursuit. If they had not joined in the
assault, could they, or troops of their type, have been used in an
equally effective way for the pursuit? The inquiry compels us to look
back a little more closely at the conditions of the charge.
-----
Footnote 17:
“With French in South Africa,” p. 426.
-----
The following points should be noted:
1. For the troops engaged on both sides this was the first day of
hostilities. Steel-armed Cavalry was a new fact to the Boers. The steel
had the best chance it ever was to have of inspiring “terror.”
2. There were no Boer reserves left to cover the retreat.
3. The light was failing, a circumstance favourable to the steel,
unfavourable to fire. (Contrast the broad daylight at Talana, when the
Boers rallied and outmanœuvred the cavalry.) _Some_ light is
necessary, of course, but, within obvious limits, the poorer the better.
4. The ground was as open and smooth as Cavalry on the average can
expect. Dongas and rocks during the initial advance only; from within
300 yards of the enemy and onwards (according to the “Official History”)
not a lawn, but fair galloping ground.
5. Horses and men fresh, not hitherto seriously engaged. Why? Because
there had been no opportunity for the use of steel.
6. The enemy, already shaken and spent by a hard fire-fight on foot,
were retreating at their usual ambling trot, in loose, formless groups;
“raggedly streaming,” as the Official Historian correctly puts it. He
adds that this objective, “a crowd in the loose disorder of defeat,
seemed to offer an indefinite object for a charge,” but “that there was
no likelihood of a better whilst sufficient light remained.” I must
digress for a moment on that illuminating _obiter dictum_, because it
gives a clue to the Cavalry view of Cavalry work. The historian is
regretting the absence of a chance for “shock,” in its literal and in
its only accurate meaning, of the collision of _two_ massed bodies; two,
and both massed. The Boers were not massed; clearly, therefore, it was
of no use for the Cavalry to adopt mass, and in point of fact they
charged with “extended files.” There could be no “shock,” therefore—that
is, violent physical impact—and there was in fact none. The Boers were
ridden down individually. What the official commentator does not
apprehend is that this absence of mass, in his view an unfortunate
drawback, was in fact one of the very conditions which made the charge
possible. It was a corollary to the beaten, spent state of the pursued.
Ragged streaming away is a characteristic of defeated troops in retreat.
Cohesion means morale, and morale means the will and power to retaliate.
Nor is it only a question of morale. The physical conditions of the
preceding fire-fight determine the nature of the retreat. In this case
some 900 Boers, in widely extended order, had been defending a line
nearly two miles long against an enemy proportionately extended, both
extensions being truly normal—that is to say, dictated by the range and
deadliness of the modern rifle. Retreat from such a line, immediately
after a failure to withstand a punishing assault, pressed in some
quarters to the bayonet’s point, excludes cohesion in any troops,
European or extra-European. Boers, as I pointed out in the previous
chapter, never troubled much about set formations at any time, whether
or no there was time for them, not through incapacity, but simply
because they did not need them, and not needing them were better without
them. For them, therefore, this kind of ragged retreat was not solely
the result of the beating they had suffered. Normal in any troops, it
was normal in a peculiar sense with them.
I dwell on this point at some length, not because of the intrinsic
importance of this fight, or of the Official Historian’s comment upon
the pursuit (for he may have written thoughtlessly), but because it
directly raises the big issue dealt with in my analysis of the physical
problem in Chapter II. I enumerated there the many crushing limitations
which surround the use of real shock against riflemen, mounted or on
foot, and I instanced the pursuit of beaten troops as one of those rare
cases where the steel weapon has its best opening. But I also pointed
out that this was a case where any well-mounted troops, however armed,
have a good opening; and that brings us back to the point from which we
started in comparing, for the sake of illustration, the work of the
Imperial Light Horse and the Cavalry at Elandslaagte. First, however,
let us recapitulate the six favourable conditions of this Cavalry
pursuit:
(1) Novelty of the steel. (2) No Boer reserves. (3) Bad light. (4) Open
and smooth ground. (5) Fresh horses and men. (6) Ragged retreat of
beaten enemy.
This may be regarded as a rare combination of ideal conditions; how rare
will be seen as the war proceeds.
Now for the Imperial Light Horse, whom, let me say, I am regarding, not
as an individual regimental unit, but as a type of what good riflemen
can do, just as the Cavalry squadrons engaged were types of what
Cavalry, decidedly good according to the standard of their time, could
do.
I asked, would the Imperial Light Horse, if they had not been used for
the fire-fight, have been capable of an equally effective pursuit
without the use of steel weapons? The speculation, of course, though
instructive, is largely academical, the crucial point being that they
_had_ been used for the preceding fire-fight. However, for the sake of
argument, we must vest them with favourable condition No. 5, “Fresh
horses and men.” Nos. 2, 4, and 6 would have been equally applicable to
them; No. 1 is irrelevant. There remains No. 3, “Failing light.” This
would have been distinctly adverse to the accurate use of the rifle, but
at the same time let us remember the fundamental distinction between the
rifle and the steel—that is, range. Posted, for the sake of argument, in
the spot where the Cavalry were posted (threatening the enemy’s right
rear), the Imperial Light Horse would at once have had the first bodies
of retreating Boers well within the range of vulnerability: 500 yards is
the official estimate. Yes, but fire at this moment would no doubt have
meant delay, and caused less damage to the Boers than the undelayed
steel-armed Cavalry. Granted; a point to the Cavalry. Let us go on.
After routing a first batch in a long gallop, the Cavalry turned on
their tracks, met a second batch, and scattered and harassed these men
also. Would not the Imperial Light Horse meanwhile have had a good
chance of intercepting these men? Finally, picture the irregular corps
as capable of fire from the saddle, and keep that point in your mind for
future illustration.
All this is the veriest sketch, suggestive of the factors inherent in
mounted combats, but utterly unreal, because it is utterly impossible to
postulate identical circumstances for steel-action and fire-action. The
essence of the matter is that the Imperial Light Horse, by aptitude,
training, and equipment, were capable of joining effectively in the
Infantry assault of the main position, and that the Cavalry, by
aptitude, training, and equipment (they carried the short carbine), were
neither capable of, nor designed for, similar intervention. If the
Colonials had not been used for the main assault, the course of the
battle might have been changed. The assault might have failed (in the
penultimate phase there was an exceedingly critical revival on the Boer
left flank, checked by the Gordons and Imperial Light Horse combined),
or the assault might have been consummated too late to give to the
Cavalry the margin of light necessary for their pursuit. Or—and this is
really the most pertinent and suggestive eventuality—the Imperial Light
Horse used as their capacity deserved, might have operated actively on
the enemy’s rear at an earlier period, when the Cavalry was still
passive. Result, a change of battle conditions, which defies
speculation. On the other hand, we can, to a certain extent, isolate our
view of the Cavalry exploit. They did, under ideal conditions, exactly
what they were trained to do, and I do not think they, or any other
Cavalry similarly trained, could have done it better.
In dwelling so long upon the topic of pursuit we must remember that
there was no question at any moment of a charge by Cavalry either upon
_unbroken_ riflemen or upon led horses. Nor (save in the case of the
rush upon the station by the Imperial Light Horse) was there any attempt
on the part of the mounted riflemen on either side, Boer or British, to
carry aggressive mobility to the point of charging on horseback into
point-blank range of riflemen on foot.[18] Developments of that sort
were still a long way off.
-----
Footnote 18:
Unless the last Boer rush was of this character. The “Official
History” (vol. i., p. 169) says that fifty Boers “charged boldly
uphill” to within twenty yards of the crest held by the Gordons and
the Imperial Light Horse, and then used their rifles. Whether they
charged mounted is not stated.
-----
I have enlarged so much on this small fight in order to focus the
reader’s attention upon the principles it illustrates. Let him study it
in conjunction with the action of Talana, which preceded it, and with
all the multitude of fights which followed it, in the next two and a
half years. Let him begin at once to picture parallels in European
warfare, on a bigger scale or smaller scale, and ask whether they tell
for or against the _arme blanche_, and why? Imagine the 900 Boers as a
German force, either of Cavalry or of the three arms in normal
proportion, and without anything in the least degree resembling either
our Imperial Light Horse or the militant burgher. Should we have won
more or less easily? Or imagine 3,500 Germans, constituted as before,
tackling the 900 Boers. Instead of moderately open ground, suppose
ground diversified with copses, walls, hedges, a sunk lane or two. Make
any permutations or suppositions that you please, and test each by South
African facts.
Finally, ask yourself at every step, on which method, that of the _arme
blanche_ or the rifle, will it pay best in the long-run to train mounted
troops?