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.
