A Line Of Battalion Double-Company Columns Is
Most Difficult To Preserve In The Darkness, And Any Confusion May
Lead To Disaster.
The whole mistake lay in a miscalculation of a
few hundred yards in the position of the trenches.
Had the
regiments deployed five minutes earlier it is probable (though by
no means certain) that the position would have been carried.
The action was not without those examples of military virtue which
soften a disaster, and hold out a brighter promise for the future.
The Guards withdrew from the field as if on parade, with the Boer
shells bursting over their ranks. Fine, too, was the restraint of G
Battery of Horse Artillery on the morning after the battle. An
armistice was understood to exist, but the naval gun, in ignorance
of it, opened on our extreme left. The Boers at once opened fire
upon the Horse Artillery, who, recognising the mistake, remained
motionless and unlimbered in a line, with every horse, and gunner
and driver in his place, without taking any notice of the fire,
which presently slackened and stopped as the enemy came to
understand the situation. It is worthy of remark that in this
battle the three field batteries engaged, as well as G Battery,
R.H.A., each fired over 1000 rounds and remained for 30 consecutive
hours within 1500 yards of the Boer position.
But of all the corps who deserve praise, there was none more
gallant than the brave surgeons and ambulance bearers, who
encounter all the dangers and enjoy none of the thrills of warfare.
All day under fire these men worked and toiled among the wounded.
Beevor, Ensor, Douglas, Probyn - all were equally devoted. It is
almost incredible, and yet it is true, that by ten o'clock on the
morning after the battle, before the troops had returned to camp,
no fewer than five hundred wounded were in the train and on their
way to Cape Town.
CHAPTER 10.
THE BATTLE OF STORMBERG.
Some attempt has now been made to sketch the succession of events
which had ended in the investment of Ladysmith in northern Natal,
and also to show the fortunes of the force which on the western
side of the seat of war attempted to advance to the relief of
Kimberley. The distance between these forces may be expressed in
terms familiar to the European reader by saying that it was that
which separates Paris from Frankfort, or to the American by
suggesting that Ladysmith was at Boston and that Methuen was trying
to relieve Philadelphia. Waterless deserts and rugged mountain
ranges divided the two scenes of action. In the case of the British
there could be no connection between the two movements, but the
Boers by a land journey of something over a hundred miles had a
double choice of a route by which Cronje and Joubert might join
hands, either by the Bloemfontein-Johannesburg-Laing's Nek Railway,
or by the direct line from Harrismith to Ladysmith. The possession
of these internal lines should have been of enormous benefit to the
Boers, enabling them to throw the weight of their forces
unexpectedly from the one flank to the other.
In a future chapter it will be recorded how the Army Corps arriving
from England was largely diverted into Natal in order in the first
instance to prevent the colony from being overrun, and in the
second to rescue the beleaguered garrison. In the meantime it is
necessary to deal with the military operations in the broad space
between the eastern and western armies.
After the declaration of war there was a period of some weeks
during which the position of the British over the whole of the
northern part of Cape Colony was full of danger. Immense supplies
had been gathered at De Aar which were at the mercy of a Free State
raid, and the burghers, had they possessed a cavalry leader with
the dash of a Stuart or a Sheridan, might have dealt a blow which
would have cost us a million pounds' worth of stores and dislocated
the whole plan of campaign. However, the chance was allowed to
pass, and when, on November 1st, the burghers at last in a
leisurely fashion sauntered over the frontier, arrangements had
been made by reinforcement and by concentration to guard the vital
points. The objects of the British leaders, until the time for a
general advance should come, were to hold the Orange River Bridge
(which opened the way to Kimberley), to cover De Aar Junction,
where the stores were, to protect at all costs the line of railway
which led from Cape Town to Kimberley, and to hold on to as much as
possible of those other two lines of railway which led, the one
through Colesberg and the other through Stormberg, into the Free
State. The two bodies of invaders who entered the colony moved
along the line of these two railways, the one crossing the Orange
River at Norval's Pont and the other at Bethulie. They enlisted
many recruits among the Cape Colony Dutch as they advanced, and the
scanty British forces fell back in front of them, abandoning
Colesberg on the one line and Stormberg on the other. We have,
then, to deal with the movements of two British detachments. The
one which operated on the Colesberg line - which was the more vital
of the two, as a rapid advance of the Boers upon that line would
have threatened the precious Cape Town to Kimberley
connection - consisted almost entirely of mounted troops, and was
under the command of the same General French who had won the battle
of Elandslaagte. By an act of foresight which was only too rare
upon the British side in the earlier stages of this war, French,
who had in the recent large manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain shown
great ability as a cavalry leader, was sent out of Ladysmith in the
very last train which made its way through. His operations, with
his instructive use of cavalry and horse artillery, may be treated
separately.
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