Битва на Тугеле: Операция по снятию осады Ледисмита в 1900 году.

1900 battle of the Second Boer War

Over the next few weeks, Buller received further reinforcements, and also acquired sufficient carts and transport to operate away from the railway line which was his main supply line. Buller devised a new plan of attack to relieve Ladysmith. His army was to launch a two pronged offensive designed to cross the Tugela River at two points and create a bridgehead. They would then attack the defensive line that blocked Buller's advance to Ladysmith. The area was only from Ladysmith. Buller delegated control of his main force to General Sir Charles Warren, to cross at Trichardt's Drift. Buller would then send a second smaller force, under Major General Neville Lyttelton to attack east of Warren's force as a diversion at Potgieter's Drift. Once across the Tugela the British would attack the Boer defensive positions and then cross the open plains to relieve Ladysmith. Warren's force numbered 11,000 infantry, 2,200 cavalry, and 36 field guns. (2nd and 5th Divisions). On the 11th they marched westward to cross the Little Tugela and take up position in front of Potgieter's Ferry. However their march was easily visible to the Boers, and so slow (due in part to the massive baggage trains necessary to British officers at the time – Warren's included a cast iron bathroom and well equipped kitchen) that by the time they arrived at the Tugela, the Boers had entrenched a new position covering it. On the 18th British mounted troops under the Earl of Dundonald enterprisingly reached the extreme Boer right flank, from where there was little to stop them riding to Ladysmith, but Warren recalled them to guard the force's baggage. Once all his force had crossed the river, Warren sent part of the 2nd Division under Lieutenant General Francis Clery against the Boer right flank positions on a plateau named Tabanyama. The Boers had once again entrenched a new position on the reverse slopes of the plateau, and Clery's attack made no progress. Meanwhile, the secondary British attack by Lyttelton at Potgieter's Drift had yet to commence in full.

Spion Kop, just northeast of Warren's force, was the largest hill in the region, being over in height (relative height from its base). It lay almost exactly at the centre of the Boer line. If the British could capture this position and bring artillery to the hill then they would command the flanks of the surrounding Boer positions. to secure Spion Kop. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft was selected to lead the initial assault. (Thorneycroft was one of six "special service" officers, among who were also Robert Baden Powell and Herbert Plumer, despatched to South Africa shortly before the war to recruit local irregular corps. Thorneycroft's mounted infantry were raised in Natal and numbered 360.) The British climbed up the hill at night and in dense mist. They surprised the small Boer piquet and drove them off the kop at bayonet point. Of the 15 men in the Boer piquet, one was mortally wounded and his grave lies on the hill to this day. Ten British soldiers were wounded in the charge. As dawn broke, the British discovered that they held only the smaller and lower part of the hilltop of Spion Kop, while the Boers occupied higher ground on three sides of the British position. The British had no direct knowledge of the topography of the summit and the darkness and fog had compounded the problem. Furthermore, the British trenches were inadequate for all defensive purposes. Because the summit of the kop was mostly hard rock, the trenches were at most deep and provided an exceptionally poor defensive position – the British infantry in the trenches could not see over the crest of the plateau and the Boers were able to fire down the length of the crescent shaped trench from the adjacent peaks. The Boer generals were not unduly concerned by the news that the British had taken the kop. They knew that their artillery on Tabanyama could be brought to bear on the British position and that rifle fire could be brought to bear from parts of the kop not yet occupied by the British. Minutes later, hundreds of Boers swarmed in to attack the British positions at the Spion Kop crestline, much to the surprise of the British. It was very unusual for the Boers to launch a daytime massed attack quickly resulting in vicious, close quarters combat. This was not a custom of the Boers' style of warfare. The British Lee–Metford and Lee–Enfield rifles were no less effective than the Boer Mauser rifles. However, the British excelled in close combat; albeit the surprise of the unusually direct Boer attack likely aided the Boer in the early stages of the engagement. Both sides exchanged fire at close range and engaged in hand to hand combat, with the British wielding fixed bayonets and the Boers wielding hunting knives and their own rifles used as bludgeons. After suffering serious losses, the Boer assault carried the crest line after several minutes of brutal hand to hand combat, but could advance no further. Over the next several hours, a kind of stalemate settled over the kop. The Boers had failed to drive the British from the kop, but the surviving men of the Pretoria and Carolina commando now held a firing line on Aloe Knoll from where they could enfilade the British position and the British were now under sustained bombardment from the Boer artillery. The British had failed to exploit their initial success, and the initiative now passed to the Boers. Morale began to sag on both sides as the extreme heat, exhaustion and thirst took hold. On the one hand the Boers on the kop could see large numbers of burghers on the plains below them who refused to join the fight. A sense of betrayal, the bloody failure of the frontal assault, the indiscipline inherent in a civilian army and the apparent security of the British position proved too much for some Boers, who began to abandon their hard won positions. On the other hand, the bombardment began to take its toll on the British. Woodgate fell at about 08:30, mortally wounded by a shell splinter. Officers and men from different units were intermingled, and the British were now leaderless, confused and pinned down by the heavy Boer artillery and rifle fire. The British artillery, positioned lower down the slopes of Spion Kop, were unable to hit back at the Boer guns. Colonel Malby Crofton of the Royal Lancasters took charge and semaphored a plea for help, "Reinforce at once or all is lost. General dead." After that the stunned colonel failed to exercise any leadership. Thorneycroft seems to have taken charge, leading a spirited counterattack that failed in the face of withering fire. Warren had already dispatched Major General John Talbot Coke's brigade of two regular battalions and the Imperial Light Infantry (raised in Durban) to reinforce the summit. However, he refused to launch an attack on Tabanyama and barred his guns from firing on Aloe Knoll, believing this to be part of the British position. At 11:40, Buller, who could see that things were not going well, suggested to Warren that Thorneycroft be appointed commander on the kop. The first runner to Thorneycroft was shot dead before he could utter a word. Finally, a second runner brought the news, "You are a general." Winston Churchill was a journalist stationed in South Africa and had been commissioned as a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse by General Buller after his well publicised escape from Boer captivity. Churchill acted as a courier to and from Spion Kop and Buller's headquarters and made a statement about the scene: "Corpses lay here and there. Many of the wounds were of a horrible nature. The splinters and fragments of the shells had torn and mutilated them. The shallow trenches were choked with dead and wounded." About 13:00, the situation proved too much for some men of the Lancashire Fusiliers who attempted to surrender. Thorneycroft personally intervened and shouted at the Boers who advanced to round up prisoners, "I'm the commandant here; take your men back to hell sir. I allow no surrenders." In the morning, Warren had asked for reinforcements from Lyttelton's division, even though he had eleven battalions of his own to draw upon. Without asking Buller, Lyttelton sent two battalions toward Spion Kop. One battalion, the King's Royal Rifle Corps, turned aside to attack Twin Peaks. After losing Lieutenant Colonel Riddell killed and 100 other casualties, the rifles cracked the thin Boer line and carried the double summit at 17:00. He ordered the brigade to retreat. At the same time, Buller sent Lyttelton strict orders to recall his troops from Twin Peaks. When morning came, the Boer generals were astonished to see two burghers on the top of Spion Kop, waving their slouch hats in triumph. The only British on the kop were the dead and the dying. The British suffered 243 fatalities during the battle; many were buried in the trenches where they fell. Approximately 1,250 British were either wounded or captured. Mohandas Gandhi was a stretcher bearer at the battle, in the Indian Ambulance Corps he had organised, and was decorated. The Boers suffered 335 casualties of which 68 were dead, including Commandant Prinsloo's commando casualties of 55 killed and wounded out of 88 men. The British retreated back over the Tugela, but the Boers were too exhausted to pursue and follow up their success. Once across the river, Buller managed to rally his troops. Ladysmith would be relieved by the British four weeks later.

The battle was the background for Louwrens Penning's best known novel De held van Spionkop (1901, The Hero of Spionkop). Penning's story concerns the very real Commandant Louis Wessels, who leads the Boer commando to defeat the British at the battle.

Buller erred in appointing Warren an independent commander, despite his own doubts about his subordinate's capacity. On the evening of the battle, Warren only ordered up reinforcements in men and heavy guns at the late hour of 21:00. Medical assistance, water and ammunition were also tardy in arriving. "Still, perhaps it was not Warren's failure to remedy these deficiencies that proved his worst error. It was his failure to tell Thorneycroft of his plans to do so. Astonishing as it may seem, he had sent no direct instructions to Thorneycroft since the heliogram appointing him a general at midday. He had left it to Coke to reassure Thorneycroft, although (by another astonishing blunder) Warren had never actually told Coke that he had put Thorneycroft in charge. Then, to compound all these blunders, at 9:00 pm Warren had ordered Coke to return to the HQ for consultation, leaving Thorneycroft alone among the horrors on the summit."

The common English name for the battle is "Spion Kop" throughout the Commonwealth and its historical literature, the official South African English and Afrikaans name for the battle is "Spioenkop": spioen means "spy" or "look out", and kop means "hill" or "outcropping". Another variant that is sometimes found is the combination into "Spioenkop". The reason why the older spelling is used internationally is because the name "Spioenkop" originates from Dutch; Spion [spee yawn], and not spioen [spee yoon], is the Dutch word for "spy". Until the 1920s, Dutch was still the official written language of the Boers, which is why the older Dutch spelling persists outside South Africa. Within South Africa, the spelling was updated along with Afrikaans spelling reform and recognition of Afrikaans as a language in its own right.