War correspondents covering the Anglo Boer War played a major role in getting
the news to the outside world. Indeed, this was the first media war in history
and in this video of the battles fought in KwaZulu-Natal we try to recreate the
events as seen through the eyes of those who recorded the war.
At last the long, weary crisis seems about to culminate and before the end of
the week it seems probable that a state of war will have begun. The diplomatic
situation in face of the Boer ultimatum makes this almost inevitable and the
reported movements of Boer commandos point to the same result.
Deneys Reitz says in his diary 'after a long ride we emerged into open country
and they're winding across the plain lay the Buffalo River with the green hills
and pleasant valleys of Natal stretching beyond. It took nearly an hour for all to
cross and during this time the cheering and singing of the Volks were
continuous, and we rode into the smiling land of Natal full of hope and courage.
The position is critical. Colonel Baden-Powell has warned the
inhabitants to expect an attack. The Boers have advanced on the town of Mafeking
and have captured an armored train at Kraaipan. The first shots of the
war have been fired. Break of day this morning, disclosed the fact that the
Boers were in great force all around Dundee. It was seen that they had taken
up a position on a hill behind Peter Smith's house and had posted guns there.
Heavy fighting had started close by for the roar of the guns had increased and at
times we heard the rattle of small arms and Maxim's.
By 1:00 p.m. the sound had died down indicating, although we did not know it
at the time, that the English had driven the Vryheid men from Talana and
Lennox Hills with heavy losses.
Officers and men dressed in drab khaki uniforms
instead of the scarlet I had seen in England, and this somewhat disappointed
me, as it seemed to detract from the glamour of war but worse still was the
sight of the dead soldiers.
In the English camp, at the deserted town, I came on the field hospital flying the
Geneva cross where I saw General Penn Symons, the commander of the English
troops......he was mortally wounded. Next morning, as I was again on my way up to
the camp, I met a bearer party carrying his body wrapped in a blanket and I
accompanied them to where they buried him behind the little English chapel.
During the battles of the first couple of weeks of the war both sides lost
large numbers of men, and when the Boers withdrew as they did at Talana, it was
more in line with their traditional fighting methods than an admission of
defeat. General French took the Imperial Light Horse and the Natal volunteer
artillery with six guns, and supported by four companies of the Manchester
Regiment, in an armored train and made a further reconnaissance to Elandslaagte
station. A small Boer patrol was sighted and taken by surprise. The Boers brought
their guns into action and their shells landed among the Natal Field Artillery.
Although their fusing was poor, one of the Boer shells damaged an ammunition
wagon forcing General French to withdraw his guns.
Reinforcements arrived at midday and the Boers were finally driven from their position.
The Transvaal Starts artillery had dragged the six-inch Long Tom up Epworth
Hill a mile to the left, and they had installed several smaller guns there as
well, and all these now began to fire on the approaching troops. By now with a
thunder of the British guns and of our own the crash of bursting shells and the
din of thousands of rifles there was a volume of sound unheard in South Africa
before. Three days later began the 118 day siege of Ladysmith, which was to grip
the imagination of the world and attract the attention of people such as Morning
Post War correspondent Winston Churchill and leader of the stretcher bearers
Mahatma Gandhi. The Boers also attracted many foreign volunteers. Winston
Churchill recorded the following in his diary: an armored train, the very name
sounds strange, the locomotive disguised as a
knight-errant on Thursday the 15th of November, the escort armored train
reconnoitered towards Chieveley. All was clear as far as Chieveley but as
the train reached the station I saw about 50 Boer horsemen cantering southwards
about a mile from the railway. Colonel Long ordered the train to return to
Frere. We proceeded to obey and were about a mile and three quarters from
Frere, when on rounding a corner, we saw that a hill which commanded the line at
a distance of six hundred yards was occupied by the Boers.
The Boers had opened fire on us at six hundred yards.
After the fight the Boer commander, Louis Botha, cabled jubilantly back to Pretoria:
our guns were ready and quickly punctured the armored trucks. The engine
broke loose and the truck returned badly damaged. Loss of the enemy: 4 dead, 14
wounded and 58 taken prisoner.
No mention was made at this stage of the capture of their famous prisoner Winston
Churchill. Botha and Joubert continued their drive southwards taking a wide
detour to avoid the three thousand British troops at Escort. On Tuesday the
21st of November Joubert's column pitched their forward tents on a kopie commanding
the railway line close to Willow Grange nearest Escort. The British attack that had
occurred on the night of 22nd November fizzled out like a fire in the rain. It
was the night of a violent thunderstorm which killed one boy and six horses
causing more injuries than the Lee-Metfords. The British suffered 86
casualties
The Boers withdrew to the Tugela. Meanwhile, General Sir Redvers Buller
had led his troops toward the Tugela River and the town of Colenso.
Botha, a brilliant tactician, had ordered trenches and defensive breastworks to be
constructed on both sides of the river leaving the hills behind lightly manned.
When Buller started his attack he shelled the high ground behind the river
in the mistaken belief that the Boers were holding to their traditional
tactics. In the Battle of Colenso British casualties amounted to more than
1,000 killed wounded or captured as well as the loss of ten guns.
Among the mortally wounded was Lieutenant Freddie Roberts, son of Lord
Roberts.
General Botha cabled Pretoria: today the god of our fathers has given us a great
victory. Buller cabled General White: as it appears certain that I cannot relieve
Ladysmith for another month and even then only by means of protracted siege
operations. You will destroy your guns, fire away your ammunition and make the
best terms possible with the general of the besieging forces. White ignored this
order and continued with the task of defending the town. Early in the new year
Buller was again to try in relieving Ladysmith focusing his attack this time
on Spion Kop. Deneys Reitz: wrote there were probably 10 or 12,000 burgers in
all on the hills. With the bastion of Spion Kop standing like a pivot in the center.
At sunrise loud gun and rifle fire broke along the front on which I
had been the day before. The British had made a night attack and had captured
Spion Kop. This was most serious for if the hill went the entire Tugela line
would go with it. The Boer counter-attack had started
shortly before. About 400 riflemen were climbing up the steep side of the hill
in face of a close-range fire from the English troops who had established
themselves on the flat summit overnight.
Many of our men dropped but already the
foremost were within a few yards of the rocky edge which marked the crest.
British casualties kept Gandhi's stretcher-bearers busy as they brought
in the wounded covered in brown blankets, with their special belongings: boots, haversack
and perhaps a pot of jam and a lump of tinned meat carried in the hood
of the stretchers.
And so Buller's second attempt to relieve Ladysmith ended in disaster for the
British. A few days later Buller was yet again unsuccessful in breaching the Boer
defenses at Vaal Krantz to get through to Ladysmith.
In the evening Buller consulted with his generals and there was consensus of
opinion that it would be impossible to advance further along this line.
Churchill to the Morning Post.......the poor little persecuted town but famous to the
uttermost ends of the earth.
Gunner Netley of the 13th battery wrote.... Thursday 2nd of November the Boers
opened fire with artillery into the town but luckily they did no harm. On the
6th of January the Boers made an attempt to break through the British defence
their aim was to drive the Light Horse off Wagon Hill making the situation at
Caesars camp untenable. It was the bayonet charge of the
Devonshire's that eventually drove the Boers off wagon Hill.
Among the reasons for the Boers lack of success in storming Ladysmith were that
all the surrounding hills were occupied by the defenders. The Boers believed
that they would be able to bombard the defenders into submission which they
were unable to do, and that their troops although not lacking in courage did not
have the training and discipline of regular troops. For the more than 13,000
soldiers and nearly 5,500 civilians trapped in the town during the siege the
situation was generally tough and demoralizing. The Battle of Tugela
Heights was the largest battle ever fought in the southern hemisphere until
the Falklands War in 1982. The British with some 28,000 troops to the
approximately 4,000 Boers outnumbered their enemy by seven to one. The British
also enjoyed an 8 to 1 superiority in artillery. Tugela Heights was a battle
of the hills: Hussar, Cingolo, Monte Cristo, Hlangwane,
Colenso Kopie, Wynne's Hill, Hart's Hill, Railway Hill and Peter's Hill.
After breaking through the last line of Boer resistance at Peter's Hill, Buller
marched on to Ladysmith where he was given a hero's welcome liberating the
inhabitants after 118 day siege.
After a few months to regroup Buller then set off for Biggarsberg.
At Helpmekaar he outflanked some 7,000 Boers before moving northwards.
Although the Boers dug kilometers of intricate entrenchments to guard the
main passes into their Republic's, Hildyard's division pushed through Botha's
pass in the Drakensberg, and fought a brief battle at Allemansnek out
flanking the Boers at Laing's Nek. In anticipation of a second attack by the
Boers the British built kilometers of block houses in the province.
The following year Botha set out for Natal again, taking with him a thousand tough
fighters who had been gathering around Ermelo and more to follow on route. By the
time he reached Vryheid on the 17th of September his force had risen to 2,000.
Reports indicated that he intended attacking Dundee.
Their first encounter with the British at Blood River Poort ended in 285 dead, wounded or captured.
On the 25th of September Botha sent his brother Christian with 1,400 men into
battle at Mount Itala and his brother-in-law Cherry Emmett
with 400 men to Fort Prospect. Major Chapman held off the Boer attack for as
long as he could before telling the Zulu Scouts to go but they stayed on to
continue the battle. The Boers had endured enough and withdrew.
At Fort Prospect the Boers encountered stiff opposition from the combined British
forces and a party of Zulu police who drove off the Boers with 40 casualties
to their own nine. Among the heroes was Sergeant Gumbi who led his men back
across the line to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the British troops.
The battles of Mount Itala and Fort Prospect persuaded Botha to
return to the relative safety of the Transvaal
The final battle in Natal occurred during the closing phase of the war when
the Boers were attacked by chief Secoboco and his Zulu impis. After the
Boers had raided their kraals in punishment for the tribes helping the
British as scouts and guides. On the night of May the 6th 1902 fifty two
burgers were killed and 48 wounded by the attack.
The black population of the province played a significant role in the
war as Scouts transport riders and armed combatants.