The Railroad in Modern War
[Illustration: Major Burnham, the American Chief of Scouts for Lord
Roberts.]
Railways are undoubtedly one of the most important factors in the
wars of to-day, and after some campaigning my first idea of war is a
railroad for a guide. Day after day the advancing columns follow the
broken iron pathway with the twisted rails and wrecked bridges as signs
on the trail they are following. At the same time the retreating force
rolls comfortably along in well-working trains, blowing up everything
behind them as soon as they are ready to evacuate a position.
After returning from South Africa I spent much time reading in the
London press of the various engagements that I had seen, or had learned
about from those who had seen them. Nearly every despatch said that
“the enemy was completely demoralized,” or “the enemy retreated in wild
confusion.” As a matter of fact, there was at no time any confusion
whatever on the part of the Boers, and the retreats were the most
orderly and methodical affairs that can be imagined. If there was no
railway for use, the men merely mounted their horses and rode away as
though there were no really pressing reason for their going and that
any time would do. Even when the British advance was within striking
distance, the same calmness was displayed. When there was a railway
communication, which was generally the case, trains were brought up,
and the burghers entrained their mounts and their guns; and when
everything was ready, they pulled out to the next place selected for a
stand. The women occupied the first-class carriages, and if they did
not fill the seats, the men shared them; but the men did not seem to
feel much preference between a passenger carriage and an open truck. It
was always an orderly, good-natured crowd, which apparently, except for
the Mauser slung across every shoulder, might have been returning from
a county fair.
The retreat from Pretoria was possibly an exception, as there was
then great excitement throughout the city; but even in this case the
agitation was among the people of the city, and not among the fighting
men. They continued in their usual quiet, indifferent manner, while
many of the non-combatants were almost panic-stricken. The commandoes
preferring to make the retreat towards Middleburg by rail gathered at
the station and attended to the entraining of their mounts as though it
were a matter of no importance whether they got away or not; and yet
at that time it was thought that the British were but a few miles away.
To be able to control the railway means everything to an army,
especially when it is operating in a hostile territory. All things must
be sacrificed to protect and maintain the line so as to allow the safe
transit of trains; and to that problem the British were compelled to
devote most of their attention; the burghers sought chiefly to destroy
their plans, as they were not of sufficient force to control any great
portion of the railways.
The defense of railroads did not enter into the Spanish-American War
on either side, as the territory covered by the operations in Cuba was
too small for them to be of vital importance; but owing to the vast
territory under military operation in South Africa they have been a
factor of prime importance. If the Boer commanders had had less respect
for property, and had destroyed every piece of rolling stock that they
could not use, they would have been more successful; but instead of
that they usually abandoned it all, and allowed the enemy to take it,
enabling him in every case to use it immediately for the transportation
of supplies and troops. A torch would have prevented this many times,
and would have been the proper and legitimate method to be used;
but, thinking of the loss to some of their own people, they allowed
the British to take everything. Some commandants even argued against
blowing up the bridges. The Spaniards knew the value of the fire-brand
at Daiquiri, for when General Shafter’s army was preparing to land
and begin the advance on Santiago, the invaders on the transports saw
the thick smoke of the burning buildings curling skywards; and when we
landed, about two hours later, we found the station and engine-house a
mass of smoking embers, surrounding the burned ruins of every engine at
that end of the line. Had the Boers shown more inclination to do as the
Spaniards did in this instance, they would have been far better off,
and would not have left miles of railroad and thousands of pieces of
rolling stock with which their enemies operated against them.
[Illustration: The old and the new military bridge at Modder River.]
The maintenance of the rail communication between the base of supplies
at Cape Town and the head of the army was the most difficult problem
that the British were called upon to solve during the South African
War; and there was nothing more essential to the successful operations
of the troops than the freedom of this line. It was the main artery
from the heart, through which the life-blood of the army flowed, and
to check it, even for a few hours, meant suffering and hardship to the
troops at the rail terminus, while to break it for a week or more would
have caused ruin to all plans of offensive campaign.
The guard to protect this communication must be strong enough at every
point to repel any attempt to destroy the line; and to maintain this
guard means the constant use of thousands of troops who may never hear
a shot fired, but who are more essential to the success of the campaign
than the soldiers who are doing the actual fighting. If this vigilance
should be relaxed for an hour, one of their enemies could do enough
damage with a single stick of dynamite to embarrass the troops very
seriously, perhaps cause a wreckage that would take a hundred men a day
to repair, even if it were merely on the ordinary line; but if they
should get at a bridge the damage could not be repaired in a week.
As the burghers retreated before the British advance they destroyed
all the bridges on the lines of retreat in a most effectual manner by
the use of high explosives, in many cases leaving hardly one stone
above another. On the line from Cape Town to Pretoria the spans over
the Orange, Riet, Modder, Vet, Vaal, and Zand rivers, besides many
others, were destroyed, so that it took weeks to repair them; and in
all cases the British were compelled to build deviations of the line
going around the banks of the rivers, and by gradual descent into
the bed of the river and then up the opposite bank. Nearly all the
river beds of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal are very deep,
with perpendicular sides. Their depth is so great that it is quite
impossible to cross at any point except by the railway bridges and the
regular fords and drifts. One may ride almost to the edge of the river
before realizing that there is a stream in the vicinity. The laborious
difficulty of spanning these deep gorge-like river cuts makes it
necessary that a large body of troops be detailed to guard each bridge
or line deviation. The railways must be maintained or the advance must
withdraw.
[Illustration: Defense of a line of communication in the Transvaal.]
There is a striking contrast between the methods of our government and
that of the various European powers in the treatment of practical
problems regarding the mobilization of troops in time of peace.
There is not a state of the Old World so small as to be without
its manœuvres, and as the great agency the railroad facilities are
carefully studied. It has been a huge military oversight on the part
of our government to fail to provide for an occasional mobilization
of troops, and for their operation in the field as one body. We have
never had an army of sufficient size to warrant any such manœuvres with
the regular force alone, but the National Guard regiments should be
included in this sort of work just as the militia regiments of England
are every year made a part of the Aldershot manœuvres. It has been
argued that our distances are too great to justify such an extensive
plan of peaceful operations, but that very reason should be the
incentive to our government to appropriate sufficient funds to carry on
the work. It would be a simple matter indeed were the operations of our
forces confined to as small a territory as those of England, France, or
Germany; but when the sudden call of troops means a mobilization from
many quarters and a journey of several days, to leave the problem to
the last moment before solving it is indeed a perilous hazard and one
that is incredibly irrational.
In France and Germany every goods carriage is marked on the outside,
showing the exact number of men or horses that it will accommodate for
military transportation; every division of the railroad accounts each
day to the Minister of War for the number of cars on the tracks that
may be used for military purposes. Such minuteness would be, of course,
an unnecessary extreme for this country; but we do need a practical
relation existing between the War Department and the railroads, by
which the brains, as well as the stock, of the various systems might
be drafted at any hour into strict military accountability. Moreover,
we need a national instruction for the National Guard. The States
should give to the War Department authority to mobilize and temporarily
control their militia in time of peace; and then the Department should
be provided with means to mobilize both State and Federal troops of
a certain territory, making the territory as large as possible, so
that the number of regiments would be sufficient to be of use in the
instruction regarding transportation. Such a mobilization would be of
most signal value, even though the encampment lasted only the briefest
time, as it would enable the officers to become accustomed to rail
transportation.
Just before the war with Spain the First United States Infantry was
stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco; and when war seemed
inevitable, that regiment was ordered to Tampa. It was the first body
of troops to be moved, and although no great haste was necessary,
there was considerable difficulty in getting the command properly
entrained. This was due to no fault of the field officers; they knew
what should be done, but the staff department did not understand the
necessary office work which it entailed. When the men were finally put
on board, they found themselves in tourist day-coaches, without any
sleeping accommodations, although they were to cross the continent.
The time occupied by the journey was longer than necessary, because
it was necessary to stop twice a day long enough to give the men an
opportunity to cook rations. A portable cooking outfit, to be used
in an ordinary baggage or freight car, should be supplied to each
regiment; most of the stops could then be avoided, the trip be made
in nearly half the time, and the comfort of the men would be greatly
increased.
Just such an apparatus was attached to a troop and hospital train upon
which I made the journey from Pretoria to Cape Town, and it was quite
a successful arrangement, although it was merely an improvised one.
That was a journey of six to eight days at that time, and as every
delay meant a certain block in the traffic, stoppages were out of
the question; but with this rolling kitchen those on the train were
supplied with hot rations. The floor of the car was covered with thin
sheet iron or zinc, to prevent the car from catching fire, a large
water tank was fitted in one end, and next to it was a water boiler
of considerable capacity. The stove was an ordinary house range made
fast, and if, owing to the motion of the train, it was not a complete
success, it is another illustration of the value of preparedness before
the very moment of need arrives.
The carrying capacity of our railroads far exceeds that of England or
of any other European country; our cars are larger and our engines more
powerful. With better facilities at command, the problem is simple, but
we need practice in the work. The War Department already knows how many
cars each railroad carries, how many may be used for military purposes,
and just how many men and horses they will accommodate; but a military
use of some of them should be made occasionally as an essential
manœuvre. The regular officers know at least the ordinary management
of trains for soldiers, but that cannot be said of the officers of the
militia which is to be used in time of war, and they should be fully
instructed in these matters in time of peace.
Armored trains are little better than amusing until the inside of them
is spattered with the blood of good men sacrificed to a theory. Then
the amusement ends and the court of inquiry begins. The character of
the country in South Africa is all that could be desired for the use of
armored trains, especially in the Orange Free State, where the great
veldt makes a low horizon on all sides, and the level country is broken
only by an occasional kopje rising unexpectedly from the great plain.
An advance can be made with as much safety over this country as any
that could be chosen, and yet an armored train did not succeed at any
time to an extent that would make it advisable to continue its use.
[Illustration: Canadian transport at a difficult drift.]
Several of these trains were fitted out in Cape Town and at other
points, and none lacked anything in construction which could make
them a success. They consisted of an engine and two open trucks, one
in front and one behind, all very heavily armored with sheet steel or
iron, and in some cases hung with chains and heavy ropes as an extra
protection. The trucks were loopholed for small arms, and each train
carried one or more machine guns. The vitals of each engine were as
well protected as was possible, and the entire machine was painted
either khaki or battle-ship gray. As long as it was safely guarded
at Cape Town it was a remarkable invention; but when it attempted an
advance towards the enemy’s country, the trouble began. The keenest
watch failed to discover a trace of any foe, and mile after mile of
track they put in their rear without discovering a living being until
they concluded to retire. Back they went until suddenly they came to
a broken bit of track, a rail removed, by which the train was brought
to a sudden halt. Then from hidden foemen poured a storm of shot and
shell. There were but two alternatives, death or surrender.
[Illustration: Cape carts with British officers’ personal luggage;
nearly every officer had one of these carts.]
All that is required to capture the invading train is thus to allow
it to pass quietly on, then to remove a single rail or to place some
ordinary obstruction on the track, and wait for its return. A few
instances have occurred where the armored train has escaped when
flanked by columns of troops, but as a rule it has proved thus far a
useless and dangerous experiment, usually resulting in the death or
capture of all on board.
[Illustration: A British transport train on the veldt.]
No features of the campaign are more interesting than the attempts to
cut the lines of communication or to blow up a bridge or a culvert, and
one of the most daring deeds of the South African War was done by Major
Burnham, the Californian who acted as chief scout on Lord Roberts’s
staff.
Major Burnham received his training in the Apache country in the
Southwest from those Indians who are masters of the world in following
a trail or informing themselves as to the whereabouts of their enemies.
Twice was Burnham captured by the Boers and twice he made his escape.
In both cases he was wounded, the last time seriously. He worked night
and day for the army with which he had cast his lot, and when he was
ready to leave for home, he came away with a letter from the field
marshal, written with his own hand, in which he stated that Major
Burnham had done him greater service than any other one man in South
Africa.
When the advance of the British forces came within striking distance
of Pretoria, Lord Roberts found it necessary to have the line cut just
east of the town in order to prevent the retreat towards Middleburg
by rail. Burnham started to do it, taking with him a small patrol of
men for assistance. They made a wide detour to avoid meeting any of
the commandoes, which were now moving in the same direction. All went
well with him until he had gone half way around and was about to turn
to the north to find the culvert which he intended to destroy, when
he suddenly met a large commando coming directly towards his party.
A running fight followed, in which his horse was hit, throwing him
heavily, and he was seriously injured. The rest of the party escaped,
but he was made a prisoner, and not being able to walk, he was put into
a wagon under a guard of four men, two riding in front and two behind.
The vehicle was one of the large trek-wagons, drawn by a span of
sixteen oxen and driven by a Kaffir boy, who divided his time between
the front seat of the wagon and walking beside the span. Major Burnham
had made up his mind to escape at all hazards, and so until night
he lay in the wagon making plans. The moon was almost full, and the
night was so bright that the difficulties of an attempt to escape were
greatly increased. During the early part of the night the Kaffir driver
kept his position on the front seat, thus preventing any experiments by
the captive. He was just considering an attack on the black boy when
something went wrong with one of the leaders, and the boy jumped down
to remedy it. Seizing the opportunity thus afforded, Major Burnham
climbed out over the seat, down on the disselboom or tongue of the
wagon, on which he stretched himself flat between the oxen of the first
span, swung himself under the disselboom, dropped into the road, and
allowed the wagon to pass over his body. As soon as it had passed he
rolled quickly over and over into the ditch, and lay perfectly quiet
while the rear guard passed by, wholly unconscious that their prisoner
had escaped. The khaki uniform which Major Burnham wore made this
little bit of strategy possible, for had he been in dark clothes his
body would probably have been seen by the guard, who rode along within
twenty-five feet of him.
As soon as the two Boer soldiers had passed to a distance which allowed
no chance of discovery, the Californian picked his way up through the
rocks to the side of an adjacent kopje, where he remained hidden for
some hours. For a well man to have accomplished this feat would perhaps
have been a simple matter, although it took a daring mind to conceive
it; but for a man in Major Burnham’s condition to go through the
mental strain and physical torture of such an escape was a remarkable
performance, and it received its proper praise from both Briton and
Boer. There is no man living who so admires true courage and pluck, or
who so despises a coward, as does this hardy farmer-fighter; nor does
he bear resentment towards a man who, like Major Burnham, fought only
for the love of war.
After spending several hours among the rocks, without food or water,
and in the bitterly cold night air of an African winter, the scout
began to drag himself towards the railroad to accomplish the task he
had first set out to do. Strangely enough, when he was captured he was
not searched, and he still carried in his tunic a dynamite cartridge
ready for use. During the entire campaign Major Burnham never carried
arms of any sort, and when he was taken, his captors, not seeing any
weapons about him, probably thought that he had nothing about him of a
dangerous character. For more than two miles he dragged himself over
the rocky veldt until he finally reached the railroad, along which he
crawled until he found a culvert. Upon this he placed the cartridge,
with a fuse of a sufficient length to allow him to crawl to a place of
safety. He destroyed the line, and accomplished the task he undertook,
although it nearly cost him his life. He was picked up by a British
patrol late that afternoon, almost dead from exposure and the effects
of his wound, and was taken to the hospital, where he was confined for
a fortnight before he could even walk.
[Illustration: Canadian transport at a difficult drift.]
This achievement is one of many performed by this same brave American
during the war. Major Burnham is without doubt an exceedingly clever
man on the trail; he does not know fear, and his one idea is to
accomplish his end. But that does not entirely indicate the reason
for his high place in the confidence of Lord Roberts; it rather comes
from the fact that Englishmen know nothing of the wonderful arts of
the men of the plains; and when a man is able to tell them the number
of cattle in a herd, and the number of men guarding it, or the number
of men in a commando, and the condition of their horses, merely by
examining the ground over which they have passed, they consider it
little short of a miracle. Neither the officer nor the private soldier
has had any of the training of the latent faculties which is so
thorough among the officers and men of our army.
The value of a stick of dynamite is sometimes more precious than that
of gold in war. As the Transvaal is a mining country, great quantities
of this explosive were easily obtained, and, accordingly, despite the
heavy guard, the line of communication was often broken; in fact, so
frequently was the railroad destroyed that Lord Roberts was heavily
embarrassed during his first month in Pretoria for provision and forage
for his troops. Hardly a day passed without the line being cut at some
point. Finally, in the hope of preventing further interruption of his
railroad line, Lord Roberts issued the following proclamation, the
terms of which were about as cruel as could be devised:
PROCLAMATION.
Whereas, small parties of raiders have recently been doing wanton
damage to public property in the Orange River Colony and South
African Republic by destroying railway bridges and culverts, and
cutting the telegraph wires; and, whereas, such damage cannot be
done without the knowledge and connivance of the neighboring
inhabitants and the principal civil residents in the districts
concerned;
Now, therefore, I, Frederick Sleigh, Baron Roberts of Kandahar
and Waterford, K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., V.C., Field
Marshal, Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s Troops in South
Africa, warn the said inhabitants and principal civil residents
that, whenever public property is destroyed or injured in the
manner specified above, they will be held responsible for aiding
and abetting the offenders. The houses in the vicinity of the
place where the damage is done will be burnt, and the principal
civil residents will be made prisoners of war.
ROBERTS,
F. M.
A few days later it was followed by another proclamation, even more
harsh:
PROCLAMATION.
Referring to my proclamation dated Pretoria, 16th June, 1900,
I, Frederick Sleigh, Baron Roberts of Kandahar and Waterford,
K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E., V.C., Field Marshal,
Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty’s Troops in South Africa, do
hereby declare, proclaim, and make known that, should any damage
be done to any of the lines of railway, or to any of the railway
bridges, culverts, or buildings, or to any telegraph lines or
other railway or public property in the Orange River Colony,
or in that portion of the South African Republic for the time
being within the sphere of my military operations, the following
punishment will be inflicted:
1. The principal residents of the towns and district will be
held, jointly and severally, responsible for the amount of damage
done in their district.
2. In addition to the payment of the damage above mentioned, a
penalty depending upon the circumstances of each case, but which
in no event will be less than a sum of 2s. 6d. per morgen on the
area of each farm, will be levied and recovered from each burgher
of the district in which the damage is done, in respect of the
land owned or occupied by him in such district. Furthermore,
all receipts for goods requisitioned in such district on behalf
of the military authorities will be cancelled, and no payment
whatsoever will be made in respect of the same.
3. As a further precautionary measure, the Director of Military
Railways has been authorized to order that one or more of the
residents, who will be selected by him from each district,
shall from time to time personally accompany the trains while
travelling through their district.
4. The houses and farms in the vicinity of the place where the
damage is done will be destroyed, and the residents of the
neighborhood dealt with under martial law.
5. The military authorities will render every facility to the
principal residents to enable them to communicate the purport of
this proclamation to the other residents in their district, so
that all persons may become fully cognizant of the responsibility
resting upon them.
(Signed) ROBERTS,
F. M., Commander-in-Chief,
South Africa.
I say these proclamations were cruel, because they struck the innocent
for the doings of the guilty. War is essentially merciless, but these
orders made it unnecessarily infernal. The reason given for the
burning of farms near where the line was cut was that such work could
not have been done without the knowledge of those who lived in the
vicinity; but that reason was wholly untrue, for in some cases farms
were burned and destroyed several miles away from the railroad--in
fact, not even in sight. How could it be expected that the occupants
of a farm several miles away could know what was going on while they
slept? I know of cases where the same damage has been done to the
railroad under the very noses of British sentries put there to prevent
it, and yet Lord Roberts assumed that the occupants of the farmhouses
must know all that went on for miles about. On the majority of the
farms there were only women. They and hundreds of other innocent people
who had no hand in the railway destruction, although their hearts were
undoubtedly with the cause, were made homeless by the torch.
[Illustration: The Guards and mounted infantry at Pretoria Station.]
The drastic measures taken by the British have reacted against them.
One of the principal obstacles in the way of ending the war has been
that the homes and farms of the greater number of the burghers in the
field were destroyed, and there was nothing left for them to do but to
fight. Outside of this wholesale burning, the British policy has, in
most instances, been very liberal indeed towards the residents of the
territory occupied; they have in most cases paid high prices in cash
for everything that was needed for the use of the military, and the
people have not been annoyed any more than was absolutely necessary for
the good of the operations of the army; but these two orders stagger
belief. They were not mere threats, but were actually carried out to
the letter, and are still in operation. The one most damaging blow
that a force inferior in strength can strike is at the enemy’s line of
communication; therefore, so long as the fighting goes on, the railway
will be broken as often as possible. More homes will be burned and more
men will be forced into the field; few farms will be left undestroyed,
and the country is likely to be left desolate of inhabitants.
Thus it is that the railroad plays such an important part in the war
of to-day. The railroad reconquered the Soudan, and will eventually
conquer the entire continent of Africa. It is working down from the
north and up from the south, slowly but surely throwing out its network
of iron, from which nothing can escape. It has reclaimed the great
territory of Siberia as it did our Western plains. It is the mightiest
engine of civilization in peace; it is the very vitals of an army in
war.