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12. A General on Spion Kop
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T W E L V E A General on Spion Kop 'Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.' WINSTON CHURCHILL, dispatch to the Morning Post, 22 January 1900 C H U R C H I L L ' S E X P E R I E N C E S OVER T H E N E X T few weeks would probably influence his attitude to war more even than his time in the trenches fifteen years later. From his first taste of battle in Cuba on his twenty-first birthday to his days as wartime Prime Minister, he was always drawn towards the sound of gunfire, exhilarated by personal danger and relishing excitement. But it was during the advance on Ladysmith that, for the first time, he weighed the tragic aspects of war along with the heroic. Acknowledging that the Tugela River was too well defended at Colenso to force a crossing there, Buller abandoned his plan for a direct advance on Ladysmith along the railway. Having assembled nineteen thousand infantry, three thousand cavalry and sixty guns, he now intended to turn the Boer right flank by crossing the Tugela some twenty-five miles upstream from Colenso. On 11 January the South African Light Horse seized a crossing at Potgieter's Drift and the ford a farther five miles upstream at Trichardt's Drift. At Potgieter's a bend in the river enabled an unopposed crossing, but blocking the way two miles to the north the Boer defences presented a formidable obstacle, hinged as they were on Spion Kop 149 Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive - 'Spy HilP. It had been aptly named by the Boers during the Great Trek, as it commanded the country for miles around. On the other hand, the enemy covering Trichardt's Drift were estimated by Buller's intelligence to number only about six hundred. Buller therefore decided that his main attack, with two thirds of his force, would be west of Spion Kop, at Trichardt's Drift. He himself would attack at Potgieter's when the Boers had been outflanked at Trichardt 's; the two prongs of the attack would then unite and advance on Ladysmith. Trichardt's Drift and the course of the river are today submerged beneath the Spion Kop reservoir, but not much else has changed. When one stands beneath the awesome feature of the Kop, Buller's plan seems perfectly sound. Unfortunately for him, no plan can be expected to succeed unless it is competently executed. The outflanking movement was entrusted to Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Warren. It was a curious choice. Warren was fifty-nine, and old for his years. He had commanded an expedition in Bechuanaland in 1884, and had then been seconded from the army to be Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Recalled to an active command, he had only recently arrived in South Africa, and was quite untried in the newly evolving tactics of the war. Buller defended his choice of Warren several years later by explaining that he considered Warren had a comparatively easy task at Trichardt 's, and that he reserved for himself the more difficult operation at Potgieter's. In his dispatch of 13 January 1900 Churchill had noted the enormous baggage train of Buller's forces: 'I have never before seen even officers accommodated with tents on service . .. but here today, within striking distance of a mobile enemy whom we wish to circumvent, every private soldier has canvas shelter . . . all rapidity of movement is out of the question.' The fact that Buller's popularity with his troops survived so many reversals was, no doubt, due in part to his concern for their welfare. However, the longer it took Buller's men to reach their positions, the more complete would be the Boer defences, and the greater the cost of overcoming them. The Morning Post readers were left in no doubt of their young 150 [52.55.19.189] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:22 GMT) A General on Spion Kop correspondent's views when he continued: 'It is a poor economy to let a soldier live well for three days at the price of killing him on the fourth.' Churchill's criticism was more than justified. It was not until daybreak on 18 January, a whole week after the South African Light Horse, that...