Boer and British positions—Failure of Commandant Erasmus to arrive—General Meyer fights Penn Symons—The battle described—The British claim to victory examined—Forces employed and results of battle considered—casualties on both sides— Facts and figures deny the British claim
The selection of Dundee as a base for a large British force operating in the north of Natal was most unwise from a military standpoint. It was easily open to attack by a force from the east, through the Utrecht and Vryheid districts of the Transvaal, while the railway line on the west, from Newcastle to Glencoe, offered a very favorable means for the march of a cooperating column. In fact, the whole plan of defending Natal north of the Tugela with less than an army of 50,000 troops, against an invading force of 10,000 burghers, was wanting in the most elementary generalship.
The country between Laing's Nek and the Tugela River has the Free State on the immediate west, with the Drakensberg mountains acting as boundary; and the Transvaal on the immediate east, having the Buffalo River and hilly country as dividing line. This section of Natal resembles in formation a triangle, with the base at the Tugela and the apex at Laing's Nek; having a depth of ninety or a hundred miles, and a width at the base of fifty or sixty. For forty miles of the east depth, the Transvaal border is crossed by drifts over the Buffalo River, which offer little difficulty to a Boer army; while Van Beenan's Pass, on the west side of the triangle, gave the Free Staters a safe way for a cooperating force to march, with flanks secured by impassable mountains, to the aid of a column moving south along the opposite side of the triangle.
The section of Natal included in this triangle is an ideal country for Boer methods of warfare. It abounds in strong positions, in kopjes and kloofs, with its western boundary made unassailable by the towering walls of the Drakensberg range.
The resolve to defend Dundee was, therefore, most unwise in itself, while the attempted defense, which was made on the 20th and 21st of October, was foredoomed to utter failure. Reasons other than strategic must have determined the selection of this town for a stand-up fight with the advancing Boers. These reasons might have had their inspiration in the existence of coal mines needing protection, or in the fact that the little town had been made a depot for an enormous amount of military stores. Political considerations were probably the essential factor in determining the unwise proceeding. The position of the farmers, traders, and others in this portion of "the Garden Colony " had to be thought of in Pietermaritzburg. The public promise made some months previously by the Governor, on the inspiration of the Colonial Office, " that Natal, if attacked, will be defended by all the forces of the Empire," was, doubtless, the real cause of cooping up General Penn Symons and his men in the position in which, but for the failure of Commandant Erasmus to carry out his part of the Boer plan of attack on the 20th, the entire British force would have been captured or destroyed.
General Joubert remained at Dannhauser on the 19th and 20th.
Lukas Meyer, with burghers from eight commandoes, namely, Utrecht, Vryheid, Ermelo, Wakkerstroom, Piet Retief, Krugersdorp, Middelburg, and Bethel, numbering 2,500 men, marched from Doornberg during the night of Thursday, the 19th. The weather was wet and cold, but the long night's ride of twenty miles was successfully performed. The march was continued in silence, and the north side of Talana Hill was reached about two in the morning of Friday. Dividing his force into three divisions, Meyer disposed them as follows: The right was to hold the northern end of the valley running in between Impati and Talana. The center was to occupy the hilltop, and the left was extended to a circular kopje behind the coal mines to the south, and was to prevent an outflanking movement by way of the neck where the railway line crossed from the coal mines in the direction of Landman's Drift on the Buffalo River. The four guns were hauled up the side of Talana by willing hands, and were placed near the crest immediately overlooking Dundee;" Captain Pretorius being in charge of the small battery, which consisted of one Krupp quick-firer, two fifteen-pound Creusots, and one pom-pom.
Anxious eyes looked to the west across the valley to Impati heights as the sun began to roll up the morning mists from hill and plain. Nothing, however, was visible except the bold outline, of the unoccupied hill against the dark gray sky. There was no sign of Erasmus! Away right in front lay Dundee, a tempting target on the plain right under the hill, while the white tents of Penn Symons' army dotted the veldt about a mile beyond the town; whether reachable by the yet untested French fifteen-pounder remained an unsolved problem for the dark, flashing eye of Pretorius.
The light was growing, five o'clock arrived, but still no sight of the Pretoria column. Suddenly the sharp crack of a Mauser was heard on the right, and some British outposts were seen hurriedly retiring in the direction of Dundee. The enemy had discovered the Boers who were holding the valley, and the battle could no longer be delayed.
Pretorius trained his Creusots on the British camp, and sent his first pair of shells over the town, right into the center of the enemy's position, some three miles away. The response to this " top of the morning " salute from Talana Hill was instant. The English guns belched forth their reply, and soon the side of the hill was being pounded by the British artillery.
It was found, after nearly two hours' firing, that Penn Symons' guns failed to reach the Boer center on Talana. His batteries were, therefore, moved into new positions, nearer to the hill; a change of plan on the part of the English general which would have been all but impossible had Erasmus, with Trichardt's battery, occupied the Impati heights, to the British left, as arranged.
It was a daring move, but the overwhelming force by which the guns were protected on the one hand, and the fewness of General Meyer's guns on the other, encouraged the operation. The fire of the enemy's batteries from their new and nearer position began to tell upon the Boer lines on the head of the hill, and necessitated a withdrawal of their artillery further back from the crest of the mountain. The British fire was, however, generally ineffective; a great number of the shells going fifty feet above the heads of the burghers. Captain Pretorius handled his little battery with admirable coolness, and developed a much greater accuracy of aim than did his British adversaries below.
It was soon seen from the hilltop what General Penn Symons' plan of operations was to be. Under cover of his numerous guns, be sent out three attacking columns; two composed of cavalry and mounted infantry, with guns, to turn the flanks of the Boers to the right and left of Meyer's position on Talana; one to sweep in south of the circular kopje, near the coal mine; the other to rush the valley, to Meyer's right, between Talana and Impati; while the third, composed of the Dublin Fusiliers, Royal Rifles, and Royal Irish Fusiliers, was to work up the slope of Talana, facing Dundee, under the shelter of Smith's plantation and a loose stone wall which crossed diagonally the face of the hill from the east to the north. This main attack on Meyer's center was to be covered by the play of the enemy's guns from the new position in front of Dundee.
There was practically a simultaneous move forward by the three attacking columns, and, as they cleared from the shelter of their camp and the town, and came out on the open to the south, east, and north of Dundee, the Boer guns played upon them with deadly effect, while several hundred of the Utrecht and Middelburg commandoes on the west of Talana moved down the hill, under cover of the wall and plantation, and poured a searching rifle fire into the center attacking column. This body of troops suffered severely by this counter attack, and already the grass on Smith's fields, over which the Irish Fusiliers were moving, was being dyed with blood. The British raced for the shelter of the trees, into which cover Pretorius now sent his pom-pom shells with unerring aim.
It was at this critical stage in the combat that the English general entered the zone of fire, and ultimately received his death wound. He had marked the advance of the Fusiliers and Royals across the spruit and into the plantation, where they remained. He saw also the steady fire from Talana into the trees, and it looked as if the column were about to be hurled back, despite the incessant play of his batteries upon the Boer position. He then rode rapidly across the open space at the base of the hill, and entered the plantation. He left his horse, and, addressing the Fusiliers and Royals, urged them to charge the hill. Encouraged by this example and appeal, the men went forward again and gained the shelter of the upper wall of loose stones which, starting from the top end of the plantation, wont round slantingly towards the north, or right, of the Boer center on Talana. To make this advance in face of a galling fire, I have been assured by Boer officers that the British officers, revolver in hand, had frequently to threaten their men unless they moved upward. Officers in every instance had to lead the way, and this accounts for the extraordinary proportion of men of rank who fell in the fight. Boers who fought in the commandoes which defended Meyer's center have related that 8 several British officers were shot down from behind while pointing their weapons towards their own men in order to induce them to advance.
The Boers contested every yard of the ground, firing from behind any cover which presented itself, and making gaps in the ranks of the climbing Fusiliers. At one point, a little to the north of the end of the plantation, where the stone wall approached a hollow in the side of the hill, a body of burghers lay waiting. On the British approaching within a hundred yards of the place a deadly volley was poured into them, which sent those of them who survived down the hill again towards the shelter of the wood. It was at this juncture in the fortunes of the advancing British column that the English gunners missed their mark most disastrously, as has happened with the British artillery at almost every subsequent big engagement. They were signaled to from below the plantation to fire on the cleft in the face of the hill, where the Boers lay concealed. At that very moment the fire from these burghers was compelling the advancing Tommies to race back for the protection of the trees, and, just as they were doubling down the side of the hill, shells from their own batteries fell among them, killing eight men and wounding more.
It was a few minutes before this British artillery blunder that General Penn Symons received a mortal wound in the stomach from a rifle bullet. He was returning from the cover of Smith's wood to the foot of the hill to rejoin his staff when he was shot, and had to be taken into Smith's farmhouse. The injury to their general was unknown to most of the troops in front or to those of the right and left columns, until after the fight had finished.
In the meantime Penn Symons' right column went round by the coal mine and engaged a small Boer force which had been placed on the round kopje to protect the left flank of Meyer's central position. A body of these Boers came down from the hill and engaged the British troops. They were soon outflanked, and had to retire on the neck connecting the kopje with Talana, leaving seventeen prisoners in the hands of the English and suffering the loss of six killed. They had checked, however, the movement which was intended to turn Meyer's left flank.
The column which had been sent forward to turn the Boer right met with a repulse. The Wakkerstroom commando was guarding this position vigilantly as a fog commenced to descend upon the battle-field. They awaited the approach of the Hussars and Fusiliers, fired into them at 500 yards, and then charged them at the east extremity of the valley, capturing a Maxim, and compelling them to retreat. The men who charged numbered only twenty-five, but the fog concealed the smallness of the force from the British, while the volleys of supporting Mauser fire from the higher ground behind completed the discomfiture of the English column and drove them into the fog.
It was this eolumn, thus driven back, that did not return to Dundee. They wandered in the mist, which now commenced to fall rapidly on the field of battle, and found themselves on the north side of Impati Hill that evening, where they fell in with some men of Trichardt's commando and of Blake's Irish Brigade, who were in search of the battle-field, and were driven by them into a cattle kraal, fought, and captured.
The artillery ammunition failing, and the non-arrival of Erasmus, caused General Meyer to give orders to retire to his base. The 900 men of his center, who had borne the brunt of the fight for seven hours, fell back, with guns and equipment intact, without confusion, before a single British soldier had reached the crest of Talana. a thick fog had fallen over the battle-field, which shut completely out from view the enemy's movements below the hill.
It was for these three reasons that the Boer general retired behind the Buffalo River. He was to learn on the morrow that he had, in reality, won a victory without knowing it.
Captain Nugent, with two bullets in his body, was the first Britisher to gain the top of the hill. There was not a single Boer in sight when the Fusiliers had worked their way round to the crest by the shelter of the loose stone 'wall. No Englishman had reached the hilltop while a single Boer remained upon it. There was, therefore, no " brilliant charge " such as has been described in the British press; no performance like that which the imagination of the English war correspondents had alone witnessed; no vaunted application of " cold steel" to which the spirit of boastful invention had given the credit of finally deciding the bloody issue of the day on the summit of the mountain.
The fortunes of the fight are to be determined, not by the statements of correspondents, but by the results of the battle. Captain Nugent was a prisoner in the hands of the Boers within forty-eight hours, as were 250 more of his wounded companions; including the general who had inspired the attack on the hill by his courage and exhortation.
Down from the top to the bottom of the mountain British dead and wounded lay, almost at every yard, showing how dearly the Fusiliers and Royal Rifles had paid for their fruitless climbing of the fiercely-contested hillside. In and around Piet Smith's farmstead, over fifty British killed were found, and in a quiet corner of the small plantation, under the shade of the rocking trees, in the branches of which the doves were telling their tales of love, I have seen the graves of these men, side by side with some of the Boers who had killed them in battle—in a battle fought by the unfortunate " Tommies " for the capitalists and schemers of London and Johannesburg.
The number of Boer killed and wounded was accurately accounted for when Erasmus entered Dundee on the Monday following the battle of Talana. The list, according to each commando engaged, was compiled and published as follows:
Commando Wounded Killed
Utrecht…………32 ............13
Middelburg....15............ 9
Wakkerstroom 12........... 9
Piet Retief..... 12.......... 5
Staats Artillery .11..........-
Bethel............ 3.......... 4
Krugersdorp...... 3......... 2
Vryheid ...........2......... 1
Outside........... 1......... 1
....................91......... 44
Adding to these numbers the 17 burghers who were taken prisoner in the encounter near the coal mine, but were subsequently abandoned on the retreat from Dundee, the total Boer casualties in the fight on the 20th amounted to 152 men.
On the British side there was a total loss of CO killed—including General Penn Symons—and 253 wounded. To this list of casualties must be added the 243 Dublin Fusiliers and Hussars who surrendered to Colonel Trichardt after having retreated from the fight with the Wakkerstroom burghers on the extreme right of the Boer central position. Altogether the British casualties reached the total of 556; or more than three times the number on the Boer side.
The forces engaged on both sides, with their relative equipment of artillery, are also a most material factor in deciding to which army the real fruits of victory belonged. The Boer general had a total of 2,500 men under his command, tho it is claimed by Meyer that only 1,700 of these came into action. This claim, however, ignores the services rendered by the commandoes which watched over the right and left wings of his fighting line, protected the horses at the back of Talana, and otherwise rendered indirect and essential aid.
Lukas Meyer had only four guns, but admittedly his fifteen-pounder Creusots and the pom-pom were far more effective in their fire than the whole of Penn Symons' batteries.
On the English side, there were 6,000 men, with 18 guns. The advantages for the British, therefore, were: in men, two to one; and in guns, over four to one.
Against this superiority in strength and equipment, there was the apparent advantage of the Boer position on Talana Hill. This position, however, ought to have been easily turnable by a numerically stronger force from the two vulnerable points to Meyer's left and right, as there were no entrenchments to defend the hill on either its top or sides. Talana was occupied by Lukas Meyer as part of a plan of attack which, if it had been carried out as arranged, would have completely safeguarded his right while menacing with a counter envelopment the left of Penn Symons' camp and position, and the barring of the enemy's only way of retreat to Ladysmith. The failure of Erasmus to appear on Impati exposed Meyer to a defeat which was only averted by the splendid fighting qualities which his small force displayed in a first encounter with an antagonist greatly superior in men and artillery.
The one convincing and conclusive fact, however, which determines the question of which side really won the battle of Talana, is the retreat of the British army from Dundee within thirty hours after the fight; leaving the dead unburied, their wounded general, and 240 wounded officers and men, 240 prisoners, with the entire camp, an enormous quantity of ammunition, and immense stores of provision, in the hands of the Boers.
The fierceness of the Boer attack upon a British army, and the deadly hail of infantry fire by which it was sustained, were a revelation to the English general and his officers. They had not reckoned upon any such development of Boer fighting qualities from a Republic which Dr. Jameson and a handful of raiders believed five years ago could be overturned in a dash upon Johannesburg or Pretoria. The dead and the wounded on the sides of Talana Hill, the Maxim fire which had never before rained its showers of lead upon British troops, were a rude awakening to those who planned Dundee as a garrison from which North Natal could be defended against the Transvaal until overwhelming numbers should arrive and clear a way to Pretoria. And this was not all which the battle of Talana Hill made clear to English officers. It taught the British a more alarming lesson still; namely, the great inferiority of the drilled English soldiers as compared, man for man, with the undisciplined burghers. They found on the morrow of the encounter on Talana that Tommy Atkins, Kiplingized into an invincible warrior for his exploits against savage foes armed with spears, was no match for the first white foeman he has met in combat in this generation. They saw him retreating from a field on which 6,000 of England's best men had been attacked by a force of 2,500 untrained farmers; leaving his dead unburied, his wounded to the mercies of his foe, his provisions and ammunition to the adverse fortune of a pronounced defeat. It was a disastrous experience for British arms, that refusal to fight again on the day after the alleged "brilliant victory" at Dundee, that three days'and three nights' continuous flight through the passes of the Biggarsberg, in drenching rain and benumbing cold, in preference to holding a selected British battle-field against the Mausers and Maxims of the despised Boers. It was the Boer, and not the Briton, who remained the actual victor at the battle of Talana Hill.
There are many stories of Boer bravery related of this battle. General Meyer has honorably mentioned one which is to the credit of the Wakkerstroom burghers: 25 of these charged the 250 of the Dublin Fusiliers and Hussars, who fled from the encounter, leaving a Maxim gun behind them, and ultimately surrendered at Marais' Farm to 300 of their foes.
A lad named Scheepers, 18 years old, fought with his father, who was mortally wounded in the attack on the Boer right by this English column. The lad was guarding his dying father when the English rode up and made him prisoner. He asked to be allowed to remain, but was refused. Soon after, however, the Wakkerstroomers swept down upon the English, drove them into the fog, and released the boy, who hastened back to where his father lay, now dead. Several boys under 16 took part in this battle.
Lieutenant Mike Du Toit, of the Staats Artillery, was severely wounded early in the fight. He was unable to stand, but refused to be removed from the field. He remained alongside of his pompom, and continued to give orders to the gunners, on receiving from them the results of their observations of the enemy's batteries and doings.
I heard a pathetic incident of the battle related when visiting the scene of the conflict in May, 1900. Three days after the fight, a number of British were found dead in Piet Smith's cow shed. They had either crept in there severely wounded, or had been carried there as dead, and left by their comrades. On the place being entered by Boers on the Monday after the battle, a collie dog was found faithfully watching the lifeless body of its owner. It had evidently been there for the three days, giving in its beautiful loyalty a sad instance of how much nobler some instincts of dumb animals are to the vaunted superior virtues of their masters.
