ADVANCE TO VENTER’S LAAGER AND ATTACK OF THE RANGEWORTHY HILLS

At the end of Chapter II we left Sir Charles Warren across the Tugela with all his force, including his wagons, on the night of 18th January and ready to march to Venter’s Laager on the following morning.

As the wagons marched on the morning of the 19th in four or five parallel columns, in length about three miles or so, the brigades commanded by Major-Generals Hart and Woodgate also kept pace with them until opposite Fair View, where the right of the line was to rest in the attack of the Rangeworthy hills. The two brigades then occupied the slopes of the adjoining hills. This march was a very remarkable one, and it is to be doubted whether there is another instance on record of such a force, forming a length of three or four miles, with wagons four or five deep on the column’s reverse flank, being successfully led by a flank march right along the face of commanding hills held by an enemy strongly intrenched and provided with long-range guns, on a road just out of range of effective rifle fire, and with a rapid river on its reverse flank. It was in accordance with the instructions, but it was a most hazardous proceeding, and it was owing to the careful management of Sir Charles Warren, as well as the want of initiative or military instinct on the part of the Boer commander, that there was no disaster.

General Warren had reconnoitred the Fair View-Groote Hoek road, and found that it led within effective rifle range round the west flank of Spion Kop, and was therefore an undesirable road so long as Spion Kop was held by the enemy. He then crossed the Venter’s Spruit, near Venter’s Laager, and examined the other road by Acton Homes. He ascertained that it led through a strongly defended pass at the water-parting, and that on both sides it was held by the Boers, while it was twice the length of the first road. The length was the great defect. There was only one road leading to it, and the wagons could only go singly. The force could not possibly watch a front of fifteen miles occupied by the enemy. The result would be that each day’s march must be limited by the length of road that could be watched. The force was to be provisioned for only four days, and, even if everything went successfully, it would take three days to get from Venter’s Spruit by Acton Homes to the point near Groote Hoek. It was therefore evident that the road could not be used, even if it were not so strongly held by the enemy.

In the evening Sir Charles Warren assembled his General and Staff Officers and the Officers Commanding Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers, and pointed out to them that there were only two roads by which the wheeled transport and guns could proceed: (1) by Acton Homes, and (2) north of Fair View by Rosalie or Groote Hoek. He informed them that he rejected the Acton Homes road because time would not allow of it, and his subordinate commanders concurred unanimously. He then pointed out that the only possible way of all getting through by the road north of Fair View would be by taking three or four days’ food in their haversacks and sending all their wagons back across the Tugela; but before this could be done the position in front of them must be captured.

Although Sir Redvers Buller does not mention in his despatches what information he possessed, either as to the routes to Ladysmith or as to the measures taken by the Boers to prevent them to him, he quotes incidentally, and in quite a different connection, the following message which Sir Charles Warren telegraphed to him the same evening:

This is not the sort of message he would have sent if he had been ordered to take the Acton Homes-Ladysmith road, and it shows unquestionably that, as to the roads and the country, very little was known.

The reply to the message was that three days’ supply was being sent.

It has been supposed by some writers on the subject—and the popular notion at the time certainly was that the mountainous country suddenly ended at the western slopes of the Rangeworthy hills to the west of Spion Kop—that Acton Homes was situated on a level plain, and that Sir Charles Warren had only to march round by Acton Homes, keeping the Rangeworthy hills and Spion Kop at a respectful distance, and he would be able with little delay to take the lines opposing Potgieter’s Drift in reverse. It does not appear whether Sir Redvers Buller entertained this idea; if he did, he gave no definite instructions, apparently, in that sense to Sir Charles Warren; but if he did not, then he must have supposed that the Boer right flank rested on the Rangeworthy hills and could be turned, and was unaware that it extended to Acton Homes and the roads to the Orange Free State. We can hardly suppose that when he wrote of sending Sir Charles Warren to turn the Boer flank he expected Sir Charles Warren to accomplish on the Rangeworthy hills, with 12,000 men and no long-range guns, what he himself had been unwilling to attempt a week before at Potgieter’s Drift with 20,000 men and long-range guns. If he did, he was sending him on a hazardous undertaking, and yet this was what opening the Fair View and Rosalie road practically meant—an attack on the centre of the Boer position.

We have already alluded to the prejudice created against Sir Charles Warren by the unfortunate suggestion that while Sir Redvers Buller desired him to go by the Acton Homes road, he preferred the nearer road to Groote Hoek and Rosalie. It is now clear that, if Lord Roberts had not alluded to Acton Homes in this connection, the idea would never have entered any one’s head, because such a route in the circumstances was impossible. It might have been the conception of a military genius to have thought that the best way of relieving Ladysmith would be to strike at the communications of the Orange Free State Boers on the Harrismith and other roads; but this we need not consider, as it certainly did not suggest itself to Sir Redvers Buller. Had Sir Charles Warren’s force been composed mainly of well-trained mounted troops, and had the country been less hilly, possibly the aspect of affairs would have been changed, and he might have made a real wide turning movement; but he had hardly any mounted troops, and the country was very hilly. He was, in fact, told to do an impossible thing—to turn a flank at a point where there was no flank to turn. As Mr. J. B. Atkins observes in his ‘Relief of Ladysmith’: ‘It had been discovered that after all there was no way round to the back of Spion Kop through open country. The hills in which the Boers were are, in fact, a spur of the Drakensberg mountains: wherever Sir Charles Warren might go, he must go through mountains.

Sir Charles Warren was not consulted as to the plan of operations, or as to the supplies, or impedimenta to accompany him, and it was generally understood that on his arrival at Frere he had advocated the attack of the Boers intrenched on the south of the Tugela at Colenso, and proceeding on the lines which were eventually successful. But, if the suggestion was made, it was not approved. Instead, Sir Redvers Buller proposed to break through the Boer line at Potgieter’s, just as he had tried to do at Colenso. On 11th January his force, assembled at Potgieter’s, was stronger by two brigades of infantry and a brigade division of artillery than it was at Colenso, and yet he hesitated, after the experience of Colenso, to attack the Boer positions. Nevertheless, he seems to have expected to be able to relieve Ladysmith by sending Sir Charles Warren with 12,000 men and thirty-six field guns to attack the Boer position in the Rangeworthy hills west of Spion Kop, while he held a certain number of Boers in front of him by making a demonstration at Potgieter’s.

With the map before us there is but one solution to Sir Redvers Buller’s directions. He assumed that the Boer right rested in the vicinity of Bastion Hill, a spur of the Rangeworthy hills, and he wished Sir Charles Warren, pivoting on Spion Kop, to sweep round his left to overlap that position.

Sir Charles was given no long-range guns with which to reply to those of the Boers. He had to deal with an enemy already confident with the victory gained at Colenso, and he was doomed to failure if he attempted to advance before he had demoralised the enemy by a continuous and effective artillery fire.

Had Sir Charles Warren been so ill-advised as to try to advance by the Acton Homes road to Ladysmith, it is not difficult to prophesy what would most probably have occurred. The Boers had strongly fortified the hills all round the Acton Homes basin, pom-poms and guns were in position along the western slopes of the Rangeworthy hills, and guns and rifles on the road to the Harrismith pass. Any force attempting to proceed by that route would no doubt have been allowed by the Boers to enter the basin, and then would have been cut off from Trichard’s Drift by the closing of the road below Bastion Hill. The column, thus hemmed in and caught in a trap, would have been compelled either to fight its way down to the Middle Drift or to surrender. In either case Natal would have been at the mercy of the Boers.

ATTACK OF THE RANGEWORTHY HILLS

Sir Charles Warren had assured himself by his reconnaissance that no wide outflanking movement was possible, and he had come to the conclusion that the only way to carry out his instructions was to capture the positions in front of him, creeping up the dongas and long arÊtes, alluded to by Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill, and getting his artillery to work so as to bring an effective fire on the Boer trenches, and, after a complete artillery preparation, to make an infantry attack—certainly in the first instance a frontal attack, because it always must be a frontal attack when an enemy defending a position and acting on interior lines is more mobile than the attacking force—to break through the Boer lines, rolling them up from each flank, and, having cleared the front, and opened the road from Fair View to Rosalie, to send the wagons back, and, with supplies for four days in the haversacks, to march round Spion Kop to the appointed position. These were the ‘special arrangements’ to which he referred in his telegram to the Chief of the Staff on 19th January.

Looking at matters as we now know them, it seems a foolhardy proceeding to send a general with 12,000 infantry and guns inferior in range to those of the enemy to attack a large force strongly intrenched on commanding positions, flanked by infantry fire and long-range guns, and at the same time to issue an order that there must be no turning back.

Sir Charles Warren believed that by adopting a plan which he employed later successfully at Pieters—a continuous fire of artillery for some days in order to demoralise the enemy, and an attack with a long line, with very weak supports, because the Boers have none, every man being in the fighting line—he might be successful. At Pieters the artillery fire on the Boer lines was continuous from 22nd to 27th February—that is, five or six days—and with as long a period of artillery fire on the Rangeworthy hills, it is probable that the Boers would have retired, as it is known they were getting demoralised on 23rd January and had begun to move their wagons to the west.

Sir Charles Warren lost no time after his reconnaissances in making his dispositions for attack, and issued the following instructions to Lieut.-General Sir C. F. Clery dated 19th January:

General Clery accordingly moved at 3 A.M. on 20th January with a force of four batteries Royal Field Artillery and the 5th and 11th Brigades of Infantry to occupy the heights to the west and north-west of Spion Kop. The eastern spur[6] was occupied with two battalions of the 11th Brigade, and the spur immediately to the west of the latter with the two remaining battalions of the 11th Brigade. On occupying these heights Lieut.-General Clery found himself in front of a semicircular range of heights completely overlooking the heights he had arrived on. The left of this high ridge almost rested on Spion Kop, while the right extended to the spur overlooking Fair View Farm. The road which would have to be used for wagons in the advance passed on the left of this position, but the enemy’s position was very strong, with a glacis reaching down to the heights occupied by Lieut.-General Clery. The ground on the other flank (left) afforded a good deal more cover for advance, and Lieut.-General Clery hoped, if he succeeded in occupying that flank of the ridge, to swing round to the right and take the remainder of the enemy’s position in flank. He therefore moved up the artillery to the eastern spur and moved the 5th Brigade to reinforce the two battalions of the 11th Brigade already on the western spur, placing the whole of this latter force under Major-General Hart, and directing him to move forward against the left flank of the enemy’s position. This was done, and a series of kopjes was occupied in succession, which brought the force that evening within reach of storming the enemy’s position.

In a despatch dated 20th January 1900 Sir Charles Warren says:

On the same day Sir Redvers Buller telegraphed to the Secretary of State for War:

Bishop Baynes of Natal, in ‘My Diocese during the War,’ writes: ‘Saturday, January 20th.—The fighting is continuous, but the real battle is on the other side of the hill, where Sir Charles Warren is swinging his line round. His right wing, which is only some five miles from us over the ridge of Spion Kop, is the pivot, and while that remains more or less stationary, a long line is gradually swinging round to his left, so bringing the Boers into a V.’

On 20th January ‘the cavalry on the extreme left, under Lord Dundonald, demonstrated effectively,’ says Mr. Winston S. Churchill, ‘and the South African Light Horse, under Colonel Byng, actually took and held, without artillery support of any kind, a high hill (Sugarloaf Hill), called henceforward Bastion Hill, between the Dutch right and centre.’

Mr. Bennet Burleigh says: ‘Warren prosecuted his turning movement, sending his right and centre well in, whilst Hildyard on the left with Hart’s Brigade moved forward. Clearly the object in view was to seize Bastion Hill, as we have dubbed it from its shape, and roll up the Boer right towards Spion Kop over the direct Ladysmith road vi Potgieter’s.... Still, it was with his left that he pushed hardest with Hildyard’s and Hart’s Brigades—the latter thrown further forward.’

On 21st January it was found that the enemy had evacuated the position during the night, and it was occupied by Major-General Hart’s Brigade in the morning. Two battalions had been detached from the 2nd Brigade on the previous evening to assist the troops on the heights, and were directed to co-operate with Major-General Hart by attacking the enemy’s right flank. When the enemy’s position of the previous day had been thus occupied it was discovered that the enemy had fallen back to a second strong position in near, the advance to which was over open ground and entailed a frontal attack.

Sir Redvers Buller, who went over to see Sir Charles Warren on the 21st, warned him that the enemy had received large reinforcements, some 2,500 men, to strengthen their right flank, and ordered two batteries to move from the hill on the right to ground on the left, where they came into action against the enemy’s right flank. A fire was kept up all day, but it was not considered advisable to make a frontal attack on his position.

It is only reasonable to suppose that Sir Charles Warren explained verbally to Sir Redvers Buller, on this first occasion of meeting him since his reconnaissance, what his plans were—i.e. the ‘special arrangements’ he had alluded to in his telegram of 19th January—the continual bombardment, the advance on both sides of an arÊte, and the alternate turning of the Boer position on the right hand and on the left, with the ultimate intention, when the position was gained, of sending the wagons back and advancing in light order with provisions carried in the haversack.

Sir Charles Warren, on 21st January, asked to be supplied with another infantry brigade to extend his line to the left, with howitzers and long-range guns. The infantry brigade and howitzers were sent to him, but not the long-range guns.

Sir Redvers Buller telegraphed to the Secretary of State for War on 21st January:

Early on the morning of the 22nd four howitzers arrived, and Sir Redvers Buller, who came over about the same time, gave directions where they were to be placed. Two were brought into action on the height close to the batteries already in action there; the others came into action on the left to keep down the Boer fire from Acton Homes. They were all effective in reaching the enemy’s position, and fire was kept up by both sides until near sundown. Both sides retained generally the same positions at the close of the day.

It was on the 22nd that Sir Redvers Buller held a consultation with Sir Charles Warren and his Generals on the situation. Sir Charles, it is understood, pointed out that it would be impossible to get the wagons through by the road leading past Fair View, unless Spion Kop were first taken; and Sir Redvers, who, it is believed, strongly objected to the wagons being sent back, agreed that Spion Kop would have to be taken; but he preferred to make an attack from the British left flank from Bastion Hill, and proposed that it should be made that night. Both Sir Charles Warren and Lieut.-General Clery were, it is gathered, opposed to the proposal as a hazardous proceeding, because, if successful, it would mean to take the whole line of the enemy’s position, which they might not be able to hold.

We learn from Sir Redvers Buller’s own despatch that he was impatient of delay, and wanted an immediate attack, either to the right or to the left, preferably to the left, but an attack at once. It would seem that, in deference to the opinions expressed at the conference, Sir Redvers did not further press the attack from the left on that day, and Sir Charles Warren decided to attack Spion Kop that night, because, if the force must take the wagons, it was only possible to do so by making the road from Fair View to Groote Hoek safe for them, and the road could only be made safe for them by the capture of Spion Kop, which, as Sir Redvers Buller has observed, was evidently the key of the position.

We now see why Spion Kop was attacked. The Acton Homes route was out of the question, and there remained three courses or lines of action for consideration:

Sir Redvers Buller, commanding in chief, advocated the first. Sir Charles Warren, second in command, was in favour of the third. But as Sir Redvers Buller insisted on either the first or second, and Sir Charles Warren objected to the first, the second—that is, the attack from the right on Spion Kop—was decided upon.

Sir Charles Warren had been reinforced at noon of the 22nd by the 10th Brigade under Major-General Talbot Coke. The Brigades of both Major-Generals Hildyard and Hart were on the hills, as we have seen, in touch with the enemy. The choice, therefore, of a column for the assault of Spion Kop was limited to the 11th Brigade forming the right attack, or the 10th Brigade just arrived. Sir Charles Warren selected the latter, and put Major-General Coke in orders to command the attack that same night. General Coke, however, asked for a delay of twenty-four hours to enable him to reconnoitre the position with the officers commanding the battalions to be employed in the assault, and to this Sir Charles assented.

On 23rd January Sir Redvers Buller again visited Sir Charles Warren, and, as he states in his despatch, again advocated an attack from the left. This, we have seen, Sir Charles Warren and his Generals had deemed too hazardous when considered on the previous day; and in the light of Sir Redvers Buller’s memorandum ‘not necessarily for publication,’ in which he mentions how he went over to tell Sir Charles Warren that the Boer right was being strongly reinforced on the 21st, and also of his Vaal Krantz despatch of 8th February, in which he again mentions that the Boer right had been considerably strengthened, so much so that on 25th January any attempt to advance his left would probably have been unsuccessful, it is strange that he should on 23rd January have been so desirous to try his fortune in that direction.

Finding that his proposal to attack from the left was not concurred in by his juniors, Sir Redvers Buller would not take upon himself the responsibility of ordering it, and gave no direction to Sir Charles Warren beyond that which he mentions in his despatch—that he must either attack or his force would be withdrawn. Retirement was the last thing to be thought of, especially bearing in mind the general order to the troops in which Sir Redvers Buller told them there would be no turning back. Sir Charles Warren states in his despatch that, being given the alternative to attack or retire, he replied that he should prefer to attack Spion Kop to retiring, showed the Commander-in-Chief the orders of the previous evening, and explained the reason of the postponement of the attack for twenty-four hours.

On this same 23rd January Sir Redvers Buller telegraphed to the Secretary of State for War the following despatch, and it is a matter to note as we go along that in no one of these telegraphic despatches is there the slightest hint or expression that would lead the reader to suppose Sir Redvers Buller had any cause of dissatisfaction, or that Sir Charles Warren was not carrying out the operations in accordance with his wishes:

It was on 23rd January that Sir Redvers Buller altered Sir Charles Warren’s disposition, and directed him to hand over to Major-General Coke the command of the 5th Division, retaining the command of the whole force across the Tugela. This step was no doubt taken to relieve Sir Charles Warren from over-work, and to free his hands for the more important duties of the general command; but at such a time any change of the kind was unfortunate, and such a change naturally caused an entire alteration of arrangements, because there was no Staff supplied for the commander of the whole force, and the Staff of the 5th Division had carried on both the divisional duties and those for the whole force.

He had now to improvise a Staff for himself, and as he could get no regimental officers, as all regiments were short, he had to work with a very attenuated Staff.

‘The Commander-in-Chief,’ says Sir Charles Warren, ‘then desired that I should put General Woodgate in command of the expedition’ to attack Spion Kop.

Sir Redvers Buller says he ‘suggested that as General Coke was still lame from the effects of a lately broken leg, General Woodgate, who had two sound legs, was better adapted for mountain climbing.’

Whether the word ‘desired’ or ‘suggested’ was used, it was regarded as an order, and Major-General Woodgate was detailed for the duty, while Lieutenant-Colonel ÀCourt—an officer of Sir Redvers Buller’s Staff—was directed to accompany him.

Now Major-General Talbot Coke was well known as an intelligent officer, much impressed with the use of the spade in war, and the importance of intrenching, and it was doubtless on this account that, in spite of his being slightly lame, he was selected by Sir Charles Warren for the command of the assaulting column.

It has been asked why Sir Charles Warren, whose activity and energy are so marked a feature of his character, did not lead the attack in person, and Lord Roberts regrets that he did not visit Spion Kop during the afternoon or evening of the 24th. It is stated on very good authority that he proposed to command the attack in person, but was forbidden by Sir Redvers Buller on the very reasonable and proper ground that, as commander of the whole force across the Tugela, it was not his province to lead a portion of it: that he might have to give orders to his left as well as to his right, and for this reason he should not go up Spion Kop, but occupy a central position, whence he could issue orders to right and left, and be in communication with the Commander-in-Chief.

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