Battle of Rooiwal

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Battle of Rooiwal
Part of Second Boer War
Date April 11, 1902
Location Rooiwal, Transvaal, South Africa
Result British victory
Belligerents
Great Britain Boers
Commanders
Ian Hamilton, Kekewich, Rawlinson General Potgeiter, General Kemp.
Strength
3,000 c.1,500
Casualties and losses
c.70 killed and wounded 50 dead
130 wounded
50 captured
v • d • e
Second Boer War


The Battle of Rooiwal was an engagement of the Second Boer War. It took place at 25°33′5.32″S, 28°12′10.73″ECoordinates: 25°33′5.32″S, 28°12′10.73″E on April 11, 1902 and resulted in a British victory.

The action consisted of a Boer attack on horseback on an entrenched British hillside position in the valley of Rooiwal, near Klerksdorp in the Western Transvaal. The Boers, under Generals Potgieter and Kemp, were attempting to break out of a British encircling manoeuvre. Their attack was repulsed at some cost to the Boers in killed and injured.

This was the end of the war in the Western Transvaal and also the last major battle of the Anglo-Boer War.

Contents

[edit] Background -the war in the Western Transvaal

By 1902, there were roughly 3,000 Boer guerrillas operating in Western Transvaal. There were three separate Boer commandos under the overall command of De La Rey. By this time, many Boer fighters had surrendered and some were now working for the British as scouts. Those who remained in the field were referred to as, 'bitter-einders'. Their situation was very difficult as the British had stripped the veld of food and supplies and had systematically burned Boer farms and homes to deny the guerrillas shelter. Nevertheless, De La Rey's men were able to supply themselves with weapons, food and clothing which they had captured from the British.

They also remained a dangerous enemy and on a number of occasions they had scored victories against British troops. On February 24 1902, for example, they had mauled a British column at Yser Spruit and on March 7 had captured a British general (Methuen)and six field guns at Tweebosch, after routing his command. One reason for the continued Boers successes was the poor quality of some of the British troops in the theatre. Herbert Kitchener had over 16,000 troops operating in the Western Transvaal, but many of them were not regulars, but poorly trained Imperial Yeomanry.

Kitchener's strategy for bringing the war to an end was to build fortified blockhouses across the veld and to mount 'drives' or sweeps of the countryside with mobile columns. The first such sweep in the spring of 1902 lasted from March 23 to March 30, but produced few results in terms of destroying the Boer commandos. Indeed the British troops suffered a reverse at Boschbult, taking 178 casualties.

[edit] Hamilton's drive

On April 6, Kitchener put Ian Hamilton in command of another drive to try to trap De La Rey's fighters. The plan was to 'squeeze' the Boers against the British mobile columns and a line of blockhouses and entrenchments at Klerksdorp. Hamilton had General Kekewich, who was in command of one of his columns, dug in at Rooiwal to strengthen his left flank. Kekewich arrived at Rooiwal on the 10th of April and because he had made a mistake in where exactly his destination was, linked up with another British force under Rawlinson. This error proved to be a fortunate one for the British. Dug in on the hillside at Rooiwal were about 3,000 mounted infantry, supported by 6 field gun]s and 2 pom poms.

[edit] The Battle

The Boers, however, did not know of the British deployment and they believed that the flank at Rooiwal was only lightly held. One of their commandos, under General Potgieter and General Kemp, therefore tried to overrun the British position early on the morning of April 11, in an effort to escape Hamilton's 'drive'. Potgieter had around 1,000 to 1,500 men, all mounted riflemen.

At around 7:15 am on April 11, they charged the British position on horseback, firing from the saddle. A British picket of mounted infantry was overrun, taking 20 casualties. The British position was a strong one, with over 3,000 troops entrenched on the hillside and covered by artillery. However, the sight of the charging Boers panicked some of the inexperienced British troops and a number of Yeoman units fled the scene of the battle and were not stopped until they were a mile away from the fighting. A Lieutenant Carlos Hickie manage to stop the stampede with a mixture of pleas and threats. In addition, a number of the regular British officers on the scene were very critical of the 'wild' shooting of their men.

In spite of this, however, the Boer charge was stopped about 30 metres from the British line by artillery and rifle fire. Fifty Boers were killed outright and more were wounded. Among the dead was General Potgieter. Kekewich later commented that, 'one good company of infantry could have killed 300 Boers'. The surviving Boers made good their retreat. Boer fire, delivered from the saddle, had produced about 50 casualties in the British line.

Ian Hamilton arrived on the scene just as the fighting was ending. However he delayed the pursuit of the beaten Boers as he feared that the retreat was a ruse and that his men would fall into Boers ambushes. At about 9:45, or 90 minutes after the Boer charge had been repulsed, Hamilton sent his mounted troops in pursuit of the enemy. They captured a further 50 Boers and re-captured the artillery lost at Tweebosch.

Kitchener had issued orders that Boers captured wearing British uniforms were to be shot. However, although a number of wounded Boers were indeed wearing captured British khaki, Hamilton ordered that they be spared.

[edit] Aftermath

The battle was a setback for the Boers, but their casualties were relatively light and most of their fighters escaped the action unscathed. In any case, peace talks to end the war were already imminent. They began on May 19 in Pretoria. De La Rey, the Boer's commander in the Western Transvaal was one of the Boer negotiators.


[edit] Sources