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THE CHARGE
OF TWO COMPANIES OF THE BLACK WATCH AT MAGERSFONTEIN
From: H. W. Wilson, With the Flag to Pretoria, 1902 |
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Arthur Conan
Doyle,
The Great Boer War
London, Smith, Elder &
Co., 1902
CHAPTER VII
The Battle of Magersfontein
Lord Methuen's force had
now fought three actions in the space of a single week, losing in killed and
wounded about a thousand men, or rather more than one-tenth of its total
numbers. Had there been evidence that the enemy were seriously demoralised,
the General would no doubt have pushed on at once to Kimberley, which was
some twenty miles distant. The information which reached him was, however,
that the Boers had fallen back upon the very strong position of Spytfontein,
that they were full of fight, and that they had been strongly reinforced by
a commando from Mafeking. Under these circumstances Lord Methuen had no
choice but to give his men a well-earned rest, and to await reinforcements.
There was no use in reaching Kimberley unless he had completely defeated the
investing force. With the history of the first relief of Lucknow in his
memory he was on his guard against a repetition of such an experience.
It was the more necessary that Methuen should strengthen his position, since
with every mile which he advanced the more exposed did his line of
communications become to a raid from Fauresmith and the southern districts
of the Orange Free State. Any serious danger to the railway behind them
would leave the British Army in a very critical position, and precautions
were taken for the protection of the more vulnerable portions of the line.
It was well that this was so, for on the 8th of December Commandant Prinsloo,
of the Orange Free State, with a thousand horsemen and two light seven-pounder
guns, appeared suddenly at Enslin and vigorously attacked the two companies
of the Northampton Regiment who held the station. At the same time they
destroyed a couple of culverts and tore up three hundred yards of the
permanent way. For some hours the Northamptons under Captain Godley were
closely pressed, but a telegram had been despatched to Modder Camp, and the
12th Lancers with the ubiquitous 62nd Battery were sent to their assistance.
The Boers retired with their usual mobility, and in ten hours the line was
completely restored.
Reinforcements were now reaching the Modder River force, which made it more
formidable than when it had started. A very essential addition was that of
the 12th Lancers and of G battery of Horse Artillery, which would increase
the mobility of the force and make it possible for the General to follow up
a blow after he had struck it. The magnificent regiments which formed the
Highland Brigade - the 2nd Black Watch, the 1st Gordons, the 2nd Seaforths,
and the 1st Highland Light Infantry had arrived under the gallant and
ill-fated Wauchope. Four five-inch howitzers had also come to strengthen the
artillery. At the same time the Canadians, the Australians, and several line
regiments were moved up on the line from De Aar to Belmont. It appeared to
the public at home that there was the material for an overwhelming advance;
but the ordinary observer, and even perhaps the military critic, had not yet
appreciated how great is the advantage which is given by modern weapons to
the force which acts upon the defensive. With enormous pains Cronje and De
la Rey were entrenching a most formidable position in front of our advance,
with a confidence, which proved to be justified that it would be on their
own ground and under their own conditions that in this, as in the three
preceding actions, we should engage them.
On the morning of Saturday, December 9th, the British General made an
attempt to find out what lay in front of him amid that semicircle of
forbidding hills. To this end he sent out a reconnaissance in the early
morning, which included G Battery Horse Artillery, the 9th Lancers, and the
ponderous 4-7 naval gun, which, preceded by the majestic march of thirty-two
bullocks and attended by eighty seamen gunners, creaked forwards over the
plain. What was there to shoot at in those sunlit boulder-strewn hills in
front? They lay silent and untenanted in the glare of the African day. In
vain the great gun exploded its huge shell with its fifty pounds of lyddite
over the ridges, in vain the smaller pieces searched every cleft and hollow
with their shrapnel. No answer came from the far-stretching hills. Not a
flash or twinkle betrayed the fierce bands who lurked among the boulders.
The force returned to camp no wiser than when it left.
There was one sight visible every night to all men which might well nerve
the rescuers in their enterprise. Over the northern horizon, behind those
hills of danger, there quivered up in the darkness one long, flashing,
quivering beam, which swung up and down, and up again like a seraphic
sword-blade. It was Kimberley praying for help, Kimberley solicitous for
news. Anxiously, distractedly, the great De Beers searchlight dipped and
rose. And back across the twenty miles of darkness, over the hills where
Cronje lurked, there came that other southern column of light which
answered, and promised, and soothed. 'Be of good heart, Kimberley. We are
here! The Empire is behind us. We have not forgotten you. It may be days, or
it may be weeks, but rest assured that we are coming.'
About three in the afternoon of Sunday, December 10th, the force which was
intended to clear a path for the army through the lines of Magersfontein
moved out upon what proved to be its desperate enterprise. The 3rd or
Highland Brigade included the Black Watch, the Seaforths, the Argyll and
Sutherlands, and the Highland Light Infantry. The Gordons had only arrived
in camp that day, and did not advance until next morning. Besides the
infantry, the 9th Lancers, the mounted infantry, and all the artillery moved
to the front. It was raining hard, and the men with one blanket between two
soldiers bivouacked upon the cold damp ground, about three miles from the
enemy's position. At one o'clock, without food, and drenched, they moved
forwards through the drizzle and the darkness to attack those terrible
lines. Major Benson, R.A., with two of Rimington's scouts, led them on their
difficult way.
Clouds drifted low in the heavens, and the falling rain made the darkness
more impenetrable. The Highland Brigade was formed into a column - the Black
Watch in front, then the Seaforths, and the other two behind. To prevent the
men from straggling in the night the four regiments were packed into a mass
of quarter column as densely as was possible, and the left guides held a
rope in order to preserve the formation. With many a trip and stumble the
ill-fated detachment wandered on, uncertain where they were going and what
it was that they were meant to do. Not only among the rank and file, but
among the principal officers also, there was the same absolute ignorance.
Brigadier Wauchope knew, no doubt, but his voice was soon to be stilled in
death. The others were aware, of course, that they were advancing either to
turn the enemy's trenches or to attack them, but they may well have argued
from their own formation that they could not be near the riflemen yet. Why
they should be still advancing in that dense clump we do not now know, nor
can we surmise what thoughts were passing through the mind of the gallant
and experienced chieftain who walked beside them. There are some who claim
on the night before to have seen upon his strangely ascetic face that shadow
of doom which is summed up in the one word 'fey.' The hand of coming death
may already have lain cold upon his soul. Out there, close beside him,
stretched the long trench, fringed with its line of fierce, staring, eager
faces, and its bristle of gun-barrels. They knew he was coming. They were
ready. They were waiting. But still, with the dull murmur of many feet, the
dense column, nearly four thousand strong, wandered onwards through the rain
and the darkness, death and mutilation crouching upon their path.
It matters not what gave the signal, whether it was the flashing of a
lantern by a Boer scout, or the tripping of a soldier over wire, or the
firing of a gun in the ranks. It may have been any, or it may have been
none, of these things. As a matter of fact I have been assured by a Boer who
was present that it was the sound of the tins attached to the alarm wires
which disturbed them. However this may be, in an instant there crashed out
of the darkness into their faces and ears a roar of point-blank fire, and
the night was slashed across with the throbbing flame of the rifles. At the
moment before this outflame some doubt as to their whereabouts seems to have
flashed across the mind of their leaders. The order to extend had just been
given, but the men bad not had time to act upon it. The storm of lead burst
upon the head and right flank of the column, which broke to pieces under the
murderous volley. Wauchope was shot, struggled up, and fell once more for
ever. Rumour has placed words of reproach upon his dying lips, but his
nature, both gentle and soldierly, forbids the supposition. 'What a pity!'
was the only utterance which a brother Highlander ascribes to him. Men went
down in swathes, and a howl of rage and agony, heard afar over the veldt,
swelled up from the frantic and struggling crowd. By the hundred they
dropped - some dead, some wounded, some knocked down by the rush and sway of
the broken ranks. It was a horrible business. At such a range and in such a
formation a single Mauser bullet may well pass through many men. A few
dashed forwards, and were found dead at the very edges of the trench. The
few survivors of companies A, B, and C of the Black Watch appear to have
never actually retired, but to have clung on to the immediate front of the
Boer trenches, while the remains of the other five companies tried to turn
the Boer flank. Of the former body only six got away unhurt in the evening
after lying all day within two hundred yards of the enemy. The rest of the
brigade broke and, disentangling themselves with difficulty from the dead
and the dying, fled back out of that accursed place. Some, the most
unfortunate of all, became caught in the darkness in the wire defences, and
were found in the morning hung up 'like crows,' as one spectator describes
it, and riddled with bullets.
Who shall blame the Highlanders for retiring when they did? Viewed, not by
desperate and surprised men, but in all calmness and sanity, it may well
seem to have been the very best thing which they could do. Dashed into
chaos, separated from their officers, with no one who knew what was to be
done, the first necessity was to gain shelter from this deadly fire, which
had already stretched six hundred of their number upon the ground. The
danger was that men so shaken would be stricken with panic, scatter in the
darkness over the face of the country, and cease to exist as a military
unit. But the Highlanders were true to their character and their traditions.
There was shouting in the darkness, hoarse voices calling for the Seaforths,
for the Argylls, for Company C, for Company H, and everywhere in the gloom
there came the answer of the clansmen. Within half an hour with the break of
day the Highland regiments had re-formed, and, shattered and weakened, but
undaunted, prepared to renew the contest. Some attempt at an advance was
made upon the right, ebbing and flowing, one little band even reaching the
trenches and coming back with prisoners and reddened bayonets. For the most
part the men lay upon their faces, and fired when they could at the enemy;
but the cover which the latter kept was so excellent that an officer who
expended 120 rounds has left it upon record that he never once had seen
anything positive at which to aim. Lieutenant Lindsay brought the Seaforths'
Maxim into the firing-line, and, though all her crew except two were hit, it
continued to do good service during the day. The Lancers' Maxim was equally
staunch, though it also was left finally with only the lieutenant in charge
and one trooper to work it.
Fortunately the guns were at hand, and, as usual, they were quick to come to
the aid of the distressed. The sun was hardly up before the howitzers were
throwing lyddite at 4,000 yards, the three field batteries (18th, 62nd,
75th) were working with shrapnel at a mile, and the troop of Horse Artillery
was up at the right front trying to enfilade the trenches. The guns kept
down the rifle-fire, and gave the wearied Highlanders some respite from
their troubles. The whole situation had resolved itself now into another
Battle of Modder River. The infantry, under a fire at from six hundred to
eight hundred paces, could not advance and would not retire. The artillery
only kept the battle going, and the huge naval gun from behind was joining
with its deep bark in the deafening uproar. But the Boers had already
learned - and it is one of their most valuable military qualities that they
assimilate their experience so quickly - that shell fire is less dangerous
in a trench than among rocks. These trenches, very elaborate in character,
had been dug some hundreds of yards from the foot of the hills, so that
there was hardly any guide to our artillery fire. Yet it is to the artillery
fire that all the losses of the Boers that day were due. The cleverness of
Cronje's disposition of his trenches some hundred yards ahead of the kopjes
is accentuated by the fascination which any rising object has for a gunner.
Prince Kraft tells the story of how at Sadowa he unlimbered his guns two
hundred yards in front of the church of Chlum, and how the Austrian reply
fire almost invariably pitched upon the steeple. So our own gunners, even at
a two-thousand yard mark, found it difficult to avoid overshooting the
invisible line, and hitting the obvious mark behind.
As the day wore on reinforcements of infantry came up from the force which
had been left to guard the camp. The Gordons arrived with the first and
second battalions of the Coldstream Guards, and all the artillery was moved
nearer to the enemy's position. At the same time, as there were some
indications of an attack upon our right flank, the Grenadier Guards with
five companies of the Yorkshire Light Infantry were moved up in that
direction, while the three remaining companies of Barter's Yorkshiremen
secured a drift over which the enemy might cross the Modder. This
threatening movement upon our right flank, which would have put the
Highlanders into an impossible position had it succeeded, was most gallantly
held back all morning, before the arrival of the Guards and the Yorkshires,
by the mounted infantry and the 12th Lancers, skirmishing on foot. It was in
this long and successful struggle to cover the flank of the 3rd Brigade that
Major Milton, Major Ray, and many another brave man met his end. The
Coldstreams and Grenadiers relieved the pressure upon this side, and the
Lancers retired to their horses, having shown, not for the first time, that
the cavalryman with a modern carbine can at a pinch very quickly turn
himself into a useful infantry soldier. Lord Airlie deserves all praise for
his unconventional use of his men, and for the gallantry with which he threw
both himself and them into the most critical corner of the fight.
While the Coldstreams, the Grenadiers, and the Yorkshire Light Infantry were
holding back the Boer attack upon our right flank the indomitable Gordons,
the men of Dargai, furious with the desire to avenge their comrades of the
Highland Brigade, had advanced straight against the trenches and succeeded
without any very great loss in getting within four hundred yards of them.
But a single regiment could not carry the position, and anything like a
general advance upon it was out of the question in broad daylight after the
punishment which we had received. Any plans of the sort which may have
passed through Lord Methuen's mind were driven away for ever by the sudden
unordered retreat of the stricken brigade. They had been very roughly
handled in this, which was to most of them their baptism of fire, and they
had been without food and water under a burning sun all day. They fell back
rapidly for a mile, and the guns were for a time left partially exposed.
Fortunately the lack of initiative on the part of the Boers which has stood
our friend so often came in to save us from disaster and humiliation. It is
due to the brave unshaken face which the Guards presented to the enemy that
our repulse did not deepen into something still more serious.
The Gordons and the Scots Guards were still in attendance upon the guns, but
they had been advanced very close to the enemy's trenches, and there were no
other troops in support. Under these circumstances it was imperative that
the Highlanders should rally, and Major Ewart with other surviving officers
rushed among the scattered ranks and strove hard to gather and to stiffen
them. The men were dazed by what they had undergone, and Nature shrank back
from that deadly zone where the bullets fell so thickly. But the pipes blew,
and the bugles sang, and the poor tired fellows, the backs of their legs so
flayed and blistered by lying in the sun that they could hardly bend them,
hobbled back to their duty. They worked up to the guns once more, and the
moment of danger passed.
But as the evening wore on it became evident that no attack could succeed,
and that therefore there was no use in holding the men in front of the
enemy's position. The dark Cronje, lurking among his ditches and his barbed
wire, was not to be approached, far less defeated. There are some who think
that, had we held on there as we did at the Modder River, the enemy would
again have been accommodating enough to make way for us during the night,
and the morning would have found the road clear to Kimberley. I know no
grounds for such an opinion - but several against it. At Modder Cronje
abandoned his lines, knowing that he had other and stronger ones behind him.
At Magersfontein a level plain lay behind the Boer position, and to abandon
it was to give up the game altogether. Besides, why should he abandon it? He
knew that he had hit us hard. We had made absolutely no impression upon his
defences. Is it likely that he would have tamely given up all his advantages
and surrendered the fruits of his victory without a struggle? It is enough
to mourn a defeat without the additional agony of thinking that a little
more perseverance might have turned it into a victory. The Boer position
could only be taken by outflanking it, and we were not numerous enough nor
mobile enough to outflank it. There lay the whole secret of our troubles,
and no conjectures as to what might under other circumstances have happened
can alter it.
About half-past five the Boer guns, which had for some unexplained reason
been silent all day, opened upon the cavalry. Their appearance was a signal
for the general falling back of the centre, and the last attempt to retrieve
the day was abandoned. The Highlanders were dead-beat ; the Coldstreams had
had enough; the mounted infantry was badly mauled. There remained the
Grenadiers, the Scots Guards, and two or three line regiments who were
available for a new attack. There are occasions, such as Sadowa, where a
General must play his last card. There are others where with reinforcements
in his rear, he can do better by saving his force and trying once again.
General Grant had an axiom that the best time for an advance was when you
were utterly exhausted, for that was the moment when your enemy was probably
utterly exhausted too, and of two such forces the attacker has the moral
advantage. Lord Methuen determined - and no doubt wisely - that it was no
occasion for counsels of desperation. His men were withdrawn - in some cases
withdrew themselves - outside the range of the Boer guns, and next morning
saw the whole force with bitter and humiliated hearts on their way back to
their camp at Modder River.
The repulse of Magersfontein cost the British nearly a thousand men, killed,
wounded, and missing, of which over seven hundred belonged to the
Highlanders. Fifty-seven officers had fallen in that brigade alone,
including their Brigadier and Colonel Downman of the Gordons. Colonel
Codrington of the Coldstreams was wounded early, fought through the action,
and came back in the evening on a Maxim gun. Lord Winchester of the same
battalion was killed, after injudiciously but heroically exposing himself
all day. The Black Watch alone had lost nineteen officers and over three
hundred men killed and wounded, a catastrophe which can only be matched in
all the bloody and glorious annals of that splendid regiment by their
slaughter at Ticonderoga in 1757, when no fewer than five hundred fell
before Montcalm's muskets. Never has Scotland had a more grievous day than
this of Magersfontein. She has always given her best blood with lavish
generosity for the Empire, but it may be doubted if any single battle has
ever put so many families of high and low into mourning from the Tweed to
the Caithness shore. There is a legend that when sorrow comes upon Scotland
the old Edinburgh Castle is lit by ghostly lights and gleams white at every
window in the murk of midnight. If ever the watcher could have seen so
sinister a sight, it should have been on this, the fatal night of December
11, 1899. As to the Boer loss it is impossible to determine it. Their
official returns stated it to be seventy killed and two hundred and fifty
wounded, but the reports of prisoners and deserters placed it at a very much
higher figure. One unit, the Scandinavian corps, was placed in an advanced
position at Spytfontein, and was overwhelmed by the Seaforths, who killed,
wounded, or took the eighty men of whom it was composed. The stories of
prisoners and of deserters all speak of losses very much higher than those
which have been officially acknowledged.
In his comments upon the battle next day Lord Methuen was said to have given
offence to the Highland Brigade, and the report was allowed to go
uncontradicted until it became generally accepted. It arose, however, from a
complete misunderstanding of the purport of Lord Methuen's remarks, in which
he praised them, as he well might, for their bravery, and condoled with them
over the wreck of their splendid regiments. The way in which officers and
men hung on under conditions to which no troops have ever been exposed was
worthy of the highest traditions of the British army. From the death of
Wauchope in the early morning, until the assumption of the command of the
brigade by Hughes-Hallett in the late afternoon, no one seems to have taken
the direction. 'My lieutenant was wounded and my captain was killed,' says a
private. 'The General was dead, but we stayed where we were, for there was
no order to retire.' That was the story of the whole brigade, until the
flanking movement of the Boers compelled them to fall back.
The most striking lesson of the engagement is the extreme bloodiness of
modern warfare under some conditions, and its bloodlessness under others.
Here, out of a total of something under a thousand casualties seven hundred
were incurred in about five minutes, and the whole day of shell,
machine-gun, and rifle fire only furnished the odd three hundred. So also at
Ladysmith the British forces (White's column) were under heavy fire from
5.30 to 11.30, and the loss again was something under three hundred. With
conservative generalship the losses of the battles of the future will be
much less than those of the past, and as a consequence the battles
themselves will last much longer, and it will be the most enduring rather
than the most fiery which will win. The supply of food and water to the
combatants will become of extreme importance to keep them up during the
prolonged trials of endurance, which will last for weeks rather than days.
On the other hand, when a General's force is badly compromised, it will be
so punished that a quick surrender will be the only alternative to
annihilation.
On the subject of the quarter-column formation which proved so fatal to us,
it must be remembered that any other form of advance is hardly possible
during a night attack, though at Tel-el-Kebir the exceptional circumstance
of the march being over an open desert allowed the troops to move for the
last mile or two in a more extended formation. 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 1,000 rounds and remained for 30
consecutive hours within 1,500 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.
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