THE NEW STRUGGLE OVER SPION KOP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6922, 11 October 1900, Page 2

THE NEW STRUGGLE OVER SPION KOP.

WHAT AN EYE-WITNESS SAW ON THE BOER SIDE. " •'•'■' .By^DOUGLAS STORY/iii the —Daily Mail.") To those of; us who know something of. the inner workings of the war, the .publication of a- summary of Sir Charies Wamai'-s reported explanation of the battle of Spion Kop must bring -much food for reflection. In considering this terrible engagement no British commentator has yet seized upon the crut of the whole matter. Briefly stated that is-^-Spion Kop at- no time was the key to the Boer position, and waa from the outset demonstrably untenable. It is true that it was a bastion hill, a .position' of enormous value to the Boers holding the long lines of hills from Acton, Homes to Spion Kop and from Spion Kop to Vaal Krantz. But it wais a wholly ' untenable position for a force that did not hold) the commanding hills to right and left. Louis Botha himself told me that had the British succeedted in holding the mountain over the night of Jan. 24, had; they man*aged to drag tlie naval 12-pounders to the summit, and had they marched .hear reinforcements there it would only have made his victory the greater. . . THE INITIAL ERROR, ! To understand his reasoning is simple in the extreme. The science of war is the application of common-sense to a specifio military purpose, and to explain any militairy position it is not necessary to encumber oane«elf with technicalities or cumbersome terminology. 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 preliminany council of war that if upon those hills one had a superior force. of artillery it would he possible from there to enfilade the position of Spion Kop. Since those hills possessed much greater area and better facilities for cover, the^-superiorlty of force must always lie with the troops occupying them. ' For five days General Builer|s ,arroy had assailed one of those limes of hills, and had been forced; to retire on Jam-. 22. It was evident, then, that the positions were strongly held, and the British Commander-in-Chief was iu possession of all the salient factors of the case when he consented to an attack npon Spion Kop. THE BOER ARTILLERY. Upon Spion Kop, before dawn of the 24th, the Boers had trained a Cruesot 94-pounder, four Krupp 12-pounders, and three of four bomb Maxams. Those were aimed to hit a writhing mass of 5000 men upon an exposed* plateau five acres in extent. Our soldiers were, without exception, riflemen, and had not so muoh as the moral support of a .bomb Maxim with them. They had to stand like dumib driven sheep against a fire that raked them from the north, east and west. Occasionally from the south the British batteries pitched* a shell among the herd to signify that no mercy existed anywhere ioni -earth ifor them. Theoretically, then, our soldiers were marched to a hopeless -death when General Woodgate led them lip the steep sides of Spion Kop on the nighib of Jan. 23 last. Arrived alt the summit, General! Woodgate .committed the same blunder -Sir George Colley made at Majuba 'Hill nineteen years before. He occupied the geographical instead of the military crest pi tlie hill. It is one of the eiemen-tary rules of tactics that where a hill has a top, a short dip, and then a lonig, steep descent, the crest commanding the long approach is that ito be occupied by tbe defending force. By neglecting 'this crest on the night of Feb. 26, 1881, General Colley allowed Nicdlaas Smit with seventy men %o -advance under its cover and to attack him from its rim on the mottling oif Feib. 27. By neglecting an texactly similar <ores't on the night of Jam. 23, 1900, General Woodgate allowed Sarel Oosthuizen with- forty men of the Krugersdorp commando to climb up under its cover and to alttack him from -its rim on the morning of Jan. 24. In this Way -a -position originally untenable through its known exposure to a terrible enfilading and converging artillery fire was . turned into a shamibles by the Boer shairp•^hooters, who had ibeen permitted to occupy good cover three hundred- yards from the packed mass oif -British troops. COLONEL. THORNEYOROFT'S PART. For neither of these fa-fa! errors of judgment and ordinary military competency Was Colonel Tharneycroft in any sense responsible. ' (The blame lies with the chiefs who designed the attack. To emphasise -this, it must foe remembered that, although Sir Charles Warren speaks off " the arrival of reinforcements of British artillery," not one gun ever -commenced t!h*» ascent of the hill — such guns as could have been sen* to the summit could 1 never have stood against .he Boer 94-poum.er, and would 1 Ityve heen outranged by the Boer Krupps. Mr WiTtefcon Churchill, 'who is jtiot habitually considered a timorous lnari Or one afraid of a bol-5 emprise, says, speaking of the project to 'haul up two long-range naval 12-pounders: "I do noit believe that the attempt would have succeeded, or that the guns could have, 'been' in position bv dav light.'" . ' ' I do not desire in this article to distract attention from the bald essentials of the case by any reference to detail. But in justice to -Colonel Thorneycroft and in defence of his determination to save "six good* battalions rather than to await a mop-up in the morning," I would point out that he has a reputation second to none throughout South Africa for reckless bravery ; that he had received no single order from his chief from his assumption of command until after he had .ordered tlie retreat ; that his signallers had been killed, his heliograph instruments smashed, and his signal lamps tinprovMed with oil; that no staff officer climbed the hill from dawn to dusk, ( and. that ' Sir Charles Warren's "* principal aide-de-camp '*' was Mr Winston Churchill, an intrepid newspaper correspondent, but not a a*esponsible officer. THE BOERS WHO FLED. In connection with Sir Charles' Warren's contention -that the Boer.-'' -WW in full flight and if the position hatd'-been held over

night lr need never have bcen'-a'handwn-ed 1 nave . onio'tliing to say. ' That' that section of the .Boer forces commanded by General Scli-oik Burger was in full flightis undoubted. Their .veak-'kn««__ commandter did mot draw rein for fortyi miles. But this was only a force a-cfting ia subpart of .Louis Botha. . , .- • i iLhave talked over .this shatter' with thd Oommandant-General, and __' {mdeittiband that, he would have ibeen glad enough t-o withdraw his men from the sunumjfe and so «ivo freer play to his a. tiUe_>v, tout, men lik_ Oosthuissen-, .\_.n fought- on with. thi*«e wounds in his body, refused to retire. After all, tl, 0 f»te of Spion Kopwaa sealed by the big guns on Thaba .Myama «_n4 Jantjes. ■ Tt now remains for me to attract sutton* turn to a phase of the fight whioh has nevei yet been referred to ih print. • No provision was made for a possibly withdrawal hi th. trodps from Spioft Kop. Ihe enterprise was from the outset * d«T« perate one, and yet the chiefs of the awny .never stopped to consider how. ..they .could extract their men should they find the wait tion ilnfenable. - Theoretically it. was itiupos^-ble to willi' draw a, single man from Spion Kop in the face of 'tihe Boer .batteries. Mr Winston Churchill Rays on this point t — ' As the infantry retired the enemy would have commanding ground fromi which Ml assail them at eveiy point. We all prepared ourselves for a -bloody and even diswftrou. rearguard action. Buller arrived on th« fiel-d calm,, cheerful, inscrutable as ever, rode hither and thither with a weary stall and a huge note-book, gripped $1* w-htoi-j business in hSs strong hand*, enfl -ao «Biooh it into shape that we crossed the river irt safety, comlfort, amd igood order, with most remarkable mechanical .precision, and without the loss of a single -man or a pound o_ tvtores . . .- A siicoeMfulrdtw-at is t poor thincr ifor a relieving army to boast oj when their gallant friends are hamd ! pressed and -worn out. 'But .this v-^ltodi-BiwaA ed that tJiife force possesses UotSi '■■_ '1-ead-e-t and! machinery of -organisation, wnd.it .i» this, and this alone, tha* hoB preserved on. ooaifidentee." . And yet. away up th-erp on tho t tapjel Louis Botha stood silent aind! pale, hit strong jaw firm-set, and beeide _dm foul 12-pounder Krtipps trained on the podtoons" the defeated army wos wearily dragging across. The Boer gunners strained at the runnions, eager for the word to fire, t tell the tale exactly as ifc was told tb me by Colonel Ricciardi and' Captain Rosseger, who commanded the Boers' Italian scouts :— . "We and other foreign officers rode ove* to General Botha, and demanded that he should fire the- guns he had!, trained upon the pontoons. • He was very pale, and spojee slowly, saying: 'If you please,- gentlemen, lam in command here. Will you leave me alone .' "We retired, hut it was impossible to stay thei'e and see so great on opportunity thrown away. We again went "to Man, am begged him' to fire. Again he turned and merely said * Na!' " It was too much, so we approached him again.. This time he sprang at tie as though ho would strangle ue: 'For God's sake, gentlemen., will you be silent? Mjy strict orders, heliographed from the Com-mandant-General this morning are not to fire a shot at a fleeing man.' " An so the unmilitary humanity of a Boer general saved Spion Kop from being an Austerlitz, but it did not save the British commanders from, their responsibility in leading ; their army into so terrible a posi* tion. -. ■' ' ' ' ■— q