THE BOER VERSION OF SPION KOP.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10786, 13 October 1900, Page 8

THE BOER VERSION OF SPION KOP.

"JOUBERT'S UNMILITARY HUMANITY."

Mr Douglas Story in the "Daily Mai\," tells. Botha's version of Spion Kop. He says:—ln considering this terrible engagement no British commentator has yet seized

upon tne crux of the whole matter. Briefly stated that is—Spion Kop at no time was the .key to the Boer position, and was from the outset demortstrably untenable. Louis Botha himself told mc tliat had the

British succeeded in holding the mountain over the night of the 24th, had they managed to drag the Naval 12-pounders to the summit, and had they marched their reinforcements there it would only have made his victory the greater. The British theorem was that, since Spion Kop was a high hill forming the point of an angle between two lines of hills of not superior height, it would be possible from there to enfilade those two ranges. It did not occur to the preliminary council of war that if upon those hills one had a superior force of artillery it would be possible from them to enfilade the position of Spion Kop. For five days General Buller's army had assailed one of those lines of hills, and had been forced to retire on the 22nd. It was evident, then, that the positions were strongly held, and the British Commander-in-Chief

was in possession of all the saliant factors of the case when he consented to an attack upon Spion Kop. Upon Spion Kop, before dawn of the 24th the Boers had trained a Ureusot 94-pounder, four Krupp 12-pound-ers, and three or four bomb-Maxims. Those ■were aimed to hit a -writhing mass of 5000 men upqp an exposed plateau five acres in extent. It is one of the elementary rules of tactics that where a hill has a top, a short dip, and tiien a long, steep descent, the crest commanding the long approach is that to be occupied by the defending force. By neglecting this crest General Woodgate allowed Sarel Oosthuizen with forty men of the Krugersdorp commando to climb up under its cover and to attack him from

its rim on the morning of the 24th. In this way a position originally untenable through its known exposure to a terrible enfilading ami converging artillery fire was turned into a shambles by the Botr sharpshooters, who had been permitted to occupy good cover 600 yards from the packed mass of British troops. For neither of these fatal errors of judgment and ordinary military competency wag Colonel Thorneycroft in any sense responsible. The blame" lies with the chief who designed the attack. To emphasise thin it must be remembered that, although Sir Charles Warren speaks of "the arrival of reinforcements of British Aγ. tillery," not one gun ever commenced the ascent of the hill—such guns as could have been sent to the summit could never have stood Bgainsfc the Boer, 94-pounder, and would have been outranged by the Boer Krupps.

That the section of the Boer forces commanded by General Schalk Burger was in full flight is undoubted. Their weakkneed commander did not draw rein for 40 miles. But this was only a force acting in support of Louis Botha. I have talked over this matter with the CommandantGeneral, and I understand that he would have been glad enough to withdraw his men from the summit and so give freer play to his artillery, but men like Oosthuizen. "who fought on with three wounds in his body, refused to retire. After all, the fate of Spion Kop was sealed by the big guns on TbaJba Myama and Jantjes. Theoretically it was impossible to withdraw a. sinsrJp man from\Spion T<7,,-> , n j*" 6 face of the Boer battefries. Mr Winston Churchill says on this'point:— "As the imantry retired the enemy would have commanding ground from which to assail them at every point. We all prepared ourselves for a bloody and even disastrous rearguard action. Buller arrived on the field calm, cheerful, inscrutable as ever, rede hither and thither with a 'weary staff and a large note-book, gripped the whole business in his strong hands, and so shook it into shape that we crossed the rivsr in safety, comfort, and good order, with most remarkable mechanical precision, and without the loss of a single man or a pound of stores."

And vet away up there on the fcopjes Louis Botha stood silent ar.d pale, his stron* law firm set. and beside him four 12-pounder Krupps trained on the pontoons the de- £?*% arm 7 w aR wearily across. The Boer sninners strained aM-he runnions eager for the word to fire. I tell the tale exactly as !t was told to ma by Colonel Ricciardi and Captain Rosseger. who commanded the Boers' Italian scouts: "It was too much, so we approached Botha again for the third time. This time lie spransr at us as though he would strangle us: 'For God's sake, gentlemen, will you he silent? Mv strict orders, heliosrraphcd from the Com-mandant-General this morning, are not to fire a shot at a fleeing man." And so the unmilitary hrnnanitr of a Boer general saved Spron Kop from teinz an Austerlitz, but it did not save the British commanders from their responsibility of leading their army into so terrible a position.