THE GUERILLA WAR
SEPTEMBER, 1900, TO MAY, 1902.
NOTE.—For actions and operations mentioned in this chapter (part of
which covers ground not yet dealt with by our Official Historians),
the reader is referred to the _Times_ History, vol. v.
So ended what is usually known as the “regular war.” In South Africa the
expression had no precise significance. Regular war had been melting
imperceptibly into guerilla war for some time past. The Boers were not
dependent, as thickly peopled industrial communities are dependent, on
their railways, capitals, and principal towns. The vast majority lived
on the land, and the land was theirs, very little ravaged as yet, and,
as to vast areas, still even unvisited. The guerilla war may truly be
said to have begun in the Free State in March, 1900, after the capture
of Bloemfontein, and in the Transvaal not later, at any rate, than July,
when Botha, from necessity rather than from choice, sent most of his
burghers to their own districts. Nor was the crash at Komati Poort
followed by anything more than a partial lull in hostilities.
Over both the newly annexed Colonies we exercised no authority outside
the range of our guns. In the greater part of the Transvaal, it is
true, there were two months during which the burghers, like wasps,
stung rarely unless they were disturbed; but in the sister state, De
Wet’s return at the end of August, after the first “hunt,” had roused
his countrymen to fresh offensive efforts. After some weeks of
propaganda and reorganization he took the field on September 20, just
when Roberts was approaching Komati Poort. A month later he was laying
formal, though unsuccessful, siege, to a fortified town in the
Transvaal—Frederikstad—and in Mid-November, undeterred by a sharp
reverse at Bothaville (November 6), he was marching south through the
Eastern Free State, besieging and, this time, capturing another
fortified town—Dewetsdorp—and endeavouring to invade Cape Colony. By a
great concerted effort, organized by Kitchener, and known as the
second “De Wet hunt,” he was checked, but not before he had succeeded,
early in December in throwing across the border bands under Kritzinger
and Hertzog, which lit an inextinguishable flame of rebellion among
the Dutch colonists.
Certain incidents in this period (September to November, 1900) call for
special notice.
1. The march of 173 miles made by French’s Cavalry division, about 3,000
strong, across the Eastern Transvaal in October, with the object of
“clearing the country.” This march revealed with startling clearness
both the nature of the campaign which was beginning, and the incapacity
of the Cavalry, armed and equipped as they were, to cope with it. Bands,
which never exceeded a third and rarely exceeded a fifth or sixth of
French’s strength, harassed the column all the way with vicious little
attacks, which were repelled, but which met with no punishment, nor with
any adequate tactical retaliation. The expedition achieved nothing,
encouraged the enemy, and was attended by enormous losses of oxen and
horses. It is true that numbers of other columns (the majority composed
mainly of Infantry) were tramping about the country at this time with
scarcely better results, and nearly all suffering from the disability
imposed by heavy ox-transport. It is true also, that the country
traversed by French presented peculiar difficulties in its remoteness
from railways, and in the pugnacity of its burghers. But, with allowance
for these considerations, the marked feature of the expedition, from the
point of view of our inquiry, was the failure of the Cavalry to reap
advantage, tactically, from occasions when the enemy sought a conflict.
2. A more hopeful omen for the future was afforded at about the same
time in the Free State, by the action of Bothaville[50] (November 6,
1900), at the end of a long chase of De Wet by some columns of mounted
riflemen under Charles Knox, after the Boer leader’s retreat from
Frederikstad, and before his attempt to invade Cape Colony. His laager
and guns were surprised and attacked at close range in brilliant style
by a small advance-guard composed of only sixty-seven regular Mounted
Infantry, who held their ground until reinforced, and brought about the
capture of several guns, much transport, and 100 men, after a fiercely
contested fight of some hours’ duration. This exploit was something
wholly new. Nothing exactly like it had been done by our mounted troops
since the war began. Some excellent work, too, though never quite good
enough for the purpose, was done by the same and other mounted columns
in the subsequent hunt of De Wet, arising out of his attempted raid on
Cape Colony (November 24 to December 13, 1900). Co-operation was far
better, and tackling power higher than in the “hunt” of the preceding
August.
-----
Footnote 50:
“Official History,” vol. iii., pp. 485–488; _Times_ History, vol. v.,
pp. 15–20.
-----
3. _Charges._—We note the Boer mounted charge occurring—
(_a_) On at least one small occasion during the march of the Cavalry
division referred to above. I have no details, only a bare mention of
the circumstance in the “Official History” (vol. iii., p. 432). The
movement was repelled.
(_b_) On November 6, at Komati River, in the course of some operations
under Smith-Dorrien, near the Delagoa Railway, where Boers, firing from
the saddle, charged clean through a rear-guard of Canadian mounted
troops (_Times_ History, vol. v., p. 51; “Official History,” vol. iii.,
p. 442).
(_c_) In the second “De Wet hunt.” This, I think, was the first example
in the war, on the Boer side, of what I may call the penetrating charge,
after the Klip Drift pattern, that is, designed to pierce a screen for
ulterior purposes, not to inflict immediate loss on the enemy. It
occurred at the close of the hunt, when, at Springhaan’s Nek (December
14, 1900), the Boers, accompanied by a mass of waggons, burst through
the Thabanchu line of fortified posts, which had been strengthened at
the point attacked by small detachments of mounted riflemen. It is worth
while, though I have not the space, to examine the incident side by side
with the Klip Drift charge, noting relative numbers, size of target,
ground, and the effect of fire upon men and animals in rapid movement
(_Times_ History, vol. v., pp. 40–42. Not mentioned in “Official
History”).
(_d_) A successful little charge, this time by Britons, occurred on the
same day in another part of the field, at Victoria Nek, where a detached
Boer force was attacked and very roughly handled by the Welsh Yeomanry
and the 16th Lancers. The “Official History” makes no mention of the
episode, and my own information is scanty. Some of the Yeomanry, it is
said, used clubbed rifles. Whether the Lancers used their swords I do
not know. As to clubbed rifles, contrast the Boer plan of firing from
the saddle (_Times_ History, vol. v., pp. 41–42).
(_e_) On the British side again, Bothaville (referred to above) was
certainly on the border-line of charges. The advance-guard dismounted at
something like point-blank range. So few in numbers, they would have
gained little by riding home, and might have defeated their own object.
As it was, they achieved their object, and that is all that matters,
whether it is Infantry, Cavalry, or mounted riflemen who are charging.
My digression has run to greater length than I intended. There was no
pause in the current of Boer aggression. No sooner had De Wet turned his
back on the Orange River than the long-prepared offensive revival in the
Transvaal was carried into effect. Viljoen’s enterprises against the
Delagoa Railway towards the end of November had heralded the storm,
which, during the early part of December, broke with violence in the
western district, where the Buffelspoort convoy was destroyed (December
2, 1900), and De la Rey defeated Clements at Nooitgedacht (December 13,
1900). The revival spread to the south-east, where several towns on the
Natal border were attacked, and culminated in the north-east, with
Viljoen’s capture of Helvetia, on December 31, and Botha’s simultaneous
midnight attacks of January 5 upon the garrisons of the Delagoa Railway,
one of which, that on Belfast, came perilously near success.
Kitchener, who had assumed the chief command in South Africa on November
29, 1900, just when the Free State revival was declining, and the
Transvaal outbreak was beginning, was faced with an extraordinarily
difficult and complicated problem. He had to cope with a new national
spirit among the Boers, emanating from men who were wholly unconnected
with the old Kruger régime, and gathering strength from the elimination,
by surrender or voluntary exile, of the supporters of that régime. The
new national spirit took practical shape in a new military spirit, one
of vigorous offence, conducted by men who represented what, beyond all
question now, was the most formidable type of soldier in the world—the
mounted rifleman—men who were equally at home in defending or assaulting
entrenched positions, and in attack or defence in the open field.
Our own resources for dealing with the situation were manifestly
inadequate. It was not only that there had been visible in some of the
recent events disquieting signs of feebleness in defence, leading to
unjustifiable surrenders. This evil was largely due to the lassitude and
staleness which affected the army in general. The really grave feature
was our inability to retaliate effectively against these aggressive
enterprises, an inability strikingly illustrated by the long but futile
operations which were set on foot in the Western Transvaal after
Nooitgedacht. The truth came like a flash, pitilessly illuminating past
shortcomings, that all along we had been conquering the country, not the
race, winning positions, not battles. Psychological causes apart, our
cardinal military weakness had always lain in the mounted arm, not in
numbers, except at the very first, but in quality. Unless we carry
self-deception so far as either to eliminate from the calculation the
great masses of Infantry who had borne the main brunt of the regular
campaign and had suffered far the heaviest losses, or, on the other
hand, to count the enemy twice over, once as opponents of the Infantry,
and again as opponents of our mounted troops; unless we perpetrate one
of these errors, we must candidly admit that we had had our full chance
of securing decisive victories through the semi-independent agency of
mounted men. The figures and facts to which I drew attention in
sketching the main operations from Paardeberg to Komati Poort prove this
conclusively. We had missed our chance, and the consequences of missing
it, obscured at the time by a long record of successful invasion and
occupation, were now apparent. The war, obviously, was to be a mounted
war. In the last resort nothing but efficiency in the same formidable
type which the Boers represented could enable us to conquer them.
Infantry would still perform the task of holding the ground won; they
would also perform many valuable subsidiary duties in the field, but
always of a defensive or semi-defensive character. For offence, whether
for finding the enemy and forcing him to action, or for beating him when
he sought action himself, mounted riflemen, good enough and numerous
enough, were an indispensable necessity. In this respect, what were our
prospects?
We had evolved our type of mounted rifleman, which, in essentials,
followed the Boer type, but in practice fell short of the ideal. The
Cavalry, who from the first should have inspired and furthered the
educational process, were only just beginning to substitute the rifle
for the carbine, a change which must, I imagine, have been finally
prompted by the experience, alluded to above, of their divisional march
across the Eastern Transvaal, in October, 1900. So far as I know, the
first occasion on which any considerable force of Cavalry carried rifles
in the field was in the great driving operations which began in that
same district, and again under French, at the end of January, 1901. The
lance was already discarded, and eventually the sword also was
discarded, but not until many months later. There seems to have been no
simultaneous abandonment of swords by all Cavalry regiments alike. The
change was gradual. In dwelling once again upon the backwardness of
Cavalry training, I must explain once again, for fear of
misunderstanding, that I am criticizing them by a standard special to
themselves, the only standard appropriate to a professional force which
had been in the field for more than a year. I need scarcely say that
their record in the guerilla war, as in all the war, is honourable, and
in many respects admirable; but by contrast with what they might have
become without the _arme blanche_ habit and training, it is
comparatively negative and tame. With a few trifling exceptions they
escape the reverses which so often befell their less disciplined and
less experienced irregular comrades, but they do not stand out
pre-eminent in that aggressive energy which was the great tradition of
their arm. In the matter of leadership we find them supplying many
excellent column commanders—men like Byng, Briggs, Scobell, and
Rimington, to name only a few—but on the whole they can scarcely be said
to have surpassed other arms of the service in the production of good
leaders. Needless to say, good leading never came from any other source
than oblivion of steel methods and unreserved reliance on the rifle.
The regular Mounted Infantry had made rapid strides in efficiency, in
spite of the extraordinary difficulties with which they had to
grapple—inexperience in riding and horse-management, dearth of officers,
hurried organization, absence of common tradition and _esprit de corps_.
But they had been worked with great severity, had shrunk greatly from
the ordinary wastage of war, and could only be reinforced by the same
unscientific and wasteful methods by which they had been raised—that is,
by abstraction from Infantry battalions, which, in their turn, lost in
efficiency from the process.
The prospect was even worse with the irregulars, Home and Colonial. All
had worked hard, and most had done exceedingly well, considering their
inexperience and the faults inseparable from improvised unprofessional
corps. In sheer fighting efficiency the best of the seasoned Colonials,
South African, Australasian and Canadian, had undoubtedly excelled all
other mounted troops. Like the self-made soldiers of the American Civil
War, they had seemed by intuition to grasp the possibilities of a union
of the rifle with the horse. But the irregular mounted army was
dissolving in Kitchener’s hands. Enlisted for limited terms, the various
corps, Yeomanry included, had reached, or were soon to reach, their
limit. It was necessary to forego their accumulated experience, to issue
fresh appeals for volunteers, and to reconstruct this part of the army
from top to bottom. The thing was done, but the stamp of new men
enlisted (for there were many re-enlistments), whether from Home or the
Colonies, and in spite of higher pay, was never again so good as of old.
This deterioration was especially noticeable in some of the minor South
African corps, whether raised for general purposes, or for the special
purpose of acting as a local militia for the defence of Cape Colony.
There was one marked exception to the general rule. The South African
Constabulary, recruited from all parts of the Empire, and designed to be
a permanent force, obtained the cream of the recruits.
Kitchener’s first reconstruction of the volunteer mounted army was not
final. Limited terms again ran out, as the war dragged on, and fresh
contingents replaced time-expired men. But the sources never ran dry,
and on balance the strength tended to increase.
The constant changes and fluctuations make it exceedingly difficult to
obtain accurate numerical estimates of our total mounted strength
(regular and irregular) at any given time during this period. But we may
say with approximate accuracy that in June, 1901, when all the volunteer
mounted troops first appealed for in December, 1900, were in the field,
and when the professional element had been reinforced, the total mounted
strength was about 80,000, of whom 14,000 were regular Cavalry, and
12,000 regular Mounted Infantry (now divided into 27 battalions). The
new contingent of Yeomanry numbered about 16,000; the South African
Constabulary 7,500, and the Australasian contingents 5,000. Exclusive of
the Cape Colony militia (District Mounted Troops and Town Guards), South
Africa itself provided about 24,000 men enrolled in active corps. These
are the full nominal figures. The effective fighting strength of the
same units, on June 19 (according to an official state), was, within a
man or two, 60,000.
The total strength of the whole army at the same period was about
244,000; “effective fighting strength” (according to the same official
state), 164,000.
During the last year of the war, from June, 1901, to June, 1902, the
regular Cavalry increased, in round numbers, to 16,000; the regular
Mounted Infantry to 15,000; the Australasian and Canadian contingents to
13,000; and the South African Constabulary to 9,500; while in the last
five months a wholly new mounted corps, eventually 2,300 strong, was
formed from the personnel of the Royal Artillery. By this time the
second contingent of Yeomanry had dwindled considerably, and a third was
formed, 7,000 strong, most of whom did not arrive in time to fight. At
the end of the war, with the active South African corps and the District
Mounted Troops reckoned in, there must have been 100,000 mounted men in
the field, without counting the Boer levies, known as National Scouts
and Orange River Colony Volunteers. The whole army numbered about a
quarter of a million.
While this progressive increase went on in British strength, and
predominantly in mounted strength, the Boers steadily diminished. Here,
too, periodical estimates are extraordinarily difficult. Within the two
annexed states, not only enrolled burghers of fighting age, but every
surviving male, except boys below, say, fourteen, and infirm old men,
now had to be reckoned as potential enemies. The rebel element in Cape
Colony was an indeterminate quantity. The foreign element gradually
disappeared. If we accept the calculation of the Official Historians,
that from first to last in the whole war, with the inclusion of rebels
and foreigners, a grand total of 87,365 persons took arms against us at
one time or another; if, at the other end of the scale, we bear in mind
the number of men who laid down their arms at the conclusion of the
war—namely, 21,256, and if we examine the intermediate statistics of
surrenders, captures, and casualties, the rough conclusion may be drawn
that at Christmas, 1900, we had still about 55,000 potential enemies to
reckon with, and in June, 1901, about 45,000. During the last year the
average monthly reduction was about 2,000.
But, apart from estimates of potential strength, the numbers actually on
a war-footing at any given moment were very small—rarely more than
15,000—and sometimes as low probably as 9,000. No single body of men
larger than 3,000—and this figure was exceedingly rare—ever again took
the field.
The reduction in total numbers was one of quantity, not of quality. The
weakest, morally or physically, were weeded out. The fittest survived
and became continuously more formidable. That is what gives such
extraordinary interest to the mounted operations of the guerilla war.
How the small nucleus of veterans with limited resources and without
external help managed to hold out for a year and three-quarters after
the crash at Komati Poort against an Empire drawing upon inexhaustible
resources of men, money, and material, and how, though losing their
independence, they succeeded in obtaining terms which ensured to them in
the near future political equality with their conquerors, is a story I
have endeavoured elsewhere to take my share in telling. In these pages I
have to confine myself, as closely as possible, to my own narrow issue.
But it is necessary, once more, to say a few words on the larger aspects
of the campaign.
First let us rid our minds of the fallacy that guerilla war is a wholly
distinct thing in kind from regular war. It is nothing of the sort. War
is a science whose fundamental principles are constant, however wide and
numerous the variations of circumstance under which it is conducted.
Perhaps I may be allowed to quote what I wrote on this point in my
preface to vol. v. of the _Times_ History:
“Whether the enemy be based on rich and populous towns, linked by a
network of railways, or on nomadic knots of waggons, filled from
half-ravaged mealy fields, whether he draws ammunition from
well-equipped arsenals, or gleans it from deserted camping-grounds,
whether he manœuvres in armies 100,000 strong, or in commandos 500
strong, the problem of grappling with that enemy and forcing him to
admit defeat is in essentials the same. Moreover, it is the peculiar
interest of guerilla war that it illuminates much that is obscure and
difficult in regular war. Just as the Röntgen rays obliterate fleshy
tissues, and reveal the bony structure, so in the incidents of
guerilla war there may be seen, stripped of a mass of secondary
detail, the few dominant factors which sway the issue of great battles
and great campaigns. Subjected to close analysis, one of Kitchener’s
combinations may be perceived to have succeeded or failed from the
same causes which dictated the success or failure of Marlborough’s
combinations. It is equally true that in many of the short and sharp
actions described in this volume there may be distinguished, following
one another with kinematographic rapidity and vividness, the same
phases through which long struggles on historic battle-fields have
passed.”
I repeat these words here because, among the many perversions of history
for which the _arme blanche_ school is indirectly responsible, none is
more widespread than the vague idea, for it cannot be called a reasoned
opinion, that the guerilla war may be ignored for instructional
purposes. This is only an insidious extension of the proposition that
the whole war was so “peculiar” as to afford no condemnation of the
_arme blanche_; but the guerilla war is supposed to lend itself
especially well to the propagation of that fallacy. So mercurial and
intangible was the enemy (the suggestion is), so incalculable and
irresponsible his movements, so numerous and safe the lairs from which
he could gather, and to which he could disperse, so complete his
independence of bases and communications, that it is useless to look for
strategical, much less for tactical and technical lessons. To speak
plainly, all this is pernicious nonsense. Every soldier knows in his
heart that no success in action was ever gained on either side but by
high individual efficiency in the men, by clever and spirited leading,
and by putting into practice ordinary military principles. When we
compare the Boers, in the way of legitimate metaphor, to wasps or
mosquitoes, do not let us vainly imagine that their tactical methods
were no more highly developed than those of that class of insect. _A
fortiori_ let us reject Mr. Goldman’s strange delusion that they
practised evasion so perpetually and successfully as not to give our
Cavalry—to say nothing of our mounted riflemen—a fair chance for the
“discharge of Cavalry duties.” Neither sporadic sniping nor persistent
evasion would have enabled the Boers to maintain their long resistance.
They needed victories, however small, not only to replenish their
ammunition, but to sustain their spirit and they could only obtain them
by careful preparation, bold execution, and disciplined tactical
methods. In war you can get nothing for nothing. However familiar the
ground to you, and however great the disabilities under which your enemy
labours, if you are going to do damage of any consequence you must
concentrate a disciplined force, however small; feed it when
concentrated; make plans, often concerted plans needing accurate
co-operation; scout boldly and intelligently; hold your force well in
hand and in close order up to the limit of prudence; and when the hour
for action comes, rely on the valour and skill of your men to execute a
definite tactical scheme in a coherent, disciplined fashion. In this way
only—a way old as war itself—were actions, small or great, won in South
Africa either by ourselves or by the Boers.
As to the _arme blanche_, whatever opportunities, if any, the past had
afforded, those opportunities still existed. If it had been possible to
exert shock in the past, it was equally possible now. That the numbers
engaged on either side in any given action were on the average smaller
made no difference. Nor did the Boer way of fighting, though it improved
greatly in vigour, change in any essential particular. They had always
fought and still fought in such a way as to make the rifle absolute
arbiter of tactics. The secondary characteristics which lend such
peculiar difficulties to guerilla war had not the remotest bearing on
this question of weapons for horsemen. What bearing could they
conceivably have? The problem still was to thrash the enemy whether he
sought action or declined action. If it was a case of finding and
forcing to battle an evasive foe, the weapon which inspired most ardour
and nerve in the search was the best weapon. If the foe chose to accept
action, or himself forced an action, the weapon which decided the issue
was the best weapon. Combat is the one and only test, and combats were
innmerable. Whether the Boers came to the scene of combat by train, or
from some base-town, or whether they had been summoned suddenly from the
farms of a certain limited district, was immaterial to the efficacy of
weapons. In accepting combat, whether with little or great ardour, they
accepted all the risks and penalties of combat. That is the only healthy
way to look at the matter if we are to gain true instruction from the
war, and not merely to drug our minds with the complacent thought that
the difficulties were immense, and that on the whole we did as well as
we could be expected to do.
The whole of the South African War, and the guerilla war in particular,
was a superb school for mounted troops. It was an exceedingly hard
school, but hard schools are the best. Our soldiers, and above all our
Cavalrymen, ought to thank Providence on their knees for having given
them this unique and unrivalled opportunity for practice in their art
within a ring-fence, so to speak, subject to no external disturbance,
and against an enemy who, however formidable in quality, could never be
reinforced, and were bound to dwindle in numbers.
Did we tackle the guerilla war in such a way as to make the most our
schooling? I am afraid we did not. I am not at all sure that, by the
time we had reached that stage, we had the power to do so; but however
that may be, when we are looking for lessons, let us ruthlessly
eliminate bad or doubtful precedents, and fix our eyes on good
precedents.
Our principal weakness was not a new one, though it assumed a new shape.
We had always aimed too much at the positions and possessions of the
enemy, and too little at his personnel. It was the same now. His new
base henceforward was the land, and we made it one of our principal
endeavours, if not our primary endeavour, to cut off that great and
fruitful source of supply. Roberts, as early as September, 1900, had
enjoined the destruction of crops, and, under certain conditions, of
farms, though comparatively little had been accomplished when he quitted
the command. Kitchener initiated a plan of systematic devastation, with
its corollary, the systematic deportation of non-combatants to
concentration camps. With the ethical and political aspects of this
measure we are not now concerned. Its military result was to retard the
education and restrict the fighting efficacy of our mounted troops by
setting before them two incompatible aims: that of grappling with the
enemy, and that of destroying his crops and cattle and deporting his
families. The latter aim, which was secondary, too often tended to
become primary, simply because it was the easiest to put into practice,
and human nature is prone to follow lines of least resistance.
Another doubtful precedent, closely allied with the last, and only to be
justified as a _pis aller_ to meet an immensely difficult case, was the
system of “drives”—the system, that is, of sweeping defined tracts of
country with large groups of columns, according to formal plans worked
out in a central staff department, and controlled in execution from that
department. This, broadly speaking, was Kitchener’s method of dealing
with the guerilla war. He varied it with other methods, with concerted
movements of a minor and less centralized character, with the night-raid
system, the constabulary post system, and with the work of independent
columns, while periodical eruptions of spontaneous Boer activity often
compelled him to retaliate with any rough-and-ready means that came to
hand. A vast amount of good independent or semi-independent work was
done in one way or another by enterprising British leaders, but on the
whole it is true to say that the drive was our principal weapon. Now,
the spirit of the drive was diametrically opposed to the spirit which
should actuate ardent mounted troops. It sacrificed dash to symmetry,
and it gave no scope for surprise, the soul of mounted effort. Designed
to cope with evasion, it bred habits which reacted on enterprise just
when enterprise had its best opportunities—that is, when the Boers took
the offensive. Except in weeding out weak-kneed burghers and in
facilitating devastation, it proved sterile until reinforced by its
complement, the block-house system. This system added physical barriers
to human barriers and provided a far-flung network of communications and
supply centres, by the aid of which, in addition to the railways and
base-towns, enormous numbers of men could be manœuvred in driving
lines, fifty or sixty miles in length, with mathematical precision and
speed. But the system was not ready for application in its complete form
until February, 1902, after sixteen months of guerilla war, and even
this huge and elaborate mechanism, although by a throttling, starving
process it eventually brought the Boers to their knees, failed to
achieve the supreme object of war, the defeat of the enemy in the open
field. To the last, veterans who still possessed horses and the will to
escape, overleapt the strongest barriers, whether animate or inanimate,
and to the last, wherever pressure was relaxed, dealt biting blows at
isolated columns.
It is easy to point out the drawbacks of Kitchener’s military policy.
But it is difficult to see how, with his professional mounted troops
still so backward, and with the raw levies which constituted so large a
portion of his mounted army, he could have adopted any other policy. As
it was, he took great risks and incurred substantial penalties in
throwing prematurely into the field untrained troops. The fact, about
which there can be no question, that during the last year of the war the
enemy replenished his ammunition almost entirely from British sources,
and at the end had largely re-armed himself with Lee-Enfield rifles, is
proof enough by itself of the penalties incurred. The most we can say in
criticism of Kitchener is that he might have done more, as the troops
gained confidence and efficiency—and they did gain both, rapidly and
continuously—to temper the rigidity of his excessively centralized
system. Even here we are on debatable ground. His genius was for
organization; his countrymen profited by that genius, and it ill becomes
them to cavil at the defects which were its inevitable accompaniment. A
weaker man, actuated by the theoretically higher aim of educating his
mounted troops on ideal lines, at whatever cost, might very well have
failed miserably. We can obtain a rough criterion of what this education
meant by a study of the guerilla war in Cape Colony, where devastation
and deportation were out of the question, where drives were barely
feasible, though they were sometimes tried, and where the single object
of finding and fighting the rebel bands stood out unobscured. With full
allowance for the immense difficulties of the problem, the results
cannot be regarded as satisfactory.
In summing up the whole matter we must remember that two great
factors—one military, the other moral—exercised an influence upon
events which Kitchener, beyond a certain point, was powerless to
modify. The military factor was simply the initial inferiority of our
troops to the Boers as mounted riflemen. At bottom, the excessive
driving tendency was promoted by the same cause as the tendency during
the regular war towards disproportionately wide turning movements, as
opposed to direct aggressive tackling. The idea was to circumvent, not
to attack; to trap, not to pierce. Similarly with reconnaissance.
This, by the time Kitchener took the command, had become almost a lost
art. To revive it, in the exacting conditions, was beyond the power of
a Commander-in-Chief. We came to rely almost wholly on outside
agencies—natives and Boer spies—for our intelligence, and on central
agencies for the diffusion of this intelligence. This was a fatal
precedent for our Cavalry in future wars. Naturally, the effect was to
favour centrally organized drives and to discourage that highest form
of enterprise which inspires men who use their own eyes to secure
opportunities for their own weapons. What is the weapon which not only
decides the combat but aids the scout to use his eyes? Everywhere and
always, in Manchuria as in South Africa, the rifle.
I touched on the moral factor in my last chapter. The Boers had the
highest possible moral stimulus—that of defending their homes and
nationalities. We had no motive so stimulating. Racial hatred would have
been the only stimulus correspondingly strong, but we had none. The
Boers improved on acquaintance. We had taken up arms to secure the
political equality of our countrymen, and we had already secured that
object beyond question, and annexation as well. To go farther, and aim
at so cowing the Boer national spirit as to gain a permanent political
ascendancy for ourselves was an object beyond our power or will to
achieve, and beyond the power or will of any free democracy or
confederation of free democracies of the British Imperial type to
achieve. Peaceable political fusion under our own flag was the utmost we
could secure. That meant a conditional Boer surrender, on a promise of
future autonomy. The unconditional surrender which Lord Milner was
anxious to obtain, however long and bitter a struggle it entailed, could
scarcely have led to peaceable fusion. The only other alternative,
feasible possibly, but outside discussion or contemplation, was the
permanent expatriation of all the most vigorous elements in the two Boer
races. Kitchener grasped the truth as soon as he took command. That his
own spontaneous instinct as a soldier was towards sharp, mercilessly
decisive blows in the field he had shown clearly enough at Paardeberg.
But that opportunity and many others had been lost, never to return.
From a soldier’s point of view he saw the insuperable difficulties at
this hour of attempting, with the material now at his command, to deal
blows sharp and heavy enough to destroy the Boer national spirit. Hence
his rather mechanical military system, aiming at slow attrition rather
than fierce aggression; hence his schemes for dealing with the civil
population; and hence his political policy, which was to obtain at the
earliest moment, but without the least relaxation of strong military
effort—indeed, with a daily intensification of those efforts—a
settlement on agreed terms. The Boers, clinging desperately to their
independence, held out against any settlement whatever, conditional or
unconditional, until May, 1902. Meanwhile the task of inducing them to
recognize the inevitable was not one which evoked, or could be expected
to evoke, any marked degree of military enthusiasm. There was a great
deal of very natural caution among commanders in the field, increased by
the ever-present impression that the war was on the point of ending and
by a well-grounded reluctance to make a bold use of new troops against
veterans. It was useless for Kitchener to enjoin daring and enterprise
if he could not get his subordinates to accept the necessary
responsibility. There is no doubt that some of his genuine efforts in
this direction met with inadequate reply. But, again, we cannot blink
the fact that the responsibility, as events showed, was very heavy, and
from purely military causes. The net result was that the strongest will
in South Africa exerted its full and legitimate influence, and produced
a military system based mainly on organization and numbers, rather than
on expert capacity in normal field operations.
_Raids._—It was natural, therefore, that during the guerilla war sound
lessons for the future should come mainly from the Boer side. In
strategy—so far as the word is applicable to the guerilla war—they had
little to teach us; but that little is not unimportant. Beyond the
simple policy of distracting our efforts and alleviating their own
distress by outbreaks timed so as to relieve one harassed district at
the expense of another less harassed, they had only one consistent
strategical object—that, namely, of feeding the rebellion in Cape Colony
by successive small invasions. The instinct was sound. Infinite
embarrassment came of it and a drain on our mounted troops, which was
constant and severe. The principal raids by which this policy was
carried out—(1) that of Hertzog and Kritzinger, December, 1900, to
January, 1901; (2) that of Christian de Wet, January to March, 1901; (3)
that of Smuts, August to September, 1901—are well worth careful study as
examples of what small numbers of determined mounted riflemen can do,
even when burdened, as De Wet was, with heavy transport, in traversing
great tracts of country through hosts of enemies for a strategical
purpose. No. 2 led to the third and greatest “De Wet hunt”—an episode
packed with excitement and dramatic interest from beginning to end. No.
3—the ride of Smuts with 340 men from the Gatsrand (West Transvaal) to
Cape Colony—merits even closer attention.
We must add to the list of raids Botha’s attempted invasion of
Natal—September to October, 1901—which was also an instructive example
for future wars, regular or irregular. Botha failed in what from the
first was a hopeless undertaking, but he showed audacity and nerve,
not only in tactical aggression, but in extricating himself from
envelopment by immensely superior forces on his return journey. Both
for making and checking such raids—and we must include under the same
general heading the previous “hunts” and De Wet’s early raids upon the
railway—rifle-power is everything. In Chapter XIV. I shall contrast
the abject failure of the Russian Cavalry in similar enterprises owing
to lack of rifle-power with the rare but brilliant Japanese successes.
Kimberley and the American Civil War drive home the same lesson.
_Night Attacks._—These were numerous, and prove conclusively that in
this class of enterprise small, thoroughly disciplined forces have good
chances of success against troops who fall short in the slightest degree
in vigilance and sound outpost work. We may divide the attacks roughly
into two classes—those against mobile forces encamped for the night, and
those against more or less permanently fortified posts or towns. Of the
former class, one of the most brilliant, because it was undertaken
against the wariest of wary veterans, was that of Colonel Scobell upon
Lotter’s rebel commando at Bouwer’s Hoek (Cape Colony) on September 4,
1901. A Cavalry regiment—the 9th Lancers—and the Cape Mounted Rifles
shared in the assault, which led to the only complete and unqualified
success we ever obtained in Cape Colony. Another plucky exploit was that
of Major Shea and a detachment of South Australians, who attacked Smuts
at Grootvlei on the night of August 1, 1901, just as that clever young
leader (for once caught napping) was beginning his ride to Cape Colony.
The chief Boer successes of the same type were at Wilmansrust (June 12,
1901), Quaggafontein (September 20, 1901), and Tweefontein (December
24–25, 1901). Careless outpost work by irregular troops was responsible
for all three reverses. On the first two occasions camps on the level
were rushed and overpowered instantaneously; but Tweefontein, besides
illustrating stratagem and stalking skill, is also suggestive of the
risks taken by a force which attacks in the dark. De Wet’s men scaled a
precipitous cliff to storm the British camp, and, in doing so,
overlooked a strong picket ensconced below the crest on the opposite
side. It is possible that if reinforcements to the hill had come as
promptly as they might have come, this picket, which was eventually
discovered and overpowered, might have served as a useful _point
d’appui_ for a counter-stroke. At night, in the confusion of a sudden
assault, the slightest stand made by a handful of determined men is
likely to bewilder and daunt the enemy.
Lake Chrissie (February 5, 1901) and Moedwil (September 30, 1901) were
finely conceived and finely executed night attacks by Botha and De la
Rey respectively against columns under Smith-Dorrien in the one case and
Kekewich in the other. Both were repelled in the most spirited fashion,
but in both there were moments of extreme danger. At Langerwacht
(February 23, 1902) there was a very dramatic and exciting night combat,
when De Wet, to avoid envelopment in one of our great drives of the
latest model type, burst through the cordon of entrenched pickets with a
horde of waggons, carts, cattle, and non-combatants. There were several
other episodes of the same type at that period.
Nooitgedacht (December 13, 1900) may also be placed in the category of
night attacks. De la Rey’s first and unsuccessful attack was delivered
in pitch darkness; the subsequent assault of Beyers in the grey of early
dawn.
All the above night attacks were upon the camps of mobile forces, but
there were many others upon fortified posts and towns. Helvetia
(December 29, 1900) and the small post at Modderfontein (January 30,
1901) were stormed in darkness. At Vryheid (December 11, 1900) an
outlying post and the Mounted Infantry camp were rushed under the same
circumstances, though the main position held out gallantly. Belfast
(January 7, 1901) had a similar, but a more dangerous, experience,
losing a strongly held outlying post and two entrenched posts, all
defended with great tenacity, shortly after midnight and in misty
weather. But the mist and darkness eventually favoured the defence.
Viljoen and Botha, in endeavouring to unite their forces against the
inner defences, lost their way, and had to retire baffled. The six other
attacks on the garrisons of a section of railway forty miles in extent,
made simultaneously on this same night, were carried out with marvellous
punctuality, but were all gallantly repulsed. In the Western Transvaal,
at a later date, De la Rey’s unsuccessful attack on Lichtenburg (March
2, 1901) was begun and carried on for several hours in the dark.
One of the most thrilling episodes of this class was at Itala (September
25, 1901), the frontier post under Colonel Chapman, which Botha struck
at when he was trying to raid Natal. An outlying post on the peak of
Itala Mountain was taken by a sudden _coup de main_ at midnight, and the
fight, fiercely contested on both sides, raged round the central
position until dawn and throughout the following day. At nightfall there
was a lull, during which each side concluded that the other was
irresistible, and both retired! Prospect, a neighbouring frontier fort,
was also attacked on the night of the 25th, but held its own with ease.
Columns on the march were very rarely attacked in complete darkness. The
only case I know of is that of Yzer Spruit (February 24, 1902), where De
la Rey ambushed a convoy, beginning his attack before the dawn. Attacks
in twilight were common.
Scrutinizing these incidents with a view to our special inquiry, let us
note three points:
1. This is of general application—that is, to day or night attacks. All
mounted troops should, in the art of entrenchment, be as nearly as
possible the equals of Infantry. Though regular Cavalry were not, I
think, concerned in any of the above incidents, the kind of work
involved, whether in attack or defence, was work which normally falls to
Cavalry in all modern war. Troops who cannot make entrenchments will
never be able to storm them.[51]
-----
Footnote 51:
I am not theorizing. This was the experience both of the Japanese and
the Russians, as in South Africa and in the American Civil War. See
“Reports of Military Observers (United States) attached to the Armies
in Manchuria” (Part V.). Also Chapter XIV., _infra_.
-----
At this moment the regular Cavalry are supposed to be able both to
attack and defend entrenched positions. “There are certain difficulties
in modern war,” admits “Cavalry Training” on page 186, “which cannot be
overcome by mounted action”—that is, by shock action. This action, it is
explained, “is precluded against an enemy posted behind entrenchments or
occupying intersected or broken ground,” or “an extended position,” etc.
In other words, the Cavalry are expected to be able to do the same
offensive work as Infantry. Can they do it? How far could they do it in
South Africa? Similarly in defence. They are “to deny important points
to the enemy” by fire-action (and presumably to deny them effectively),
and on page 215 (“The Defence”) they are “often to be called upon to
occupy localities for defence, especially in small bodies.... Whenever
time and means permit, the position should be put into a state of
defence; the preparations, however, should be _limited to those of the
simplest kind_.” The italics are mine. It is thus that, after South
Africa and Manchuria, we persist in ruinous error. One thinks of Majuba,
of Spion Kop, of Nicholson’s Nek, Dewetsdorp, Nooitgedacht, and only too
many other examples of the Nemesis which attends “defences of the
simplest kind,” no matter by what class of troops they are made and
used. The compilers of the section entitled “Dismounted Action” should
have taken to heart the lesson of Zilikat’s Nek (July 11, 1900), where
regular Cavalry were concerned, both in defence and in attack. Of
course, behind all the compromise which pervades the section there lies
the fatal obsession that openings for shock action must at all costs be
allowed for, and that, in defence, entrenchments should not be so good
as to encourage Cavalry to rely on them, to the prejudice of “mounted
action,” which in Cavalry language means _shock_. This is to disregard
the facts of war. Why did not the Cavalry execute shock charges at or
after the Boer assaults on Wagon Hill? They were there, fighting bravely
enough on foot in defence, but the counter-charges were made by Infantry
and irregular horsemen acting dismounted.
2. Nothing, not even the strongest entrenchments, can replace vigilance.
Here the Cavalry showed an excellent example to their irregular
comrades. Cavalry outposts were rarely surprised, and, I think, there
was only one case of any consequence of a homogeneous Cavalry force
being completely surprised in daylight.
3. Mark the skill and confidence with which the Boers arranged for the
disposal of their led horses in their night attacks, whether on columns
or posts. Of the cases I have quoted, in no instance that I can discover
did they suffer any appreciable loss in horses, or fail, if repulsed, to
get away safely on horseback. One of the many fallacies dissipated by
the South African War is the idea that mounted riflemen can never have
full confidence in attack, because, if they dismount, they perpetually
think too much about the line of retreat to their horses. In darkness,
one would think, this feeling, if it existed, would be particularly
strong. But whether by day or night, this was neither a Boer nor a
British weakness.
_Night Raids._—These were a British speciality, and must come under a
separate heading, for they were not strictly night attacks, but long
nocturnal expeditions designed to culminate in a surprise attack at dawn
upon a Boer laager. Fond themselves of night enterprises, the Boers were
also very sensitive to attack while in laager. This weakness began to be
exploited by some of our mounted leaders in the early part of 1901. The
first noteworthy night raid was on April 13 of that year at
Goedvooruitzicht, where Sir Henry Rawlinson surprised the laager of
Wolmarans at dawn, and captured his transport and a gun, though it is
true that the Boers retaliated with some effect later on in the day.
Other small raids followed in various quarters, and in August and
September Colonel Benson, R.A., with the assistance of Colonel
Woolls-Sampson, operating with a single column in the Eastern Transvaal,
brought the system to high perfection. After his death in the unhappy
reverse of Bakenlaagte, General Bruce Hamilton successfully carried on
the same system in the same district, though with very much larger
forces.
These raids supply most valuable instruction as to the best way to
transport a mounted force with speed and secrecy over long distances of
hostile country at night. Immense distances were sometimes covered with
unerring exactitude of direction. Nerve in leadership and the highest
standard of discipline among all ranks were required, both for the march
across country and for the deployment at dawn for attack. Ability to
imitate these marches would be invaluable in any sort of war. But there
are reservations to be made. Accurate information and skilled guides
were absolutely essential to success. Both, in the case of these raids,
came from extraneous sources—namely, Boer spies and native scouts. These
are luxuries which we are not likely to get in future wars. We shall
have to rely mainly, if not solely, on our own eyes and wits. Nor were
the material results of the raids commensurate with the efforts put
forth—at any rate, in the later period when very large forces were used.
Much transport was captured, but most of the prisoners taken were
horseless men, who formed a proportion of every commando in the field.
There was rarely any fighting. If a thorough surprise was effected, all
who could fly fled; but it was noticeable that all through the raiding
period, and in the raided district, the Boers were a match for us in
ordinary daylight actions. On the other hand, the nervous worry and
exhaustion caused by the raids had a very powerful moral effect upon the
burghers.
_Artillery with Mounted Troops._—I pointed out in Chapter VII. the
disadvantages of allowing mounted troops of any class, acting
independently, to rely too much on the support of Artillery. Guns weaken
surprise, which is the soul of mounted effort. This truth came out with
increasing clearness during the guerilla war. The Boers, having
exhausted all their ammunition and resources for repair and upkeep,
learnt, perforce, to do without guns altogether, with immense advantage
to their tactics. When they obtained them by capture, they soon
abandoned them. We ourselves, in offence, obtained little, if any, value
from guns, and were apt to lose in vigour by the ever-present temptation
of shelling before attacking. In defence they were often useful, but
often, magnificently efficient as the gunners were, a source of tactical
embarrassment. How vulnerable guns are to the assaults of bold mounted
riflemen the record of losses in South Africa shows with painful
clearness. The truth is, that the conditions created by the smokeless
magazine rifle are highly unfavourable to the use of artillery in
exclusively mounted warfare. When both sides are mounted, and acting
freely, the game should be “loose” and “fast,” to borrow football
metaphors. The battery has no target worth speaking of, and is itself a
very substantial and a highly sensitive target, whose mobility is liable
to be destroyed in a few moments by rifle-fire. The team is the vital
point, and the team alone, in the vulnerable surface it presents, is six
times more extensive than a single troop-horse, and twenty times more
extensive than a rifleman skirmishing on foot.
As I have already suggested, the gun, while it calls for the skilled
co-operation of a number of individuals, is essentially an impersonal
weapon. No amount of courage and dexterity in its handling can
compensate for this inherent defect. When used with independent mounted
troops it should be as small, light, in a word, as “personal” as
possible. The bearing of these observations on the _arme blanche_
question is obvious. No superficial peculiarities of the guerilla war in
any way lessen the force of the physical and moral principles involved.
If mounted men, in defiance of physical facts and the inexorable laws of
the modern game, use shock formations—and shock is the fundamental
condition for the use of the steel—they reduce the personal factor to
its lowest point, and play into the hands of the hostile gunners. As a
matter of fact, the steel-charge upon guns was never tried in any form,
dense or loose, in South Africa, and that, surely, is a sufficiently
conclusive circumstance in itself, when we recollect the numerous cases
in which guns were successfully attacked by mounted riflemen. If most of
these exploits were performed by the Boers, and if they afford undoubted
proof of the superior efficiency of the Boers as mounted riflemen, we
must, none the less, bear in mind the fact that our men had not the same
chance of performing them. The Boers, as they lost both their faith in
Artillery and their resources for maintaining it, grew callous to its
loss, and were wont to abandon guns without a qualm. With ourselves it
is always a point of honour to defend guns _à outrance_. That is an
admirable rule, but it carries with it the obligation on the one hand of
using Artillery only in strict accordance with its positive tactical
utility, and on the other of making sure that its escort is absolutely
efficient.
Attack on guns brings me naturally to the consideration of mounted
charges, and to that important topic I must devote a separate chapter.