Battle of Spion Kop

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Spion Kop was fought over the 23rd and the 24th of January 1900, and it ended with a strange sight. Two Boer burghers stood on the summit, waving their slouch-hats in triumph. The Boer generals watching from below were astonished, because the only British soldiers left on the hill were the dead and the dying.

  The fight pitted British forces against two Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. It took place in the opening months of the Second Boer War. The Boers won, though not in the way anyone had planned.

  Why would a hill that cost so many lives be given up by the side that held it? How did the commanders on the British side lose track of one another on a single patch of rock? And how did the name of one hill in South Africa travel to football grounds, golf courses and cottages across the world?

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• 2. Crossing the Tugela

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  General Sir Redvers Buller, a holder of the Victoria Cross, commanded the British forces in Natal. His task was to reach Ladysmith, where a British force sat besieged. Standing in his way along the Tugela River was General Louis Botha.

  Botha's men were outnumbered. But most of them carried modern Mauser rifles, they had up-to-date field guns, and they had dug in with care. In late December 1899, Buller attacked them head on at the Battle of Colenso and suffered a heavy defeat.

  Over the following weeks, Buller received more troops and enough carts to operate away from the railway line that had been his main supply route. His new plan had two prongs, each crossing the Tugela at a different point to secure a bridgehead. Ladysmith lay only 32 km beyond. Buller gave his main force to General Sir Charles Warren, who would cross at Trichardt's Drift. Major-General Neville Lyttelton would make a diversion to the east at Potgieter's Drift.

  Warren's column counted 11,000 infantry, 2,200 cavalry and 36 field guns, drawn from the 2nd and 5th Divisions. It marched west on the 11th. The Boers could watch it come, and it moved slowly under the weight of its baggage trains. Warren's own included a cast-iron bathroom and a well-equipped kitchen. By the time he reached the river, the Boers had dug a fresh position to cover it.

  On the 18th, the Earl of Dundonald led mounted troops around to the far right of the Boer line. Almost nothing stood between them and Ladysmith. Warren called them back to guard his baggage. He then sent part of the 2nd Division under Lieutenant-General Francis Clery against a plateau called Tabanyama. The Boers had again entrenched on the reverse slope, and Clery's attack made no progress.

  Lyttelton's diversion had not yet begun in full. So Warren turned his attention to a single hill just northeast of his force. It was the largest in the region, rising over 430 m from its base, and it sat almost exactly at the centre of the Boer line.

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• 3. The Night Climb

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  On the night of the 23rd of January, Warren sent two battalions up that hill. One was eight companies of the Lancashire Fusiliers under Blomfield. The other was a mixed battalion of six companies of the Royal Lancaster Regiment and two of the South Lancashire Regiment, under Woodgate. If the British could capture the summit and haul artillery up, they would command the flanks of the surrounding Boer positions.

  Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft was chosen to lead the first assault. He was one of six "special service" officers sent to South Africa shortly before the war to recruit local irregular corps. Robert Baden-Powell and Herbert Plumer were among the others. Thorneycroft's own mounted infantry had been raised in Natal and numbered 360.

  The British climbed in the dark, through dense mist. They surprised a small Boer piquet and drove it off the hill at bayonet point. The piquet held 15 men, and one was mortally wounded. His grave lies on the hill to this day. Ten British soldiers were wounded in the charge.

  The surviving Boers ran down to their camp, screaming to wake their comrades: "Die Engelse is op die kop!" That means "The English are on the hill!" Meanwhile a half-company of sappers began digging in with only 20 picks and 20 shovels, while almost 1,000 soldiers stood around idle. Woodgate sent word to Warren that the hilltop was taken.

  Dawn showed a problem. The British held only the topographical crest, the highest ground. The military crest, on the edge of the plateau, lay another 150-200 metres forward and lower down. Below it was dead ground, where Boers could move without being seen. Darkness and fog had hidden all of this.

  The Boer positions on Green Hill, Conical Hill, Aloe Knoll and the Twin Peaks were all lower than the British crest. Even so, each could fire into the British trenches, and the British had no heavy weapons on the hill to answer. The summit was mostly hard rock, so the trenches were at most 40 cm deep. The crescent shape of the main trench meant Boer riflemen on the neighbouring peaks could fire along its whole length.

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• 4. The Boer Counterstroke

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  Down on the Boer side, the generals were not unduly alarmed. Their artillery on Tabanyama could reach the British position, and their riflemen could fire from the parts of the hill the British had not yet occupied. But they knew that shelling and sniping alone would not shift the British.

  Their own position was dangerously exposed. If the British took Conical Hill and Aloe Knoll, they could turn their guns on Tabanyama. Worse, they might storm the Twin Peaks at the eastern end of the hill. That would let them turn the Boer left flank and destroy the main Boer encampment. The generals concluded that the hill had to be retaken quickly.

  The Boer guns on Tabanyama began shelling the summit at ten rounds per minute. Commandant Hendrik Frederik Prinsloo (1861-1900) of the Carolina Commando took Aloe Knoll and Conical Hill with some 88 men. Around 300 burghers, mainly of the Pretoria Commando, climbed the hill to attack the British position head on.

  Prinsloo told his men: "Burghers, we're now going in to attack the enemy and we shan't all be coming back. Do your duty and trust in the Lord." Minutes later, hundreds of Boers swarmed over the crestline.

  A massed attack in daylight was highly unusual for the Boers, and the British were taken by surprise. Both sides had good rifles, but the British excelled at close combat. The surprise probably helped the Boers early on. Soldiers fought with fixed bayonets on one side. On the other, they used hunting knives and rifles swung as clubs. After several minutes of brutal fighting, the Boers carried the crest line but could go no further.

  A stalemate then settled over the hill for hours. The Boers on Aloe Knoll could now fire along the British position, while Boer artillery kept up its bombardment. The British had failed to exploit their first success, and the initiative passed to the Boers.

  But morale sagged on both sides in the heat, with exhaustion and thirst setting in. Boers on the hill could see many burghers on the plains below who refused to join the fight. Some felt betrayed, and some began to abandon the positions they had won. By day's end, Prinsloo's own 88 men had lost 55 killed and wounded.

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• 5. Leaderless on the Summit

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  At about 08:30, a shell splinter mortally wounded Woodgate. Blomfield of the Lancashire Fusiliers took command and was wounded soon after. Major H.H. Massy, the sappers' officer, and Captain N.H. Vertue, Woodgate's brigade major, were both killed.

  Units were now mixed together, and the British on the summit were leaderless, confused and pinned down. Their own artillery sat lower on the slopes and could not hit the Boer guns. Worse, its shots fell wide. One soldier wrote in his diary: "our gunners, by the inaccuracy of their fire did far more damage to our front line of infantry than to the Boers!"

  Colonel Malby Crofton of the Royal Lancasters took charge and semaphored a plea: "Reinforce at once or all is lost. General dead." Then the stunned colonel failed to lead. Thorneycroft appears to have taken charge instead, and his spirited counterattack failed under withering fire.

  Warren had already sent Major-General John Talbot Coke's brigade to the summit. It held two regular battalions and the Imperial Light Infantry, raised in Durban. Yet Warren refused to attack Tabanyama. He also barred his guns from firing on Aloe Knoll, believing it was part of the British position.

  At 11:40, Buller could see that things were going badly. He suggested to Warren that Thorneycroft be given command on the hill. The first runner sent to Thorneycroft was shot dead before he could speak. A second runner got through with the message: "You are a general."

  Winston Churchill was in South Africa as a journalist. After his well-publicised escape from Boer captivity, Buller had commissioned him a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse. Churchill carried messages between the hill and Buller's headquarters. He described what he saw: "Corpses lay here and there. Many of the wounds were of a horrible nature. The splinters and fragments of the shells had torn and mutilated them. The shallow trenches were choked with dead and wounded."

  About 13:00, some Lancashire Fusiliers tried to surrender. Thorneycroft ran to the spot and shouted at the advancing Boers: "I'm the commandant here; take your men back to hell sir. I allow no surrenders." The first British reinforcements arrived at that moment. A point-blank firefight followed, and the line held.

  At 14:30, Thorneycroft sent Warren a plea for reinforcements and water. Coke saw the message but never reached the summit. He did nothing to let Thorneycroft know that help was near.

  On the British right, Colonel Augustus Hill held the line for two and a half hours with the Middlesex Regiment and the Imperial Light Infantry. He was senior to Thorneycroft on the army list and believed he was overall commander. When those men began to give way, the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) arrived and drove the Boers back with a bayonet charge. The fighting on the right settled into stalemate.

  Lower down, a different attack was under way. Warren had asked Lyttelton for reinforcements, even though he had eleven battalions of his own. Without asking Buller, Lyttelton sent two battalions toward the hill. One of them, the King's Royal Rifle Corps, turned aside to attack the Twin Peaks. It lost Lieutenant Colonel Riddell killed and 100 other casualties. Then it cracked the thin Boer line and took the double summit at 17:00.

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• 6. Withdrawal in the Dark

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  The loss of the Twin Peaks shattered General Schalk Willem Burger, and he took his commando out of the battle line that night. On the hill itself, the Boers who had fought bravely since morning left their positions as darkness fell. They were about to retreat when Botha appeared and persuaded them to stay.

  The Boers still did not reclaim their old positions. Unknown to Thorneycroft, the battle was as good as won. But his nerve had also broken. He had spent sixteen hours doing a brigadier-general's job on the hill, without instructions from Warren. He now ordered an unauthorised withdrawal. His reasons were that the men had no water and ammunition was running short. Without artillery support, he saw no way to hold the summit, and the rocky ground left his men exposed.

  Churchill appeared a second time, bringing the first orders from Warren since Thorneycroft's promotion. He said that 1,400 men were on the way with two large naval guns. Thorneycroft answered: "better six good battalions safely down the hill than a bloody mop-up in the morning." He ordered the brigade to retreat. At the same time, Buller sent Lyttelton strict orders to recall his troops from the Twin Peaks.

  The British suffered 243 dead, and many were buried in the trenches where they fell. About 1,250 more were wounded or captured. Mohandas Gandhi served at the battle as a stretcher-bearer in the Indian Ambulance Corps he had organised, and was decorated. The Boers suffered 335 casualties, of whom 68 were dead.

  The British fell back across the Tugela. The Boers were too exhausted to chase them. Once over the river, Buller managed to rally his troops. Ladysmith would be relieved four weeks later.

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• 7. Who Was to Blame

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  One commentary on the battle puts the first error with Buller. He appointed Warren as an independent commander, despite doubts about Warren's capacity. Reinforcements and heavy guns were ordered up only at 21:00 that evening. Medical help, water and ammunition also arrived late.

  The same account argues that Warren's worst failure lay elsewhere. He did not tell Thorneycroft what he planned to do about those shortages. Since the midday message making Thorneycroft a general, Warren had sent him no direct instructions at all.

  Warren left it to Coke to reassure Thorneycroft. Yet he had never told Coke that Thorneycroft was in charge. Then, at 9:00 pm, Warren ordered Coke back to headquarters for consultation. That left Thorneycroft alone on the summit among the dead and wounded.

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• 8. A Name That Travelled

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  In 1901, Louwrens Penning published a novel set around the battle, De held van Spionkop, or The Hero of Spionkop. Its central figure is the real Commandant Louis Wessels, who leads the Boer commando to defeat the British.

  The name of the hill is itself a puzzle. The official South African English and Afrikaans name is Spioenkop. Spioen means spy or look-out, and kop means hill or outcropping. Outside South Africa, the older spelling Spion Kop survives. It comes from Dutch, where the word for spy is spion, pronounced "spee-yawn," rather than spioen, pronounced "spee-yoon." Dutch remained the official written language of the Boers until the 1920s. Within South Africa, the spelling changed with Afrikaans spelling reform.

  In England, the name settled onto football grounds. Many stadiums in the Premier League and Football League have a terrace or stand called the Kop or Spion Kop, because of how steeply the terracing rises. Villages and homes took it too. A village near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire bears the name, as does a hill outside Llanwrtyd Wells in Powys. Cottages in Belfield, Greater Manchester, carry a date of 1900, and two in Watledge, Gloucestershire, a date of 1901.

  Golfers met it on the course. Holes named Spion Kop include the 5th at Craigie Hill, the 16th at Edzell, the 5th at Strathtay and the 2nd at Traigh in Scotland. Others are the 4th at East Geelong and the 13th at Launceston in Australia, and the 18th at Otago in New Zealand.

  In Arklow, Ireland, a rocky outcrop on the north beach took the name because the land belonged to the Kynoch armaments and explosives factory, which supplied munitions for the war. It inspired a poem by Toddy Kennedy. On the Kent coast at Dungeness, a bungalow called Spion Kop has a tall tower once used to watch passing shipping for Trinity House and to spot salvage opportunities. A variety of fuchsia carries the name, and so does the South African Navy Valour-class frigate SAS Spioenkop, numbered F147.

  The play The Iceman Cometh also remembers it. A character named Wetjoen boasts of shooting British officers cleanly in the forehead at Spion Kop.

  The name even reached Norway. Navvies building the Ofoten railway near Narvik named a mountain top east of the town Spionkopen after news of the battle reached them. In Judith Basin, Montana, a post office opened in 1906 under the name Spion Kop.

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