Battle of Spion Kop

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Battle of Spion Kop
Part of Second Boer War
Boers at Spion Kop, 1900.
Date 23-24 January 1900 Location Spioenkop, 38 km west-south-west of Ladysmith Result Boer victory
Combatants
Great Britain	Boers
Commanders
Charles Warren Alexander Thorneycroft	Louis Botha
Strength
11,000 infantry 2,200 cavalry 36 field guns	6,000 men
Casualties
383 killed 1,000 wounded 300 captured	58 killed 140 wounded

Second Boer War
Talana Hill – Elandslaagte – Belmont – Modder River – Stormberg – Magersfontein – Colenso – Spion Kop – Bloody Sunday – Paardeberg – Ladysmith – Sanna's Post – Mafeking

The Battle of Spion Kop (Afrikaans: Slag van Spioenkop) was fought about 38 km (21 miles) west-south-west of Ladysmith on the hilltop of Spioenkop⁽¹⁾ along the Tugela River, Natal in South Africa. The battle was fought between Boer and British forces from 23-24 January 1900 as part of the Second Boer War, and resulted in a famous British defeat during the Boer War.

Contents 1 The battle 1.1 The kop 1.2 The British assault 1.3 The aftermath 2 Note about the name 3 Miscellaneous 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading

[edit] The battle

General Sir Redvers Buller, VC, commander of the British forces in Natal, was at the time still overshadowed by Lieutenant-General Louis Botha and the fate of Ladysmith undecided. Buller gave control of his main force to General Sir Charles Warren, who decided to attack the Boers along two fronts. General Warren had command of 11,000 infantry, 2,200 cavalry, and 36 field guns. After ten days' travel and preparation to reach Trichardt's Drift on the Tugela river the battle for Spion Kop began. Spion Kop, as the largest hill in the region at over 1,400 feet, was occupied by the Boers, who were armed with modern German Mauser rifles.

[edit] The kop

Spion Kop formed a major bastion of the Boers' defensive line that blocked Buller's advance to Ladysmith, where some 13,000 British troops were besieged. The Kop was only 10 miles from Ladysmith and possession of the hill would allow the British artillery to dominate the surrounding area. Spion Kop was therefore seen as the "Key to Ladysmith". The Boers sited their defensive positions not on the crests of hills but instead on the rear slope, out of sight of enemy forces, a tactic unfamiliar to British military orthodoxy. This tactic allowed the Boers to observe the British forces while keeping hidden their own forces' numbers and dispositions.

[edit] The British assault

On the night of 23 January, Warren sent a force under Major General Edward Woodgate to secure Spion Kop. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft was selected to spearhead the initial assault.

The British climbed up the hill at night and in dense mist. They effectively surprised the smaller Boer piquet around 100 men and drove them off the Kop at bayonet point. A small number of British Sappers began to entrench the position (whilst almost 1,000 soldiers stood around idle) and Major General Woodgate communicated with General Warren of the success of taking the hilltop, but the good cheer only lasted until the fog lifted.

With the dawn of the new day the British discovered that they had the smaller and lower part of the hilltop of Spion Kop, while the Boers occupied higher ground on three sides of the British position. To make matters worse, the British trenches were totally inadequate. The British had no direct knowledge of the topography of the summit and the darkness and fog had compounded the problem. At most the trenches were 40cm 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. However, the Boer Generals also knew that sniping and artillery alone would not be sufficient to dislodge the British - and the Boer position was desperately vulnerable. If the British immediately established positions on Conical Hill and Aloe Knoll (the two unoccupied kojes on the kop itself) they could bring their artillery to bear on Tabanyama, threatening the key Boer positions there. More importantly, there was a risk that the British would storm Twin Peaks (Drielingkoppe) to the eastern end of Spion Kop. And if Twin Peaks fell, the British would be able to turn the Boers' left flank and annihilate the main Boer encampment. The Boer Generals realised that Spion Kop would have to be stormed, and stormed soon, if disaster were to be averted.

The Boers began to bombard the British position, dropping shells from the adjacent plateau of Tabanyama at a rate of ten rounds per minute. Meanwhile, Commandant Henrik Prinsloo of the Carolina Commando rose to the challenge of taking Aloe Knoll and Conical Hill with some 88 men while around 300 Burghers, mainly of the Pretoria Commando, climbed the Kop to launch a frontal assault on the British position. The British Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield Rifles were no less deadly that the Boer Mausers however, and the frontal assault ended in a bloody repulse.

A kind of stalemate now settled over the Kop. The Boers had failed to drive the British off 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 one hand the Boers on the Kop could see large numbers of Burghers on the plains below who refused to join the fight. The 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. They began to abandon their hard-won positions. On the other hand the bombardment began to take its toll on the British. Major General Woodgate fell mortally wounded. Three more senior British Officers fell in quick succession. Officers and men from different units were intermingled, and the British were now leaderless, confused and pinned down.

By mid-morning, for both sides the question was: Could the Officers rally the troops and prevent a whole-sale surrender?

Colonel Malby Crofton took charge and asked for reinforcements. Warren had already dispatched two further regular battalions and the Imperial Light Infantry were on their way up to the firing line. Warren 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. Thornycroft now replaced Croft as commander on the Kop.

Winston Churchill was a journalist stationed in South Africa and he was commissioned an officer at the rank of Lieutenant in the South African Light Horse by General Buller during the Boer War after his prisoner-of-war prison escape. Churchill acted as a courier to and from Spion Kop and General Buller's HQ 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."

At this point the situation proved too much for the Lancashire Fusiliers who attempted to surrender to the Boers. Thornycroft personally intervened and ordered his men back. A vicious point-blank firefight ensued but the British line had been saved. At this crucial point, the re-inforcements arrived, attacked and took Twin Peaks.

[edit] The aftermath

The Boers were shattered by the loss of Twin Peaks and abandoned the Kop as darkness fell. Unbeknownst to Thornycroft, the battle was as good as won. But Thornycroft's nerve was also shattered. After sixteen hours on the Kop doing the job of a Brigadier General, he ordered a retreat after reporting that the soldiers had no water, and ammunition was running short. It is hard to fault Thornycroft for this error. Warren did nothing to intervene and it is he who must shoulder the blame from snatching disastrous defeat from the jaws of an assured victory.

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 were they fell. Approximately 1,250 British were either wounded or captured. The Boers suffered 335 casualties of which 68 were dead. Commandant Prinsloo Commando suffered a loss of 55 out of his 88 men.

The British retreated back over the Tugela but the Boers were too weak to follow up their success.

Somehow, Buller managed to rally his troops. The morale of the British was miraculously restored.

Ladysmith would be taken by the British on another day.

[edit] Note about the name

Although the common English name for the battle is Spion Kop throughout the Commonwealth and its historic literature, the official South African English and Afrikaans name for the battle is Spioenkop, which is in common use in South Africa and is the correct English spelling of the borrowed Afrikaans name; spioen means "spy" or "look-out", and kop means "hill" or "outcropping". Another variant that is sometimes found is the combination into Spionkop.

The name Spionkop originates from Dutch instead of Afrikaans. Spion (and not Spioen) is the Dutch word for "spy". Until the 1920s Dutch was still the official language of the Boers, especially in its written form.

[edit] Miscellaneous

• The Kop Stand at Anfield Stadium — home of the English football team Liverpool — is named in honour of the battle. The east side of Sheffield United's Bramall Lane, built on a hill, is also called "Spion Kop", as is the east side of their city rivals |Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough Stadium. The south side of Birmingham City's St. Andrews ground is also known as the "Spion Kop". Similarly, Plymouth Argyle named a corner of Home Park 'the Spion Kop' in honour of the battle, but the disabled facility was torn down during Phase I regeneration of the football ground. The lower part of the South Stand at Leicester City's old Filbert Street ground was also called the 'Spion Kop'.
• A Terrace at Wigan Rugby League Football Club's former ground, Central Park, was also named the 'Spion Kop'.
• There is a Kop stand at Windsor Park, home ground of Irish Football Association side Linfield F.C., and also of the Northern Ireland football team.
• The village of Spion Kop near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire was named in honour of the battle.
• Similarly, in places like Australia there are numerous hills bearing the name "Spion Kop". A railway hill in the Melbourne yards is called Spion Kop, (Gerald A Dee,"A Lifetime of Railway Photography" in Photographer Profile Series, Studfield, 1998, p. 20) and at least two hills (one near Kilmore) also have the same name.
• "The Battle of Spion Kop" was an episode of the Goon Show radio program, originally broadcast on December 29, 1958.
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a British stretcher-bearer at the battle.

[edit] See also

• Military history of South Africa

[edit] References

• Oliver Ransford, Battle Of Spion Kop, (John Murray, London, 1971)
• H. G. Castle, Spion Kop: The Second Boer War (Almark, London, 1976)
• CHAPTER XV Spion Kop, "The Great Boer War", By Arthur Conan Doyle (pub 1902) ISBN 1-4043-0473-8
• Chapter IX The Battle for Spion Kop, "Commando: A Boer Journal Of The Boer War" by Deneys Reitz (first pub in GB 1929) ISBN 0-571-08778-7
  • "Boer Commando: An Afrikaner Journal of the Boer War" (same book different edition), ISBN 0-9627613-3-8

[edit] Further reading

• The 7 volume "The Times History of the War in South Africa", ed L.S. Amery,(pub 1900-1909)
• An Illustrated History of South Africa, Cameron & Spies, Human & Rousseau publishers, 1986 (ISBN 1-86812-190-9).
• Military Heritage did a feature about the bloody Spion Kop battle for a hill of the Boer War (Herman T. Voelkner, Military Heritage, October 2005, Volume 7, No. 2, pp 28 to 35, and p. 71), ISSN 1524-8666.
• Winston, Churchill, My Early Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1930.
• Byron Farwell, The Great Anglo-Boer War. New York; Harper & Row, 1976.
• Denis Judd, The Boer War. New York: MacMillan, 2003.
• William Manchester, The Last Lion. Boston: Little Brown, 1983.
• Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War. New York: Random House 1979.
• Celida Sandys, Churchill: Wanted Dead or Alive. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1999.