Battle of Spion Kop

Background

The Second Boer War opened in October 1899 with Boer columns striking into Natal. By early November about 13,500 British troops and 7,500 civilians were shut up in Ladysmith, held in by Boer trench lines that rarely had more than 5,000 men in them. General Sir Redvers Buller, sent out as commander-in-chief, took personal charge of the relief and on 15 December was beaten at Colenso trying to force the Tugela head-on. The initiative passed back to the Boers, and Buller went so far as to suggest that Sir George White consider surrendering the town.

Reinforced by Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Warren's 5th Division, Buller tried again upstream. Warren was to cross at Trichardt's Drift and swing round the Boer right while Major-General Neville Lyttelton made a diversion at Potgieter's Drift. The crossing, from 17 January, went well. Then Warren moved slowly, weighed down by baggage, and wasted two days on an aimless march to the left and back. Doyle records the assurance of Botha's chief of staff that a vigorous turning movement at that point would have outflanked the Boer line. Instead the Boers dug a new line along the Tabanyama (Rangeworthy) heights, Dundonald's mounted troops were recalled from the open Boer flank, and Clery's attacks on the ridge made no progress.

Spion Kop, the highest hill in the area, stood near the centre of the Boer line and formed the salient angle of the position. The British reasoned that guns on its summit would command the Boer trenches on either side and open the road to Ladysmith. On 23 January Buller rode forward and told Warren to attack. Spion Kop was to be taken that night.

The armies

Buller had roughly 20,000–24,000 men on the Tugela, and Warren's turning force alone had some 11,000 infantry, 2,200 mounted men and 36 field guns. The night column was, in Doyle's phrase, 'a North of England job': eight companies of the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers, six of the 2nd Royal Lancasters and two of the 1st South Lancashires from Major-General Edward Woodgate's Lancashire brigade, with Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry and half a company of Royal Engineers. Thorneycroft's was a colonial unit raised in Natal, and the sappers had only 20 picks and 20 shovels. Later reinforcements came from Coke's brigade (Middlesex, Dorsets, Somersets), the Imperial Light Infantry, a raw corps of Rand refugees, and Lyttelton's Scottish Rifles and 3rd King's Royal Rifle Corps. The British guns, 15-pounder field batteries, the 61st Howitzer Battery and naval 4.7-inch and 12-pounder guns on Mount Alice, stayed on the plain. Only the 61st had an observation team.

Louis Botha commanded on the Upper Tugela, with Schalk Burger and Hendrik Prinsloo of the Carolina commando among his subordinates. Barnard puts the Boers on the whole Tugela front at about 4,000 in mid-January; other accounts give 8,000. Botha said his men on the hill itself never exceeded 350. Their Mauser riflemen were backed by Major Jan Wolmarans's Staatsartillerie: 75 mm Krupp and Creusot quick-firers and 37 mm Maxim-Nordenfelt pom-poms, hidden behind Tabanyama and the Twin Peaks. Barnard and Doyle count five guns and two pom-poms firing on the summit.

The battle

The night climb (23–24 January). Woodgate's column left its rendezvous at about 8.30 pm and began to climb at about 11 pm. The men went up in single file by a winding, ill-defined path, some 2,000 feet in fine rain under low cloud, with rifles unloaded and bayonets fixed. Around 3 am the leading files found themselves on level ground. A challenge of 'Wie da?' came out of the dark, then shots, and the Fusiliers charged. The Boer piquet, about 50 Vryheid burghers and German volunteers, fled, and a British cheer woke both armies.

The trench in the fog. At about 4 am the sappers marked out a trench in thick mist. Rock lay close beneath the surface, and the trench was nowhere more than about 40 cm deep. It was also in the wrong place. It ran along the topographical crest, while the military crest lay 150–200 m farther forward, leaving dead ground in front of it. The British held only half of the summit plateau, which in places was little more than 100 yards wide.

The Boer counter-attack (morning, 24 January). Botha reacted at once. Prinsloo led about 65 Carolina men, later 84, up the north-eastern slopes, and they were below the summit shortly after 7 am. Pretoria burghers under Opperman arrived about 9.30, followed by men from Krugersdorp, Ermelo, Standerton, Heidelberg and elsewhere. When the fog lifted at about 8–8.30 the British found themselves in a salient. Rifle fire came in from Aloe Knoll, Conical Hill and Green Hill, and shells from guns that the British batteries below could not find. A Boer heliograph on Aloe Knoll passed Botha's corrections back to the guns, and Gillings thinks this may have been the first use of indirect artillery fire. At about 8.30 Woodgate was mortally wounded, and Colonel Crofton signalled: 'Reinforce at once or all is lost. General dead.'

Midday on the summit. At 11.40 Buller suggested putting Thorneycroft in command on the summit. Warren agreed and made him a temporary brigadier-general. At about 1 pm some Lancashire Fusiliers in the forward trench began to surrender. Thorneycroft strode out and refused to allow it, but about 170 men were taken off as prisoners. Coke's reinforcements, the Middlesex and the Imperial Light Infantry first and later the Scottish Rifles, crowded onto a plateau with no room to extend. Watchers below counted shells landing at seven a minute. At 2.30 pm Thorneycroft reported his men exhausted and without water. Coke never reached the top.

The Twin Peaks (afternoon). Without Buller's approval, Lyttelton sent the 3rd King's Royal Rifle Corps up the Twin Peaks, east of Spion Kop. They took the double summit at about 5 pm, losing nearly 100 men. Their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Buchanan Riddell, was shot dead as he stood to read Lyttelton's order recalling them, and they came down after dark. The loss of the peaks shook Burger, who pulled his commando back.

Night: both sides break. At 9 pm Warren ordered up fresh troops and heavy guns and sent sappers to cut a path for them, but he never told Thorneycroft directly, and he recalled Coke to headquarters. Thorneycroft had no guns, no water and no word of help coming. 'Better six battalions safely down the hill than a mop up in the morning,' he said, and by about 10 pm the summit held only the dead and wounded. The sappers met the retreating infantry on the path. On the Boer side many men were also leaving. Around midnight Botha and Prinsloo rode into the Carolina laager and talked the burghers back to the hill. At dawn on 25 January Boer scouts found the summit abandoned, and two burghers stood on it waving their hats.

Aftermath

British losses are usually given as 243 killed and about 1,250 wounded or captured, roughly 1,500 in all. Shellfire made the proportion of dead unusually high. The Lancashire Fusiliers suffered worst, and the Imperial Light Infantry lost 130 men in their first action. Many of the dead were buried where they lay in the shallow trench. Boer losses on the day were about 200, and the 335 often quoted may cover the wider operations. Prinsloo's Carolina commando lost more than 50 of its 84 men.

Buller recrossed the Tugela unmolested by 27 January, having lost nearly 2,000 men since crossing it, and finally broke through to Ladysmith on 28 February. The argument over blame began at once. The official despatches, when published, showed that Buller had lost confidence in Warren and admitted he should have taken command himself on 19 January. Pakenham's verdict is that Warren's worst failure was not telling Thorneycroft that help was on the way. Doyle asked why so momentous a decision was left to a man who had been a lieutenant-colonel that morning.

Spion Kop gave its name to the 'Kop' terraces at English football grounds, Anfield's the most famous. Two later-famous men were nearby. Winston Churchill, a correspondent commissioned in the South African Light Horse, carried messages to the hill and later argued that guns could have been got up it. Mohandas Gandhi's Indian ambulance corps carried wounded to Spearman's, though no evidence places Gandhi himself on the summit.

Wargaming it

Spion Kop is a small battlefield with high stakes. The summit plateau is a few hundred yards across and packed with infantry, ringed by Boer positions on Aloe Knoll, Conical Hill, Green Hill and the Twin Peaks, with the Boer guns out of sight beyond. A skirmish or company-level game works well for the summit fight, with each base or figure standing for a section of 10–20 men. A battalion-level game at a smaller ground scale can take in Spion Kop and the Twin Peaks together.

The game needs a few special rules. Fog should limit sight until about 8.30. The British should have to dig blind, so that their trench may end up on the wrong crest. Boer artillery should fire indirectly from off the table, spotted by a heliograph observer, while the British gunners below fire nearly blind. Track water and ammunition, test morale in the forward trench for surrender, and slow the British command with signal delays, since Thorneycroft never knew help was coming.

The decisions are good ones. Does Woodgate push on to the military crest before the fog lifts? Do the British get mountain guns up the path? Does Lyttelton hold the Twin Peaks? For the Boers, Botha can feed more men onto the crowded summit or, as he actually did, hold Green Hill and let the guns work. The best finish is a hidden night phase in which each side secretly decides whether to stay. Whoever still holds the summit at dawn wins.

Maps and pictures