CHAPTER 5.
TALANA HILL.
It was on the morning of October 12th, amid cold and mist, that the
Boer camps at Sandspruit and Volksrust broke up, and the burghers
rode to the war. Some twelve thousand of them, all mounted, with
two batteries of eight Krupp guns each, were the invading force
from the north, which hoped later to be joined by the Freestaters
and by a contingent of Germans and Transvaalers who were to cross
the Free State border. It was an hour before dawn that the guns
started, and the riflemen followed close behind the last limber, so
that the first light of day fell upon the black sinuous line
winding down between the hills. A spectator upon the occasion says
of them: 'Their faces were a study. For the most part the
expression worn was one of determination and bulldog pertinacity.
No sign of fear there, nor of wavering. Whatever else may be laid
to the charge of the Boer, it may never truthfully be said that he
is a coward or a man unworthy of the Briton's steel.' The words
were written early in the campaign, and the whole empire will
endorse them to-day. Could we have such men as willing
fellow-citizens, they are worth more than all the gold mines of
their country.
This main Transvaal body consisted of the commando of Pretoria,
which comprised 1800 men, and those of Heidelberg, Middelburg,
Krugersdorp, Standerton, Wakkerstroom, and Ermelo, with the State
Artillery, an excellent and highly organised body who were provided
with the best guns that have ever been brought on to a battlefield.
Besides their sixteen Krupps, they dragged with them two heavy
six-inch Creusot guns, which were destined to have a very important
effect in the earlier part of the campaign. In addition to these
native forces there were a certain number of European auxiliaries.
The greater part of the German corps were with the Free State
forces, but a few hundred came down from the north. There was a
Hollander corps of about two hundred and fifty and an Irish--or
perhaps more properly an Irish-American-corps of the same number,
who rode under the green flag and the harp.
The men might, by all accounts, be divided into two very different
types. There were the town Boers, smartened and perhaps a little
enervated by prosperity and civilisation, men of business and
professional men, more alert and quicker than their rustic
comrades. These men spoke English rather than Dutch, and indeed
there were many men of English descent among them. But the others,
the most formidable both in their numbers and in their primitive
qualities, were the back-veld Boers, the sunburned, tangle-haired,
full-bearded farmers, the men of the Bible and the rifle, imbued
with the traditions of their own guerrilla warfare. These were
perhaps the finest natural warriors upon earth, marksmen, hunters,
accustomed to hard fare and a harder couch. They were rough in
their ways and speech, but, in spite of many calumnies and some few
unpleasant truths, they might compare with most disciplined armies
in their humanity and their desire to observe the usages of war.
A few words here as to the man who led this singular host. Piet
Joubert was a Cape Colonist by birth--a fellow countryman, like
Kruger himself, of those whom the narrow laws of his new country
persisted in regarding as outside the pale. He came from that
French Huguenot blood which has strengthened and refined every race
which it has touched, and from it he derived a chivalry and
generosity which made him respected and liked even by his
opponents. In many native broils and in the British campaign of
1881 he had shown himself a capable leader. His record in standing
out for the independence of the Transvaal was a very consistent
one, for he had not accepted office under the British, as Kruger
had done, but had remained always an irreconcilable. Tall and
burly, with hard grey eyes and a grim mouth half hidden by his
bushy beard, he was a fine type of the men whom he led. He was now
in his sixty-fifth year, and the fire of his youth had, as some of
the burghers urged, died down within him; but he was experienced,
crafty, and warwise, never dashing and never brilliant, but slow,
steady, solid, and inexorable.
Besides this northern army there were two other bodies of burghers
converging upon Natal. One, consisting of the commandoes from
Utrecht and the Swaziland districts, had gathered at Vryheid on the
flank of the British position at Dundee. The other, much larger,
not less probably than six or seven thousand men, were the
contingent from the Free State and a Transvaal corps, together with
Schiel's Germans, who were making their way through the various
passes, the Tintwa Pass, and Van Reenen's Pass, which lead through
the grim range of the Drakensberg and open out upon the more
fertile plains of Western Natal. The total force may have been
something between twenty and thirty thousand men. By all accounts
they were of an astonishingly high heart, convinced that a path of
easy victory lay before them, and that nothing could bar their way
to the sea. If the British commanders underrated their opponents,
there is ample evidence that the mistake was reciprocal.
A few words now as to the disposition of the British forces,
concerning which it must be borne in mind that Sir George White,
though in actual command, had only been a few days in the country
before war was declared, so that the arrangements fell to General
Penn Symons, aided or hampered by the advice of the local political
authorities. The main position was at Ladysmith, but an advance
post was strongly held at Glencoe, which is five miles from the
station of Dundee and forty from Ladysmith. The reason for this
dangerous division of force was to secure each end of the
Biggarsberg section of the railway, and also to cover the important
collieries of that district. The positions chosen seem in each case
to show that the British commander was not aware of the number and
power of the Boer guns, for each was equally defensible against
rifle fire and vulnerable to an artillery attack. In the case of
Glencoe it was particularly evident that guns upon the hills above
would, as they did, render the position untenable. This outlying
post was held by the 1st Leicester Regiment, the 2nd Dublin
Fusiliers, and the first battalion of Rifles, with the 18th
Hussars, three companies of mounted infantry, and three batteries
of field artillery, the 13th, 67th, and 69th. The 1st Royal Irish
Fusiliers were on their way to reinforce it, and arrived before the
first action. Altogether the Glencoe camp contained some four
thousand men.
The main body of the army remained at Ladysmith. These consisted of
the 1st Devons, the 1st Liverpools, and the 2nd Gordon Highlanders,
with the 1st Gloucesters, the 2nd King's Royal Rifles, and the 2nd
Rifle Brigade, reinforced later by the Manchesters. The cavalry
included the 5th Dragoon Guards, the 5th Lancers, a detachment of
19th Hussars, the Natal Carabineers, the Natal Mounted Police, and
the Border Mounted Rifles, reinforced later by the Imperial Light
Horse, a fine body of men raised principally among the refugees
from the Rand. For artillery there were the 21st, 42nd, and 53rd
batteries of field artillery, and No. 10 Mountain Battery, with the
Natal Field Artillery, the guns of which were too light to be of
service, and the 23rd Company of Royal Engineers. The whole force,
some eight or nine thousand strong, was under the immediate command
of Sir George White, with Sir Archibald Hunter, fresh from the
Soudan, General French, and General Ian Hamilton as his
lieutenants.
The first shock of the Boers, then, must fall upon 4000 men. If
these could be overwhelmed, there were 8000 more to be defeated or
masked. Then what was there between them and the sea? Some
detachments of local volunteers, the Durban Light Infantry at
Colenso, and the Natal Royal Rifles, with some naval volunteers at
Estcourt. With the power of the Boers and their mobility it is
inexplicable how the colony was saved. We are of the same blood,
the Boers and we, and we show it in our failings. Over-confidence
on our part gave them the chance, and over-confidence on theirs
prevented them from instantly availing themselves of it. It passed,
never to come again.
The outbreak of war was upon October 11th. On the 12th the Boer
forces crossed the frontier both on the north and on the west. On
the 13th they occupied Charlestown at the top angle of Natal. On
the 15th they had reached Newcastle, a larger town some fifteen
miles inside the border. Watchers from the houses saw six miles of
canvas-tilted bullock wagons winding down the passes, and learned
that this was not a raid but an invasion. At the same date news
reached the British headquarters of an advance from the western
passes, and of a movement from the Buffalo River on the east. On
the 13th Sir George White had made a reconnaissance in force, but
had not come in touch with the enemy. On the 15th six of the Natal
Police were surrounded and captured at one of the drifts of the
Buffalo River. On the 18th our cavalry patrols came into touch with
the Boer scouts at Acton Homes and Besters Station, these being the
voortrekkers of the Orange Free State force. On the 18th also a
detachment was reported from Hadders Spruit, seven miles north of
Glencoe Camp. The cloud was drifting up, and it could not be long
before it would burst.
Two days later, on the early morning of October 20th, the forces
came at last into collision. At half-past three in the morning,
well before daylight, the mounted infantry picket at the junction
of the roads from Landmans and Vants Drifts was fired into by the
Doornberg commando, and retired upon its supports. Two companies of
the Dublin Fusiliers were sent out, and at five o'clock on a fine
but misty morning the whole of Symons's force was under arms with
the knowledge that the Boers were pushing boldly towards them. The
khaki-clad lines of fighting men stood in their long thin ranks
staring up at the curves of the saddle-back hills to the north and
east of them, and straining their eyes to catch a glimpse of the
enemy. Why these same saddle-back hills were not occupied by our
own people is, it must be confessed, an insoluble mystery. In a
hollow on one flank were the 18th Hussars and the mounted infantry.
On the other were the eighteen motionless guns, limbered up and
ready, the horses fidgeting and stamping in the raw morning air.
And then suddenly--could that be they? An officer with a telescope
stared intently and pointed. Another and another turned a steady
field glass towards the same place. And then the men could see
also, and a little murmur of interest ran down the ranks.
A long sloping hill--Talana Hill--olive-green in hue, was
stretching away in front of them. At the summit it rose into a
rounded crest. The mist was clearing, and the curve was
hard-outlined against the limpid blue of the morning sky. On this,
some two and a half miles or three miles off, a little group of
black dots had appeared. The clear edge of the skyline had become
serrated with moving figures. They clustered into a knot, then
opened again, and then--
There had been no smoke, but there came a long crescendo hoot,
rising into a shrill wail. The shell hummed over the soldiers like
a great bee, and sloshed into soft earth behind them. Then
another--and yet another--and yet another. But there was no time to
heed them, for there was the hillside and there the enemy. So at it
again with the good old murderous obsolete heroic tactics of the
British tradition! There are times when, in spite of science and
book-lore, the best plan is the boldest plan, and it is well to fly
straight at your enemy's throat, facing the chance that your
strength may fail before you can grasp it. The cavalry moved off
round the enemy's left flank. The guns dashed to the front,
unlimbered, and opened fire. The infantry were moved round in the
direction of Sandspruit, passing through the little town of Dundee,
where the women and children came to the doors and windows to cheer
them. It was thought that the hill was more accessible from that
side. The Leicesters and one field battery--the 67th--were left
behind to protect the camp and to watch the Newcastle Road upon the
west. At seven in the morning all was ready for the assault.
Two military facts of importance had already been disclosed. One
was that the Boer percussion-shells were useless in soft ground, as
hardly any of them exploded; the other that the Boer guns could
outrange our ordinary fifteen-pounder field gun, which had been the
one thing perhaps in the whole British equipment upon which we were
prepared to pin our faith. The two batteries, the 13th and the
69th, were moved nearer, first to 3000, and then at last to 2300
yards, at which range they quickly dominated the guns upon the
hill. Other guns had opened from another crest to the east of
Talana, but these also were mastered by the fire of the 13th
Battery. At 7.30 the infantry were ordered to advance, which they
did in open order, extended to ten paces. The Dublin Fusiliers
formed the first line, the Rifles the second, and the Irish
Fusiliers the third.
The first thousand yards of the advance were over open grassland,
where the range was long, and the yellow brown of the khaki blended
with the withered veld. There were few casualties until the wood
was reached, which lay halfway up the long slope of the hill. It
was a plantation of larches, some hundreds of yards across and
nearly as many deep. On the left side of this wood--that is, the
left side to the advancing troops--there stretched a long nullah or
hollow, which ran perpendicularly to the hill, and served rather as
a conductor of bullets than as a cover. So severe was the fire at
this point that both in the wood and in the nullah the troops lay
down to avoid it. An officer of Irish Fusiliers has narrated how in
trying to cut the straps from a fallen private a razor lent him for
that purpose by a wounded sergeant was instantly shot out of his
hand. The gallant Symons, who had refused to dismount, was shot
through the stomach and fell from his horse mortally wounded. With
an excessive gallantry, he had not only attracted the enemy's fire
by retaining his horse, but he had been accompanied throughout the
action by an orderly bearing a red pennon. 'Have they got the hill?
Have they got the hill?' was his one eternal question as they
carried him dripping to the rear. It was at the edge of the wood
that Colonel Sherston met his end.
From now onwards it was as much a soldiers' battle as Inkermann. In
the shelter of the wood the more eager of the three battalions had
pressed to the front until the fringe of the trees was lined by men
from all of them. The difficulty of distinguishing particular
regiments where all were clad alike made it impossible in the heat
of action to keep any sort of formation. So hot was the fire that
for the time the advance was brought to a standstill, but the 69th
battery, firing shrapnel at a range of 1400 yards, subdued the
rifle fire, and about half-past eleven the infantry were able to
push on once more.
Above the wood there was an open space some hundreds of yards
across, bounded by a rough stone wall built for herding cattle. A
second wall ran at right angles to this down towards the wood. An
enfilading rifle fire had been sweeping across this open space, but
the wall in front does not appear to have been occupied by the
enemy, who held the kopje above it. To avoid the cross fire the
soldiers ran in single file under the shelter of the wall, which
covered them to the right, and so reached the other wall across
their front. Here there was a second long delay, the men dribbling
up from below, and firing over the top of the wall and between the
chinks of the stones. The Dublin Fusiliers, through being in a more
difficult position, had been unable to get up as quickly as the
others, and most of the hard-breathing excited men who crowded
under the wall were of the Rifles and of the Irish Fusiliers. The
air was so full of bullets that it seemed impossible to live upon
the other side of this shelter. Two hundred yards intervened
between the wall and the crest of the kopje. And yet the kopje had
to be cleared if the battle were to be won.
Out of the huddled line of crouching men an officer sprang
shouting, and a score of soldiers vaulted over the wall and
followed at his heels. It was Captain Connor, of the Irish
Fusiliers, but his personal magnetism carried up with him some of
the Rifles as well as men of his own command. He and half his
little forlorn hope were struck down--he, alas! to die the same
night--but there were other leaders as brave to take his place.
'Forrard away, men, forrard away!' cried Nugent, of the Rifles.
Three bullets struck him, but he continued to drag himself up the
boulder-studded hill. Others followed, and others, from all sides
they came running, the crouching, yelling, khaki-clad figures, and
the supports rushed up from the rear. For a time they were beaten
down by their own shrapnel striking into them from behind, which is
an amazing thing when one considers that the range was under 2000
yards. It was here, between the wall and the summit, that Colonel
Gunning, of the Rifles, and many other brave men met their end,
some by our own bullets and some by those of the enemy; but the
Boers thinned away in front of them, and the anxious onlookers from
the plain below saw the waving helmets on the crest, and learned at
last that all was well.
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. From all points Boer
commandoes were converging upon it, and already it was understood
that the guns at their command were heavier than any which could be
placed against them. This was made more clear on October 21st, the
day after the battle, when the force, having withdrawn overnight
from the useless hill which they had captured, moved across to a
fresh position on the far side of the railway. At four in the
afternoon a very heavy gun opened from a distant hill, altogether
beyond the extreme range of our artillery, and plumped shell after
shell into our camp. It was the first appearance of the great
Creusot. An officer with several men of the Leicesters, and some of
our few remaining cavalry, were bit. The position was clearly
impossible, so at two in the morning of the 22nd the whole force
was moved to a point to the south of the town of Dundee. On the
same day a reconnaissance was made in the direction of Glencoe
Station, but the passes were found to be strongly occupied, and the
little army marched back again to its original position. The
command had fallen to Colonel Yule, who justly considered that his
men were dangerously and uselessly exposed, and that his correct
strategy was to fall back, if it were still possible, and join the
main body at Ladysmith, even at the cost of abandoning the two
hundred sick and wounded who lay with General Symons in the
hospital at Dundee. It was a painful necessity, but no one who
studies the situation can have any doubt of its wisdom. The retreat
was no easy task, a march by road of some sixty or seventy miles
through a very rough country with an enemy pressing on every side.
Its successful completion without any loss or any demoralisation of
the troops is perhaps as fine a military exploit as any of our
early victories. Through the energetic and loyal co-operation of
Sir George White, who fought the actions of Elandslaagte and of
Rietfontein in order to keep the way open for them, and owing
mainly to the skillful guidance of Colonel Dartnell, of the Natal
Police, they succeeded in their critical manoeuvre. On October 23rd
they were at Beith, on the 24th at Waselibank Spruit, on the 25th
at Sunday River, and next morning they marched, sodden with rain,
plastered with mud, dog-tired, but in the best of spirits, into
Ladysmith amid the cheers of their comrades. A battle, six days
without settled sleep, four days without a proper meal, winding up
with a single march of thirty-two miles over heavy ground and
through a pelting rain storm--that was the record of the Dundee
column. They had fought and won, they had striven and toiled to the
utmost capacity of manhood, and the end of it all was that they had
reached the spot which they should never have left. But their
endurance could not be lost--no worthy deed is ever lost. Like the
light division, when they marched their fifty odd unbroken miles to
be present at Talavera, they leave a memory and a standard behind
them which is more important than success. It is by the tradition
of such sufferings and such endurance that others in other days are
nerved to do the like.
