The immediate response of the Boers (and I interpret the text to indicate that this is indeed the case) would have been to go from loose column of march to a dispersed skirmish line with the interval anywhere from 1 to 3 meters. Assuming a 300 man main body that’s a total frontage somewhere from 150 to 900 meters depending on whether he stacks his main force or not. Probably the latter, as Boer tactics leaned towards maximum force on line to develop superior firepower, giving up the ability to generate the sequential offensive impulses sought by European commanders.

Thus the length of time needed for his runners to inform everyone of any new orders once his force had deployed. Dispersing them to defensive positions in cover or concealment as he did later would have been hasty before he knew exactly what he was up against. The amount of time needed to herd them all back together and get them straightened out enough to maneuver might have resulted in more casualties than simply performing that maneuver from the deployed state. Hence, 5-10 minutes to deploy once they had come under fire, 5-10 minutes to figure out what they were up against and that they couldn’t tackle it offensively (without prohibitive casualties), 5-10 minutes for the Boer commander to get his orders to everyone, and 5 minutes or so for them to get into cover where they couldn’t be shot at. Total: 25-35 min. Those are all exceedingly rough estimates, of course.

As Clausewitz pointed out: “In war everything is very simple, but the simplest thing becomes very difficult.” Everything takes longer than it seems like it should, especially with hundreds of people involved.

At those ranges, against 300 Boers in open line on the plain, 0.5% accuracy sounds about right. Only way to find out for sure would be to do some experiments. Happily, they’ve already been done. I have a book around here somewhere that was written just after the Boer War, presenting the various positions taken in tactical debates of the time as well as the data resulting from the experiments in long-range rifle and artillery accuracy against bodies of troops made by various countries. I’ll see if I can dig it up.

This has reminded me that I should write the remaining sections in my “Victorian Tactics” series.

Given that the whole Boer force is 500 men, the main body is probably around 300-400 men strong. 30-40 hits decimates them in that case, which is pretty nasty. Their morale would be hurting at that point since they couldn’t see the enemy, and their general and obvious exposure to fire wouldn’t help things. Hence the confusion.

The Boer commander was in a tight spot, and made the right decision given the information at hand. Sending his men to ground took away any realistic chance at building enough forward momentum for an assault, but since he controlled the surrounding countryside and greatly outnumbered the British force (he would have been able get a rough idea of the numbers from the weight of fire and their passive behavior) there was little cost to simply waiting until night to slip past. His scouts would warn him of any British maneuver forces, in which case he could withdraw, and given the situation there was no chance of the British slipping a runner out in time to warn any such force if it wasn’t already on the way.

See Volley fire vs aimed fire for a discussion of volley fire.

In this fifth dream though, our protagonist has his men open fire on the main body some 1500 meters away, doing a good deal of damage and causing great confusion. A little research though suggests that the Lee-Metford rifle of the time had an effective range — meaning the average shooter should hit a human target 50% of the time at that range — of 500 to 800 meters.