War and the Arme Blanche. Erskine Childers

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СКАЧАТЬ the reconnaissance on which the battle scheme was founded, and had seized and held necessary tactical points. They had rushed the railway-station by a gallop in open order. Together with the Cavalry (who came out later with the main force from Ladysmith) they had prepared the way for the Infantry advance, and had helped to clear a flank during the early part of the action. But in addition to these duties they dismounted and joined with the Infantry in the assault of the main position, took a prominent and, at one critical moment, a decisive share in the desperate fighting which wrested it from the Boers, and suffered losses (including that of their brave Colonel) heavier than most of the units engaged.

      Mr. Goldman, in remarking on Elandslaagte, makes the strange comment that the Imperial Light Horse were “trained as Cavalry,” and adduces their exploits on this occasion as an example of the value of that arm in South Africa.^[17] This is the first of many misinterpretations upon which I shall have to comment. For all practical purposes the Imperial Light Horse were mounted riflemen, who used rifles, not carbines, and, as far as I know, never in all their history made or attempted to make an arme blanche charge, yet were very effective in action, and were very fair scouts. Used for the bloody assault at Elandslaagte, they could not also be used for the pursuit. If they had not joined in the assault, could they, or troops of their type, have been used in an equally effective way for the pursuit? The inquiry compels us to look back a little more closely at the conditions of the charge.

      The following points should be noted:

      1. For the troops engaged on both sides this was the first day of hostilities. Steel-armed Cavalry was a new fact to the Boers. The steel had the best chance it ever was to have of inspiring “terror.”

      2. There were no Boer reserves left to cover the retreat.

      3. The light was failing, a circumstance favourable to the steel, unfavourable to fire. (Contrast the broad daylight at Talana, when the Boers rallied and outmanœuvred the cavalry.) Some light is necessary, of course, but, within obvious limits, the poorer the better.

      4. The ground was as open and smooth as Cavalry on the average can expect. Dongas and rocks during the initial advance only; from within 300 yards of the enemy and onwards (according to the “Official History”) not a lawn, but fair galloping ground.

      5. Horses and men fresh, not hitherto seriously engaged. Why? Because there had been no opportunity for the use of steel.

      6. The enemy, already shaken and spent by a hard fire-fight on foot, were retreating at their usual ambling trot, in loose, formless groups; “raggedly streaming,” as the Official Historian correctly puts it. He adds that this objective, “a crowd in the loose disorder of defeat, seemed to offer an indefinite object for a charge,” but “that there was no likelihood of a better whilst sufficient light remained.” I must digress for a moment on that illuminating obiter dictum, because it gives a clue to the Cavalry view of Cavalry work. The historian is regretting the absence of a chance for “shock,” in its literal and in its only accurate meaning, of the collision of two massed bodies; two, and both massed. The Boers were not massed; clearly, therefore, it was of no use for the Cavalry to adopt mass, and in point of fact they charged with “extended files.” There could be no “shock,” therefore—that is, violent physical impact—and there was in fact none. The Boers were ridden down individually. What the official commentator does not apprehend is that this absence of mass, in his view an unfortunate drawback, was in fact one of the very conditions which made the charge possible. It was a corollary to the beaten, spent state of the pursued. Ragged streaming away is a characteristic of defeated troops in retreat. Cohesion means morale, and morale means the will and power to retaliate. Nor is it only a question of morale. The physical conditions of the preceding fire-fight determine the nature of the retreat. In this case some 900 Boers, in widely extended order, had been defending a line nearly two miles long against an enemy proportionately extended, both extensions being truly normal—that is to say, dictated by the range and deadliness of the modern rifle. Retreat from such a line, immediately after a failure to withstand a punishing assault, pressed in some quarters to the bayonet’s point, excludes cohesion in any troops, European or extra-European. Boers, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, never troubled much about set formations at any time, whether or no there was time for them, not through incapacity, but simply because they did not need them, and not needing them were better without them. For them, therefore, this kind of ragged retreat was not solely the result of the beating they had suffered. Normal in any troops, it was normal in a peculiar sense with them.

      I dwell on this point at some length, not because of the intrinsic importance of this fight, or of the Official Historian’s comment upon the pursuit (for he may have written thoughtlessly), but because it directly raises the big issue dealt with in my analysis of the physical problem in Chapter II. I enumerated there the many crushing limitations which surround the use of real shock against riflemen, mounted or on foot, and I instanced the pursuit of beaten troops as one of those rare cases where the steel weapon has its best opening. But I also pointed out that this was a case where any well-mounted troops, however armed, have a good opening; and that brings us back to the point from which we started in comparing, for the sake of illustration, the work of the Imperial Light Horse and the Cavalry at Elandslaagte. First, however, let us recapitulate the six favourable conditions of this Cavalry pursuit:

      (1) Novelty of the steel. (2) No Boer reserves. (3) Bad light. (4) Open and smooth ground. (5) Fresh horses and men. (6) Ragged retreat of beaten enemy.

      This may be regarded as a rare combination of ideal conditions; how rare will be seen as the war proceeds.

      Now for the Imperial Light Horse, whom, let me say, I am regarding, not as an individual regimental unit, but as a type of what good riflemen can do, just as the Cavalry squadrons engaged were types of what Cavalry, decidedly good according to the standard of their time, could do.

      I asked, would the Imperial Light Horse, if they had not been used for the fire-fight, have been capable of an equally effective pursuit without the use of steel weapons? The speculation, of course, though instructive, is largely academical, the crucial point being that they had been used for the preceding fire-fight. However, for the sake of argument, we must vest them with favourable condition No. 5, “Fresh horses and men.” Nos. 2, 4, and 6 would have been equally applicable to them; No. 1 is irrelevant. There remains No. 3, “Failing light.” This would have been distinctly adverse to the accurate use of the rifle, but at the same time let us remember the fundamental distinction between the rifle and the steel—that is, range. Posted, for the sake of argument, in the spot where the Cavalry were posted (threatening the enemy’s right rear), the Imperial Light Horse would at once have had the first bodies of retreating Boers well within the range of vulnerability: 500 yards is the official estimate. Yes, but fire at this moment would no doubt have meant delay, and caused less damage to the Boers than the undelayed steel-armed Cavalry. Granted; a point to the Cavalry. Let us go on. After routing a first batch in a long gallop, the Cavalry turned on their tracks, met a second batch, and scattered and harassed these men also. Would not the Imperial Light Horse meanwhile have had a good chance of intercepting these men? Finally, picture the irregular corps as capable of fire from the saddle, and keep that point in your mind for future illustration.

      All this is the veriest sketch, suggestive of the factors inherent in mounted combats, but utterly unreal, because it is utterly impossible to postulate identical circumstances for steel-action and fire-action. The essence of the matter is that the Imperial Light Horse, by aptitude, training, and equipment, were capable of joining effectively in the Infantry assault of the main position, and that the Cavalry, by aptitude, training, and equipment (they carried the short carbine), were neither capable of, nor designed for, similar intervention. If the Colonials had not been used for the main assault, the course of the battle might have been changed. The assault might have failed (in the penultimate phase there was an exceedingly critical revival on the Boer left flank, checked by the Gordons and Imperial Light Horse combined), or the assault might СКАЧАТЬ