When the Boer War began on October 12, 1899, Australia was still a collection of separate British colonies with a total population of less than 4 million on a land mass nearly as large as the United States. When each colony immediately offered troops for the war, the War Office in London didn’t want unskilled, probably unreliable colonial volunteers. But the British government, facing criticism of its policies and actions in southern Africa from America and most European countries, chose to regard the offers from the Australian colonies as a mark of Empire solidarity, overrode the War Office and accepted the offers. Shiploads of soldiers and horses set sail from Australia for the Cape of Good Hope.

The first contingents arrived in South Africa in November 1899; they continued arriving throughout the war until more than 16,000 soldiers had been transported to the Cape. They were not regular soldiers, though; they were militia, part-tithe soldiers with anything from 36 to 80 of hours training or drill a year, depending on the colony they came from.

They arrived in small units, since the British government stipulated that the units should consist of about 125 then, with no more than a single captain and three subalterns to each one. If more than one unit carne from a single colonial force, these could be commanded by a major. The Aussies came under such names as the New South Wales Lancers, New South Wales Mounted Rifles, Queensland Mounted Infantry, Queensland Bushmen, South Australian Mounted Rifles, South Australian Imperial Bushmen, Victorian Bushmen, Western Australian Mounted Infantry, Tasmanian Bushmen, and Australian Commonwealth Horse. Ill-trained as soldiers, they would probably not have lasted very long in a conventional war against regular, disciplined troops.

The Boers, however, were fighting an unconventional war, one to which the Australians adapted easily and in which they were able to make a contribution quite out of proportion to their numbers. Like the colonial-steeped Boers themselves, the Australians were mostly countrymen, used to the bush, to living rough and living off the land when necessary, able to find their way day or night in any kind of country, and familiar with horses and guns from an early age.

Other volunteers for the war came from among Australians living and working in southern Africa. Some joined units such as the South African Constabulary, whose Australian James Rogers was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery. Others joined irregular units such as that formed by the Australian Walter D. ‘Karri’ Davis, the Imperial Light Horse of South Africa. All units, wherever they came from, were dispersed among British units, under British command.

The war began badly for the British. Before the war was a month old, Boer General Pieter A. ‘Piet’ Cronjé had led a large force of horsemen out of the Transvaal and laid siege to Mafeking; Orange Free State forces had laid siege to diamondrich Kimberley; and General Petrus Jacobus ‘Piet’ Joubert and his 15,000 horsemen had defeated General Sir George White’s Natal Defence Force at Laing’s Nek, defeated him again a week later at Talana Hill, and by November 2 had laid siege to Ladysmith. And then came ‘Black Week,’ when between December 10 and 17 the Boers defeated the British at Magersfontein, where the British suffered 1,000 casualties; at Stormberg, where they lost 100 casualties and 600 prisoners; and at Colenso, where General Buller’s force took 1,200 casualties in an unsuccessful attempt to relieve Ladysmith. Buller–General Sir Redvers Buller–was commander in chief of all forces, but now the British government decided he had to go.

On the first day of January 1900, meanwhile, 200 Australians of the Queensland Mounted Infantry, with a supporting group of Canadians and British, mounted an attack on a Boer camp on Sunnyside Kopje, one of the low hills near the Vaal River west of Kimberley. While the Canadians and British held the Boers’ attention with a frontal attack, the Queenslanders moved in from the flank, using cover as they moved from ridge to ridge, until they were in position to launch a surprise attack on the Boers. The Boers retreated, leaving 30 dead and 41 prisoners and a large supply of food and weapons. The Queenslander casualties were two dead and two wounded. In another action, on January 16 at Slingersfontein, a Boer commando (group) of 400 attacked a small hill where 20 men of the Western Australian Mounted Infantry were positioned. The Australians, constantly moving in the scrub and rocks, beat off attack after attack from sunrise to sunset, at which time the Boers finally withdrew. These small successes were given much publicity, drawing attention to the unorthodox fighting tactics of the colonial horsemen.

General Buller’s replacement arrived in mid-January 1900. He was Field Marshal Lord Frederick Sleigh Roberts, 1st Baron of Kandahar. He brought with him General Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener as his chief of staff.

Roberts realized immediately that this was no conventional war and that vast changes would have to be made if he was to defeat the Boers. A much more mobile army was needed, and different tactics. The Australian horse soldiers already were working successfully against the Boers, an example of what was needed. Roberts began putting every man he could on horseback and concentrating his forces at Enslin near the Modder River for an invasion of the Orange Free State.

Meanwhile, General Buller was still in the field. Disobeying his commander in chief’s order to stay put, he crossed the Tugela River into Natal–and there he was badly beaten by the Boers at Spion Kop and at Vaal Kranz. He blundered deeper into Natal.

While concentrating his own forces at Enslin, Roberts sent Maj. Gen. John French in a wide, flanking move toward Kimberley, as if intending to relieve the diamond town. French’s forces, in addition to British cavalry regiments such as the Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Scots Greys, included the New South Wales Lancers, Queensland Mounted Infantry and New South Wales Mounted Rifles. Then Roberts himself moved with massive force across the Moddertaking with him 30,000 infantry, 7,500 cavalry, 3,600 mounted infantry and 120 guns, and a transport unit of 4,000 drivers, 11,000 mules and 9,600 oxen.

He sent Lord Methuen’s 1st Division along the rail line leading to Kimberley to convince Boer General Piet Cronjé that this was the main assault and that he should hold his forces at Magersfontein to oppose it. With Cronjé taking the bait, Roberts ordered General French’s British and Australian horsemen to avoid Magersfontein and spearhead the drive on Kimberley.

French drove hard for the Modder River, where a large Boer force was in position. On one of that summer’s hottest days French’s cavalrymen and mounted infantry raced nonstop for the Modder. It was so hot, horses pulling the guns died in their traces. The cavalrymen and infantrymen trotted alongside their horses to give them some relief, with dead and dying horses littering the back trail. Even 21 of the men died on the march. But the Boers were completely surprised and hastily retreated, leaving their supply wagons behind.

Roberts’ forces caught up with French and they moved on toward Kimberley together. Cronjé, however, had moved 1,000 Boers, with field guns, into positions in the hills overlooking the pass that led to Kimberley. The only alternative for the British was a long march around the hills, a march inviting harassment and attacks by Boer horsemen and fire from the guns in the hills. Roberts sent French and his British and Australian horsemen into the pass.

Lances down, sabers swinging, mounted infantry shooting from the saddle, they charged so fast the Boer gunners could not alter range quickly enough to keep up with them. The Boer riflemen also were beaten by the speed of the charge and the clouds of dust kicked up by the horses’ hoofs. Reinforcements followed the charge, and the Boers slipped away. The horsemen rode on into Kimberley, raising a siege that had lasted 124 days.

Next day French could find only 2,000 horses that could possibly be ridden. Mounting some of his cavalrymen and his Australians, he set off after Cronjé, who was making for Bloemfontein. Hampered by the slowness of his supply wagons and the women and children in his column, Cronjé reached the Modder River at Paardeberg Drift, and there French, followed by some of Roberts’ force, caught up with him. The Boers dug in. General Christiaan de Wet and his commando arrived to help Cronjé, attacking and skirmishing around the British force. The Australians were sent out to contain them while the main force concentrated on Cronjé. He held out for eight days, then surrendered with 4,000 fighting men on February 27.

In Natal, General Buller had captured Hlangwane, a dominant height southeast of the Tugela River, and advanced on Ladysmith. The Boers waited for him at Pieter’s Hill. True to form, Buller sent in his troops in massed attack. They were saved by the Natal Carbineers and the Imperial Light Horse, each unit including Australian volunteers. Those rescuers broke through the Boer lines–but only after 1,900 of Buller’s troops were dead or wounded. Ladysmith was relieved on February 28, and Buller at last was sent back to England.

Advancing next on Bloemfontein, Roberts caught up with Boer commander Christiaan de Wet, who made a stand at Dreifontein Kopjes (the Hills of the Three Springs). The Ist Australian Horse dismounted and went into the assault, keeping low in the long grass and shooting as they moved while artillery fired over their heads. In the face of this implacable advance, the Boers took flight on their horses, although scene of their guns continued firing until the riders of the New South Wales Mounted Rifles and Queensland Mounted Infantry charged on horseback and silenced them. The Aussies then went after de Wet, but he disappeared in the dark hills.

Roberts’ army moved on to Bloemfontein, where the hills around the town were thick with Boer riflemen, machine-gunners and artillerymen, but when he began shelling their positions they faded away. The army stayed in Bloemfontein for six weeks. A quarter of the army was ineffective because of an epidemic of enteric fever, from which more than a thousand died. The horses were in such terrible condition that the soldiers shot them in batches of 100. Replacement horses arrived from Argentina, but they were mostly of poor quality–and wild. The Australian bushmen were given the job of breaking them, and dazzled the British with their expertise.

Out on the veldt, Boer commandos were still skirmishing and attacking. At Sannah’s Post, not far from Bloemfontein, three squadrons of British cavalry, two Royal Horse Artillery batteries and some infantry were guarding a large convoy of supplies when de Wet struck with 2,000 men and field guns. In a fast, savage fight, 19 British officers and 136 of their men were killed or wounded and 426 taken prisoner. Seven guns were lost and the whole of the convoy.

Roberts got his army moving again, 45,000 men, 11,000 horses, 120 guns and 2,500 wagons. Spearheading it was Maj. Gen. Ian Hamilton’s division, which included a brigade commanded by Maj. Gen. ‘Curly’ Hutton and mostly made up of colonials-New Zealanders, Canadians, and mounted infantry from all the Australian colonies. On May 5, the brigade came up against Boer positions at Coetzee’s Drift on the Vet River. The Boers, estimated at 1,000, occupied positions along the riverbank while artillery covered them from a hill behind.

The Royal Horse Artillery softened up both positions, then the New South Wales Mounted Rifles dismounted and went into the attack. Under heavy fire they pushed the Boers back from the river bank and, after another bombardment of the hill, joined Queenslanders and New Zealanders in clearing the hill. The division moved on.

Pages: 1 2