So it was also at a critical moment at this action at Vaalkranz.  In the original scheme of operations it had been planned that an adjoining hill, called the Green Hill, which partly commanded Vaalkranz, should be carried also.  The two together made a complete position, while singly each was a very bad neighbour to the other.  On the aide-de-camp riding up, however, to inquire from General Buller whether the time had come for this advance, he replied, ‘We have done enough for the day,’ and left out this essential portion of his original scheme, with the result that all miscarried.

Speed was the most essential quality for carrying out his plan successfully.  So it must always be with the attack.  The defence does not know where the blow is coming, and has to distribute men and guns to cover miles of ground.  The attacker knows where he will hit, and behind a screen of outposts he can mass his force and throw his whole strength against a mere fraction of that of his enemy.  But in order to do so he must be quick.  One tiger spring must tear the centre out of the line before the flanks can come to its assistance.  If time is given, if the long line can concentrate, if the scattered guns can mass, if lines of defence can be reduplicated behind, then the one great advantage which the attack possesses is thrown away.  Both at the second and at the third attempts of Buller the British movements were so slow that had the enemy been the slowest instead of the most mobile of armies, they could still always have made any dispositions which they chose.  Warren’s dawdling in the first days of the movement which ended at Spion Kop might with an effort be condoned on account of possible difficulties of supply, but it would strain the ingenuity of the most charitable critic to find a sufficient reason for the lethargy of Vaalkranz.  Though daylight comes a little after four, the operations were not commenced before seven.  Lyttelton’s Brigade had stormed the hill at two, and nothing more was done during the long evening, while officers chafed and soldiers swore, and the busy Boers worked furiously to bring up their guns and to bar the path which we must take.  General Buller remarked a day or two later that the way was not quite so easy as it had been.  One might have deduced the fact without the aid of a balloon.

The brigade then occupied Vaalkranz and erected sangars and dug trenches.  On the morning of the 6th, the position of the British force was not dissimilar to that of Spion Kop.  Again they had some thousands of men upon a hill-top, exposed to shell fire from several directions and without any guns upon the hill to support them.  In one or two points the situation was modified in their favour, and hence their escape from loss and disaster.  A more extended position enabled the infantry to avoid bunching, but in other respects the situation was parallel to that in which they had found themselves a fortnight before.