.....preparations for battle
The Bavarian arrived on December 1st in Durban and within days the infantry men had marched to Chieveley Station. The camp at Chieveley was massive and a much welcome site to the new arrivals. After 18 days on an overcrowded troopship, then being packed into cattle trucks and pitched out in the heat of a African midsummer required great stamina and fitness.
Unaccustomised to their new surroundings, dazed by the 102 degreee heat, the effects dehydration many of the soldiers were not in fighting condition. Their health was not improved by their daily rations of bread and corn beef.
These units were being assembled unknown to the lower ranks pitched in camp as part of General Redvers Bullers attempt to relieve Ladysmith by defeating the Boers at Tugela.
Morale was high amongst the troops. This was further heightened by the press predicting an easy victory that was relayed to the men from their officers. The British expected their enemy to be an ill prepared bunch of simple farmers. As the Irish joked and laughed about theses men with whom they were to do battle with, the Boers were digging in at Tugela.
The 1st Battalion of The Connaught Rangers were detailed as part of the 5th Irish Brigade under the command of Major-General A Fitzroy Hart. General Buller used this Brigade during the Battle of Coenso. Its objective was to cross the Tugela river at the Bridel Drift and then proceed down the far side to support the 2nd Brigade which consisted of the 2nd Devons, 2nd West Surreys, the 2nd West Yorkshires and the 2nd East Surrey Regiment. This Brigade was to cross at the Bridge of Colenso towards Colenso Kopjes were the enemy was entrenched. If the British defeated the Boers at Tugela, Ladysmith and its starving, disease ridden population would be relieved.
"3. The 5th Brigade (Major-General Hart's) will move from its present camp at 4.30 a.m. and march towards Bridle Drift (a ford about four miles west of Colenso), immediately west of the junction of Doornkop Spruit and the Tugela. The brigade will cross at this point, and after crossing move along on the left bank of the river towards the kopjes north of the iron bridge.
The above extract were the basic instructions given to General Hart. On December 14th he assembled his senior officers of the Brigade and informed them of Bullers intention.
December 15th 1899. Breakfasts were hastily prepared and eaten. Canteens were filled, final inspections were made and orders issued. The camp was one buzz of active life. At 4am the Connaughts joined the 5th Birgade on the parade ground. The men saw ambulance waggons dragged by innumerable oxen, mule and donkey carts, the teams and guns of six field-batteries, cavalry and infantry, and hale and hearty Jack Tars, looking very ship-shape, square and determined, and joking as though they were off to a ball. All were equally jovial, all confident that the big move was begun, and a big and glorious ending was in store.
There was total silence in the early morning darkness. The Connaughts would march lighty – carrying a rifle and 150 rounds of rounds of ammunition in their pouches per man they moved out from Chievely Camp as part of a British Force numbering 21,000 men. The time was now 4.30am.
In the dark of the early morning as preparation for the attack, Hart had ordered his men to perform half an hour's exhausting close-order drill similar to ther training on Salisbury Plains before riding out in front of his men.
Then, he led them in tight formation, towards the uThekela in order to force a crossing at the ford of Bridle Drift. Hart insisted that the Brigade marched in a drill block advance as he liked to keep his men “well inhand”.
As the 5th Brigade marched throughout he morning, before them lay the long level plain, then the curve of the Tugela River and beyond silent looking very serene stretched a line of gentle curving hills. This peaceful view changed instantly when Buller ordered his naval guns to shell the sunlit foothills. At 5.30 the naval guns opened the battle with a tremendous bombardment.
With the usual idle bantering among the troops, the Irish Infantry led by the Dublins, then the Connaughts, the Inniskillings and the Borders moved forward towards the river and its ford. Already the sun was rising, the men were drenched in sweat after only several miles of marching. As they quenched their thirsts, there was still no sign of the Boers when Hart after leading his men over the open veld halted his Brigade within 200 yards of the river. He saw a problem – the infantry had to advance into a loop formed by the meandering river making all the units exposed to possible cross fire at the flanks.
After crossing the spruit he observed to his annoyance that the native guide was continually pointing up the loop in the river. After a consultation the guide explained through an interpreter that the only ford in the area was at the top of the loop. Since his sketch map had already proved inaccurate in one respect, General Hart allowed himself to be persuaded that it was also inaccurate about the fords. And into the loop he rode at the head of his men.
Hart had been following a track from the Official Field Intelligence Dept blue print. In reality the map was a table sketch, shortly prepared by an engineer officer using a farm survey and infomration collected from long distance observations. When Hart reached the Doringkop Spruit, flowing to the north-east, he realized that Buller's sketch map was inaccurate.
The General had also being relying heavily on a colonist intreter guide who pointed towards the loop explaining that it was the only drift. An African who kenw neither English nor the topgrapghy of the waterway Hart a man not to share his problems especially with Buller believed the maps to be incorrect and furthmore too kno notice of the warnings from the cavlry guarding his flanks. After crossing the spruit he observed to his annoyance that the native guide was continually pointing up the loop in the river. After a consultation the guide explained through an interpreter that the only ford in the area was at the top of the loop.
Hart favoured his African guide and ordered the 5th Brigade into the open arms of a loop in the river – a well defended salient lined with Boer trenches. …. and into the loop he rode at the head of his men.
Throughout this time the Boers were watching patiently and prepared as this extraordinary spectacle unfolded before them. On a front two miles wide and a mile deep, line upon line of helmeted men moved across the veld in a pall of dust.
The 5th Brigade made several short halts from Chieveley Camp but it was the halt made at 200 yards from the river was when the first Boer gun opened fire. Immediately Hart ordered the Brigade to deploy. The Border Regiment to the right, The Connaughts and Inniskillings to the left. At first the men advanced at single file before extending to three pace interval. Shell after shell fell around and among the infantry. Men were dropping fast in all directions as the battalions pressed forward towards the cursed river through the rattle of the Boer Mausers from the Sanderton Commando. The men from Connaught past over a path marked by sobbing, gasping writhing wounded men.
The advance was met with a fire from three sides. At this stage the Creusot guns opened fire, followed by the riflemen around the loop. Already the third shell ploughed into the tightly packed ranks of the Connaught Rangers. As the men loosened out, units became inextricably mixed and General Hart was no longer in complete control of his brigade. To test the Connaughts even further their Commandng Officer Brooke was wounded in the early stages of the battle after receiving shrapnel wounds. Brooke’s command was immediately replaced by Major J.D.C O’Grady.
Groups of men followed officers up the loop without any clear idea of where they were going or what was happening. Others simply threw themselves on the ground in the tall grass and remained where they were fell. Casualities were mounting. The Connaughts lost G H Ford Hutchinson, Lieut G F Brooks, Second Lieut E V Jones all fell wounded.
It was total chaos. There was limited fire from the Irish because no Boer could be seen. Hart anticiapated neat manoeuvres amongst the infantry. For the groups who reached the riverbank officers were yelling frantatically at their men.
There were now ten feet of water instead of two, and sad was the plight of many a poor fellow of the Dublins and Connaughts, who, weighted with ammunition and accoutrements, found it impossible to swim to shore or even to return. They were drowned in the flood, while others dropped in heaps under the enemy's fire, and even under volleys of our own men, who, unluckily, mistook them for the foe.
But the Irishmen's blood was up, and some, at any cost, determined to reach the other side to get one grip of the enemy, but what many of them thought to be the other bank was merely the bank of a winding spruit, which took them no farther towards the foe. The disappointment and rage was intense. Boom, boom, went the cannons roaring. their dirge of death; bang, bang, bellowed the Naval battery in reply; rattling and raking water in their ears as they scrambled from rock to stone or swam for dear life.
Only 6 Connaughts – a Captain, a Lieutenant and four men managed to reach the far embankment. In their ordeal four were wounded. Exhausted and outnumbered they ceased firing whereupon the Boers left them until end of the battle. The position near the other side was untenable.
Men fell in heaps; horses with half their bodies blown away littered the veldt; the guns were stuck fast—useless lumber, too valuable to leave, too heavy to get away. Some say that had it not been for the action of the artillery commander in taking a whole brigade division—three batteries—up at a gallop to within 700 yards of the Boer trenches, the day might still have been Bullers.
The valiant Irishmen would still have pursued their risky advance. Others declared that the want of proper scouting caused the whole fiasco, and that all the pluck of the Irish Brigade was so much heroism wasted. They had no information relative to the intrenchments of the place to be attacked by them, nor any conception of the strength of the opposition they were liable to meet. No scouts appear to have discovered the position of the ford by which they were ordered to cross, or the nearness of the enemy to that point, and consequently the brigade marched in quarter-column into the very jaws of death, only deploying when shells had already begun to burst in their midst. Like the guns of the Royal Artillery, they found themselves before they were prepared in the midst of a close and deadly fusillade—the more deadly and unnerving because on the clearest of days not a whiff of smoke betrayed the quarters from whence the murderous assaults were coming.
In the slaughter all 4 battalions melted into one to Harts dismay. Hart anticipated neat manoeuvres and as the Irish crowded into then loop which wa sonly 1000 yards wide clearly not being conformed to. No ford could be found. Unwilling to retreat and unable to advance after suffering heavy casulaities in the early stages the later companies of the Connaughts sheltered on a knoll in the centre of the loop.
The counter-attack which Botha had ordered here, did not materialize. With the Irish Brigade entrapped in the loop a heaven-sent opportunity had arrived for the Johannesburgers, Middelburgers and Free Staters to carry out a really effective counter-stroke. But to Botha's intense annoyance nothing happened. Three times he sent messengers to Christian Fourie, whom he had so unwisely put in command of this sector only 24 hours before, urging him to deliver the attack; but Fourie was not up to his task. He withdrew the Johannesburgers to reinforce the Ermelo commando, which was under no pressure whatsoever, and ordered the Middelburgers and Free Staters to remain on the hill. When Botha sent a message to the Free State commander, General Andries Cronjé, demanding an explanation of why he did not carry out his orders, Cronjé replied: "Hier het 'n nuwe generaal uit die lug geval en ander bevele gegee." Botha was furious, but there was nothing he could do. After the fight he remarked in a private telegram (to General Lucas Meyer in Pretoria): "Had the Middelburg and Free State commandos carried out my instruction and crossed the Tugela, we would have taken a thousand prisoners and probably six more guns. Instead they continued to watch the battle, sitting manfully on the mountain."
As the small pockets of stubborn heroic assaults began to fade the loop was scattered with the dead and wounded, many who lay for 5 hours by which time many had ceased groaning.
After about an hour General Buller, who had been watching the Irishmen putting their heads into the noose, decided to break off this attack. To General Lyttelton, commander of the reserve brigade in this area, he said: "Hart has got into a devil of a mess down there. Get him out of it as best you can." In the confusion in the loop, swept as it was by heavy fire, it was no easy task to extricate the battalions and the withdrawal was not completed until well in the afternoon, the Irishmen having suffered some 550 casualties.
The battle ended in defeat for the British. At Colenso the Connaught Rangers were in the thickest, and their losses were very heavy, being approximately 24 men killed, 2 officers and 103 men wounded, and 2 officers and 23 men missing: these latter had got so far forward that they either did not receive the order to retire or were unable to get back. The Birgade lost a total of 525 men. The total casulaities of the forces engaged at Colenso numbered 1147 loses.
The Bavarian arrived on December 1st in Durban and within days the infantry men had marched to Chieveley Station. The camp at Chieveley was massive and a much welcome site to the new arrivals. After 18 days on an overcrowded troopship, then being packed into cattle trucks and pitched out in the heat of a African midsummer required great stamina and fitness.
Unaccustomised to their new surroundings, dazed by the 102 degreee heat, the effects dehydration many of the soldiers were not in fighting condition. Their health was not improved by their daily rations of bread and corn beef.
These units were being assembled unknown to the lower ranks pitched in camp as part of General Redvers Bullers attempt to relieve Ladysmith by defeating the Boers at Tugela.
Morale was high amongst the troops. This was further heightened by the press predicting an easy victory that was relayed to the men from their officers. The British expected their enemy to be an ill prepared bunch of simple farmers. As the Irish joked and laughed about theses men with whom they were to do battle with, the Boers were digging in at Tugela.
The 1st Battalion of The Connaught Rangers were detailed as part of the 5th Irish Brigade under the command of Major-General A Fitzroy Hart. General Buller used this Brigade during the Battle of Coenso. Its objective was to cross the Tugela river at the Bridel Drift and then proceed down the far side to support the 2nd Brigade which consisted of the 2nd Devons, 2nd West Surreys, the 2nd West Yorkshires and the 2nd East Surrey Regiment. This Brigade was to cross at the Bridge of Colenso towards Colenso Kopjes were the enemy was entrenched. If the British defeated the Boers at Tugela, Ladysmith and its starving, disease ridden population would be relieved.
"3. The 5th Brigade (Major-General Hart's) will move from its present camp at 4.30 a.m. and march towards Bridle Drift (a ford about four miles west of Colenso), immediately west of the junction of Doornkop Spruit and the Tugela. The brigade will cross at this point, and after crossing move along on the left bank of the river towards the kopjes north of the iron bridge.
The above extract were the basic instructions given to General Hart. On December 14th he assembled his senior officers of the Brigade and informed them of Bullers intention.
December 15th 1899. Breakfasts were hastily prepared and eaten. Canteens were filled, final inspections were made and orders issued. The camp was one buzz of active life. At 4am the Connaughts joined the 5th Birgade on the parade ground. The men saw ambulance waggons dragged by innumerable oxen, mule and donkey carts, the teams and guns of six field-batteries, cavalry and infantry, and hale and hearty Jack Tars, looking very ship-shape, square and determined, and joking as though they were off to a ball. All were equally jovial, all confident that the big move was begun, and a big and glorious ending was in store.
There was total silence in the early morning darkness. The Connaughts would march lighty – carrying a rifle and 150 rounds of rounds of ammunition in their pouches per man they moved out from Chievely Camp as part of a British Force numbering 21,000 men. The time was now 4.30am.
In the dark of the early morning as preparation for the attack, Hart had ordered his men to perform half an hour's exhausting close-order drill similar to ther training on Salisbury Plains before riding out in front of his men.
Then, he led them in tight formation, towards the uThekela in order to force a crossing at the ford of Bridle Drift. Hart insisted that the Brigade marched in a drill block advance as he liked to keep his men “well inhand”.
As the 5th Brigade marched throughout he morning, before them lay the long level plain, then the curve of the Tugela River and beyond silent looking very serene stretched a line of gentle curving hills. This peaceful view changed instantly when Buller ordered his naval guns to shell the sunlit foothills. At 5.30 the naval guns opened the battle with a tremendous bombardment.
With the usual idle bantering among the troops, the Irish Infantry led by the Dublins, then the Connaughts, the Inniskillings and the Borders moved forward towards the river and its ford. Already the sun was rising, the men were drenched in sweat after only several miles of marching. As they quenched their thirsts, there was still no sign of the Boers when Hart after leading his men over the open veld halted his Brigade within 200 yards of the river. He saw a problem – the infantry had to advance into a loop formed by the meandering river making all the units exposed to possible cross fire at the flanks.
After crossing the spruit he observed to his annoyance that the native guide was continually pointing up the loop in the river. After a consultation the guide explained through an interpreter that the only ford in the area was at the top of the loop. Since his sketch map had already proved inaccurate in one respect, General Hart allowed himself to be persuaded that it was also inaccurate about the fords. And into the loop he rode at the head of his men.
Hart had been following a track from the Official Field Intelligence Dept blue print. In reality the map was a table sketch, shortly prepared by an engineer officer using a farm survey and infomration collected from long distance observations. When Hart reached the Doringkop Spruit, flowing to the north-east, he realized that Buller's sketch map was inaccurate.
The General had also being relying heavily on a colonist intreter guide who pointed towards the loop explaining that it was the only drift. An African who kenw neither English nor the topgrapghy of the waterway Hart a man not to share his problems especially with Buller believed the maps to be incorrect and furthmore too kno notice of the warnings from the cavlry guarding his flanks. After crossing the spruit he observed to his annoyance that the native guide was continually pointing up the loop in the river. After a consultation the guide explained through an interpreter that the only ford in the area was at the top of the loop.
Hart favoured his African guide and ordered the 5th Brigade into the open arms of a loop in the river – a well defended salient lined with Boer trenches. …. and into the loop he rode at the head of his men.
Throughout this time the Boers were watching patiently and prepared as this extraordinary spectacle unfolded before them. On a front two miles wide and a mile deep, line upon line of helmeted men moved across the veld in a pall of dust.
The 5th Brigade made several short halts from Chieveley Camp but it was the halt made at 200 yards from the river was when the first Boer gun opened fire. Immediately Hart ordered the Brigade to deploy. The Border Regiment to the right, The Connaughts and Inniskillings to the left. At first the men advanced at single file before extending to three pace interval. Shell after shell fell around and among the infantry. Men were dropping fast in all directions as the battalions pressed forward towards the cursed river through the rattle of the Boer Mausers from the Sanderton Commando. The men from Connaught past over a path marked by sobbing, gasping writhing wounded men.
The advance was met with a fire from three sides. At this stage the Creusot guns opened fire, followed by the riflemen around the loop. Already the third shell ploughed into the tightly packed ranks of the Connaught Rangers. As the men loosened out, units became inextricably mixed and General Hart was no longer in complete control of his brigade. To test the Connaughts even further their Commandng Officer Brooke was wounded in the early stages of the battle after receiving shrapnel wounds. Brooke’s command was immediately replaced by Major J.D.C O’Grady.
Groups of men followed officers up the loop without any clear idea of where they were going or what was happening. Others simply threw themselves on the ground in the tall grass and remained where they were fell. Casualities were mounting. The Connaughts lost G H Ford Hutchinson, Lieut G F Brooks, Second Lieut E V Jones all fell wounded.
It was total chaos. There was limited fire from the Irish because no Boer could be seen. Hart anticiapated neat manoeuvres amongst the infantry. For the groups who reached the riverbank officers were yelling frantatically at their men.
There were now ten feet of water instead of two, and sad was the plight of many a poor fellow of the Dublins and Connaughts, who, weighted with ammunition and accoutrements, found it impossible to swim to shore or even to return. They were drowned in the flood, while others dropped in heaps under the enemy's fire, and even under volleys of our own men, who, unluckily, mistook them for the foe.
But the Irishmen's blood was up, and some, at any cost, determined to reach the other side to get one grip of the enemy, but what many of them thought to be the other bank was merely the bank of a winding spruit, which took them no farther towards the foe. The disappointment and rage was intense. Boom, boom, went the cannons roaring. their dirge of death; bang, bang, bellowed the Naval battery in reply; rattling and raking water in their ears as they scrambled from rock to stone or swam for dear life.
Only 6 Connaughts – a Captain, a Lieutenant and four men managed to reach the far embankment. In their ordeal four were wounded. Exhausted and outnumbered they ceased firing whereupon the Boers left them until end of the battle. The position near the other side was untenable.
Men fell in heaps; horses with half their bodies blown away littered the veldt; the guns were stuck fast—useless lumber, too valuable to leave, too heavy to get away. Some say that had it not been for the action of the artillery commander in taking a whole brigade division—three batteries—up at a gallop to within 700 yards of the Boer trenches, the day might still have been Bullers.
The valiant Irishmen would still have pursued their risky advance. Others declared that the want of proper scouting caused the whole fiasco, and that all the pluck of the Irish Brigade was so much heroism wasted. They had no information relative to the intrenchments of the place to be attacked by them, nor any conception of the strength of the opposition they were liable to meet. No scouts appear to have discovered the position of the ford by which they were ordered to cross, or the nearness of the enemy to that point, and consequently the brigade marched in quarter-column into the very jaws of death, only deploying when shells had already begun to burst in their midst. Like the guns of the Royal Artillery, they found themselves before they were prepared in the midst of a close and deadly fusillade—the more deadly and unnerving because on the clearest of days not a whiff of smoke betrayed the quarters from whence the murderous assaults were coming.
In the slaughter all 4 battalions melted into one to Harts dismay. Hart anticipated neat manoeuvres and as the Irish crowded into then loop which wa sonly 1000 yards wide clearly not being conformed to. No ford could be found. Unwilling to retreat and unable to advance after suffering heavy casulaities in the early stages the later companies of the Connaughts sheltered on a knoll in the centre of the loop.
The counter-attack which Botha had ordered here, did not materialize. With the Irish Brigade entrapped in the loop a heaven-sent opportunity had arrived for the Johannesburgers, Middelburgers and Free Staters to carry out a really effective counter-stroke. But to Botha's intense annoyance nothing happened. Three times he sent messengers to Christian Fourie, whom he had so unwisely put in command of this sector only 24 hours before, urging him to deliver the attack; but Fourie was not up to his task. He withdrew the Johannesburgers to reinforce the Ermelo commando, which was under no pressure whatsoever, and ordered the Middelburgers and Free Staters to remain on the hill. When Botha sent a message to the Free State commander, General Andries Cronjé, demanding an explanation of why he did not carry out his orders, Cronjé replied: "Hier het 'n nuwe generaal uit die lug geval en ander bevele gegee." Botha was furious, but there was nothing he could do. After the fight he remarked in a private telegram (to General Lucas Meyer in Pretoria): "Had the Middelburg and Free State commandos carried out my instruction and crossed the Tugela, we would have taken a thousand prisoners and probably six more guns. Instead they continued to watch the battle, sitting manfully on the mountain."
As the small pockets of stubborn heroic assaults began to fade the loop was scattered with the dead and wounded, many who lay for 5 hours by which time many had ceased groaning.
After about an hour General Buller, who had been watching the Irishmen putting their heads into the noose, decided to break off this attack. To General Lyttelton, commander of the reserve brigade in this area, he said: "Hart has got into a devil of a mess down there. Get him out of it as best you can." In the confusion in the loop, swept as it was by heavy fire, it was no easy task to extricate the battalions and the withdrawal was not completed until well in the afternoon, the Irishmen having suffered some 550 casualties.
The battle ended in defeat for the British. At Colenso the Connaught Rangers were in the thickest, and their losses were very heavy, being approximately 24 men killed, 2 officers and 103 men wounded, and 2 officers and 23 men missing: these latter had got so far forward that they either did not receive the order to retire or were unable to get back. The Birgade lost a total of 525 men. The total casulaities of the forces engaged at Colenso numbered 1147 loses.
Warfare is a fascinating subject. Despite the dubious morality of using violence to achieve personal or political aims. It remains that conflict has been used to do just that throughout recorded history.
ReplyDeleteYour article is very well done, a good read.