An armoured train: even the name was strange. It was the epitome of nineteenth-century progress clad in medieval armour, a train that resembled a latter-day knight errant. And though it looked impressive, as Churchill had told his readers in the Morning Post a few days earlier, ‘nothing is more vulnerable and helpless’. If just one bridge were blown up, it would all be over for the train and its occupants. Unable to proceed, the steel-plated monster would be at the mercy of the enemy. And the fate of the inferior specimen in which the expedition was now leaving Estcourt would be so much the worse. There was no roof to its trucks, no shutters to its loopholes, and no weapon apart from an antiquated naval gun. The soldiers called it ‘Wilson’s death trap’.
Churchill had no idea who Wilson was, but the nickname said it all. The two reporters sharing his tent had wisely decided to stay put when he woke them at five that morning. One of them—Leo Amery of The Times, an old school friend from Harrow, who also happened to be in Estcourt—said it was raining too hard. The other, John Atkins, who had travelled with Churchill from Cape Town, put it more bluntly. He was paid to report on the war, he replied from his bunk, not risk ending up in the hands of the enemy. Churchill took his point, but set off nevertheless. The evening before, he had given his word to Captain Aylmer Haldane, another acquaintance he had run into here. Haldane had helped him secure a post in the Malakand Field Force in India, which Churchill had written about with considerable success. This was a chance to return the favour. Moreover, as a war correspondent it was his job to gather as much news as he could. There was a third reason too, no worse than any other—‘I was eager for trouble’.
And trouble would certainly come, though it may not have seemed so at the start. All went well for the first few kilometres. At the head of the train was a truck carrying the naval gun, manned by four sailors. Behind it were two armoured carriages with Dublin Fusiliers, followed by the locomotive and the coal tender. Then came two more armoured carriages, with troops from the Durban Light Infantry and a team of mechanics, and at the rear a truck with tools and equipment. There were 120 men in total, all under Haldane’s command. Churchill stood beside his friend in the carriage with the Irish, and scanned the surroundings with his field glasses. At six thirty they pulled into Frere station, where a Natal Police patrol reported that no Boers had been spotted.
Should they continue to the next stop at Chieveley? It was higher up and would afford a better view. Haldane’s orders from Colonel Charles Long, the garrison commander in Estcourt, were to proceed as far as they could and try to reach Colenso. The green, hilly countryside looked peaceful. They decided to continue their journey.20
Reconnaissance expeditions by armoured train were a daily chore for the troops in Estcourt. The soldiers saw them as a form of discipline, the war correspondents thought them absurd, but Long stood his ground, even though a single mounted patrol could obtain more information than the lumbering, clattering colossus. He stuck to routine, as if to prove that he wasn’t going to change his ways on account of the Boers.
Churchill had already spent about ten days in Estcourt and was growing impatient. On his arrival he had been met with good news from London. His recent book, The River War, about Kitchener’s campaign in Sudan, had received good reviews, and this was a chance to consolidate his reputation. He had spread the word that he was offering a generous reward to anyone who would escort him through the Boer lines to Ladysmith. A couple of military guides had shown some interest, but nothing came of it. Their superiors thought it ridiculous for them ‘to lead a bloody war correspondent into Ladysmith’.
In the circumstances, any distraction was welcome. Churchill had been on similar missions before, once on horseback with the entire garrison and once in the same armoured train. On that occasion they had gone all the way to Colenso, edging their way at a snail’s pace on the last stretch of the journey. Five hundred metres from the town the commanding officer—not Haldane this time—had disembarked with a sergeant to inspect the area on foot. And of course Churchill had joined them. They found Colenso deserted. It was even smaller than Estcourt and had apparently been ‘ransacked and plundered by the Boers and the Kaffirs’. The streets were littered with people’s possessions and several houses had been burned down. A dead horse lay in the middle of the road, its stiff legs extended in the air. A straggler at the end of the street waved a white rag on a stick. ‘But no Dutchmen were to be seen.’ The rails had been torn up and broken telegraph wires trailed over the ground. The damage could be repaired, however, and the bridge over the Tugela was still intact. The Boers had apparently been meaning to use it themselves, Churchill concluded. The men spent only a short time in Colenso and returned at full speed, trying to identify what they saw on the way: ‘Black dots on the horizon?’ ‘Perhaps, but definitely not Boers. They’re still too far away.’
But that had been a week earlier. On Wednesday 15 November they knew there were Boers in the area. The question was, where? The train was approaching Chieveley, when Churchill spotted them. A hundred men on horseback were galloping towards them. They were now about a kilometre and a half from the tracks. At the station, Haldane had sent a telegram to Estcourt, saying they had arrived in Chieveley safely and that there were Boers in the vicinity. Long’s instructions came at once. They were to return to Frere and follow developments from there.
The engine driver was pleased, and the train set off in the direction from which it had come. The truck carrying Churchill, Haldane and the naval gun was now at the rear. Churchill climbed onto a box to gain a better vantage point. A few kilometres on, as they rounded a bend, they realised they had run into trouble. The Boers were waiting for them on a craggy ridge, 500 metres away. Out of the blue ‘three wheeled things’ appeared on the crest of the hill. A few blinding flashes, an eerie silence, and then all hell broke loose. A cloud of white smoke erupted overhead. Churchill leapt for cover. Hailstones hammered the metal plating. He had come under fire before, in Cuba. He had stood face to face with men wielding sabres at Tirah and Omdurman. But this was completely different. They were being pounded by rapid fire and shrapnel from hundreds of Mausers, a Maxim machine gun and two field guns. They had no option but to carry on. The driver gave steam.21
The Dublin Fusiliers had faced the Boers’ firepower before. They had achieved a hard-fought victory at Talana Hill, only to suffer a humiliating defeat on Mournful Monday. At Modderspruit on 30 October they had endured shellfire for hours, before retreating in disarray to Ladysmith. The Gordon Highlanders and the English regiments had fared no better, but that did little to soothe the Irish Fusiliers’ injured pride. The only consolation for the common soldiers was that the blame for the debacle would be borne by their bungling officers.
Lieutenant-General Sir George White was the main culprit. From the start his actions in northern Natal had been erratic. He kept vacillating between two extremes. First, there had been his reckless decision to ambush the Boers north of the Tugela and, later, after his first minor victories at Talana Hill and Elandslaagte, the fretful dithering and overhasty withdrawal of his troops to Ladysmith. There, he had recovered his composure and decided to stage a decisive confrontation. That’s what the textbooks said and that’s what he was intending to do.
For days he had been sending out reconnaissance patrols, even using an observation balloon, so he knew exactly where the Boer positions were. They were dispersed over a broad front on the hills north-east of Ladysmith, roughly in the form of a horseshoe. The main force, led by Joubert, was in the centre, on Pepworth Hill, and that was where White intended to concentrate his attack. The old advance-and-assault routine would be carried out by the infantry brigade, which had been successful under Ian Hamilton at Elandslaagte, with support from the artillery and cavalry. And this time, White himself would be in command. On the right flank Colonel Geoffrey Grimwood would lead a second brigade similar in kind. They would circle around Long Hill, drive out the Boers and attack Pepworth Hill from the south-east. And if the Boers tried to flee from the two-pronged attack, they could expect a nasty surprise. In the meantime, the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the Gloucestershire Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel F.R.C. Carleton, would be at Nicholson’s Nek to intercept the fleeing Boers.
The plan was insane, as most of his staff officers agreed. The Boers were still some distance away, they argued, hiding out in the hills. Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until they were closer to Ladysmith? But White was determined to deliver a knock-down blow. He had more men than Joubert—12,000 compared with his 7500—and three times as many guns—60 to Joubert’s 20. He was also keen on the idea of an ambush at Nicholson’s Nek, which one of his staff officers, Major W. Adye, had proposed. White took the final decision on Sunday 29 October, after the last reconnaissance. Monday was the moment of truth. On Sunday night the troops moved into position. At eleven o’clock Carleton led his column north, in the direction of Nicholson’s Nek. The two brigades set off shortly afterwards. Grimwood headed for Long Hill in the east, White and Hamilton made for Pepworth Hill in the north-east.
The Boers had no idea what was coming, but Joubert, cautious as ever, had had second thoughts about their forward position on Long Hill. On Sunday evening, after the British reconnaissance balloon had completed its mission, he ordered the Lydenburg Commando under General Schalk Burger to clear the hill and take positions on the opposite bank of the Modderspruit. At the same time, he was informed that 400 officers of the South African Mounted Police, known as Zarps, had arrived from Johannesburg. Joubert sent them to Nicholson’s Nek to reinforce the western flank of his ‘horseshoe’. A third stroke of luck was the arrival of the Long Tom, the heaviest-calibre gun in the Boers’ arsenal. It took 22 mules and hundreds of men to haul it up Pepworth Hill. But there it stood at last, installed on the base that Lieutenant-Colonel S.P.E. Trichardt of the State Artillery had prepared for it.
The advantages of these three circumstances became apparent on Monday morning. By daylight, around five o’clock, Grimwood discovered that his march through the night had brought him to an abandoned position. His men did come under fire, but not from Long Hill. It was the Long Tom bombarding them from Pepworth Hill. At the same time, they were being battered by heavy artillery and gunfire from the east and had to direct their efforts in that direction. Their strategy was in shreds. Instead of supporting the assault on Pepworth Hill, Grimwood himself needed assistance. White and Hamilton came to the rescue, but as a result both British brigades found themselves in different positions from those they had expected. Their carefully coordinated combat plan for artillery, infantry and cavalry had come apart at the seams. Each unit was left to improvise and fend for itself, and in this respect the British—both officers and men—were no match for their adversaries. At half past eleven White gave his men the order to retreat. They fled in disarray under pitiless fire from the advancing Boers. The battle at Modderspruit, the first major encounter between the two sides, ended in a crushing defeat for the British.
The disaster unfolding at Nicholson’s Nek at the same time only added to their humiliation. The troubles there had started earlier, at two o’clock in the morning. Carleton’s column, comprising 950 infantrymen and 150 artillerymen with mountain guns, was making slower progress than they had expected and had lost hope of reaching Nicholson’s Nek before sunrise. Carleton and Adye, who had joined the expedition to witness his plan in action, decided instead to take positions on Cayingubo Hill, nearby. But fate intervened. For one reason or another, pandemonium broke out. Some said it was caused by falling stones, others by the sound of gunshot; no one really knew. In any event, the mules carrying the munitions and mountain guns suddenly bolted and scrambled downhill in the dark. Scores of men were trampled underfoot; some were dragged along by the animals; many fled. It looked as if the mission had come to an end, but Carleton and Adye weren’t ready to give up. They restored order and assigned their remaining troops to the south side of Cayingubo Hill, to lie in wait for Boers on the retreat.
They didn’t have to wait long. The Boers soon appeared, but they weren’t retreating. Three of their units had heard the commotion on the hill. At daybreak, a division of the Pretoria Commando, led by Piet Zeederberg, opened fire from the south-east. Approaching from the opposite side, the northern slope of the Cayingubo—which wasn’t visible from the British position—were 300 Free Staters of the Heilbron Commando. For their acting commandant, Christiaan de Wet, this was a re-enactment of Majuba. He had been there, 18 years earlier, and the scenario was exactly the same. Yet again, the British had left one slope unguarded, allowing the Boers to advance, crawling through the tall grass and sheltering behind the outcrops of rock that covered the hill. Around eight o’clock, the Free Staters received reinforcements from the Zarps, led by Commandant G.M.J. van Dam. The British troops on the southern slope were surrounded.
The Boers were in no hurry. They continued to climb the hill at a leisurely pace, knowing that heat and fatigue would take their toll. At eleven o’clock the front units of the Gloucesters began to retreat. Half an hour later, Carleton saw flashes of light coming from a spot near the British headquarters. It was a heliogram from White, in Morse code. He was instructing them to ‘retire as opportunity offers’, but they didn’t stand a chance. They were hemmed in and their supply of ammunition was almost depleted. At a quarter past one, a few white flags appeared, and the Boers emerged from their shelters. Carleton and Adye surrendered. The remaining Gloucesters and Royal Irish Fusiliers—the 840 men who had not fled or been killed or wounded—were taken prisoner.
The British sustained far heavier casualties than the Boers at Nicholson’s Nek as well as Modderspruit. The two clashes together are known as the Battle of Ladysmith. All in all, on Monday 30 October, the Boers lost 16 dead and 75 wounded. The British losses amounted to 106 dead, 374 wounded, and 1284 captured.
But the outcome could have been far worse. If the commandant-general, Joubert, had listened to his younger officers, the British press might have had to think up an epithet even more dismal than Mournful Monday. Commanding officers like De Wet and Louis Botha—Botha had replaced the ailing Lukas Meyer at the eastern end of the Boer horseshoe—were eager to give chase to the British troops fleeing to Ladysmith. But Joubert wouldn’t allow it. His men were exhausted, he said, and he wouldn’t risk throwing away the victory. In any case, he felt it was ‘unchristian to pursue an enemy on the run’. De Wet could only watch from the heights as the plain filled with demoralised British soldiers. He gave vent to his frustration. As if Joubert were at his side, he hissed, ‘Go, your horsemen, go! Go, your horsemen.’22
Thus the Dublin Fusiliers at Modderspruit were spared the humiliation that befell the Royal Irish Fusiliers at Nicholson’s Nek. The wholesale surrender of British troops caused dismay in military circles and beyond, even more than the high toll in casualties. Churchill was outraged and expressed his views in the Morning Post. He wrote a personal letter to the adjutant-general, Sir Evelyn Wood—another old family friend—demanding that the officers responsible be punished.23
But five days later, on 15 November, it was Churchill himself who was under fire from the Boers. He was taking cover with the Dublin Fusiliers and Captain Haldane in an armoured train that was gathering speed as it hurtled downhill. Slow down, he thought to himself, convinced that the Boers would have blocked the line up ahead. He was just turning to Haldane to suggest that someone should warn the driver, when the train crashed. It came to an abrupt halt, as if it had hit a brick wall, hurling the men in all directions. After recovering from the shock, Churchill returned to his box. He had little time to inspect the damage to the front of the train. Bullets whistled past his ears and clattered like hailstones against the steel armour. He ducked down again and conferred with Haldane. None of the Dubliners or sailors were injured. If the gunners could return the Boer fire with their rifles and the naval gun, he would go out to investigate. Haldane agreed.
Protected by the train and crouching low, Churchill made his way to the front of the train as swiftly as he could. The engine and the tender were still on the line, but the three cars in front of them had derailed. It had only taken a single rock to do the job. The front truck containing equipment for repairs had uncoupled and overturned on the embankment. The two carriages behind it, carrying the Durban Light Infantry and the labourers, were badly damaged. One lay on its side, the other was wedged across the track, half on and half off the rails.
As Churchill drew level with the locomotive, a shell burst overhead. He was unharmed, but the driver was injured by a shard. He stormed out of his cab in a rage, his face bleeding. He was a civilian, he protested, he wasn’t getting paid to be shot at. He took shelter behind the overturned cars and refused to budge. Realising that there could be no escape without the driver, Churchill used all his powers of persuasion to calm him down. If he—the man’s name was Charles Wagner—remained at his post, Churchill assured him, he would receive a medal for ‘distinguished gallantry’ in action. The ploy was successful. Wagner wiped the blood from his face and went back to the locomotive. The Durban Light Infantrymen had been flung out of their carriage, but most of them could still hold a rifle and fire it. Churchill returned to the rear of the train. He had a plan.
Churchill never stopped to reflect that he was a civilian too, a correspondent dispatched to report on the war, not take part in it. Under enemy fire, he conducted himself like the officer he had once been, and instinctively assumed command. Even Haldane seems to have accepted Churchill’s authority when he explained his plan. The Dubliners and the Durban Light Infantry gunners would keep the Boers at a distance while Churchill used the locomotive to remove the wreckage from the line. They had the expertise and equipment, so it wouldn’t be too difficult. The only problem was that many of the labourers had fled, leaving their equipment scattered on the ground. There was also the unrelenting attack from the Boers to deal with. Their own gun had been damaged beyond repair. Undeterred, Churchill went ahead with the help of the engine driver, who meekly followed his orders.
First, they uncoupled the truck that was lying on its side and pushed it off the rails. The carriage was more of a problem. Using steam and sheer physical power—nine men volunteered to face the Boers’ barrage of fire—they managed to move it, too. Well, almost. There was just enough room for the tender to pass, but the locomotive was too wide to get through. The driver struggled to clear a passage, taking care not to derail the engine in the process. They finally succeeded more than an hour later, after 11 or 12 attempts. After they managed to lift the carriage a few inches off the ground, the engine tilted precariously to the right, but inched through, with a grating screech of steel on steel.
Estcourt was now within reach—in any event, for the locomotive. To Churchill’s dismay, the coupling between the engine and the carriage behind it gave way at the crucial moment. It would be too risky to try to force the engine past the obstruction a second time, and if they were to push the cars up to the engine, the men would be exposed to the Boers’ line of fire. The only option was to transport the wounded—more than 40 at that stage—in the engine and the tender and have everyone else run alongside the train. There was a small hamlet near Frere station, 800 metres further along. They might be able to take shelter there while the engine continued to Estcourt to fetch reinforcements.
Fearing that their prey was about to escape, the Boer gunners redoubled their efforts. The engine driver put on steam. The men running alongside struggled to keep pace and many of them, including Haldane, were left behind. As the locomotive approached the houses, Churchill leapt off to assist the stragglers, after instructing Wagner to press on and get the wounded to safety in Estcourt. He then returned on foot along the railway line, passing through a cleft in a hill, unaware that most of the men he was going back to help had already surrendered.
Two figures in civilian clothes suddenly appeared a hundred metres ahead of him. At first, Churchill thought they were British railway workers. But he was wrong—they were Boers and they were armed. Churchill spun around and fled. He heard the thud of bullets left and right, felt one of them graze his hand, but he continued to run and managed to scramble up the railway embankment. There was a brief respite, then shock, when he realised that another disaster was looming on the crest of the hill. A horseman was galloping towards him across the tracks, a tall, dark figure with his rifle trained on him. Churchill weighed up the odds. He knew how to shoot and—war correspondent or not—he was carrying a Mauser pistol. He had shot to kill before, in Tirah and Omdurman. He felt for his holster, but the pistol was gone. Slowly, he raised his hands.24