Penn Symons

Lieutenant-General Sir William Penn Symons KCB (17 July 1843 – 23 October 1899) was a British Army officer who was mortally wounded as he commanded his forces at the Battle of Talana Hill during the Second Boer War. While his forces won the battle, they had to abandon their position and fall back to Ladysmith. Symons and the more severely wounded were left to the Boers; he died three days later. A monument to his valour was raised in Victoria Park, Saltash, Cornwall, UK.

Early life and family William Penn Symons was born on 17 July 1843 at Hatt, Cornwall, the eldest son of William Symons and Caroline Anne (née Southwell). He was educated privately and commissioned as an Ensign of the 24th Foot (later the South Wales Borderers) on 6 March 1863. and captain on 16 February 1878. His first combat experience was in South Africa during the Ninth Xhosa War (1877–78) where as a captain of the 2nd Battalion of the 24th Foot faced the native Gcaleka and Ngqika tribes led by King Sandile kaNgqika. In 1879 he took part in the Zulu war and on 1 July 1881 he obtained his majority. and appointed as Assistant Adjutant General for Musketry in Madras (with the brevet rank of colonel) on 25 November 1887. In 1889 he commanded one of the two columns of the Burma Field Force in the Chin-Lushai Expedition for which he received the Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB). where he would command the 2nd Battalion, South Wales Borderers, until being made A.A.G Musketry in Bengal in April 1883. Then in 1894-5 he commanded a brigade during the Waziristan Expedition being promoted to local (brevet) brigadier general on 25 March 1895. In 1898 he was in command of the 2nd Brigade, Tochi Field Force during the Tochi Valley Expedition 1897-98, after which he led the 1st Division in the Tirah Campaign and was awarded the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) on 20 May 1898.

Second Boer War

Colonel Symons was given the staff rank of brigadier general and was to be General Officer Commanding of Natal with temporary rank of major general on 15 May 1899; later that year on 20 September his staff rank would be raised to major general and on 9 October to lieutenant general.

When Symons arrived in South Africa there were around ten thousand troops spread between Cape Colony and Natal. He was asked by the War Office to advise on the number of troops required to safely garrison the Natal from the threat of invasion from the Boer Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. His initial estimate was for an extra two thousand troops but he later raised that to five thousand.

However, before White arrived at Cape Town Penn Symons (who was known as a "fire eater"), had on his own authority deployed one of his brigades seventy miles north of Ladysmith at a town called Dundee. The position of both Ladysmith and Dundee was precarious as they stand in a triangle of Natal north of the Tugela River with the Orange Free State to the west and the Transvaal to the east. White wanted to recall the Dundee garrison to Ladysmith but because of political pressures from Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, the Governor of Natal, he agreed to leave them there. The Boers declared war on 11 October and began crossing the Natal borders the following day.

Battle of Talana Hill

On 20 October 1899 as dawn broke, men of the Dundee garrison spotted Boer troops on the nearby Talana hill (at ) who proceeded to open fire on the town with their Creusot 75mm guns. Symons was annoyed by the "impudence" of the Boers to attack before breakfast. The British guns moved to return fire as the general surveyed the Boer positions and gave orders to his commanding officers.

Symons believed in old-fashioned military tactics of close order, where by concentrating troops on the attack he hoped to smash the Boer defences. The reality was that these formations were not designed to be used against long-range bolt-action rifles, and Symons' brigades would be the first of many in this war to pay the heavy cost of the mistake, as many generals would repeat it. However, his orders for the cavalry commander, Colonel Möller, were less conventional, telling him to act on his own initiative; it would be another costly mistake.

Winston Churchill wrote in his telegrams to The Morning Post:

Memorials The Durban Light Infantry erected a memorial stone over his grave at Dundee. Another monument to his valour was raised in Victoria Park, Saltash, Cornwall.