The Fall of the Asante Empire (20 page)

General Wolseley’s hopes for a railroad had to be abandoned when it was discovered that the astonishing amount of six and a quarter miles of rails already delivered could not be laid because the land was far from being level.
A railway engine was converted to use tractor tires, but it had only gone a few yards before it tumbled over into a muddy ditch and was abandoned.
The railway was set aside, much to the derision of newspaper men who wondered why the idea had been entertained in the first place.
That Bowdich, Hutton, and Dupuis had all noted the presence of valleys and hills was not lost on the newsmen, and the decision to build a railroad when time was so much of the essence and laborers were so difficult to obtain was also ridiculed.
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It was not one of Wolseley’s better ideas.

As the Asante army slowly withdrew to the north, Wolseley fumed in his dispatches to London that he lacked the troops to strike a serious blow at them.
The best he could do was use men of his West India Regiment, supplemented by Royal Marines, sailors, and native recruits, to nip at their heels—to “keep them moving,” as he put it.
Occasionally, the Asante rear guard stood to fight, and the two sides exchanged fire.
Fortunately for the British, almost all of whom were solidly hit by Asante slugs, these were fired at such long range that, except for one sailor who was hit in the eye, they did no more than sting.
The African allies the British had pressed into service had even less stomach for combat than the starving and dispirited Asante.
British officers flogged men with sticks and umbrellas (which they actually carried into combat), but they would not advance.
Many dead Asante were found, apparent victims of starvation, and numerous starving and diseased prisoners of the Asante were left behind to be taken by the British.
They were described as living skeletons.
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As Captain Maurice was marching behind some Hausa soldiers under a Captain Gordon, he came upon “a poor little sick boy” who was apparently wounded and starving as well, lying by the side of the road.
A Hausa “ran his spear in mere wantonness into the stomach of the poor little wretch.
I don’t suppose I shall ever forget the look of agony with
which the poor creature drew together his limbs and rolled himself over.”
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Maurice could not identify the Hausa, and Gordon had no time to stop his column to investigate; so the troops moved on.

As General Amankwatia slowly withdrew toward Kumase, he decided that he would vent some of his rage on the rebellious king of Abra by attacking his capital, Abrakrampa.
Amankwatia boasted so publicly about his intention to destroy the king of Abra that his plans became known to Wolseley, who reinforced the British garrison there.
Some one thousand armed men, including Marines and Hausas, sited rocket launchers, built stockades, dug shelter trenches, loopholed houses, and converted the brick Wesleyan chapel into a fort.
The brush was cleared away for one hundred yards in all directions.
The force was commanded by Major Baker Russell, one of Wolseley’s favorites.
A cavalryman from the 13th Hussars, Russell was an instinctively effective leader who loved battle.
He was noted for reminding the men of the 13th Hussars, a famous regiment, that it was their duty to “look pretty in time of peace and get killed in war.”
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Amankwatia’s decision “to plant his umbrella” in the Abra king’s capital caused widespread dissension among his junior officers and soldiers, who were hungry, sick, and tired of war.
A threatened mutiny was barely averted by the senior officers, who reluctantly supported Amankwatia.
Abrakrampa was so heavily fortified that, by the time the Asante attack finally took place on November 5, it was tantamount to suicide.
Still, with their ivory horns blaring out martial music, their drums pounding heavily, and thousands and thousands of men chanting in unison, the Asante soldiers made a valiant charge.
But they had to cover one hundred yards in the open and were shot down in such numbers that the charge was beaten back.
Despite severe losses they continued to blaze away at the British position for thirty-six hours.
When Wolseley was informed about the fighting, he decided to march to the rescue of the garrison with the few men he still had available.
When his small force arrived, the Asante had withdrawn, and Baker Russell urged Wolseley to send the marines and Hausas after them to strike at their rear.
Wolseley listened, but to Russell’s dismay he delayed for hours while he carefully sited his cannon to the south, not north toward the Asante, and stared in that direction with a fixed expression.
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Wolseley was in the grip of malaria.
He gave no orders to the marines or Hausas, but he did finally send his undisciplined coastal allies after the Asante.
The Asante badly mauled them, sending them scrambling back in disorder.

While the meager British forces tried to hurry the Asante withdrawal, work on the road was accelerated so that it would be twelve feet wide, free of roots, dry and level.
Without skilled labor Major Home, the senior Royal Engineer, and his handful of Royal Engineers had to improvise at every step and do backbreaking work themselves.
One crew of Africans cut back the brush, another dug out roots.
A third group, more skilled and closely supervised, dug culverts and drains so that the troops would not have to march with wet feet.
Another crew built bridges.
Major Home reported with chagrin that it had taken twelve hours to bridge a stream that was only six feet across.
Home’s men also had to set up supply depots.
All of this had to be done while heavy rains fell and Home had only 220 laborers.
Despairing, he asked for an additional one thousand men, but it was weeks before any could be found.

Wolseley, Home, and Surgeon Major Gore also had to prepare campsites for the troops along the line of march.
Eight sites were chosen along the route of march to the Pra River.
Each camp contained housing for at least 450 men.
There were eight large huts with wattled walls and thatched roofs, each capable of sleeping fifty men on comfortable split bamboo or palm-stalk beds raised two feet above the ground.
There were smaller huts to house officers and even smaller ones for senior commanders.
Deep latrines were dug, one for officers and the rest for the other ranks.
Each camp had a small hospital (the largest one bore a sign reading The Forlorn Hope), and some had post offices and telegraph facilities.
Four of the camps even had bakeries.
The campsites were placed on elevated, well-cleared land with a good water supply, but even if the water appeared to be uncontaminated, it was not drunk until it had been filtered through a large mobile filter tank.
There was also a large commissary filled with food supplies, a roomy, open-sided mess hall, and a canteen that sold wine to officers.

Correspondent Winwood Reade was so impressed by these camps that he wrote, “In no campaign has the British soldier ever had such comforts and luxuries on the march.
Each camp was like
an hotel, and some were almost elegant, with neatly swept roads, and boards fixed up pointing the way to the Water, the Latrine, etc.”
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Other correspondents agreed with Reade, but if they had seen these camps before the troops moved in, they would have received quite a different impression.
Before the British troops arrived, African laborers were joined by people from nearby villages in making themselves very much at home in the camps.
Some huts were used to slaughter sheep, and others as toilets.
One of the larger huts had been converted into what one British observer discreetly referred to as a harem.
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Wolseley distributed information to his officers and men instructing them about means for preventing illness, the need for kindness to carriers, and various infantry tactics.
Then he made this astonishing declaration: “It must never be forgotten by our soldiers that Providence has implanted in the heart of every native of Africa a superstitious awe and dread of the white man that prevents the negro from daring to meet us face to face in combat.”
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Colonel Torrane, Sir Charles MacCarthy, Captain Ricketts, and Colonel Purdon, among many others, would have been surprised to learn this.

As ever, the health of the men Wolseley hoped to command was uppermost in his mind.
He was determined to get his European troops to the point of battle as rapidly as possible and, of course, in a condition to fight.
He ordered that every man take quinine daily, that they avoid chills at all costs, and that they be warm and dry when they slept.
He also ordered, with the approval of his medical officers, that wherever the men slept, they protected themselves against malaria by burning huge fires to dry the poison-laden air.
At each camp huge piles of logs were stacked up so that when the troops arrived, gigantic fires could be lighted to burn away the noxious vapors that were thought to threaten the men’s health.
These fires certainly made the camps colorful, and they probably drove away mosquitos, thus perhaps inadvertently reducing the chances of malaria.
The general was also greatly concerned that the troops he hoped to receive not overexert themselves, something that was thought to assure an attack of malaria and, in many instances, appeared to do so.
This caution did not apply to his officers.
They performed exhausting physical labor from 5
A.M.
to 5
P.M.
every day, and all except one contracted malaria.

Although officers were expected to run every risk, the troops were to be protected at all costs.
Small hospital facilities were provided at each camp, and a major one hundred-bed hospital facility was built at the most advanced camp, where it was expected that casualties from the first battle would be treated.
Even better facilities were available at the coast, where survivors would be cared for.
There would be no fewer than sixty surgeons with the army It was also arranged that hospital ships would be offshore, ready to care for the sick and wounded and, when necessary, transport them to England.
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Incredibly detailed arrangements were also made for carriers to be provided with stretchers and hammocks to carry wounded from the battlefield to the nearest treatment center and, if need be, to the coast.
Not surprisingly, these arrangements were calculated for European troops only.
Sick or wounded African troops and carriers would be cared for as circumstances allowed.
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Despite the thought given to these matters, Wolseley did not provide enough hammocks for the sick and wounded, and his campaign was seriously jeopardized as a result.

Wounds and malaria were not the only concerns.
When some Europeans aboard ship were found to be suffering from yellow fever, a strict quarantine was imposed on all ships.
Even so, some naval officers died of the disease while these ships sailed home.
Dysentery was a killer, too.
Reade, the correspondent, suffered a terrible bout of dysentery but survived.
He also wrote movingly about Captain Huyshe, one of Wolseley’s favorite officers, who had served with him so courageously in Canada.
Sick with ghastly diarrhea almost from the moment he stepped ashore, he nevertheless found the strength to save a fourteen-year-old Asante boy from certain death at the hands of Africans allied to the British, and he then treated him gently.
But Huyshe continued to suffer so terribly from dysentery that when newsman Reade stopped by his sickbed, he could barely manage these last words: “Goodbye, we shall meet at the front.”
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Whatever the cost, Wolseley was determined that his men would be well provisioned.
On the recommendation of the surgeon major, the soldiers’ daily ration would be enormous: each man was to receive 1 ½ pounds of biscuit or freshly baked bread, 1 ½ pounds of fresh beef or canned Australian beef without bone, two to four ounces of rice, potatoes, peas, or other vegetables, plus salt,
pepper, tea, and three ounces of sugar.
In addition to these prescribed rations, a large amount of sausage and cheese would also be available.
Lime juice with sugar was to be provided four times a week.
Preserved vegetables were so scanty and unappreciated by the men that a soldier’s diet effectively consisted of 1 ½ pounds of bread plus cheese or sausage and beef three times a day, washed down by very sugary tea.
This was considered to be an ideal diet for troops marching and fighting in ninety-degrees heat and tropical humidity.
Even well-filtered water tasted foul in the men’s wooden canteens, so they carried lukewarm tea, which proved to be a little more palatable.

Wolseley’s otherwise meticulous preparations all hinged on the availability of transport, and here his plans miscarried so badly that the outcome of the campaign was significantly affected.
There were no navigable rivers that approached Kumase and no beasts of burden.
Everything depended on African labor, and in making his plans, Wolseley ignored what past experience had taught earlier British officers—namely, that neither the Fante nor other coastal people were eager to carry loads, especially not into the heart of the Asante kingdom.
When he sent his officers out to round up men to carry British supplies, they usually returned empty-handed.