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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
.Article – Online Historic Information | Military
.Page xv
Vickers .303 water-cooled gun was virtually the same as the weapon that would dominate the
killing fields of the First World War. As Philips’s text-book said: “These guns are especially suitable
for flanking fire, for defending defiles such as bridges, mountain gorges, entrances to villages,
barricades, and for commanding ground of limited extent which has to be traversed by assaulting
columns” – a fair description of their use fifteen years later. They were also found to be useful for
laying down covering fire for troops advancing by bounds (rushes) and making use of cover, a tactic
the British had learned after the first six months of the war. The Vickers, Sons and Maxim company in
Britain also furnished the Boers with the 1-pounder machine-gun, known as the Pom-Pom or MaximNordenfelt. This was very mobile, being mounted, like many of the .303s, on a light carriage, and
could thus be used in open country or, with some manhandling, in hilly terrain.
Boer artillery far outperformed that of the British at the outbreak of the war. Krupp and Creusot
75mm guns had been purchased by the Boers, and were manned by fully trained regular soldiers of
the Staatsartillerie.They also had heavy guns, 155mm Creusots, “Long Toms”, which out-ranged
anything the British could put in the field and which were used for the indiscriminate bombardment of
civilian centres at Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking early in the war. On the British side only the
brilliant improvisation of Royal Navy Captain Percy Scott saved the day. He designed mountings for
naval 4.7-inch guns which were rushed into Ladysmith just before the siege began, and designed
carriages for the 4.7s and the naval 12-pounders for mobile employment. The proper use of artillery
to support infantry against modern small-arms fire was not discovered until Buller’s assault of the
Tugela Heights in the Battle of Pieters in February 1900.
Even when the guns were properly used, the ammunition might not be. The armoured train
ambushed by the Boers between Frere and Chieveley, and on which Winston Churchill was
travelling, escaped with less damage than one would expect. In their haste, the gunners had failed to
arm the time fuses and the shells passed through the rail trucks without exploding. Equally, British
shrapnel was used with minimal effect against Boer positions consisting of stone shelters and
trenches.
At the time of the war, only northern Natal had been mapped at 1 inch to the mile (1:63,360)
before 1899 (IDWO No. 1223), which may explain how Buller advanced with such élan after the
relief of Ladysmith compared with his uncertain advance beforehand. Methuen had to rely on sketch
maps prepared from observation without instruments and from memory because full surveys were
considered provocative in the months preceding the war. Captain O’Meara did his best to show the
Modder River crossing on the map he drew up, but Methuen was justifiably critical of the result in
relation to the map’s usefulness in planning the attack, although he was perhaps at fault for failing to
understand its limitations. Later in the war Major H. M. Jackson, RE, drawing on the facilities of the
office of the Surveyor-general of the South African Republic in Pretoria, produced a comprehensive
series of maps (IDWO No. 1495) at 2.35 miles to the inch (1:150,000) which were helpful, but not
detailed enough for planning an attack on a particular Boer position. The traditional foreign-country
campaign skills of observation and scouting had to be developed by the British as the war continued.
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