But It Was, It Must Be Confessed, A Pyrrhic Victory.
We had our
hill, but what else had we?
The guns which had been silenced by our
fire had been removed from the kopje. The commando which seized the
hill was that of Lucas Meyer, and it is computed that he had with
him about 4000 men. This figure includes those under the command of
Erasmus, who made halfhearted demonstrations against the British
flank. If the shirkers be eliminated, it is probable that there
were not more than a thousand actual combatants upon the hill. Of
this number about fifty were killed and a hundred wounded. The
British loss at Talana Hill itself was 41 killed and 180 wounded,
but among the killed were many whom the army could ill spare. The
gallant but optimistic Symons, Gunning of the Rifles, Sherston,
Connor, Hambro, and many other brave men died that day. The loss of
officers was out of all proportion to that of the men.
An incident which occurred immediately after the action did much to
rob the British of the fruits of the victory. Artillery had pushed
up the moment that the hill was carried, and had unlimbered on
Smith's Nek between the two hills, from which the enemy, in broken
groups of 50 and 100, could be seen streaming away. A fairer chance
for the use of shrapnel has never been. But at this instant there
ran from an old iron church on the reverse side of the hill, which
had been used all day as a Boer hospital, a man with a white flag.
It is probable that the action was in good faith, and that it was
simply intended to claim a protection for the ambulance party which
followed him. But the too confiding gunner in command appears to
have thought that an armistice had been declared, and held his hand
during those precious minutes which might have turned a defeat into
a rout. The chance passed, never to return. The double error of
firing into our own advance and of failing to fire into the enemy's
retreat makes the battle one which cannot be looked back to with
satisfaction by our gunners.
In the meantime some miles away another train of events had led to
a complete disaster to our small cavalry force - a disaster which
robbed our dearly bought infantry victory of much of its
importance. That action alone was undoubtedly a victorious one, but
the net result of the day's fighting cannot be said to have been
certainly in our favour. It was Wellington who asserted that his
cavalry always got him into scrapes, and the whole of British
military history might furnish examples of what he meant. Here
again our cavalry got into trouble. Suffice it for the civilian to
chronicle the fact, and leave it to the military critic to portion
out the blame.
One company of mounted infantry (that of the Rifles) had been told
off to form an escort for the guns. The rest of the mounted
infantry with part of the 18th Hussars (Colonel Moller) had moved
round the right flank until they reached the right rear of the
enemy. Such a movement, had Lucas Meyer been the only opponent,
would have been above criticism; but knowing, as we did, that there
were several commandoes converging upon Glencoe it was obviously
taking a very grave and certain risk to allow the cavalry to wander
too far from support. They were soon entangled in broken country
and attacked by superior numbers of the Boers. There was a time
when they might have exerted an important influence upon the action
by attacking the Boer ponies behind the hills, but the opportunity
was allowed to pass. An attempt was made to get back to the army,
and a series of defensive positions were held to cover the retreat,
but the enemy's fire became too hot to allow them to be retained.
Every route save one appeared to be blocked, so the horsemen took
this, which led them into the heart of a second commando of the
enemy. Finding no way through, the force took up a defensive
position, part of them in a farm and part on a kopje which
overlooked it.
The party consisted of two troops of Hussars, one company of
mounted infantry of the Dublin Fusiliers, and one section of the
mounted infantry of the Rifles - about two hundred men in all. They
were subjected to a hot fire for some hours, many being killed and
wounded. Guns were brought up, and fired shell into the farmhouse.
At 4.30 the force, being in a perfectly hopeless position, laid
down their arms. Their ammunition was gone, many of their horses
had stampeded, and they were hemmed in by very superior numbers, so
that no slightest slur can rest upon the survivors for their
decision to surrender, though the movements which brought them to
such a pass are more open to criticism. They were the vanguard of
that considerable body of humiliated and bitter-hearted men who
were to assemble at the capital of our brave and crafty enemy. The
remainder of the 18th Hussars, who under Major Knox had been
detached from the main force and sent across the Boer rear,
underwent a somewhat similar experience, but succeeded in
extricating themselves with a loss of six killed and ten wounded.
Their efforts were by no means lost, as they engaged the attention
of a considerable body of Boers during the day and were able to
bring some prisoners back with them.
The battle of Talana Hill was a tactical victory but a strategic
defeat. It was a crude frontal attack without any attempt at even a
feint of flanking, but the valour of the troops, from general to
private, carried it through. The force was in a position so
radically false that the only use which they could make of a
victory was to cover their own retreat.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 28 of 222
Words from 27529 to 28528
of 225456
