by David Gilman
Irish regiments’ and brigades’ exploits can be explored by reading any of the excellent non-fiction publications available on the Boer War, but the Royal Irish Regiment of Foot is a fictional unit, as is Belmont’s 21st Dragoons. The Royal Irish are an amalgam of different units, and I chose to pit them against the Boer Army and Liam Maguire’s commando from the Foreign Brigade at the great battle at the Tugela Heights in Natal (more correctly named ‘Thukela’) in mid to late February 1900. Across the Tugela River lay the steep, undulating ground of Pieters Hill, Harts Hill and Railway Hill, and General Fitzroy Hart’s (5th) Irish Brigade’s assault, along with other British regiments, was an exhausting attack over rolling hills to dislodge an entrenched enemy. Wounded soldiers were often left unattended in the field, their injuries seen to by their comrades only if circumstances permitted. In the first half of the war medical evacuation was crude and badly organized, and so too were the attempts to instil field hygiene. Poor water supplies forced men to drink whatever water could be found and this made a significant contribution to bringing down soldiers with enteric fever, typhoid and dysentery. (As Mulraney said: Drink from the Tugela and you’ll have the scutters.)
A field dressing was all the men possessed by way of medical supplies and they had to wait until they could be taken from the battle by Indian stretcher-bearers. Although my story does not directly relate the fighting done by colonial troops I learned from my research that India contributed more soldiers and ambulance workers than any of the other British colonies and that the largest number of Boer prisoners of war were held in camps in India. Unlike the British and colonial soldiers who fell in the Boer War the graves of Indian ‘auxiliaries’ who died in South Africa are not known, and the only memorial to them was erected by the Indian community. These soldiers’ contribution is seldom recognized but the comfort they afforded the wounded men in the field was significant. The Natal Indian Ambulance Corps was formed by a twenty-eight-year-old Indian lawyer practising in Natal: Mohandas K. Gandhi.
Gandhi’s sympathies lay with the Boers and he expressed great admiration for their leaders and for the heroism of the Boer women. He justified his action in organizing the ambulance corps on the grounds that Indians who claimed rights as subjects of the British Empire had an obligation to contribute to the war effort.
Any reader familiar with British rifle shooting will know that it was Sergeant J. H. Scott who won the Silver Medal at Bisley in 1897, and not Captain Frederick Taylor. I took some licence with the facts as I wanted to establish that Sheenagh O’Connor’s killer was a crack shot. I hope, too, that any ‘gunners’ will forgive the very brief description of firing the Royal Field Artillery 12-pounder. Other than the mechanics of opening and closing the breech and setting the gun’s elevation, there are other tasks to be performed in setting a gun, and the fuze on the top of the shell should be turned to accommodate the length of time before it explodes, but in the heat of the action I needed to have Pierce load and fire the gun as quickly as possible. I followed, as closely as my understanding allowed, the information given by the 1897 Treatise on Ammunition, which was very kindly offered to me by one of the forum members on the Anglo-Boer War website (AngloBoerWar.com). There are many enthusiasts who contribute to online forums, and I would urge anyone receiving assistance from them to make a donation to help keep them going. Much effort is put into these sites’ development and were it not for the breadth of experience that the forum members offer some of the minutiae that we fiction writers are forever seeking out might never be discovered.
I also found personal accounts of the war from individual soldiers’ recollections, as well as observations made by war correspondents and diaries kept by nurses in the field. I’m sure that any reader with knowledge of this conflict will recognize that Evelyn Charteris could, in part, be modelled on Miss Emily Hobhouse, the daughter of an Anglican rector. This Cornishwoman travelled to South Africa to do what she could to alleviate the suffering of the women and children in the concentration camps. These internment camps were set up to house the families whose farms had been burned out in order to disrupt the Boer fighters’ supply lines. This was a badly conceived concept based on a strategic and logistical problem. The welfare of the women and children became a mark of shame for the political and military class; the poor hygienic conditions and lack of sufficient food in the camps caused between 18,000 and 28,000 deaths and left an embittered Afrikaner nation with a legacy of hatred for the English.
Hobhouse, a member of the South African Women and Children’s Distress Fund, visited some of the camps in the Orange Free State between January and April 1901. Unlike Evelyn Charteris, who depended on someone at home – in this story Joseph Radcliffe – to publicize her reports, Hobhouse published her findings to a shocked public in England. Her report led to a government enquiry: the Fawcett Commission. In their report the commission criticized the camps and listed a number of recommendations for improvement. The British High Commissioner in the Cape Colony, Lord Arthur Milner, assumed direct control of the camps in November 1901. He improved the conditions and rations in the camps. Before he took over, the death rate was 344 per thousand per annum in October 1901. Infant deaths, mainly due to measles, stood at 629 per thousand. By January 1902, the overall mortality rate had reduced to 160, and by February to 69, and by May to 20. By the end of the war the death rate had fallen below the peacetime rate. Few people know that there were also concentration camps for Africans. When the white women and children were taken into camps their black servants and labourers from the farms were also detained in one of the sixty-six camps that were set up specifically for them and which claimed the lives of twenty thousand. At one stage there were more than 115,000 Africans incarcerated in these camps and many were used by the British as a labour force. (It is worth pointing out that unlike later Nazi concentration camps these camps were not set up with the express intention of exterminating a section of the human race, but to deprive the Boer commandos of supplies and to induce the burghers to surrender.)
It should be noted that the concentration camp at Bergfontein is fictional, as are the towns of Verensberg and Swartberg and the railway line connecting them.
It is interesting that an American lobbyist on behalf of the Boers argued that condemnation of the concentration camps would rebound on Boer supporters because of the role played by American imperialism during the Filipino revolt: the United States authorities had established concentration camps to suppress the insurrection in the Philippines early in 1899 where ‘the torture by water cure and pumping sea water into prisoners make it difficult to protest...’ Waterboarding has been around a long time.
The Boer commandos were made up of farmers, clerks, lawyers and foreigners. I referred to the original 1929 edition of Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War by Deneys Reitz, who fought as a young seventeen-year-old in the conflict. Thomas Pakenham’s acclaimed scholarly work The Boer War (1979) is one of the first books I turned to; there is also a wonderful shortened but illustrated, large-format edition of this work published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. I also consulted the collected studies of various academics in The South African War (1980), General Editor: Peter Warwick and Advisory Editor: Professor S. B. Spies.
The Manual of Military Law 1898 explains that an officer is placed in arrest by either a staff officer or adjutant on the command of the senior officer. Being in arrest does not mean being placed in confinement as would happen to an NCO or private soldier. However, given that Major Taylor had committed murder I felt it appropriate for the story that I confine him.
The National Army Museum Book of the Boer War by Field Marshal Lord Carver (1999) is a gem of a book and contains documents, photographs and information that I had not found elsewhere. Leo Amery’s seven-volume work published between 1900 and 1909, The Times History of the War in South Africa 1899–1902, is comprehensive and also partisan. Amery was committed to reform in the British Army and he levels criticism at the high command.
On a person
al note I came across one of my wife’s ancestors, Lieutenant Nicholas William Chiazzari, who served with the Naval Brigade, Natal Naval Volunteers, who when the Royal Engineers failed to span the Tugela worked through the night to get the troops across. The events were described by W. K. L. Dickson in his book The Biograph In Battle: Its Story in the South African War.
January 16th... Our soldiers looked wretchedly wet and bedraggled as they wound their way over and around the kopjes. We could see them slowly approach the river and test the crossing, two men going up to their middles and wading round to make sure that there were no entanglements for the feet. Then the troopers followed one by one, while others tried to engineer the ferry, which they ultimately abandoned to our naval men, the handy boys, who are signalled for from the valley. Soon a party of thirteen was made up under command of Lieutenant Chiazzari, with Chief Gunner Instructor Baldwin assisting. They managed to quickly repair the ferry and send the troops across, toiling all evening and throughout the night until dawn. General Buller sent word to Captain Jones next morning that his men were worth their weight in gold.
Baldwin’s account of the feat is most entertaining. I abbreviate it somewhat for convenience sake:
We got orders to repair and handle the ferry just as it was getting dark, so we nipped down the hill and were soon at work, the Colonel of the Engineers passing it over to us. Lieutenant Chiazzari took the ferry while I remained on this side, and soon had the thing going in good shape. It’s a wonder what a bit of rope will do along with plenty of willing chaps. We were six from [HMS] Terrible, and seven Natal Volunteers, including Lieutenant Chiazzari... Before dawn we had taken nearly all over at the rate of 126 horses and three waggons in forty-two minutes...
In addition to the gratitude of General Buller, Lieutenant Chiazzari was thanked by Major General N. G. Lyttelton and was twice mentioned in despatches and awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
The lines quoted by Edward Radcliffe are taken from Walt Whitman’s ‘Ashes of Soldiers’:
With sabres drawn and glistening, and carbines by their thighs, (ah, my brave horsemen!
My handsome, tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride...)
Old soldiers know the awfulness of war and I wanted such men, in the characters of Joseph Radcliffe and Benjamin Pierce, to be obliged to face their own history: older men going to war to save a young man from its terror. It seemed a better way to tell the story than to have a single, robust hero, who could take on the rigours and hardship of such a conflict. These were men who had fought in the Civil War and Indian Wars in the USA, and knew the viciousness of killing and the changes it brings about in a man. Despite any liberties I may have taken in the eyes of historical purists I hope these characters, who share the story with ordinary Irish infantrymen (and a war-hungry cavalryman), bring dramatic conflict to the tale and will foster in the reader an interest in a war that foreshadowed a greater contest to come.
DAVID GILMAN
Devonshire, 2015
www.davidgilman.com
www.facebook.com/davidgilman.author
Further Sources
King’s College London: King’s Collections: The Serving Soldier, www.kingscollections.org/servingsoldier/home
The National Archives, British Army Operations up to 1913
Pope, Georgina Fane, C.N.R., Nursing in South Africa during the Boer War 1899–1900 (1902)
Steevens, G. W., From Cape Town to Ladysmith: An Unfinished Record of the South African War (1900)
University of Cape Town, South Africa, Department of Historical Studies
The Wellcome Trust
There were also many internet sites – more than fifty – that I turned to for snippets of information but they are too many to list here. However, one in particular that has many interesting contributions is www.angloboerwar.com.
Glossary
Asseblief:
(Afrikaans) please.
Donga:
(Nguni) dry, eroded watercourse.
Kaffir:
originally an Arabic term for ‘unbeliever’ and ‘infidel’. Once a common prefix in names of fauna and flora (such as kaffirboom, now known as the coral tree): there are over sixty compounds and combinations. Also an insulting and contemptuous word for a black African, common (along with the American term ‘nigger’) at the period of the novel; both are now considered unacceptably offensive.
Kopje
(pronounced kop-ee): (Dutch) a hillock.
Inkosi:
(Zulu) boss; respectful term for one in authority.
Mhlangana:
Zulu name pronounced Muh-shlan-gana.
Riempie:
(Dutch) a strip of leather used as a rope or in making furniture.
Rooinek:
(Afrikaans) literally ‘redneck’; an English person.
Sawubona
(pronounced: sa-born-a): (Zulu) hello.
Sjambok
(pronounced shambok): (Dutch) a rhinoceros hide whip.
Stoep:
(Afrikaans) verandah.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the staff at the National Library of Ireland, Dublin, for their kind assistance during my research for this book. My gratitude to Nic Cheetham and staff at Head of Zeus for their ongoing enthusiasm; so too to all those beavering away on my behalf at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. Isobel Dixon, my literary agent, is a constant source of encouragement and sound advice. Without the skill of my editor, Richenda Todd, there would be many more mistakes, and those that may remain are due to my endless tinkering with the narrative long after her generous and insightful editing.
Preview
Read on for a preview of Master of War
ENGLAND, 1346
Amid the carnage of the 100 Years’ War – the bloodiest conflict in medieval history – a young English archer confronts his destiny.
For Thomas Blackstone the choice is easy – dance on the end of a rope for a murder he did not commit, or take up his war bow and join the king’s invasion.
Vastly outnumbered, Edward III’s army will finally confront the armoured might of the French nobility on the field of Crécy.
It is a battle that will change the history of warfare, a battle that will forge a legend.
Can’t wait? Buy it here now!
Part 1
The Blooding
1
Fate, with its travelling companions Bad Luck and Misery, arrived at Thomas Blackstone’s door on the chilly, mist-laden morning of St William’s Day, 1346.
Simon Chandler, reeve of Lord Marldon’s manor and self-appointed messenger, bore his master’s freeman no ill will. A warning to the young stonemason of the writ issued for his brother’s arrest would stand him in good stead with his lordship and make the reeve appear less grasping than he was. A chance for the boy to run rather than hang. And hang he surely would for the rape and murder of Sarah, the daughter of Malcolm Flaxley from the neighbouring village.
‘Thomas?’ Chandler called, tying his horse to the hitching post. ‘Where’s that dumb bastard brother of yours? Thomas!’
The house was one room deep, twenty-odd feet long, its cob walls made of clay and straw mixed with animal dung, the steep pitched roof thatched with local reed, now aged and smothered in moss. Smoke seeped through an opening in the roof. Chandler stooped low beneath the eave to bang on the iron-hinged door. A figure emerged from the mist at the side of the cottage.
‘You’re about early, Master Chandler,’ said the young man cradling an armful of chopped wood. He looked warily at Lord Marldon’s overseer. There was no good reason for the man to be there. It could only mean trouble.
Thomas Blackstone stood a shade over six feet and, apprenticed in the stone quarry since the age of seven, had the build of a grown man who used his body tirelessly doing hard labour. His dark hair framed an open face with no meanness of spirit reflecting from his brown eyes. Lean like the rest of him, it was weathered to a colour that almost matched his leather jerkin
. It gave him the look of a man older than his sixteen years.
‘I’m here to warn you. There’s a warrant of arrest for your brother. The sheriff’s men are on their way. You don’t have much time.’
Blackstone peered into the rising mist; another hour and the morning sun would burn it away. He listened for the sound of hoof beats. The horsemen would come down the rutted track; its flint would ring from the impact of steel-shod hooves. It was quiet except for a morning cockerel. The cottage lay beyond the edge of the village; if he had the desire to run he could have his brother into the forest and over the hills without being seen.
