Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  Describing a meeting of General Ben Viljoen with a group of his officers, he wrote:

  The astonishing assemblage looked very much like a cannibal fancy dress meeting. One officer wore a jacket of monkey skin, hair to the outside; another officer a jacket of leopard skin. One looked a cross between Attila the Hun and Sancho Panza. Others wore odd garments of sheep, goat, and deer skin, and of green baize and gaudily coloured kaffir blankets. Quite evidently the apparel does not here proclaim the man.3

  To the British it seemed humiliating that these bands of ragamuffins could prove such formidable foes. Herbert Lionel James looked at a batch of prisoners and found cause for reflection:

  The majority had neither coats nor boots; and their remaining costume was in the last stages of decay.... They were emaciated and drawn with hunger and hardship.... But what is more humiliating than anything else, is the realization that these miserable creatures are an enemy able to keep the flower of England’s army in check, to levy a tax of six millions a month upon this country, and render abortive a military reputation built upon unparallelled traditions. This is indeed a bitter reflection ...4

  James was writing in February 1901. The war was to go on for more than a year longer, and the Boers learned to look to the British army as unwilling supplies of clothing. When prisoners were taken, the Boers, having no prisons, simply stripped them of their clothing and accoutrements and freed them to “walk man-naked in the ’eat” (as Kipling put it) back to their units.

  Clothing was not the only item in short supply. Kitchener’s scorched-earth policy made everything scarce. Tobacco adicts suffered, and desperate men smoked horse dung, calling it Wayside Mixture. The Boers became skilled at making do with what they could find on the veld. From British telegraph wire they made nails for their horses’ shoes; when there were no more matches they made tinder boxes, using flints they found and, for tinder, the fluffy substance found inside the pods of a common shrub.

  Ammunition for their Mausers became very scarce indeed, and when it was nearly exhausted the Boers took every opportunity to exchange their Mausers for Lee-Metfords; eventually almost the entire Boer force in the field was armed with British rifles shooting British ammunition.

  “It is an extraordinary thing when we think of it,” wrote David Miller in a letter home, “that the Boers depend almost entirely for their ammunition on captures they make from us.”5 But the Boers did not have to rely entirely on captures. British soldiers carried their cartridges loose in ammunition pouches, an unsatisfactory arrangement, for a loose strap made it easy for them to spill out. The burghers often followed behind a British column gleaning cartridges; camp sites always yielded a supply, for the British usually broke camp before daylight and did not police their areas before leaving. The Canadians had a superior cartridge belt invented by a retired American general, Anson Mills, and toward the end of the war the British also acquired some, but there were always enough captures, enough of the old ammunition pouches, and enough careless soldiers to keep the Boers supplied and fighting.

  Someone once suggested to Kitchener that he ask the ordnance department in England to produce cartridges that resembled the ordinary issue but which would explode when fired and that these be scattered about for the Boers to pick up. Kitchener considered this idea, but Ian Hamilton talked him out of it. “To my mind,” said Hamilton, “this stood on a level with the poisoning of wells, and heaven be praised, K. never touched it.”6

  The Boers had begun the war with hymns and sermons, had ridden off to join their commandos with their Bibles stuffed in their saddlebags; many commandos had been accompanied by predikants of the church, some of whom had become officers. “The men who led the Boers in prayers also led them in battle,” Captain Carl Reichmann observed. “In camp or at a halt on the march he read his Bible or hymn book, and at night after dark, groups of men would sing psalms and hymns, whose weird solemnity subdued the frivolity of any would-be scoffer.”7

  The altered character of the war did little to change this picture. There were church services, prayer meetings, thanksgiving services after victories or narrow escapes, and confirmation classes for the young men. At least one commando even formed a religious debating society—and this during the guerrilla war.

  Absent from the hymn singing and other pious observances were the foreign volunteers, whose free-ranging ways were not to be checked. It was a rare burgher who drank to drunkenness; many foreign volunteers did so as often as they had the opportunity. They were also more profane, and many had a wild exuberance of language that bewildered the more literal-minded Boer. One old burgher sat amazed, a plug of tobacco halfway to his mouth, while an Irish-American with whom he had refused to share it ranted at him, “You are lower than a snake’s arse, and I wouldn’t spit on you if your guts were on fire.”

  Most of the men with the guerrilla commandos were no more disciplined at the end of the war than they had been at the beginning, although much depended upon their leaders. De Wet was probably the most successful, but even in his forces the state of discipline never reached what would be considered an acceptable standard in any other army; orders deemed unacceptable were still disregarded. Schikkerling in his diary for 22 February 1901 recorded one such time: “In the afternoon the General [Ben Viljoen] sent to arrest a young fellow who, without leave, had left some distant commando to visit someone in our laager. About seventy of us congregate and refuse to allow violence to our visitor, and there the matter drops.”8

  Leaders found it difficult to restrain their burghers from pillaging and even from stealing from each other. Although the foreigners were credited with being the worst thieves, the Boers were not far behind. Schikkerling was the proud possessor of a spoon, a rare article, but he was forced to carry it in his pocket at all times to prevent its being stolen by his comrades, and in his diary he once wrote: “It is today two years since I fled out of Johannesburg. On this historic day a depraved person steals the twelve bars of soap I made.”9

  Commandant Botha (a relative of the commandant-general) one night listened patiently to the fulminations of a burgher who had come to him with the news that they were losing the war because God was punishing them for their sins, especially for the sin of thieving, and in particular for the heinous crime of stealing from comrades. The harangue was brought to an end only by the exhausted Botha rolling himself in his blankets and falling asleep. He awoke cold and shivering, his blankets gone. So, too, were his coat and saddle. So too was the burgher.

  Schikkerling’s diary reveals repeatedly the depredations of his own commando:

  During our wanderings last night [16 May 1901] we stopped at a farmhouse to make some enquiry, but received scant courtesy from the woman in command. She approached, followed by a long diminishing file of children, the whole looking like a monstrous sea serpent, herself in the van forming the formidable head. With tearful fury she denounced us as thieves, drunkards, and cowards who, having left our manhood behind us in the big cities and other idolatrous centres, had come here to rob and ruin helpless Christian women and children, and to be instrumental in causing their homes to be burnt down, by drawing, through our uninvited presence, the enemy to their houses with fire and sword and, when he came, by fleeing and leaving the distracted household to face him. The painful part of the reproach was the coarse grains of truth therein embedded. We admitted defeat and moved on.10

  The Boer officers generally did their best to discourage indiscriminate looting from their own people, but, without power to punish, their words often fell on deaf ears. At one farm the housewife welcomed the men of the Johannesburg Commando warmly, but they stole her pigs and turkeys anyway, causing her to break into tears: “If only she had cursed us,” said Schikkerling, “we could have stood it; but she merely wept; and this drew from me all that I had to leave her—a tear of pity.”11

  Some commandos were worse than others, carrying reputations that made their visits dreaded. Jack Pienaar’s field coronetcy, consisting mostly of f
oreign volunteers, earned a name for poultry thieving, and the approach of the Machadodorp Commando, noted for plundering, was cause for alarm to any farm, although when they came to her parents’ farm Freda Schlosberg recorded that they were “so utterly discouraged that they did not have enough pluck to loot us, though they stole as much as they could.... So the much dreaded commando passed harmlessly.”12 But there were others, and, as Freda wrote in her diary, “some of them were exceedingly troublesome.” One carried off the little pony on which she and her sister used to ride. When a commando came to a neighbouring farm the woman there snatched up a revolver and ran to the stable. The two horses inside were all she had left after the depredations of another commando only a week before, and she vowed she would shoot any man who touched them. They simply took the revolver out of her hand and led the horses away.

  The Schlosbergs finally abandoned their farm, and Freda recorded its fate in her diary:

  As soon as we left Rhenosterkop the Boers took away the doors and windows of our house, all the furniture and everything else useful, broke into our warehouses and took all the forage and mealies that we left.

  Then Colonel Plumer arrived with his regiment and burnt our home and warehouses to the ground.13

  Schlosberg, born in Russia, was not a burgher, and he had tried to be neutral, but any farmer found that impossible; whatever he did he seemed certain to be accused of partisanship and to lose all he possessed. On 6 October 1900 Botha issued the following order to his subordinate commanders: “Do everything in your power to prevent the burghers laying down their arms. I will be compelled, if they do not listen to this, to confiscate everything movable and also to burn their farms.”14

  So the Boers did their share of farm burning too, and they were not always judicious. Marthinus Becker was with his commando when a group of Boers came to the thatched cottage where he had left his wife and children. They accused Becker of having gone over to the British and refused to believe his wife’s protestations that he had not. They burned the house and all its contents.

  The Boer leaders did their best to see that their commandos did not take on the appearance of mere bands of banditti, and they struggled to maintain a semblance of formal government. In spite of Lord Roberts’s annexation proclamation, Steyn still claimed to be president of the Orange Free State, and although Kruger was gone, Schalk Burger remained as acting president of the Transvaal; cabinet officers were appointed and they did as much government business as they could, although it was not much. Their capitals were wherever the heads of state laagered for the night. Schikkerling lightheartedly made fun of the Transvaal government:

  The Government is.... a portable and peripatetic body, the head and executive mounted on horses and mules, on which are packed the State Documents and worthless paper money; of coin currency they have none. This fugitive assemblage wanders about, making the Capital and seat of Government any humble hill, valley or grotto, that gives shelter and sanctuary. When it stands for any length of time on one spot, it acquires impedimenta and poultry and gets into easy habits, the Ministry often eating real bread and sometimes putting sugar in their mealie coffee.15

  Effective national leadership in the Transvaal was really given by Louis Botha rather than the weak Schalk Burger, but in the Orange Free State the fiery Marthinus Theunis Steyn was a flaming torch of patriotism, giving to the cause of independence every ounce of his energy. Although De Wet and faithful burghers tried to protect him, Steyn led a precarious life. Several times he came close to being captured, and once he came very close indeed.

  On 6 July 1901 a British column passing through the village of Reitz in the northern Free State discovered that the Boers were in the habit of vacating the town as soon as a column approached and returning as soon as it passed on. Three days later Brigadier General R. G. Broadwood was ordered to double back by forced marches and take the town by surprise.

  The Boers, who kept track of British columns, knew (or thought they did) that the nearest column was 20 miles away when, on the night of 9 July, Steyn and his government were camped at Reitz. As a precaution, however, some men were posted between the town and the column. But Broadwood, taking 400 well-mounted men and a pompom, moved fast. When the Boer picket dashed into town shouting “The English are on us!” the British were pounding at their heels.

  Steyn shared a tent with his brother-in-law and aide, Gordon Fraser, but this night Fraser had sat up until one o’clock playing cards at a home in town and, not wanting to disturb the President, had decided to sleep there. He had slept only a few hours when shouts woke him. He tumbled out of bed and grabbed up his clothes, but at the door of the house he was met by soldiers and the order, “Hands up!”

  About two o’clock in the morning Steyn had awakened, as he frequently did, to get up, look around, and see that all was well. Everything was quiet, and he went back to sleep. Just before dawn his Coloured servant, Ruiter, got up to make the morning coffee and heard, faintly at first, a sound he took to be made by cattle. Then he saw, looming up in the darkness, Broadwood’s hard-riding dragoons, and he rushed into Steyn’s tent shouting, “Oubaas! Here are the English!” Steyn leaped up and ran outside. Only about 400 yards away were the British, riding with loose reins as fast as they could straight towards him. He and Ruiter made a dash for it, Steyn wisely following Ruiter, who knew where the horses were, and they managed to round a corner and race to the barn where the horses were stalled without being seen. Another servant, who had dashed back into the tent to fetch Steyn’s saddle, was met by the troopers as he ran outside with it. Steyn had thrown a rope over his horse’s neck and was about to mount bareback when a young burgher named Curlewis, a former schoolmaster, thrust his saddle at him. He was a small man and the stirrups were too short, but there was no time for niceties.

  Mounted and outside the barn, Steyn and Ruiter could see that the town swarmed with soldiers, and Steyn instinctively turned that way, but Ruiter managed to dissuade him and they galloped for a nearby kopje. A dragoon sent a shot after them, and Steyn, looking over his shoulder, saw Ruiter tumble from his saddle.

  Dawn found the President of the Orange Free State hatless, coatless, and alone, a fugitive on the veld. Behind him in the hands of the enemy were all his official and personal papers; his staff and most of his cabinet were prisoners.

  Early in the morning he came upon some Boer scouts, one of whom gave him a handkerchief (a rare article among the guerrillas) to cover his balding head. Another scout he encountered gave him a hat, and at the farm of a recently married man the bride gave him the only man’s jacket in the house—her absent husband’s wedding coat.

  Although the British had failed to capture Steyn, they had done well. Among the prisoners were one of the president’s brothers, Pieter Gysburt Steyn; Gordon Fraser, the president’s brother-in-law; Rocco de Villiers, secretary of the Executive; Alec McHardy, secretary of the War Committee; and two Boer generals: A. P. Cronjé and J. B. Wessels. Broadwood also had the satisfaction of recapturing the remaining guns De Wet had taken from him at Sanna’s Post. It was quite a haul.

  All accounts except the most reliable—that of Steyn himself—say that the president fled Reitz in his nightshirt. But Steyn, like his burghers, slept in his clothes. He had been wearing a nightcap, but this he had thrown aside while running with Ruiter for the horses. Later, Major Hamilton Goold-Adams, then military governor of Bloemfontein, stopped the carriage of Steyn’s wife and asked, “Mrs. Steyn, can it be true that President Steyn barely escaped in his nightshirt?”

  “I would like to think that it is true,” she replied. “If the President can still sleep in a nightshirt then I know he still has clothes enough. ... But he certainly got away, your excellency, and that is the most important thing to us.”

  The deprivations and dangers of living on the open veld fighting for a lost cause required men who were exceptionally brave, hardy, determined, and skilful. Not all men by any means could measure up to the demands made upon them. They were
cut off from their families and, for most of the time, cut off from any news at all. Their leaders, particularly Steyn, gave inspiring speeches when they could; occasionally the burghers would see a newspaper, but this would be British; and from time to time news and propaganda would be sent to them. Kruger in Europe sent messages—“flinch not and fall not into disbelief” was the usual theme—and sometimes they gathered around their commandant or general to hear news of minor victories, words of encouragement from Boer sympathizers, or selected quotations from articles and speeches written by antiwar enthusiasts in England. Sometimes too the British sent out news that circulated among the commandos. Schikkerling wrote:

  The enemy has sent to inform us that Commandant Trichardt had a hundred and sixty-two of his men captured, that Commandant Scheepers in the Cape Colony has been put to death, and that Kritzinger is awaiting trial. An enemy seems to have no regard for one’s feelings. Who wanted this news? This is the sort of thing that makes enemies bad friends.16

  From first to last Schikkerling retained his sense of humour. He had need of it. But even he was sometimes homesick, and on 28 November 1901, his twenty-second birthday, he wrote: “I am so tired, and do so long to be home.”17 And he was sometimes discouraged:

  The enemy is wearing us down and huddling us together, and we seem unable to offer resistance. We are far out of courage, and our days are becoming one continuous extremity. We are at a loss to know what Saint to humour. The roomy days of our talkative forefathers, who never had such protracted campaigns, are gone and past, and the fates seem weary of doing Majuba miracles. There used to be a time when we were entitled to look forward to a miracle as naturally as to a shock of corn in its season.18