by John Wells
It is amazing that we forget some of the great stories of our past. One of those stories is of the resistance our Boer War men, with their Rhodesian allies, put up in the defence of the Elands River post in August 1900.
The post was an important resupply point in the western Transvaal. There were about 1500 horses and oxen there, 100 wagons and enough supplies to keep 3000 men for a month. It was defended by 200 Rhodesian militia and 300 Australian volunteers. It was not really fortified, though, and was more a group of close encampments with rudimentary protection.
The Boers, under Colonel de la Rey, surrounded the fort with 3000 commandos on August 4, 1900. It was not an even battle.
The soldiers were singing around their campfires in the evening, not knowing that the Boers were sneaking up on them on three sides, but they realised what had happened as the Boers opened fire at first light.
The Boers had six 12-pound artillery pieces. The defenders had one old seven-pounder, so badly knocked about that it had to be dismantled and repaired at least four times during the engagement. The Australians did have a Maxim machine gun – one. The Boers had two machine guns and three quick-firing 'pom poms'.
On the first day 1700 artillery shells were fired into and around the camp. Twenty eight men were killed (although another reports says the defenders lost only 12 soldiers killed and 36 wounded. Four African porters were also killed. Almost all the animals were killed and within twenty four hours the stench was unbearable. Burying the animals was impossible. On the second day 'only' 800 shells were fired, before the Boers realised they were destroying the stores they wanted to capture.
There was no water supply inside the little fort, so every night a patrol would sneak out to the creek and bring back as much water as they could carry. Several times the 'water patrol' was attacked. The camp closest to the river was command by Rhodesian Captain Sandy Butters. On the nights of August 7 and 8, 2000 Boers attacked to cut off the water supply, but they were driven off.
Gradually the position was made safer. The ground was rocky and the men had no real tools for the task, so they dug with their bayonets. They built low walls from the rocks. Gradually the camp took on at least some of the features of a fort.
On August 7General Carrington brought up his thousand troops to within sight of the fort, about three kilometres away, but the Boers gave them such a fright that they retreated very quickly, though having only seventeen men wounded. Away they went, all the way back to the safety of Mafeking. The outnumbered little force watched them go.
The Australian and Rhodesian defenders were a temporary garrison, and Carrington's force was supposed to take over the camp and protect the movement of the supplies. It was not a 'relief expedition' when it set out for Elands River. The fact that a thousand men were thought to be needed for convoy escorts shows how small the temporary garrison really was.
Here is where truth probably is overridden by legend, but perhaps not. Colonel De La Rey, wanting to get the stores and be gone before the next relief column appeared, sent a rider with a white flag to seek the surrender of the defenders. It is said that the reply was "If De La Rey wants our camp why does he not come and take it? We will be pleased to meet him and his men, and promise them a great reception at the end of a toasting fork. Australians will never surrender. Australia forever!"
Lt-Col Charles Hore, a British officer, was in command, but he was laid low with malaria. So command passed to Major Walter Tunbridge, of the Queensland Citizen Bushmen. The Australian numbers were made of men from his regiment and the NSW Citizen Bushmen, the 3rd Bushman Regiment (42 Victorians and nine Sandgropers) with two Tasmanians whose unit I do not know.
Five days later, after long bouts of shelling – the Australian seven-pounder had only a hundred shells to start with, so the shelling was a little one-sided – Koos De La Rey knew that support would be on its way to the defenders and he did not want to be caught, so he offered the garrison one more chance to surrender with honour but this was rebuffed with a message that should be better-known.
Major Tunbridge wrote "Even if I wished to surrender to you – and I don't – I am commanding Australians who would cut my throat if I accepted your terms."
Now another famous soldier enters the story. Colonel Robert Baden-Powell set forth from Rustenberg with another thousand-man column. He moved out eight miles of the 24 four or so he had to cover and sent his scouts forward. Their reconnaissance was terrible. They reported gunfire moving to the west and Baden-Powell assumed this mean Carrington had relieved the garrison. Not wanting his force isolated he turned back. More importantly even than this, the overall commander, Lord Roberts, thinking instead that the garrison had surrendered, withdrew most of his forces from the area.
Fortunately De La Rey did now know what Roberts was thinking and was alarmed at the time he had been exposed to a potential relief force. He left 200 men opposite the camps and withdrew the rest of his force.
Now the truth became known to the distant commanders and another relief force was assembled, this time 10,000 men under Lord Kitchener. Their movement persuaded De La Rey to withdraw the remaining 200 Boers. The shooting stopped on August 15 and Kitchener's force arrived on the 16th. Carrington's original force was also on the way to Eland River, very slowly indeed and arrived some time after Kitchener's force.
There were two Elands Rivers and a battle was fought on the other one thirteen months later but that did not involve any Australians.
The importance of the Elands River siege to Australians back home was not just because it was in every sense heroic. Until this time the Australians were spread among other British forces and though they had developed an enviable reputation they had not, until now, fought a battle that could call their own. The Rhodesians was obviously vit as well, but nearly the whole of the force was thus 'colonial'.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote an account of the war and he wrote of the Elands River siege "…when the ballad makers of Australia seek for a subject, let them turn to Elands River, for there was no finer fighting in the war…"