The Battle of Elandslaagte
Battle: Elandslaagte.
War: The Boer War.
Date: 21st October 1899
Place: Northern Natal in South Africa.
Combatants: British against the Boers.
Generals: Major General French and Brigadier Ian Hamilton
against Commandant Kock
Size of the armies: 2,500 British with 18 guns against
1,000 Boers of the Johannesburg Commando with 3 guns..
Uniforms, arms and equipment: The Boer War was a serious
jolt for the British Army. At the outbreak of the war British
tactics were appropriate for the use of single shot firearms, fired
in volleys controlled by company and battalion officers; the troops
fighting in close order. The need for tight formations had been
emphasised time and again in colonial fighting. In the Zulu and
Sudan Wars overwhelming enemy numbers armed principally with
stabbing weapons were easily kept at a distance by such tactics;
but, as at Isandlwana, would overrun a loosely formed force. These
tactics had to be entirely rethought in battle against the Boers
armed with modern weapons.
In the months before hostilities the Boer commandant general,
General Joubert, bought 30,000 Mauser magazine rifles and a number
of modern field guns and automatic weapons from the German armaments
manufacturer Krupp and the French firm Creusot. The commandoes,
without formal discipline, welded into a fighting force through a
strong sense of community and dislike for the British. Field Cornets
led burghers by personal influence not through any military code.
The Boers did not adopt military formation in battle, instinctively
fighting from whatever cover there might be. The preponderance were
countrymen, running their farms from the back of a pony with a rifle
in one hand. These rural Boers brought a life time of marksmanship
to the war, an important edge, further exploited by Joubert’s
consignment of magazine rifles. Viljoen is said to have coined the
aphorism “Through God and the Mauser”. With strong fieldcraft skills
and high mobility the Boers were natural mounted infantry. The urban
burghers and foreign volunteers readily adopted the fighting methods
of the rest of the army.
Other than in the regular uniformed Staats Artillery and police
units, the Boers wore their every day civilian clothes on campaign.
After the first month the Boers lost their numerical superiority,
spending the rest of the formal war on the defensive against British
forces that regularly outnumbered them.
British tactics, little changed from the Crimea, used at Modder
River, Magersfontein, Colenso and Spion Kop were incapable of
winning battles against entrenched troops armed with modern magazine
rifles. Every British commander made the same mistake; Buller;
Methuen, Roberts and Kitchener. When General Kelly-Kenny attempted
to winkle Cronje’s commandoes out of their riverside entrenchments
at Paardeburg using his artillery, Kitchener intervened and insisted
on a battle of infantry assaults; with the same disastrous
consequences as Colenso, Modder River, Magersfontein and Spion Kop.
Some of the most successful British troops were the non-regular
regiments; the City Imperial Volunteers, the South Africans,
Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, who more easily broke
from the habit of traditional European warfare, using their horses
for transport rather than the charge, advancing by fire and
manoeuvre in loose formations and making use of cover, rather than
the formal advance into a storm of Mauser bullets.
Uniform: The British regiments made an uncertain change into
khaki uniforms in the years preceding the Boer War, with the topee
helmet as tropical headgear. Highland regiments in Natal devised
aprons to conceal coloured kilts and sporrans. By the end of the war
the uniform of choice was a slouch hat, drab tunic and trousers; the
danger of shiny buttons and too ostentatious emblems of rank
emphasised in several engagements with disproportionately high
officer casualties.
The British infantry were armed with the Lee Metford magazine
rifle firing 10 rounds. But no training regime had been established
to take advantage of the accuracy and speed of fire of the weapon.
Personal skills such as scouting and field craft were little taught.
The idea of fire and movement was unknown, many regiments still
going into action in close order. Notoriously General Hart insisted
that his Irish Brigade fight shoulder to shoulder as if on parade in
Aldershot. Short of regular troops, Britain engaged volunteer forces
from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who brought new
ideas and more imaginative formations to the battlefield.
The British regular troops lacked imagination and resource.
Routine procedures such as effective scouting and camp protection
were often neglected. The war was littered with incidents in which
British contingents became lost or were ambushed often unnecessarily
and forced to surrender. The war was followed by a complete
re-organisation of the British Army.
The British artillery was a powerful force in the field,
underused by commanders with little training in the use of modern
guns in battle. Pakenham cites Pieters as being the battle at which
a British commander, surprisingly Buller, developed a modern form of
battlefield tactics: heavy artillery bombardments co-ordinated to
permit the infantry to advance under their protection. It was the
only occasion that Buller showed any real generalship and the short
inspiration quickly died.
The Royal Field Artillery fought with 15 pounder guns; the Royal
Horse Artillery with 12 pounders and the Royal Garrison Artillery
batteries with 5 inch howitzers. The Royal Navy provided heavy field
artillery with a number of 4.7 inch naval guns mounted on field
carriages devised by Captain Percy Scott of HMS Terrible.
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