His valiant, some would say arrogant quest to conquer all had come to an abrupt and unexpected end on the unfamiliar terrain of a far off foreign land. His battle weary troops, consider their own expansion as their birthright, but have seen victory become more significant, yet apparently harder to attain than ever before.
You may have in your minds eye that of Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool of recent times. Their European dream, ended so dramatically in Basel. Their delusions of grandeur shattered by a league run of eleven matches without a victory. Liverpool’s most recent struggle that pummelled the very core of the club is something that, after intensive licking of wounds they are only just beginning to recover from.
But instead, I refer in the first few paragraphs to the regimented, foolishly branded ‘indomitable’ forces of the British Colonial army. The day they took their arrogance too far on an obscurely christened hill – Spion Kop.
1899, Queen Victoria has recently celebrated her diamond jubilee assured that the British Empire is at the very height of it’s power and prestige as it pulls itself and it’s colonies kicking and screaming into the 20th century.
High commissioner of Cape Colony in South Africa, Alfred Milner, decides in his infinite wisdom that it is of great finacial importance to line the coffers of the Empire by ‘acquiring’ the gold mines in the Dutch Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He sees gaining its economic power as hugely beneficial to the Empire as is an expansive confederation of British Colonies on the African continent, which he can then rule.
The British Empire is pulled into what is expected to be a brief skirmish, well within the means of the colonial army, expected to last no more that a matter of weeks. No surprise then that the second Boer War lasts not weeks, not months but years.
January 24 1900. The Lancashire Fusiliers, consisting of dozens of honourary Liverpudlians, prepare to take the strategic heights of the now famous Spion Kop hill. 1800 men led by Colonel Alec Thorneycroft took, under the cloak of night, what was wrongly perceived by General Woodgate as the hilltop of Spion Kop. The British were met with little resistance as they climbed the steep gradient with relative ease.
At daybreak as the mist that descended across the terrain the night before dissipated it becomes quickly apparent that that they had gained no such vantage point. Instead of looking down, they were looking up at three surrounding hills. The order for retreat was unable to be carried back to Major General Woodgate as the British are attacked from behind.
Thorneycrofts men tried to take cover as best they could, but their surroundings are far too barren and flat, lifeless. The ground is far too hard, making adequate trenches is horendously difficult. Then, the inevitable Boer onslaught from the heights of the hills that encompassed Spion then begin. The British are penned down indefinitely, loosing men fast they are unable to retreat or advance.
To make matters worse the Boers (essentially farmers) were armed with the formidable new German Mauser rifles, expertly trained in their operation.
One of the main tactics of warfare at the time was to locate the hanging smoke clouds created by enemy gun fire and to then use that to target your return volley. But, these German guns were smokeless, and Queen Victoria’s finest were in disarray.
The Spion debacle lasted for almost thirteen hours, over which time the British had eventually managed to retreat backwards far enough down the hill. The survivors had been to hell and back. British losses were 87 officers and 1647 men, the Boers reported some 225 casualties.
The Boer war was defeat after defeat, pilled upon disaster after disaster for the British army, illustrious military careers were destroyed and 22,000 colonial troopers never returned to England’s shores.
Lest we forget. how the Spion Kop, our Spion Kop, lent its name.