Botha had to choose whether to move slowly along the railway line, which had to be repaired after being torn up by the retreating Germans, or more rapidly along the dry bed of the Swakop River. He chose the latter. He had 4 850 mounted riflemen and eight guns. All his senior officers had served with him in the Anglo-Boer War. The German force ahead of them was entrenched in strong defensive positions on high ground – about 2 000 men with four artillery pieces. The landscape where the fighting was expected to take place was a place of “utter desolation”, wrote O’Shaughnessy, “not a drop of water, nor a sign of life – a truly forsaken wilderness”.
Botha’s men advanced before daybreak on 30 March 1915, after a 48km march through arid desert the day before. The first frontal attack was pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire. The gunners of the Transvaal Horse Artillery needed to relieve the pressure on the infantry. In his book With Botha in the Field, Eric Moore Ritchie captured what it was like for men lying flat on the ground avoiding bullets, or doing the heavy work manning the guns: “All afternoon the heat strikes up at you, overpowering, like the breath of a wild animal. Then the wind rises and the sand shifts in eddies. Veils and goggles are useless. They can’t keep out that spinning curtain of grit. The horses rattle the dry bits in their mouths, trying to get some moisture.”
The Germans, outnumbered and outgunned, withdrew from their positions during the night. Then the men of the Ermelo and Standerton commandos, riding fast to avoid machine-gun fire, were able to outflank the retreating Germans and occupy a tactically vital position above a gap in the hills through which the railway ran. Gerald L’Ange tells the amazing story of what happened when Botha saw guns firing from this high ground:
Botha decided that the only way to find out whose guns they were was to go down and have a closer look. Leaving his men, he climbed down the hillside through the dust and suddenly found, to his consternation, that he was in the midst of a German artillery battery.
Realising that they were more surprised than he was, Botha coolly demanded to see the battery commander and to him announced, ‘I have come to discuss the terms of your surrender.’ Looking from the solitary South African to his sweating gun crews and back again, the astonished German replied: ‘On the contrary, I think it is you who must surrender to us.’
Botha’s bluff might have ended in disaster, but a shell from one of his own guns exploded nearby and in the confusion he managed to escape back to his own position.
The South African force continued to advance in the same fashion, outflanking the slower Germans in retreat, pounding them with artillery, taking ground and seizing the railway, and forcing more and more of the enemy to surrender. The official history of the campaign summed up this phase of the campaign: “The result of the day’s operations was that the pick of the German troops had, with considerable loss, in one day been turned out of strong and carefully prepared positions which topographically were ideal for their purpose. They had every advantage: interior lines, local knowledge of the intricate terrain, water and railways transport nearly to their fire positions.”
By May 1915, Botha had effectively cut the German colony in half, and he then divided his forces into four contingents. The first, under General Britz, went north to Otjiwarongo, Outjo and Etosha Pan, so cutting off the German forces in the interior from the coastal regions. The others spread across the northeast, with General Lukin moving along the railway line running from Swakopmund to Tsumeb. Meanwhile, another South African force under General Jan Smuts landed by sea at Lüderitz and then moved inland to capture Keetmanshoop, where they linked up with two other columns that had moved up from Port Nolloth and Kimberley. The Germans eventually surrendered in July.
Botha returned home a hero. The British Minister of War, Lord Kitchener, who had been largely responsible for the “scorched earth” policy of laying waste to Boer homesteads little more than a decade before, cabled congratulations and expressed his “sincere admiration of the masterly conduct” of the campaign. One German observer noted sourly that “the first British victory in the war was won by a Boer general”.
Delville Wood
Many of the soldiers who served in South West Africa went on to fight in France, where massive British and French armies had settled into static attritional trench warfare, following the early war of manoeuvre after the declaration of war in August 1914.
South Africa, as part of the British Empire, offered to send a contingent of soldiers to fight in Europe, an offer that was accepted by Britain in July 1915, with a request for an infantry formation. Four battalions made up the 1st South African Infantry Brigade, one each from the Cape; Natal, the Border region (Kaffrarian Rifles) and the Free State; the Transvaal and Rhodesia; and a composite battalion drawn from all the South African Scottish regiments. The Permanent Force of the UDF was kept in South Africa to ensure stability following the Rebellion by some former Boer officers and men. All the 2 000 men who went to France were volunteers.
The battle of Delville Wood is etched in South African history as a display of extraordinary valour in the face of unimaginable horror. It was one of many “sub-battles” in the massive Somme offensive, which was intended to break through the German defences once and for all and win the war. The 1st South African Infantry Brigade was ordered to take Delville “at all costs” as a means of breaking the impasse that set in soon after the launch of the offensive on 1 July 1916.
The initial Somme plan had envisaged the British Fourth Army, under Sir Henry Rawlinson, breaking the first and second German lines of fortifications, first from Serre to Montauban, and then through Thiepval, Guillemont and Pozières, with the French army focusing on the southern sector around Peronne from Maurepas to Flaucourt. It soon became clear that the “big push” had met with only limited success especially in the southern sector, and the limited advances soon came under determined German counterattacks. It soon became a battle of attrition. The attacks became concentrated after 1 July on the horseshoe of woods north of Montauban and, after 14 July, Delville, High and Trônes woods, and Waterlot Farm.
Delville Wood derived its name from Bois de la Ville (“wood of the town”), a small forest near the village of Longueval. The wood was slightly less than a square mile in area. Advancing for the attack, Private Geoffrey Lawrence (1st Battalion, C Company, 1st South African Infantry Regiment) wrote that “it was a most fearsome sight to see the wood a mass of flames rising to the full height of the trees, a perfect hell, and this was our objective for the following day. I felt terribly afraid. I think all of us before battle were jolted into facing the facts of fear and death and knew they must be fully dealt with.”
The British high command had decided on a night advance and dawn attack on Longueval. The attacking force was to consist of two British brigades, with the South African brigade in reserve. At dawn the attack began and soon developed into hand-to-hand fighting. Private Sidney Carey (D Company, 1st South African Infantry Regiment) recalled the fighting on that day:
We all knew that we were going against a pretty tough enemy – but we didn’t expect anything like what actually happened. While going up to Longueval, my friend next to me (Private Greenwood) said: ‘Man, but there’re a damn lot of bees around here!’ I said, ‘Bees be blowed! Those are bullets flying around.’ Unfortunately about four minutes afterwards a bullet caught him and killed him right out.
Then I began to see that things were getting bad. Then another went over, then another. Then I thought, ‘It’s my turn next’. There were machine-gun posts at the flour mill at Longueval and we got it very heavy from there. I got hit at the beginning of the wood. The lower part of my jaw was shot away, they reckon by a ricochet. It felt like a mule-kick.
On 15 July, the 1st South African Regiment and the 27th Brigade were ordered to capture the town of Longueval near Delville Wood, but were unable to