The Battle of Magersfontein
War: The Boer War. Date: 11th December 1899.
Place: 6 miles north east of the Modder River in the North
West of Cape Colony, South Africa. Combatants: British
against the Boers. Generals: Major General Lord Methuen and
General De la Rey.
Size of the armies: 8,000 British against 9,000 Boers.
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 manouevre 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. Automatic weapons were used by the British usually
mounted on special carriages accompanying the cavalry. |
