The Anglo-Boer War

Thanks to those who've sent messages of support in the last few weeks – the level of interaction has been remarkable from all my listeners around the world. For some we started this journey together in September 2017 and here we are almost 36 months later and the Three Years War has ended. This podcast was always designed to track the war week by week and it's now time to bid adieu. So yes, it's an emotional time for this has been an intense three years and I'd like to thank Jon who listened to the series with his father who passed away during our series. Jon, thanks for sending me notes through this time. To Samuel who has donated so much to this podcast series and Thomas who's constantly spoken to me over the past two years and also helped fund the Soundcloud account – thank you two in particular. Gustav – thanks for brightening up my day with some of your observations and unusual comments. To Andrew and Martin of History by Hollywood, thank you for sharing your time with me and for your professional help. To Sean the real professional historian who is also known as the Historian who sees the future and who has taken the time to make contact – thank you. To Susan from Canada who suggested I talk about two veterans of the Anglo-Boer war who went on to great things during the First World War. One is Lieutenant Edward Morrison who I mentioned in episodes dealing with the Eastern Transvaal, and the second is John McCrae. He wrote a poem called “In Flanders Field” which features the poppies and is now the reason why people wear poppies for remembrance when it comes to the First World War. Another direct link between this little African fracas and the utter disaster of the Western Front. As we know, the link between the Boer War and the First World War is inescapable. It was 12 years later which sounds a long time, until you get a little older like me then a dozen years is really a short hop in time. To Michael who has listened to the whole series – and told me this week he's gone back to Episode 1 to start again. If that's not a vote of confidence then nothing is – Michael I reckon you'll need a medal for bravery. Ryan, who's shared such detail I have stored for a day when our Covid lockdown lifestyle comes to an end – I'll be making that trip to Lindley in the Free State and a few wee draughts of Brandewyn and coke.

This week we count the costs of the war and follow some of those involved as they begin the long process of recovery. First, the cost. There is still debate about some of the statistics as there always is after a war. However the general consensus is that more than 100,000 men, women and children died between 1899 and 1902. At first glance it appears to be insignificant compared to – The Somme, for example during the first world war, where on one day 40 000 British casualties were recorded – or Stalingrad where 44 000 civilians were killed in an air raid on one day in September 1942. What you have to remember is that the total population of South Africa in 1899 was around 4 million. Britain lost 22 000 - 5 774 killed by enemy action, the rest died of disease. The Boers lost around 14 000 men killed. More than two thousand of these were foreigners, Italians, Americans, Dutch, German, French, Swede, Norwegian, Russian who were fighting against the British. However it was the non-combatants who dominated the death roll with at least 26 000 Boer women and children estimated to have died. Some say this figure is closer to 30 000. Then the total number of black South Africans who died in the Concentration camps and in war-related conditions topped 30 000 although the latest research suggests more like 36 000. In the case of the Boers, the number of women and children who died in Concentration Camps amounted to almost 10 percent of the population of the Republic of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. These deaths are particularly bitter in the memories even to this day. tale of the father who comes home from St Helena seeking his wife and children in Bloemfontein only to be told that all died in the concentration camps. The British servicemen returning home by the end of the war are treated as heroes, but there were many in Britain who questioned the civilian deaths and the veterans were very sensitive about criticism – which veterans always are. Awaiting many of these men is the horror of trench warfare as they became part of the British Expeditionary Force or BEF in Flanders and France fighting and dying in the Great War of 1914-18. The Uitlanders in South Africa were incredulous at the terms of peace. The Boers would pay no reparations, in fact, it was the British who would fund rebuilding of the country to the tune of 3 million pounds. They supported Lord Milner's view that Boers should be crushed and a whole new population be brought in to run the country.

Episode 141 is where the British and the Boers finally sign a peace treaty, but there's quite a bit to cover as we go about watching the days between 19th and 31st May 1902. Remember how the representatives from both sides, Botha, Smuts, Hertzog, De Wet, Burger and De la Rey for the Boers, Milner and Kitchener for the British, had decided to try and write a treaty together rather than separately through a commission. Nowadays commissions seem to drag on for years – while the original concept of a commission was premised on the threat of a lack of quick action. There is no doubt that we have lost the ability in the modern world to think rapidly. Commissions in the 21st Century are proficient at wasting time pandering to expensive lawyers representing a thicket of politicians rather than a direct pursuit of an objective legal conclusion. Back in Lord Kitchener's office in Pretoria in the week between 21st and 28th May 1902 the Boers were now aware that there was no way the British would ever agree to any sort of independence, and the British were aware that the Boers wanted to find an honourable way out of this war. Judge Hertzog put it in a nutshell when he said “I think that I am expressing the opinion of the whole Commission when I say that we wish for peace… we on both sides are really desirous of coming to a settlement…” This group of men then selected a sub-committee composed of Judge Hertzog and General Smuts along with Lord Kitchener and lawyer Sir Richard Solomon that drew up a schedule that included rules for those who refused to sign an oath to become citizens under the rule of his Majesty King Edward the Seventh. Before discussing that document Smuts asked “If we were to sign this document would not the outcome be that we leaders made ourselves responsible for the laying down of arms by our burghers?” To which the imperial hawk Lord Milner replied “Yes. And should your men not lay down their arms it would be a great misfortune.” And so they continued, debating each point but inevitably building trust and mutual respect. Nothing improves a relationship more than a desire to find an outcome rather than stating a position. The first draft had already been telegraphed to the British government on 21st May. Privately Lord Milner followed it up with a confidential note to Chamberlain saying he would have no regrets if the British Cabinet rejected or radically amended the proposals

The first large group of Boer prisoners were taken by the British at the battle of Elandslaagte on 21st October 1899. The army had failed to plan for prisoners because the idea was the Boers would be beaten in a few weeks so why spend money on POW camps? The first 188 Boers taken at Elandslaagte were temporarily housed with the naval guard in Simonstown on board the guard ship HMS Penelope. Several other ships were used as floating prisons until eventually permanent camps were established at Green Point, Cape Town, Bellevue and Simonstown. At the end of December 1900 more than 2500 Boers were placed on board the Kildonan Castle guardship where they remained for six weeks before they were removed to two other transports at Simonstown. The English army base at Ladysmith in Natal was used between December 1900 and January 1902 but was merely a staging area. Another staging area was established at Umbilo south of Durban in Natal where POWs would be placed on board ships and then routed to Cape Town. But it soon became clear that the Cape prisoner of war camps were targets for attacks and the British then shifted the burghers offshore. There were four main regions used to house Boer POWs, St Helena, Ceylon or modern day Sri Lanka, Bermuda and India. As you'll hear in a moment, a few hundred were also taken to Portugal. During the war, the British captured around 56 000 Boer prisoners and eventually ran out of space in host countries. India was only used as a last resort after the other three main camps became overcrowded. Of course, the most feared of all these was the camp in St Helena, but by the end of the war disease was more rampant in the other regions – mainly because of the climate. St Helena has a fairly benign climate, its much cooler than Bermuda, Ceylon and India. One of the first contingents of Boers to arrive in St Helena included general Piet Cronje who was captured along with thousands of his men after the battle of Paardeberg in February 1900. Cronje and 514 his commando arrived on the island in the middle of the Atlantic after disembarking from the troopship Milwaukee on 27th February that year. Cronje had surrendered to Lord Roberts after being caught in the battle which shook the Free State Boers as Cronje was cornered with a powerful commando. Illustrating his arrival on the island of St Helena, Punch Magazine published a cartoon of the general saluting the ghost of Napoleon and saying “Same enemy, Same result..” Prior to the Boers arrival, the governor of St Helena RA Sterndale had published a proclamation which read : “.. His Excellency expresses the hope that the population will treat the prisoners of war with that courtesy and consideration which should be extended to all men who have fought bravely for what they considered the cause and their country” So as General Cronje prepared to make that winding march up the hill from the tiny port of Jamestown at St Helena, his men fully expected to be subjected to humiliation. Instead, there was silence, no jeering nor rude remarks, as the Boers passed the crowds of islanders on their way to Deadwood Camp inland. Being escorted along with Cronje was his wife, whom Lord Roberts had allowed to accompany her husband. The Boer general and his wife were accommodated at Kent Cottage, not in Deadwood Camp itself and were surrounded by a strong military guard which changed every day. Of course, Cronje was a general and for once, it was the Boers demanding special attention. Whereas the culture was supposedly based on a democratic principle of equality, Piet Cronje insisted that proper respect be shown to his rank and that a mounted guard should be provided.

Episode 139 is full of peace and a smattering of love as the Boers gather in Vereeniging to discuss the British terms of surrender. As you can well imagine, the moment is bitter sweet. Men who have not seen their children for years are reunited on May 15th, while further afield, in the prisoner-of-war camps, the news is greeted with both joy and sorrow. So here we are, in Vereeniging on May 15th 1902. It's a settlement our narrator Deneys Reitz passed on his way back from the Natal front “This is a small mining village on the banks of the Vaal River, where nearly two years before, I had watched the Irishmen burning the railway stores during the retreat from the south” he writes. Remember he's riding with Jan Smuts and the other representatives chosen by Boers in the Eastern Transvaal. There will be representatives from the Free State who will be housed in an array of British army tents along with the Transvaal emissaries, each region with its own section. The British had prepared this tented camp with precision. It was laid out in a square, with the delegates meeting in a large central marquees, mess tent on one side, toilets were long drops as they're known in South Africa – pit latrines. But where was the stern General Christiaan de Wet ? Also missing were a handful of the Free State Delegates. Eventually on the morning of the 15th May, the day of the meeting, de Wet and a few hardliners arrived – fashionably late. The other senior political and military leadership were already in Vereeniging, along with Commandant General Louis Botha and de la Rey, Vice President Burgher of the Transvaal, members of the two government and of course, Jan Smuts. Reitz senior was also present, with JB Krogh, LJ Meijer, LJ Jacobs. Each Boer Republic was represented by 30 delegates. For the Free State Judge Hertzog was present, along with Secretary of State WJB Brebner, commander in chief de Wet and CH Olivier. Missing was his the man who'd survived so many incidents and battles on the veld – President Steyn.

We're up to episode 138 and it's a week to go before the all-important Boer Conference in Vereeniging starting May 15th 1902. Lord Kitchener has ordered his men in all intents and purposes to stop chasing the Boers, stop the burning of farms and to wait for the Boers conference. We have heard how Jan Smuts and Louis Botha met in the Eastern Transvaal, chose their representatives and now were making their way to the South Eastern border down on the banks of the Vaal River. That was on the 4th May 1902. The western Transvaal Boers were doing the same, selecting 30 representatives who would debate the future of their people, so too were Free State's president Steyn and diehard General Christiaan de Wet – except for the outcome. They wanted the Boer conference to reject surrender and to push on to oblivion. Which is what awaited the hawks I'm afraid. Lord Milner the British High Commissioner also wanted the Boers to fight until they were totally crushed so that he could flood South Africa with English loyalists. In military terms, you know you're in trouble when your most hated adversary thinks your strategy should be to fight to an inevitable death. That's what the loyalists through South African wanted, the English speaking hard-core British iumperialists. Yes, they were shouting, keep it up Mr Boer until your terms of surrender at unconditional then you'll be all but extinct and we can just take over everything you've built. The most vocal jingos of the day were actually despised the professional British officer corps in South Africa. The war needed to end so that they could get on with their careers. Winston Churchill was one of those who found what were known as loyalists as deeply concerning. He'd survived a Boer prisoner of war camp and many close calls and respected his former captors, there was very little rancor. While the Boers and the British were framing their views and devising their negotiation strategies, an incident in Natal on May 6th was to sharpen everybody's minds. Some historians have suggested that what became known as the Holkrantz incident gave further impetus to the Peace Process and strengthened the hand of the moderate Boers like Smuts and Botha who wanted to end the war immediately. Steyn and de Wet on the other hand took the opposing view – fight on was their rallying call. Watching all of this closely was black South Africa. The massacre at Holkrantz shocked most Boers into accepting that the longer this war continued and the more unlawful the landscape would become.

First we join General Jan Smuts who has been waiting in Cape Town for the British to lay on a a train to take him inland where he will join the Boer political and military leaders at Vereeniging for a conference starting on May 15th. They gathered in order to discuss the British terms of surrender. Smuts was mostly silent while he waited with his brother in law Krige and Deneys Reitz our narrator. They were placed aboard the warship HMS Monarch in Simonstown. Just to set the record straight, I said last week this was an Orion class battleship but of course it was just a normal warship as her namesake was only launched in 1910. My apologies, but a quick description about both is in order. The Monarch was placed as Guardship in Simonstown port in 1900. This was one of the older vessels in Britain's navy having been launched in 1868. It was also a symbolic vessel for Smuts, Reitz and Krige to find themselves. The design has been neither modern nor old. Built in the 1860s when sail was giving way to steam, wooden hulls were being replaced by iron, smoothbore artillery firing round-shot had been overtaken by rifled shell-firing cannon, heavy armour was being mounted on the sides. Mounted gun turrets were being mooted by the Navy top brass as well, but others more conservative opposed the upgrade. So she was a compromise and therefore pleased no-one. When it was built the Navy said steam engines were still not reliable enough so HMS Monarch was fitted with both engine, sails and even a forecastle. That prohibited the gun turrets from being able to fire forward – so in all intents and purposes she remained a man-o-war like the old wooden battleships of the 18th Century. After her renaming in 1902 as the HMS Simoon, the Royal Navy launched its new Orion Class dreadnoughts and the more modern HMS Monarch appeared in 1910. AS an aside, Monarch fought in the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and her shells damaged the German Dreadnought, SMS Koenig. Back in Simonstown Deneys Reitz, his general and the General's brother in law waited for their train. They were hurried through the suburbs of Cape Town in the dead of night so that no-one would catch sight of the famous General Smuts, then switched trains at the main line at Salt River. The next day they awoke in Matjesfontein in the Karoo. It's also time to rejoin Boer Spy Johanna van Warmelo one more time. She asked and was given permission to visit Irene concentration Camp outside Pretoria. If you remember she had worked there as a nurse months before, when women and children were dying at a rate of up to a dozen a day. At the end of April 1902 Johanna was finally allowed to visit Irene and dreaded what was awaiting her there.

We're back in the Northern Cape with General Jan Smuts. He's been waiting in vain for more than two weeks for the British to send a relief force after he laid siege to the well defended town of O'Kiep having already seized Springbok and Concordia. Meanwhile, the first round of peace talks have already ended in Pretoria with the Boers undertaking to select representatives to appear at follow up talks set to take place at Vereeniging starting on May 15th 1902. Smuts has no idea that this meeting has already been agreed. As far as he's concerned, the British will send a relief column by ship from Cape Town to Port Nolloth, and entrain from there to O'Kiep – which is a copper producing town of some significance. Compared to Kimberley and Johannesburg, hardly strategic, but important nonetheless. And with him is our young narrator Deneys Reitz, fighting on with the other bitter enders. “On the surface things looked prosperous..” he writes in his book Commando. “Five months ago we had come into this western country hunted like outlaws, and today we practically held the whole area from the Olifants to the Orange River four hundred miles away…” Except of course for a few garrison towns which had held out against Smuts. These were now hunkered down and the British inside the towns were unable to travel freely while the Boers roamed this vast territory at will. The success of Smuts' commando were gratifying for the Volk back home in the Free State and Transvaal, as well as sympathisers in the Cape. Their spirits had been raised as reports circulated about General Smuts' incredible attacks using hand grenades and trench type warfare at Springbok and Concordia. “Unfortunately while matters stood thus well with us, the situation in the two Republics up north was far otherwise..” Lord Kitchener's drives and policy of scorched earth had worked in the end. Smuts had been out of touch from his own leaders since the previous September. That was almost nine months of no direct messages. Even guerrilla leaders must be in communication at some point or the entire idea of command and control evaporates in a mist of local delusion. “We had been out of touch with them for so long that we did not realise the desperate straits to which they had come..” Reitz along with Smuts had been trying to motivate the men while at the same time, realised that this war could not continue in the same vein. Something had to give. So towards the end of April, Smuts and his men were living in the town of Concordia which lies around four miles from O'Kiep. The British there were dug in and their defensive positions were too difficult to overrun. Smuts had assumed that eventually the relief force would arrive, and it would be large. This he believed, would mean the southern region of the Cape would have been weakened and then he could make a direct dash south and perhaps catch the British off-guard. Reitz presumed the dash included a possible attack on the outskirts of Cape Town.

While the Boer political and military leadership were huddled around a table in Lord Kitchener's office, far off in the Northern Cape General Smuts and his commando had defeated the British at three small towns through the months of March and April 1902. We've heard about the assaults on Springbok, Calvinia and O'Kiep. Smuts was waiting patiently for the British to send their expected relief expedition via the Atlantic town of Port Nolloth to relieve O'Kiep. Smuts wanted to then head directly to Cape Town to catch the British unprepared. It was audacious but typically Smuts. He was not aware that he had literally missed the train to Pretoria and that Peace Talks were underway. He had ordered van Deventer and his commando to head twenty miles west and to monitor the main railway line from Port Nolloth to O'Kiep which was an important copper mining area. But 760 miles to the north East in Kitchener's office, there was a slow change to the overall tenure of the discussions. Remember how the Boers had left the topic of the Boer Republics independence off their list of demands, in their view, this was non-negotiable. On the other hand, the British had expected the Boers to return to the negotiating table with the understanding that independence was impossible. Things became extremely complicated when Lord Milner joined Kitchener two days after talks began on 13th April – because Milner wanted unconditional surrender and he didn't mind a few more months of war to subjugate the Boers completely. That was not the view of Kitchener and is aide – Ian Hamilton. At the same time the British standpoint was unequivocal, there would be no reversal of the annexation of the Republic of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Everything else however was open to discussion. President Steyn of the Free State was particularly stern in his opposition to the British position of fait accompli and in discussions with Acting President Burgher and General Louis Botha of the Transvaal, he managed to convince them of a last line of defence. The overall policy dominating Boer politics was the concept of a democratic decision taken by the people – they needed to poll the Volk for their point of view. Under the Boer constitution, argued Steyn, neither of the Boer government's was empowered to authorise surrender without permission.

This is episode 134 and its April 1902. The Boer military and political leadership has been permitted by the British to travel to Pretoria by train and will meet with Lord Kitchener to talk peace. All the fighting of the previous two years and 6 months have led both sides to this moment. And yet, there is one more major bloody battle left which is difficult to fathom – other than to say the Boers launched a cavalry charge that wouldn't have looked out of place in the Napoleonic era. It was a hugely courageous attack led by Commandant Potgieter and General Kemp on the 11th April that both surprised and was admired by the English troops who watched. Viewing the details of the Battle of Roodewal now you can understand Kemp and Potgieters' act as a brave yet suicidal final salvo from a pugnatous people. Roodewal means Red Valley and the valley surrounded by gentle slopes would be spattered with blood by the end of the day. It could have been worse, as we'll see, with Ian Hamilton doing a General Buller and hesitating when his foe was clearly defeated and the Mounted Infantry's woeful shooting. Roodewal is two hundred miles west of Pretoria and the very day that General de la Rey with Botha and De Wet steamed into the Transvaal Capital, his men were receiving a terrible hiding. The success was not so much the credit of Ian Hamilton, as to the officers and men of the thirteen columns who had finally caught up with a large Boer commando. It was perspiration, inspiration and sheer luck that caused the enemy to make a bad decision. Afterwards Hamilton and Kekewich called it a real soldiers' battle, fought out on the kind of terms that British Generals had despaired of every seeing again in their lifetime. As Thomas Packenham calls it, the final reassuring echo from the 19th Century. The British troops had been frustrated for 30 months as they marched up and down the veld, hunting the Boers who were like ghosts. The terrain didn't help. IT was half wilderness, these plains to the West of Johannesburg and Pretoria. A huge diamond shaped box enclosed by the lines between Lichtenburg, Klerksdorp, Vryburg and the Vaal River – two hundred miles of rolling sandy plains intersected by shallow meandering river valleys. They were mostly dry except in the rainy season. The news of this momentous battle reached Pretoria. It was the 12th April and the peace talks were about to start. As I explained last week, Kitchener had purposefully left Lord Milner out of the first round of negotiations because he wanted some kind of wriggle room – knowing of course that Milner was hoping to have complete control over South Africa in the future without interference from the troublesome Boers. President Burger of the Transvaal was gloomy as he sat down with Kitchener, remaining mostly silent after the Boers handed over their proposal to the British Army commanding officer. Kitchener was taken aback by the affrontery of the Boer demands. He expected them to address the elephant in the room – that is the continued independence of Boer Republics which was no longer viable.

As we heard last week, the Netherlands government had decided by January 1902 that the South Africa war was no longer viable for the Boers. Even the latest successes in March where General De la Rey and Jan Smuts had been victorious in battles in the western Transvaal and Northern Cape respectively had failed to really convince their closest ally in Europe that they were likely to defeat the British. The successes by Smuts around Okiep were more good news but all of these skirmishes were in the non-strategic parts of South Africa. The Boers could do nothing now about the increased production on the mines for one, which began producing gold and other commodities. While much of the country was still denuded, burnt, destroyed, the main cities were functioning and things were slowly returning to a version of normal. There were around 6000 gold mine stamps in South Africa at the start of the war. These are machines that crush rock, before the all-important metal within is extracted. Whether it is copper, gold, silver or any other precious mineral inside a rock, the mine stamp was used to pulverise the material, from where the ore would be removed. Most were steam or water driven and the vast majority had been mothballed at the start of the war as miners fled Johannesburg. But by January 1902 at least 1 075 of these mine stamps were functioning in the Transvaal. Gold output was surging. From a lowly 7 400 ounces in May 1901 to a much more productive 70 000 ounces in January 1902. The financiers were happier, the British Empire was getting some of its money back, things were looking up. February production climbed still further, to 81 000 ounces, and by March 1 700 mine stamps were online and 104 000 ounces of gold found its way onto the trains south to South Africa's ports. That was still some way off the 300 000 ounces the mines were pumping out before the start of the Boer war, but you can imagine how each ounce was putting the bounce back in the bankers' steps as they read weekly updates in their smoking rooms in London. Lord Kitchener had accepted a request by the Boers for their generals and political leadership to meet to discuss possible terms after he reached out to President Burgher of the Transvaal. In England, Rudyard Kipling was churning out his poems and stories and he wrote at this time that “Not by lust of peace or show, Not by peace herself betrayed, Peace herself must they forego, Til that peace be fitly made…” Like Milner, Kipling believed the Boers must be made to come to the peace table with cap in hand – not as equals but as a vanquished people. Meanwhile, that icon of empire, Cecil John Rhodes had died at the age of 48. The sudden announcement on March 26th 1902 was a shock to many, although the man who gave his name to an entire country was not exactly loved. Remember how he had bullied and mentally tortured the poor Kekewitch, commander of the British forces in Kimberley during the siege? His stint in Cape politics had also been a disaster. And he was arrested in September 1901 in an extremely unsavoury fraud case involving a promiscuous Russian princess. I don't have the space to cover that here, but if you're interested go Google princess Radziwill. She was one of a kind.

There are a few more skirmishes and one more big battle after this period with its frustrations for the British and determination by the Boer die-hards or Bitter einders to continue their war against an empire at its zenith. We will hear about General Christiaan de Wet and Lord Kitchener who are closer physically than at virtually any other time in the war. Kitchener arrived in the Transvaal town of Klerksdorp on the 26th March, de Wet has evaded Kitchener's columns and blockhouses in the the Free State and is about to cross over the Vaal River to join General Koos de la Rey. More about that in a while. What these soldiers don't know is that there have been peace moves afoot internationally for some time. The Dutch Prime Minister, Abraham Kuyper, had sent a coded message to Lord Landsdowne, the British Foreign Secretary, on January 21st 1902. As was the case in those days, the language used was French - the language of diplomacy. And in his forthright way, The Hague was offering “en traite de paix” – a peace treaty between the British and Boers. The Dutch went one step further. They had already worked out a scenario. First the three members of the Boer Delegation which we heard about last year were still in the Netherlands. They would return to South Africa to confer with Boer leaders then return with an authorisation to conduct peace talks somewhere in the Netherlands. On the 29th January, Lord Landsdowne replied bluntly that the British government appreciated the humanitarian considerations that inspired the offer, but on principle declined the intervention of foreign powers in the South African war. Leyds, who was Paul Kruger's secretary in Holland, heard about Kuypers offer through the newspapers and was not amused. Why had the Dutch Prime Minister not bothered to confer with him or Kruger? What also angered the Boer emissaries in Europe was the tone adopted by the Netherlands missive. The letter which failed to call on the British to end an imperialist war nor did it mention the abuses being suffered by Boer women and children in the internment camps. The Dutch message implicitly urged the Boers to give up a hopeless cause. Worse, that response came at about the same time another arrived from America which was negative. President Roosevelt told the Boers that his predecessor, McKinley, had offered his services as a mediator and had been turned down flatly by the British. So Roosevelt said any attempt at intervention would be folly.

General Jan Smuts and his commando have seized the small town of Springbok in the far northern Cape. As we heard last week, the town fell after a few hours of fighting and the surrender of the three forts that dominated its defences. After the town was taken, our narrator Deneys Reitz had fallen into a deep sleep have had no rest for three full days and nights. Reitz slept for 24 hours – and when he awoke it was to a surprise. “I found my friend Nicolas Swart sitting on the bed beside me. He was almost recovered from his wounds, and had just arrived from the south.” An extraordinary man, this Nicolas Swart. He'd been shot through the hip while leaning over and the bullet had passed through his body ending exiting through his chest. Reitz believed he was probably not going to survive. And that was only a few weeks after Swart had been shot in the arm, shattering the ulna. Yet here he was, less than a month after appearing near death. Meanwhile, in Pretoria, Lord Kitchener was tearing at his characteristic moustache. Remember how he had collapsed upon hearing about Lord Methuen's defeat at the hands of General Koos de La Rey. How were the British to capture this large and well-fed marauder? He had escaped certain capture to turn on his pursuers three times in the last six months. First at Moedwil on 30 September 1901 when he had mauled part of Kekewitch column, then at Yzer Spruit on 24 February 1902 when he had devoured most of von Donops wagon convoy protected by a large force of 700 men. He'd seized 150 wagons of food and ammunition there. Then at Tweebosch, he had swallowed Lord Methuen whole. The British now regarded de la Rey as their biggest problem – far more deadly than both General Smuts and Christiaan de Wet. AS well as looting British bully beef and .303 ammunition, he had also looted six field guns, and machine guns. De la Rey's men were now at the peak of their military power and of course the British were sending half trained yeomen into battle.

After the blood and guts we heard about last week, there is more of the same this time in the Northern Cape where General Smuts and his commando are sowing a certain degree of angst as he took control of large areas of the region. The only real problem was that capturing towns like van Rijnsdorp and Springbok were not going to win the war for the Boers. But the news of what Smuts was up in this harsh desert region had given the Boers a great deal of optimism. Those in the western Transvaal who had witnessed the battle of Tweebosch which we heard about last week were convinced the English were beatable – General Koos de la Rey particularly felt that they were on to something. After Lord Kitchener had recovered from his shock of losing Lord Methuen and an entire column in the battle, he was in depressed state of mind. He'd also heard that General Christiaan de Wet had burst through a cordon in the Northern Free State and this made matters worse. Was nothing going right in the Western Theatre? De Wet had led his men on a goose chase – except some of the geese had been caught by the New Zealanders who had trapped over 800 Boers on their all important Majuba Day. De Wet focused his remaining commando on the relatively quiet area of the north West Free State and set out at sunset from the town of Reitz on the 5th March. There were only two really active areas of the battlefront left – the Western Transvaal and the Northern Cape. Neither was of any real strategic significance. The gold mines were slowly returning to normal, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was dealing and trading, electricity was burning in the Kimberley streets once more. Remember Kimberley, oddly enough, was the first place in the world to use electric street lights, courtesy of Rhodes' De Beers company support. No-one had yet told Deneys Reitz, our intrepid narrator, who was General Jan Smut's scout, and at this point, believed emphatically that the British would one day turn tail and flee his South Africa. As Tabitha Jackson writes in her fantastic book called the Boer War which she compiled after producing the documentary series on BBC channel Four, the English would win the war but the Boers were about the win the peace. That would do nothing for soldiers like Deneys Reitz. He was currently in the northern Cape, sitting close to Van Rijnsdorp with Jan Smuts. Top the north of where they rested, around 150 miles away, was the important copper mining centre of O-Kiep. As I explained in episode 128, Smuts was convinced that if he created enough trouble for the Briitsh here, they would send troops out by ship, and leave the way open to the South for him to attack – perhaps even as far as Cape Town. Rmember I explained how Smuts had broken up his force into smaller units for the trip as there was not enough water for all to travel together. Finding the terrible massacre at Leliefontein, Smuts had continued onwards after a few days. They were heading for Silverfountains where Commandant Bouwer and his men were waiting, along with Maritz who'd managed to gather around him a large group of local rebels. Missing however, was Van Deventer commando.

In this episode we will hear how General Koos de la Rey captures Lord Methuen in an act that will push Lord Kitchener over a psychological precipice. Remember when we ended last week I explained how Lord Methuen was particularly despised by both de la Rey and General Christiaan de Wet because the British commander had personally overseen the destruction of both of their farms. But de la Rey displays the kind of chivalry in victory last seen almost a hundred years before this war. He will also allow himself to be swayed by angry men to execute British troops in cold blood. As for Methuen, he was someone with whom the Boers had an axe to grind. And with the capture you would expect that the Boers may have played hard ball – do some kind of swap at dawn. A General for a general as historian Martin Bossenbroek writes. This is not to be. General Koos de la Rey had been itching for something significant in the western Transvaal as he was pushed hither and thither by the British, and in turn, pushed them back and forth. It all started on the 25 February 1902 at Ysterspruit which is around 10 miles from Klerksdorp in the Western Transvaal. De La Rey caught the English napping, swooping on a convoy of 150 wagons, most of which were empty. It was what was protecting that wagons that the General was after. A machine gun, two cannons and a huge cache of rifles, ammunition, 200 horses, 400 oxen and 1500 mules. This came at precisely the right point for the Boers, and exactly the wrong time for the English troops who were going to be shot up with their own weapons shortly.

Episode 128 -The Leliefontein Massacre & de Wet runs into British trenches by Desmond Latham

We'll kick off where we left off last week – where Jan Smuts' commando was near Calvinia in the northern Cape evading the English. But its also where commandant Bouwer was surprised by a mounted infantry unit of the British – killing or wounding 17 men who were mainly skewered by swords as they slept. Remember I explained how the colonial Lem Colyn had ingratiated himself with Bouwer's commando, lying that he had been sentenced for treason and escaped. Deneys Reitz, who's memoir I've used throughout this series, called him Lemuel Colyn, but his real name was Lambert Colyn. And he wasn't English speaking, but a Cape Afrikander and the fact he was an Afrikander doomed him as we'll see. Colyn was a British spy and playing a dangerous game. Remember he arrived at Bouwer's unit claiming he'd escaped from a Clanwilliam prison where he was charged with treason by the British. That was a lie, he was being paid by the British. After he learned enough about the commando's daily life, Colyn disappeared one day only to return with the British mounted infantry – leading them towards the men sleeping under the trees at Van Rijnsdorp at dawn in mid-February 1902. This incensed the Boers who swore revenge on him and his Nemesis would be Jan Smuts. After Commandant Bouwer's force had been surprised, he was smarting from the setback. Not only had he lost good men, but the British were now following up their attack by advancing in force with the clear object to retake the town of van Rijnsdorp from the Boers. Smuts had moved further westwards towards the Atlantic Ocean, which was now only 25 miles from his camp on the Olifants river so he decided it was time for a bit of unusual Rest and Recuperation. Smuts called for Boers who had not set sight on the ocean to meet him. About 70 Boer burghers arrived from this part of the northern Cape within two days. First Smuts and his posse passed the famous Ebenezer Mission Station, and then towards afternoon, they glimpsed something remarkable. The glint of the sea through a gap in the dunes. This curious commando of beach goes topped the last dunes, and stopped their horses to stare in wonder. Of course, that was only for a second. In a moment they turned back into children, soon they were throwing their clothes off and that's when Reitz and a handful of the others who had experience of the sea began to save their colleagues from their own zeal.

This week we'll find out what happened to Jan Smuts and his commando as they combine forces with Kommandant van Deventer who is in the middle of a major skirmish with the British near Calvinia in the northern cape. The war is sputtering, the Boers are faltering, the British are escalating – all in all – it's a bit like the end of the line for Smuts and his men. But they're not beaten yet. Many believe that they can give the British at least one more bloody nose, then perhaps sue for peace and keep their independence. This was hoplessly naïve as the British wanted the Boer Republics in their ambit partly because of world diplomacy and nationalism and partly because of the enormous mineral resources of the Transvaal and Free State. These had been developed into mines, and these mines were owned by English financiers. There was no way that such treasure would be allowed to fall into German hands, and the Germans were very busy both in the Eastern African region, and in nearby German South West Africa. While local issues were driving the short term responses by London, its eyes were very much on its own local European enemies. While the ramifications of this pre-World War one diplomacy is beyond the scope of this podcast series, we must keep in mind what was going on throughout the globe at the same time. Smuts however, was trying to make contact with another of his leaders, Commandant Bouwer who had been told to remain down on the plains near the Olifants River near van Rijnsdorp. It was time for Reitz to head off once more, now the main messanger for General Smuts as he had an uncanny knack of finding distant Boer commandos. It took him three days of riding, through the high plains, then the mountain passes, and finally he located Bouwer near Van Rijnsdorp camped along the Trutro river. It is close to the western coast of South Africa, where the icy cold Atlantic flows past bringing dense fogs. The town is on the edge of the Nama Karoo region and has ancient San or Bushman paintings – some of the oldest in Africa. Reitz was too busy to take much notice of its history. You see Commandant Bouwer had suffered a major setback on the previous day – and it was all because of a Colonial called Lambert Colyn. This one moment in the Boer war would later sully General Smuts' name as he sought to reunify South Africa – this English speaker who told the Boers he would fight for their liberty.

February 1902 is full of surprises, not least for Lord Kitchener who has designed his great Drives which are similar to hunting Grouse on the moors of England. Lines of men walk side by side, twenty yards apart, driving the Boers before them until they are squashed against the blockhouses and posts where they are forced to surrender in droves. Well that is the theory. Sometimes is worked, sometimes not. In the case we'll hear today where Kitchener's second major drive was launched in the Free State, the theory and the practice were out of kilter. Because Major Rawlinson and his superiors were after the crafty fox, General Christiaan de Wet and President Steyn. Should they capture these two, the Boer war would surely splutter to a halt. De Wet and General Jan Smuts, along with General de la Rey were the symbols of freedom for the Boers, and it was vital for the British to bring them to book. In the Eastern Transvaal, General Louis Botha had fought his last battle as we heard in January, and was now making preparations for a shift in strategy – and region. He had decided that his commando would serve no purpose remaining in the Transvaal and he was headed to Northern Natal where he believed he would have more success. Lord Kitchener had an epiphany. Rawlinson had had one too – but far earlier. Other British commanders had similar moments when the phrase Eureka surely must have escaped their lips. The British drives had been designed as day-time operations, at night the thousands of men would stop and make fires for supper, which is when the Boers would slip between the clearly demarcated fire areas of sleeping English and make their escape. The epiphany was a set of orders that altered how the British army would deal tactically with their enemy - which they pretty much use to this day. In fact, when I was a soldier, we used some of the tactics which the Americans also employed in Vietnam. In a nutshell, it is understanding that owning the night is essential in any war. You control the darkness, you control the coming battle. When walking patrol or moving a group of men of whatever size, one of the most important things to do before the sun sets is to confuse the enemy by pretending to be in a place you are not.

This week we'll concentrate on surely one of the more unique southern africans of the 18th Century, who's descendents feature as a small independent people in modern South Africa, and who found themselves stuck in a British concentration camp in the northern Transvaal town of Pietersburg in 1901. I was going to return to General Smuts, but he's still meeting with rebels in the far northern Cape. So this week its all about Coenraad de Buys, his long strange journey through southern Africa and how he and his vast family ended up close to the Limpopo river – far away from the Cape Colony. And how his descendants ended up in a British Concentration Camp. Pietersburg was the northernmost Concentration camp in the Transvaal system during the Boer war, isolated and difficult to access, with the road constantly under threat by Boers. By May 1901 the frontier territory was under threat from various directions. The British had secured the town, but Boer commandos continued raiding the region. Insecurity was rife, African societies around the town had never been fully subdued by the Boers when they expanded northwards from the Cape in the 1830s. The frontier area was considered a lawless region and few British troops operated there, except for the notorious Bushveld Carbineers who we've heard about already – remember the Breaker Morant sage. Yet, one of the families living here were the de Buys people who origin dated back to the 1700s. Now they were based near the Soutpansburg to the north, and were regarded as what at the time was called the “In Between people” – in other words, somewhat black, somewhat white, not quite coloured. That sounds mysterious, and the de Buys people are enigmas. I need to explain as their provinence is somewhat extraordinary and probably needs a Netflix series to do it justice. The de Buys people are descendents of a Cape colonial Boer renegade called Coenrad de Buys who escaped from British rule in the late 18th century. You'll see why I need to go back that far in a moment. As with things South African, this story is not one of black and white, it has shades of pink, champagne, salmon, brown, mustard, burnt umber, chocolate and cocoa brown. Not to mention Khaki and smokey topaz. There are many shades of black and white, particularly when you realise the story of South Africa is actually a story of pink and brown. This tale also has shades of surprise for most who don't know about Mr De Buys and his adventures.

This is episode 123 and its January 1902. The war has four months to run, and there are still a few big shocks. One would be Lord Methuen's capture by General Koos de la Rey. More about that in just over a month. But in the Eastern Transvaal, the last major battle in the region took place in January, and as I've explained in episode 121, General Louis Botha was convinced that he could no longer fight effectively there because the British actions had been so successful. Before he left, there was one more piece of violent business to attend to – the Battle of Onverwacht which the British called the Battle of Bankkop. The action took place in the first week of January and I have used Robin Smith's excellent report into the battle published in the SA Military Journal as my main source. So it was then that on the 4th January 1902, on a ridge overlooking a fertile valley on the farm Onverwacht, the advance guard of a British column sat down for their midday meal. The commander of the detachment of 110 men of the 5th Queensland Imperial Bushmen was Major John Maximilien Vallentin. He was also in charge of a company of mounted infantry of the Hampshire Regiment and some Imperial Yeomanry. Valentin was a major of the Somerset Light Infantry and had been in South Africa since before the Anglo-Boer war started in 1899. He had been recognised for conspicuous gallantry during the battle of Elandslaagte in October 1899. After contracting enteric fever, he rejoined Brigadier General Ian Hamilton in Bloemfontein in late 1900, and then had been the military commissioner in Heidelberg south of Johannesburg. His name was mentioned in despatches four times and he is described in the Times History as an 'officer of proven gallantry and capacity'. So on the 4th January, Vallentin had halted his men on a flat area on the summit of the Bankkop range of hills, 30km east of Ermelo. There are many small wetland depressions here called pans which were an excellent source of clean fresh water for the horses and the men, so they off-saddled and prepared a meal. In order to prevent being caught by surprise, Vallentin placed pickets along the ridge running a few hundred metres to their front in a line stretching about three kilometres. This was a very strong position, secure from attack in front by the steep ridge while behind them were the soldiers of the Hampshire Regiment and the rest of the 19th Company of Imperial Yeomanry, Scots from the Lothian and Berwickshire. Attack from behind across the flat ground was thus highly improbable – and he had the guards out just in case. Westwards, towards Ermelo, there was a column led by Brigadier General Herbert Plumer, nearly a thousand men with mounted infantry and artillery. Even closer, to the east of them, was another column of similar strength commanded by Scots Guardsman Colonel William Pulteney. So you could say that with so many British units around, Vallentin could be forgiven for believing that the Boers would not attack.

This is episode 122 and we will take a close look at the love-life of a Boer spy – who's tale is laced with an unusual irony that involves a regiment called the Witwatersrand Rifles. The nature of the war had shifted again by January 1902 with the British system of blockhouses and drives beginning to create a major problem for the Boers – pushing the small number of commandos left into areas of the country that could hardly be called strategic. The guerrilla tactic has morphed again from hit and run, to a lot more running and far less hitting. The policy of no-longer forcing women and children into the Concentration Camps had also begun to pose a problem for the Boers in a way. While they were used to tough conditions, drought and poor crops returns in lean years, the increasingly volatile regions on the frontiers meant they were isolated and in danger from other forces. Near Swaziland the kiSwati chiefs had made it clear that they felt the need to launch revenge attacks on the nearby Boer homestead, so too in the North Western Transvaal, in the northern Transvaal, and along the border with Zululand. The basutho had not actively entered the Free State but there were real fears by the Boers that vast tracts of empty farmland would entice their traditional foe who had made it clear their interests lay with the British. In Pretoria, sitting at her desk was Boer Spy Johanna van Warmelo. After the war she was married and was known as Johanna Brandt, but that was later. WE have heard many stories from her as she kept three diaries, a personal, a public, and a secret spying diary. The Historian Jackie Grobler published these in one volume in 2007 – it's a great read because she wrote as a young woman – and her point of view was mixed. She wrote also in English, while despising the English. Its January 1902 and Johanna has applied for a permit to travel between Pretoria and Johannesburg. Small parties of Boers have repeatedly attacked the railwayline between these two cities which are 43 miles or 62 kilometers apart. In 1902 that was a whole day by slow moving train, now the Gautrain travels the route in 35 minutes. There is an unusual connection between van Warmelo and her ex-fiancé Karel de Kock which involves the Rand Rifles. The deserve a special mention because like with many things about the Anglo-Boer war, their importance resonates to this day. After the Boer war, the Rand Rifles were absorbed with members of the Railway Pioneer Regiment into The Witwatersrand Rifles in 1903. This new regiment was to play a major role in South Africa's military history over the next century. It saw action during the the Bambata Rebellion of 1906, when it deployed a contingent to Zululand. In 1907 the regiment was strengthened when it absorbed the Transvaal Light Infantry Regiment and was mobilised again when World War I broke out. The first action that it took part in was the South African invasion of German South-West Africa (now Namibia). After the successful conclusion of this campaign, virtually all members volunteered for overseas service. Most of the volunteers were consequently assigned to the 3rd South African Infantry Battalion. Unfortunately for these men, they ended up in the terrible Battle of Delville Wood during the Somme offensive where 3433 men went in and only 750 came out alive.

General Jan Smuts is making merry in the Cape, trying to stoke uprisings, while Lord Kitchener's been more successful in clearing the Eastern Transvaal, forcing General Louis Botha to shift towards Vryheid and along the border between the Transvaal and Natal. General Christiaan de Wet is active in the Free State, while General Manie Maritz has continued his low level harassment of the British across the Free State and Cape. I haven't spent much time on Maritz mainly because there is not a great deal of documentation about exactly what he got up to on a daily basis – unlike the other generals we've been following for two years. He is also one of the most bigoted, warped and psychotic men who held a weapon during this terrible war who tended to lie quite a bit in his memoirs. During the Anglo-Boer war he was the only Boer General we know about took a great deal of pleasure in killing blacks instead of British. He seemed inclined to shoot all blacks he found. His most heinous act was lining up all 35 men of a Khoi village at the end of the war and shooting them down in cold blood in what became known as the Leliefontein Massacre. I will have more detail about this in later podcasts. Maritz evaded execution at war's end for what were really war crimes. After all, the Australian Breaker Morant the Australian was executed by the British for a similar spree as he went about executing at least a dozen Boers in cold blood. But back to 1902. General Koos de la Rey is also still free, roaming the veld in the far west of the Transvaal and he has been particularly successful around Rustenburg, Mafikeng, Marico, Zeerust and other smaller towns in the region. We will also hear about how Trek Boers ended up founding the Kenyan town of Eldoret. It was established by the Boers in the midst of the farms they created, and known by locals as Sisibo because of the main farm number 64 – or Sisibo in the local language. Sixty more Afrikaner families arrived in 1911, by then it had a post office and was officially named as Eldoret which continued to prosper. Eventually the railway line reached Eldoret in 1924 accelerating growth, then in 1933 electricity arrived along with an airport. By the 1950s the town was literally divided in two along the main street now called Uganda Road, with Afrikaners living in the north of the divide, and English speakers on the South.

Its new year – the first week of January 1902 and we continue to ride, or rather walk, with Deneys Reitz as he and seven other colleagues have been separated from General Jan Smuts who is on a mission to raid the Cape – and possibly – cause an uprising of Cape Afrikaners. By now Smuts has realised that the idea of Cape Afrikaners rising up is a pipe-dream, but wants to surprise the British close to Cape Town to prove to them that the Boers are still able to strike fear into British citizens. Remember last week we heard how Reitz and his fellow commando members had managed to give the English troops the slip over the Swartbergen somewhere in the Small Karoo to the north of Craddock. The eight had managed to cross the mountains but now had to make a difficult decision. Where the Swartbergen mountains had consisted of a single clearcut barrier … It was getting dark, and a heavy rain began to fall. They continued descending from the Swartbergen and needed to find shelter quickly. When the rain falls in highground, the temperature can slide from a balmy 30 degrees centigrade to a really chilly 12 degrees of less in a matter of half an hour. They found a overhanging rock and rested until daybreak, trying to sleep as the wind whipped rain into their faces. They scrambled down the whole day, until by around four in the afternoon they emerged from the mist and clouds and could see a long narrow canyon ahead. It's sides were enclosed in perpendicular cliffs. Then they spotted huts around 1000 feet below and decided to go ask for directions out of these mountains. They were taking a chance, all eight together descending to the huts. Those with horses left them in a nearby ravine to look after themselves and scrambled down arriving at the huts as the sun sank below the western cliffs. They were faced with a number of huts designed in the Xhosa way but also featuring wattle and daub, the much fancied building technique of the early settlers in the Eastern Cape. “As we approached the huts, a shaggy giant in goatskins appeared and spoke to us in a strange outlandish Dutch…” The stranger was one of the oddest people Reitz had ever met.

Its summer – December 1901. General Jan Smuts is on the run in the Cape Colony being chased by tens of thousands of British troops who are fixating on the fact that they don't seem to be able to pin down this mercurial general. With him is one of our war narrators, Deneys Reitz. Or rather was with him until he became separated in late November and since then has been following Smuts – and trying to stay alive. This week we will hear how he stumbles into another series of largely self-inflicted moments of terror. Reitz has a propensity for falling asleep at precisely the wrong time and as you'll hear, his escapades in the Cape include another variant. It was close to the Kariega River in the now Eastern Cape where Reitz last rode with Smuts. Then he found himself with a rearguard unit of seven other men who failed to join up with the General after fighting a skirmish with the British. They were laid up at a friendly Boers farm in the district and the next day thought they'd rejoin the Boer commander. But it was not to be. He managed to change from his British khaki uniform which was a death sentence – remember that Lord Kitchener had issued orders any Boer found wearing British uniforms should be shot as spies. They began to ride north westerly and as they went, local farmers told them that a large British column was ahead, also following Smuts. Not for the first time, the small unit of Boers followed a British column following a commando. Then a bizarre moment for Reitz. He bumped into an Englishman who was a relative by the name of Rex. He couldn't remember the man's name when he wrote his memoirs in 1902 but recounts. “…a lineal descendent of George Rex, the morganatic son of King George III by Hannah Lightfoot, the Quakeress. George Rex had been sent out to South Africa in 1775 and given a large tract of land at Knysna, on condition that he did not again trouble his august parent..” His descendants lived there ever since and one of them had married Reitz's mother's brother. They were cousins.

This episode takes us to Christmas 1901 and the battle of Groenkop near Bethlehem in the Free State where General Christiaan de Wet catches the British offguard on the top of a two hundred foot high kopje. We will also hear how the opposition party leader Lloyd George narrowly escapes being lynched as a pro-Boer Brit in a night of extreme violence as you'll hear. The wobble that Chamberlain the Liberal Unionist leader and Sir Alfred Milner were most worried about had begun back in England. The Tax-payer was now fully aware that they were funding a war in South Africa that never seemed to end. The Times newspaper had led a revolt against the government as we heard in previous podcasts. Lord Kitchener was ignored as he complained asbout the fact that most of the new soldiers arriving in South Africa could neither ride nor shoot straight. That was nothing new in the eyes of the British public. They had heard that excuse since October 1899 and it was now wearing extremely thin. Parliament had been prorogued until after the New Year but mounting expenditure and public anger might force government to go into session again at such a late date in the year. Winston Churchill was pro-government, yet was also warning about what he called a disquietening situation which in his words was as “momentous as it was two year ago”.

So its December 1901 Christmas is a fortnight away for the combatants and Christiaan de Wet was tracking his arch enemy, brother Piet. It was revenge he was after and as we all know – it's a meal best eaten cold and unfortunately Christiaan was overheating. While he stewed on the information that his hated brother was instrumental in setting up the National Scouts, made up of Boer turncoats who now fought for the British, across the world the end of 1901 brought with it a number of fascinating events, incidents and issues. On December 1st : A crowd of 100,000 people turned out at London's Hyde Park to demonstrate in sympathy for recently fired British Army General Redvers Buller. He was now being blamed for the disasters at Colenso and Spioen Kop almost two years previously where the Boers had pulverised the British as they tried to relieve the siege of Ladysmith. But on matters more prosaic. On the 2nd December 1901 a man by the name of King C Gillette began selling his safety razors in the United States. He was inspired by something that could be used and then thrown away, thus ensuring future business. It's a bit like Monsanto's seed business these days, but that's another story. Gillette applied for his US. Patent number 775 134 on December 2 1901. His American Safety Razor Company would become the multi-billion dollar behemoth Gillette Company. Bizarrely Following the commercial success of disposable razors, Gillette refocussed his attention on promoting his views on utopian socialism. Strange but true. On December 3rd 1901 the Australian parliament passed its Immigration Restriction Act primarily to restrict non-Europeans from permanently entering the country. Interesting. Then on December 7 1901 The United Kingdom and Germany delivered an ultimatum to the government of Venezuela, after the South American country reneged on bond payments. Venezuelan President Cipriano Castro was given 48 hours to agree to the terms, or to face a blockade of his nation's ports by the Royal Navy and the German Navy. Well some things never change. On December 9 1901 the first-ever Nobel Prizes were announced, with x-ray discoverer Wilhelm Roentgen receiving the first Nobel Prize in Physics, Emil von Behring being awarded the prize in medicine for his discovery of the first diphtheria antitoxin, Jacobus van't Hoff pioneering work in physical chemistry earning him the chemistry prize, Henry Dunant and Frédéric Passy sharing the peace prize, and Sully Prudhomme winning the prize in literature. The bestowal of the prizes came on the fifth anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel who I mentioned in Episode 1 of this podcast series. The next day December 10 Joseph W. Jones was granted U.S. Patent No. 688,739 for his invention, "Production of sound-records", which was purchased immediately by the Columbia Phonograph Company for production of its disc-shaped Graphophone records. Jones was paid $25,000 – worth around 700 000 dollars in today's moolah. Finally in this series of amazing things that happened in December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, sent 1,700 miles from Poldhu in Cornwall, England to Signal Hill, St. John's in Newfoundland in Canada on the 12th. December. It was the letter "S" ("..." in Morse code)., He is quoted as saying "there was no doubt that the principle of wireless communication had arrived on a transatlantic scale... This was a utility, and would prove itself beyond argument as a vital aid to shipping and military communication." And on the same momentous day, 12th December in South Africa's Cape Colony, Lieutenant General French finally caught up to General Pieter H. Kritzinger, who had led the Boer incursions into the Cape on three occasion. Unfortunately for him, it was three strikes and he was out.

This week its all about the scandal of the Concentration Camps which breaks across Great Britain as the Fawcett Commission releases its initial report. We also continue to monitor General Christiaan de Wet who has a large commando of 700 men and is beginning the move towards the Cape once more. His plan is to increase the pressure on the English although his previous attempt a few months before ended in failure. But first, a reality check for Lord Kitchener who has led what has become known as the Drives across Southern Africa where tens of thousands of British troops have been mopping up the remnants of the guerrilla commandos, but at a cost. The Boer women and children have been herded into Concentration Camps along with their black workers and this has turned into a catastrophe. As Emily Hobhouse realised more than 9 months ago, squeezing civilians into camps without proper hygiene or sanitation is a disaster waiting to happen. The country didn't have long to wait. The Fawcett Commission was made up of a fairly diverse group of women. It was a daring experiment, a women-only commission which would investigate conditions in the Concentration Camps and compile a report which would be given to the Government in December. Between August and December they steamed up and down the veld in their special train. They may have had diverse backgrounds but they were all united in one thing – they believed that the war against the Boers was just and that the civilians were part of the Boer support network and therefore should be punished. Led by Mrs Millicent Fawcett, a liberal unionist and feminist, she was also a leader of the women's suffragette movement. Lady Knox was the wife of Major General General Sir William Knox, who was on Kitchener's staff. The four other women included a nurse from Guy's Hospital two doctors who were already living in South Africa.

This week General Christiaan De Wet who has been largely dormant for November awakens and begins to leer in the direction of the Cape once more while Sarah Raal continues to ride with Commandant Nieuwoudt and her three brothers but for how long? The presence of a woman fighting alongside the burghers in Nieuwoudt's commando has become something of a problem for him. He's worried that she'll be killed while she simultaneously is creating propaganda for the Boers in her skirts and matching Lee Metford with a hat rimmed with gold, bandolier and serious attitude. The British are highly motivated to track her down so she has now attracting more columns to the Southern Free State. Nieuwoudt has tried already to suggest that she return to some kind of safety in a town – but Sarah refused to listen as she knew it will be straight to a Concentration Camp which she dreaded. Niewoudt was also threading his way through thousands of British troops and the going become increasingly difficult.

This week's episode is dominated by a young woman who we heard about last week called Sarah Raal. While some of her exploits have been exaggerated for Nationalist reasons years after the Boer War, there's no doubt that she was extraordinary by any measure. Remember she is in her early twenties and escaped from Springfontein Concentration Camp outside Bloemfontein heading to join her four brothers who were fighting with Commandant Nieuwoudt who was part of General Herzog's commando in the Free State. It's around November 1901 when she joins the commando, and immediately is thrown into the thick of action. Nieuwoudt and his men and one women head off to a place called Boomplaas. “I was apprehensive about going there as it was the scene of my previous capture” she writes in her biography published in English in 2000. The commando ended up in the small settlement of Excelsior which was only to become a town in 1910, well after the war ended. This is where Sarah caught sight of the mountains to the East which loomed in purple and grey tones, and appeared malignant. “The imposing mountains frightened me, they looked so mysterious and full of unknown danger that I felt as if some misfortune may befall us at any moment…” she writes. That was around 50 miles due east of Bloemfontein and the Sarah's life became increasingly more desperate in the coming weeks. She was to face numerous skirmishes fighting alongside her Boer brothers, and as you'll hear, Sarah became a target for the British who realised there was a woman fighting against them.

Episode 113 covers events happening in November 1901 with six months of the war and this podcast left to run. This week Deneys Reitz and his fellow Boers suddenly realise they should not be wearing British uniforms which they donned after running out of clothing. Lord Kitchener has issued a proclamation that any Boer found clad in British uniforms should be shot out of hand as a spy. We also hear about Sarah Raal - one of the Boer women who actively fought in the war and was eventually made a prisoner of war. Her story was captured at the time in various ways - not least by curious photographers who clustered around a railway line during her transit after being caught fighting as a commando member. Her courage and gall is legendary and has been somewhat buried over time.

The first week of November 1901 shipping records published in the Times of London featured regular updates such as this one: “The Armenian left Port Natal for Bombay on Nov 3 with Boer prisoners, 36 officers and 981 men. They were escorted by the following: 67 th Battery RFA – Major Manifold, Captain Tapp, Lieutenant Sheppard, 2/Lieutenants Newland, Russell and 157 men 69th Battery RFA – Captain Belcher, Lieutenants Clark, Herbert, 2/Lieutenant Shaw and 156 men The Times continues to list a contingent of 350 men to guard just over a thousand Boers. Then the report states: “The Menes has arrived at Gibraltar, from Alexandria, bringing 109 officers and men of the 1/Derbyshire Regiment for South Africa. They will wait at Gibraltar for the Manhattan, which will take these troops to South Africa.” Still they came, thousands of troops from across the empire, many serving more than one tour in Africa. And through late October and into November 1901 that the English press began to paint the war in South Africa as never-ending. The editorials for most part up until this period in the conservative press in particular had been in full support of the Anglos fighting the Boers - but a series of embarrassing reports from South Africa led to a reappraisal of both the strategy, and the tactics at times. It was Bakenlaagte where General Louis Botha had decimated Lieutenant Colonel Benson's mounted column leaving the British with almost 350 casualties and the Colonel dead. There was General Jan Smuts who cornered a company of 17th Lancers killing or wounded almost the entire unit of 167. These figures shocked the public back home who had believed the final phase was under way, where a handful of bandits as they were known who were hiding in the vast veld would be tracked down and killed or imprisoned. The bitter end of this war is upon us. And it was troops like those on the Mendes who still faced a focused enemy in the Boers who had no-where to go and were fighting for their survival. Another battle that had shaken the British resolve back home involved Robert Kekewich. If you remember our previous podcasts, Kekewich made his name during the siege period at the start of the war in 1899 through to the second quarter of 1900. He was officer in command at Kimberley - remember his to-and-fro with the arch imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes? Yet, for all the bad blood, Robert Kekewich was a hero in the eyes of the English back home. As the hours of daylight shortened back home, as the Autumn dappled dark light settled into the grey of winter, the gloom quickened when it came to citizen's perceptions of the South African war.

The scenes have shifted recently between the war in South Africa and the effect of the war in England. The press has begun to turn against the government with vitriolic attacks on war hero Sir Redvers Buller as we heard last week. There's more bad new for the government in the form of the Fawcett Commission made up of women sent to assess the Concentration Camps in South Africa. What liberal activist Emily Hobhouse had been decrying for months was about to be confirmed by a group of distinctly pro-Empire Englishwomen, much to the chagrin of some government officials. The death rates in these camps has been climbing constantly as they fill with more and more women and children. The camps for Black South Africans are even worse. Both camp systems were riddled with disease and abuse. The last straw for the commander in Chief, Lord Kitchener, had been the Benson smash up in the Eastern Transvaal I covered last week. While the military gains for the Boers was somewhat limited, the affect on their morale was indescribable. General Louis Botha had made Benson pay with his own life. Combine that with the news about the 17th Lancers squadron which had been decimated by Jan Smuts in the Cape and you can see why Kitchener was deep in the doldrums psychologically. It was so bad that Lord Roberts back home in England had dispatched his closest ally, Ian Hamilton, back to South Africa to keep an eye on Kitchener as his chief of staff. That had been in October 1901, by early November Hamilton felt like a square peg in a round hole. Ktichener had no need of a chief of staff - he kept everything in his head. This by the way, was to prove as disastrous to the British during the first world war as it had during the battle Paardeberg in the first phase of the Boer war. The Destruction of Benson's unit at Bakenlaagte had not been a complete disaster for the British, once Kitchener received the full report. Benson's rearguard had fought heroically and actually saved the entire column from being crushed. The Boers had lost General Opperman during that attack which was a major blow to Louis Botha. Kitchener's new grand strategy began to look more like Lord Milner's. This was to establish protected areas centred on Bloemfontein, Pretoria and Johannesburg, then progressively worked outwards clearing the entire country of all guerrillas and simultaneously restoring civilian life within the protected zones.

It's time for reflection - and to talk about General Louis Botha who's invasion into Natal fizzled out leading to his commando being forced to flee Lord Kitchener's columns back to the Eastern Transvaal. But all is not lost for the man who would one day become South Africa's first Prime Minister. It's the final days of October 1901 when he returns to his base roving the veld somewhere between Ermelo and the Swaziland border. It's a region dominated by rolling grassy undulating hills, then high mountains further eastwards closer to Swaziland, as the landscape breaks up into dolomite fractures where whole armies lurk. The Boers have learned to keep well away from the Swaziland border where the chiefs have been palavering with the British. Back to Botha in a moment. First, let's take a look at what was happening in Britain, where the war had dragged on for long enough for the tabloid press to begin a sharp campaign against General Buller. He had been replaced in South Africa by Lord Roberts, who himself had been replaced by Lord Kitchener. Buller was pilloried in newspapers through October 1901, particularly by the Times and the Spectator. “On Thursday Sir Redvers Buller, presiding at a luncheon given by the Queen's Westminster volunteers” a Spectator editorial opined under the headline, The Mistake of General Buller. “made a speech in which we believe that the nation will find the best possible justification for the declarations which we and others have made that Sir Redvers Buller is not a fit and proper person to be entrusted with the great and responsible duties involved in the command of the First Army Corps…” Wait, it gets worse. “…We would fain say no more about the speech, for it is one which can only be fairly described as pathetic in its weakness and inconsequence..” Thats not all folks .. “…unfortunately it is impossible for us to pass it over, for it must be urged upon public notice as one of the reasons which oblige us to continue our protests against the recent appointment to the First Army Corps..” We can safely assume that the Editors do not consider Buller a great leader of men - although his men who fought with him in Natal would disagree. The reality of his meandering about and his blithe incompetence as he meandered about trying to lift the siege of Ladysmith - not to mention to terrible battles of Spion Kop, Dundee, Colenso and others where he'd been defeated by a much smaller army of Boers had sullied his name.

This week we pick up where we left General Jan Smuts and his commando as they writhed about in pain having eaten from a plant that they failed to prepare properly and had poisoned about half the 250 men riding with the general. Worse, they were forced to fight off a British attack on the Mountains above Port Elizabeth at the same time. They had managed to escape the British cavalry and mounted infantry unit, but were now deep in badlands country in the mountains of the Eastern Cape region of South Africa. There are steep sided, with deep ravines and thickets, dotted about with thorn bushes ready to rip at the unprepared. Matters were coming to a head in the Eastern Transvaal. General Louis Botha had been forced to retreat from northern Natal where he had launched an invasion with 2500 men. The British and the Zulu were waiting for his commando. Despite shattering Colonel Gough near Dundee as we heard, Botha's invasion had been a failure. However the British found the task of tracking and destroying Botha was almost impossible. First, Botha left his wagons and resorted to high mobility - Boers on horses. The British were slowed down by having to destroy the farms as they moved through Boer support, and this meant drives through swamps, mountains, caves and forests. Botha was actually succeeding in something else - that was prolonging the dislocation of Kitchener's troop arrangements. The areas that troops had been drawn from were now more isolated and immediate prey for the guerillas. Of course Louis Botha was still highly active back in the Eastern Transvaal. He had rejoined the government in hiding between the towns of Piet Retief and Ermelo but he was frustrated. In his absence, the man he'd left in charge Commandant Viljoen had been worse than useless. This was unacceptable and Louis Botha was chomping at the bit. What could he dream up to make the British pay for their continued actions in the Eastern Transvaal - and make up for the vacillating Viljoen.

This is an important week - it is the 120 anniversary of the start of the Boer War - which formally began on 12th October 1899. This week saw the Anglo-Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein host a conference as part of the commemorations. Amongst the topics discussed were how all communities were affected by this war, and those attending included both professional and amateur historians. On Saturday 12th, a monument to Australian forces was unveiled at the battle site of Driefontein. If you want more details about this museum and the conference, head off to the website wmbr.org.za . But back to October 1901. It has been an extremely busy past few weeks for both Boer and Briton in South Africa - and in England as we heard last week where Churchill and conservative party backbenchers had begun to criticise the British Army tactics. General Jan Smuts was beginning to cause serious consternation in the Cape - while Louis Botha had found it impossible to continue his attack on Natal. However, Botha's actions were proving to be a thorn in the side of Kitchener's army. He was forced to send forty thousand men in various units to try and surround and capture the Transvaal Boer commander. This weakened other areas and the number of guerrilla attacks on railway lines and other infrastructure began to increase. Smuts, meanwhile, was trying to stimulate the Cape Afrikaners into rebellion in the Cape by showing them how weak the English were. This did not turn out as planned - although he was still determined to create a gap into which General De La Rey was supposed to pour with a much larger commando in a month or so. The timing was unclear - because Smuts still had not succeeded in his mission. But first, there was a food poisoning incident involving what is called Hottentots Bread and it almost proved the undoing of all who ate this remarkable plant. ITs scientific name is Dioscorea Elaphantipes - or Elephants foot. IT is one of the most beautiful, weird and wonderful caudiciform plant in the world and has a deeply fissured surface resembling an elephants foot - thus its name. It is one of those plants you cannot ignore, and indeed, Jan Smuts and his men made the almost fatal mistake of regarding it as a source of nourishment. With correct preparation, this is a useful plant to eat. Prepare it incorrectly and its almost as dangerous as the Japanese puffer fish.

It's early Spring 1901 and in England there are now serious doubts about how the British Army is going about its campaign in South Africa. Winston Churchill had been elected as an MP for Oldham partly because of his fame as a survivor of a Boer prisoner of war camp. He took issue with the manner in which the war office under Brodrick was going conducting itself in South Africa - it alarmed Churchill. He believed the military policy was wrong. It had started back on the 12 March 1901 - three weeks after Churchill's maiden speech in parliament. Now the future British Prime Minister was involved in a series of debates over the army. Yet, by May Churchill began to oppose what he thought of as a mistaken policy, both in South Africa, and generally by the war office. The main idea presented by Brodrick was that the British army should be modelled on the Continental example. He wanted it bigger in order to respond more effectively to acute crisis situations. Such as the outbreak of war in South Africa. Churchill thought this was a bad half baked idea, and said so. He said it was contrary to the nature of the British to have a large standing army. Both sides debated about the Anglo-Boer war, with Brodrick believing that the small size of the army in Africa had meant the war had lacked progress - at least from the British point of view. Churchill said the problem in South Africa was not the number of British soldiers, there were other reasons including a lack of horses and failure to manage logistics amongst others. Don't forget that Churchill was a conservative and his attack on Brodrick didn't go down well with his party. By Mid-July Churchill had formed a parliamentary faction with four other young conservatives known as the Hughligans, alluding to its leader, Lord Hugh Cecil. The group held weekly debates, separate from their party. This began to sharpen Churchill's mind still further, and he slowly shifted his political allegiance to the left both on the issue of the war in South Africa. Not that he supported the Boers, he fully supported Chamberlain the prime minister and Alfred Milner, the High Commissioner in South Africa. At the same time, individual officers were showing how they could lead a proper response to the Boers when given the freedom to do so. One was Colonel Harry Scobell of the 9th Lancers who was about to crush Lotter's commando at Groenkloof farm in the Tanjesburg mountains between Graaff-Reinet and Cradock in the Eastern Cape.

This is September 1901 and it's been a wet Spring so far. The weather has caused trouble for both Jan Smuts and Louis Botha - but things are about to improve for Smuts after his daring raid into the Cape Colony almost ended before it started as you've heard. The number 17 shall feature strongly in this episode. We will hear how the 17th Lancers who were the first line of cavalry in the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean war, meet their match on the African veld. Twenty four hours after their horrendous ride known as the Night of the Big Rain, the 17th September dawned bright and sunny after days of rain. The men of Jan Smuts' commando were cheerful as they rode in the sun, but there was little additional reason to be optimistic. General Haig and thousands of his men were searching the nearby hills and valleys for Smuts and the Boer General knew time to act was ebbing away. His men were down to their last few rounds and many were now on foot. Our intrepid narrator Deneys Reitz who'd joined Smuts was operating as one of the General's Scouts as part of the quaintly named Rijk Section, or Rich Section, and he realised how critical the situation was. Still the sun was shining. After a few miles General Smuts ordered the Rijk Section - Reitz's small group of scouts, to ride ahead of the commando and look out for trouble. That was when they ran slap bang into the 17th Lancers and a major battle developed.

An incredible turn of events was taking place after a few icy months of winter - the Boers were waking up like hibernating bears and there would be a sudden escalation in incidents across south Africa. General Jan Smuts led a commando of around 400 men. He had survived three near misses after entering the Cape in the first week of September 1901. Remember I'd explained how he was first attacked by a group of Basutho's, then he was ambushed by a British patrol while conducting surveillance - losing three men and his horse, then he was surrounded on a flat-topped hill in the Stormberg range. He escaped after being led to a steep ravine by an unnamed hunchback. General Louis Botha meanwhile, had managed to invade Natal with a much larger force of around 2000 men in his commando and had savaged a British cavalry unit near the town of Dundee. I explained last week how Captain Gough had charged straight into this commando, and lost virtually all of his 245 men. Botha and his commando had been marching south skirting both Zululand and just clipping the Swaziland border. His men were riding fast - they had hundreds of pack mules and pack horses, leaving their cumbersome ox wagons. They had armed themselves with both Lee Metford and Mauser rifles so could take advantage of seized Britsh ammunition. As Major Hubert Gough had discovered, this commando was moving swiftly. Remember the invasion of Natal was the other half of the grand strategy agreed with Smuts at the meeting in Standerton earlier in the year. The military aim was to divert pressure from the occupied Republics, its political aim, to prove that the war was not over.

It's mid September 1901 and Jan Smuts is about to face one of the most challenging moments in his illustrious career. He was only 28 at this point, yet was to achieve so much in the next few weeks and would forever be remembered as the remarkable soldier who led a tiny group of men into the mouth of the British Empire lion. His immediately challenge, however, involved the weather, rather than the British. In an event which became known in Boer storytelling as The Big Rain, his commando was caught on high ground and hammered by a biblical deluge that threatened to destroy his force A few days after crossing into the Cape Colony and being attacked by the Basotho, Smuts survived a second ambush by a British patrol that killed his three scouts as they rode to investigate reports of a large column nearby. That was at the aptly named Moordenaars Poort or Murderers Way. Among the dead was Neethling who was a friend of our narrator, Deneys Reitz, who has warned us how many of the members of the Rijk Section, the Rich section as they ironically called themselves, were going to die. Ironic because they were dressed in rags - one of the ten went further describing the band of brothers as the Dandy Fifth. By around mid-September they were riding into more hills, which of course is where moist air rises and it rains more particularly on the Southerly facing mountains of South Africa. It may be the first month of Spring, but it can still snow on the high ground and Smuts' commando was caught in freezing weather. It rained constantly, sometimes sleeted, and the wind never abated. The continued lack of any sunshine made them even more dispirited, and Reitz began to wish he'd never left the Free State.

We continue to rid4 with General Jan Smuts and he has just entered the Cape Colony, an invasion that has been planned to coincide with Spring in early September 1901. The master guerrilla fighter and his commando of around 400 men are in a spot of bother, however. As they entered the Cape, their route took them through Basutho territory where they were set upon by around 300 warriors armed with rifles, spears and knobkerries. As we heard last week, they managed to fight off the attack, but lost 3 dead and seven wounded. They had also used up spare reserves of ammunition which was a big problem. This commando was supposed to immediately begin sowing mayhem inside the Cape but couldn't do so without Lee Metford Rounds - their new choice of firearm replacing the German Mauser's. The Boers were now armed with the same weapons as the British because their supply chains had dried up and were using attacks on the British to replenish ammunition and other material. Our narrator since the start of this podcast series, Deneys Reitz, had joined General Smuts along with ten others just before they crossed the Orange River into the Cape. He had only four rounds left after the clash with Basutho warriors that almost cost him his life. Invading hostile territory with a virtually empty rifle was not going to build confidence and Reitz fretted about this.

Spring is upon is in this podcast - so too the long-awaited invasion of the Cape Colony by General Jan Smuts and his commando. It has taken him almost a month of zig-zagging across the Free State from his base in the Eastern Transvaal to arrive at the border. Other Boer leaders had already been busy in the Cape, but they were operating in smaller units and were regarded as less significant at least from the point of view of the British occupying the territory. Smuts' arrival was a completely different kettle of fish. He was the very symbol of resistance, but also a symbol of the contradictions that many Boers encapsulated as I'll explain. While he remains literally a giant in the pantheon of South African heroes, he was not an easy man to travel with as Deneys Reitz would find out. Remember last week Reitz had ridden to within sight of the Orange River and its junction with the Calendon River in the southern Free State. That's when Jan Smuts' commando rode into view and our youthful narrator was seeking to invade the Cape himself with his new found friends - nine extremely young and radicalised teens who wanted to fight the British inside their own territory. But first a quick look at Smuts and why he was such an enigma in South African early politics. He deserves an entire podcast series himself his life was so rich - from his incredibly brave acts as a youthful Boer leader, all the way through to his involvement in the formation of the Royal Air Force during the First world War, his leadership during the second world war, his diplomatic skills and crucial role in the formation of first the league of Nations and then United Nations, and of course, as South Africa's prime Minister decades after the Boer war. Strangely, he studied American poet Walt Whitman, and then wrote a book which remained unpublished until 1973 called Walt Whitman: A study in the evolution of personality. But as soon as General Smuts and his commando crossed the Orange River into the Cape Colony, they came under attack by Basotho warriors hired by the British to police the border.

This week we hear about the Dandy Fifth and Deneys Reitz. It's also time to ride with General Christiaan de Wet as he sums up the Blockhouses. Reitz has fallen in with “this little band” as he calls them - and most would die tragically. There were Dandy fifth were actually nine in number and led by Jack Borrius who was a short thick-set man of 28 from Potchefstroom. We must stand back and take a look at what was happening across the battlefields at this time. For most of South Africa the winter period was a time of stagnation but significant developments were taking place. Remember how General Jan Smuts was already riding south towards the Cape Colony border and was planning an invasion with a crack squad of Boers. His plan was simple. Destabilise the colony and convince the Cape Afrikaners to rise up and join the two Boer states of the Transvaal and the Free State in their long war against the British. In the Free State, while drives, columns and patrols continued across the desolate plains, a lightning raid on General Hertzog's commando laagered in the South West on the 25 August indicated new methods. The British were finally going Boer in their tactics. After the start of the guerrilla campaign in late 1900, the British continued concentrating their forces around the logistic centres like railway lines and towns. They also preferred moving during the day and the Boers had taken to sniping at these large columns but never facing them, then riding away and resting before resting for the night and then continuing the skirmishes the next day. IN the Eastern Transvaal Boer tactics had been successful in attacking the British during the night. Now things were changing in the Free State much to the chagrin and frustration of leaders like Christiaan de Wet who'd figured out long ago how to fight this war of attrition against the British Empire. Lord Kitchener, the Commander in Chief in South Africa, now ordered that each large column which moved through the veld to hand pick the most daring and skilled men on horseback to operate as special units. These were lightly equipped but proactive soldiers - the same kind of man as the Boer if you like. They could spend days on the veld living on next to nothing and sleeping in short bursts, but could pop up anywhere within a 50 mile radius of the columns and possibly catch the Boers unprepared. Kitchener went further. He set up special mobile columns in August which worked along a logic that would be called special force raids rather than a stolid slow march across the veld. The Drives as they were known were co-operative and therefore slow. Each section would have to move in relation to the other.

It's an amazing to think that back in 2017 I was thinking about this podcast and whether I should go ahead and cover a topic that was missing on both iTunes and general podcasting. Jumping in and starting in October 2017, the plan was to follow the war as it wound its way through the next three or so years. Now we're on episode 100! We're now well into year two and this podcast series will wrap up at the same time as the Boer war - in May next year. I've tracked the incidents, events and issues through the war on a week by week basis so we're now in August 1901 and as you heard last week, Breaker Morant and his murderous Bushveld Carbineers have been busy across the north of the Transvaal. In the Free State, hundreds of Boers are beginning to arrive close to the Cape Colony border where they'll join up with General Jan Smuts who has been riding from the Transvaal and plans an invasion into the colony. The winter temperatures begin to ease in August. South Africa's high veld as I've explained experiences quite bitter winters with below freezing conditions for most of June and July. However by mid to late August, winds begin to blow and the sun which has been angled low in the north starts rising earlier, setting later and warming everyone. Not a moment too soon. In the Concentration camps now dotted around the interior, the death rate has been creeping up. There are now officially 100 000 Boer civilians - mostly women and children, who are incarcerated in these camps, with another 60 000 black civilians at least. These numbers are now known to have been conservative. Lord Kitchener had published his infamous proclamation of August 7th with an ultimatum to all the Boers' political and military leaders from commandants down to the heads of what he called ‘armed bands'. Anyone who hadn't surrendered by 15th September would be exiled from South Africa for life. What's more, those who had families in the Concentration Camps would be forced to pay for their maintenance which naturally meant their land and property would be seized. This would hit them where it hurt most, he thought. And of course, it would. But General Christiaan de Wet and other hardliners shrugged off Kitchener's threat. There were other ideas beginning to float around at this time. Why shouldn't the British rid themselves of the Boers altogether? This has an ominous sound to it, doesn't it? Kitchener ran his idea of rounding up all the Boers, women, children, old, young, from the camps as well as the 20 000 men in prisoner of war camps overseas. Why not pack these people off to a new region - Fiji perhaps? Willem Leyds had heard some of these wild plans before, but in August 1901 he was shocked when one of these wild plans came from a man by the name of Hyram Maxim. He was a 61 year-old American who had become a naturalised British subject and one of the last people that Queen Victoria had bestowed a knighthood before she died as I mentioned in an earlier podcast. The honour was conferred on Maxim as an inventor. He claimed to have invented the lightbulb, but that was debatable, but he had invented a number of machines including the mousetrap, the merry-go-round and, terrifingly, the machine gun. At the beginning of the letter dated August 1901, Maxim professed to be well disposed towards the Boers. Maxim wrote to Kruger that because of the British numerical superiority, they were inevitably going to win the war. But, there was a way out of this morass believed Maxim. And the horrible truth is that he was completely correct in his basic analysis. The British, by pure dint of their numerical and financial superiority, were going to win the war because they still wanted to win it. So what to do, thought Maxim? Simple, he said. The Boers were going to leave South Africa en masse to establish a new colony in the north of Mexico.

It's early August 1901 and a series of events in a far off corner of the war would end up resonating internationally for the next one hundred and 18 years. These involved the Bushveld Carbineers, the unit of irregular troops from Australia that was eventually disbanded. I covered part of this story in an earlier podcast, Episode 72. Because most of these events happened in August 1901, and that's where we are in our podcast series, we must reconsider the story of Breaker Morant. The events that led to the Morant and his partner in crime, Lieutenant Handcock, are still clouded in controversy. Very few stories resonate so continuously as this. We need to take a closer look once more. By February 1901 a 320-man regiment had been formed by Australian colonel Robert Lenehan which was based in Pietersburg 180 miles north of Pretoria. It was called the Bushveld Carbineers As I've described, the northern Transvaal area where they were based is largely lowveld, extremely hot and dry, dusty in summer, warmer than the high veld where Pretoria is based. There's a slow descent from Pretoria to the low veld town of Pietersburg which is known as Polokwane today. It was also a slow descent into the madness of war for the Bushveld Carbineers and their officers as we will hear. By the summer of 1901, rumours had reached the Officer Commanding at Pietersburg "of poor discipline, unconfirmed murders, drunkenness, and general lawlessness in the Spelonken.” That was the name of the region - Spelonken which itself has a discordant feel. Spelonken means caves in Dutch. The main example of indiscipline was rape. A local woman had accused British Army Officer James Robertson, the officer commanding of the Bushveldt Carbineers A Squadron of sexual assault. In response, Robertson was recalled to HQ and given an ultimatum. Court Martial, or resign his commission. He submitted his resignation and quit the British Army. Modern organisational planning includes what's known as the culture of organisations. And alas, the culture of the the Bushveld Carbineers was steeped in abuse. Former Kitchener Fighting Scout Lieutenant Percy Frederick Hunt was ordered to the northern Transvaal and given command of the Bushveld Carbineers B Squadron. Before leaving Pietersburg in July 1901, the newly promoted Captain Hunt asked for a number of officers to be transferred with him to his new field of command. These officers were Lieutenant's Morant, Charles Hannam and Harry Picton. An emblematic moment as we'll see. The Bushveld Carbineers were building a name for themselves in this region and it wasn't positive. With Hunt officer commanding the detachment at Fort Edward in Spelonken, both lieutenant Morant and Handcock began to reimpose discipline which had been lacking. They would take the concept of retribution far beyond what is acceptable in war.

It's time for an exchange of letters and a proclamation or two. General Jan Smuts and his commando have broken into smaller units and are traveling from the Transvaal to the Free State / Cape border. They're going to launch an invasion in a last-ditch attempt to entice their Afrikaner brothers living in the Cape Colony into an uprising. So far it's failed. The Cape Afrikaners are threatened with execution should they take part in the Boer war, as the British consider the Cape their Colony and all citizens should support the Empire. The Free State and Transvaal have also been seized by the British, but the rules of warfare still govern these two territories. That means any Boer citizen seized or taken prisoner is accorded the protection of the rules. But it also means that the Cape Afrikaners have much more to loose if they take part in this war. Not only will they be executed for treason, but it's likely their property will be seized and their families will lose everything. The cost of the war rose and by this period it was around 1.25 million pounds a week. The British government has been borrowing money to pay for the material and men its poured into South Africa - 250 000 in all. Lord Kitchener, who is commander-in-chief in South Africa, is trying to rush the war to an end but the bitter-einders are refusing to stop fighting. General Christiaan de Wet is active in the Free State and President Steyn has not been captured yet, although he has had two narrow escapes as we've heard. The British were also quickly building their blockhouse system along the railway line between Cape Town and Pretoria. They were also extending these military defensive positions along the lines to the western and eastern transvaal. They were immediately successful, as Boer generals have attested in their personal memoirs, including de Wets called "Three Years War" and published in 1902 at the war's conclusion. “I now impressed upon my officers as forcibly as I could the importance of intercepting the communications of the enemy by blowing up their trains…” he writes. “A mechanical device had been thought of by which this could be done. The barrel and lock of a gun in connexion with a dynamite cartridge, were placed under a sleeper so that when a passing engine pressed the rail on to this machine, it exploded and the train was blown up…” Thus the Boers devised one of the first ever examples of an IED or improvised explosive device. I mentioned right at the beginning of this series how this war produced a number of firsts - or at least a modern use of new technology and the IED here was the first of its type. “It is terrible to take human lives in such a manner, still however fearful, it was not contrary the rules of civilised warfare and we were entirely within our rights in obstructing the enemy's lines of communication in this manner…” But he must have felt discomfort in the idea that it was not a direct attack - it was indirect. It was a tactic we've come to know and fear as conventional soldiers in the world today. The carnage that has been sewn by IEDs and its more extreme cousin, the suicide bomber, is so established in guerrilla armies now its more usually found in training schedules than a knowledge of mine laying or grenade use.

This week we will hear about bandits at the Southern Border who are making the most of the guerrilla war raging around the Transvaal, parts of the Cape and the Free State. These motley laggards lurked close to towns and sometimes waylaid unfortunate men and women who passed by as they in turn were fleeing from the British - or the Boers. Of both. The small town of Fauresmith is a classic desert town on the edge of the karoo close to where the Free State and Cape colony border lay. This town had seen its fair share of skirmishes and battles during the first phase of the war and its residents were now exhausted by the ongoing fighting swirling around the veld. Riding towards this small town was Deneys Reitz and his new friend, Jacobus Bosman. Little did they know that also riding towards this part of the Free State was General Jan Smuts who was to meet up with his initially small commando of 350 men and launch a lightning raid into the Cape Colony. Meanwhile, Lord Kitchener was aware of the Smut's commando plans and had mobilised another 15 000 men to march onto the semi-desert southern plains of the Free State in an attempt to surround this commando and once and for all deal a terminal blow to Boer sentiment. But we'll start this week riding with Reitz and Bosman. They had begun their ride after bidding good bye to their commando led by Field Cornet Botha who had turned back saying it was impossible to cross into the Cape now. And disappointingly, his two German friends Haase and Pollatchek had decided to turn back as well. The Dirty dozen members had been reduced to two idealist youngsters - Reitz almost Quixotic in his belief in some divine order that was calling him to the Cape - Bosman equally motivated which was to be a terrible miscalculation as we'll hear in later podcasts. So after spending the night at a graveyard where British soldiers were killed in an shootout with Boers in 1848 - the two awoke to a real problem. That night the little Shetland Pony that had wondered into the Boers camp shortly before had taken off again - and this time Bosman's horse joined it on the expedition. Reitz and Bosman spent five hours on foot, hunting for the horses. Finally they located the two and rode them back to the graveyard to collect their saddles and other belongings. But these had disappeared. Bandits were busy and they obviously had spied on the two - perhaps even tried stealing their horses. They had made a big mistake however, as Reitz was by now more than an expert tracker. They had lost their bridles, saddles, cooking tins, blankets.

It's the third week of July 1901 and this winter has been cold even by the standards of South Africa's high plains. As I'm writing this, snow has blanketed parts of the semi-desert known as the Karoo and it was no different then. And Deneys Reitz is close to this region. He had found a bolt hole near the Lesotho border where he'd been hiding out with a handful of fellow travellers and his German colleagues. They'd been able to bathe for the first time in months having found a copper cistern. Reitz recovered during his short stint of R&R and was itching to rejoin the war. By the end of June the small band led by Field Cornet Botha started back down the mountains heading towards the Orange River which is the border between the Free State and the Cape Colony. AS they descended they saw a rider approaching. It was a young man named Jacobus Bosman. He would have been shot as a traitor. But Mr Bosman said it was worth the risk, so Reitz and his German troop enlisted him. Unfortunately for Bosman, he should have listened to the advice for as we'll see, his is not a happy ending. After three days of progress the Quixotic group, or the dirty dozen as Dutch historian Martin Bossenbroek calls them, are back on the flat open plains within sight of the Johannesburg-Bloemfontein railway line. By now Lord Kitchener's blockhouse system is causing the Boer guerrilla army some problems because these are close together and crossing the railway line has become very difficult during the day.

It's mid July 1901 and it's a Southern Winter. We will also hear how the commanding officer in Pretoria, General Maxwell, meets a Petticoat commando member Johanna van Warmelo who unknown to him, is carrying explosives during their meeting. There're awful resonances here with contemporary events. For example, Lord Kitchener writes in the London newspapers in 1901 that the Boer women and children are relatively healthy and well, and that the hygiene of the camps is at acceptable levels. Meanwhile, disease is killing hundreds, and eventually, thousands a month. Kitchener had written that the families in the camps “..had sufficient allowance, and were all comfortable and happy…” Emily Hobhouse the British humanitarian had visited these camps and she wrote in her diary how Kitchener's claims were shocking because she knew that the people in the tented camps were ..” all miserable and underfed, sick and dying…” She realised that the British public was being sold lies. This brought her to an important decision. There was no way that Hobhouse supported the Boers political ambitions - those of remaining independent. Her report to the House Committee and eventually made public in late June was delivered purely on the belief that the reasonable government would respond to what was her obviously neutral description of how badly the camps were being run. Instead, she was fobbed off by the political establishment and it dawned on Emily Hobhouse that her personal sympathy for the Boers was being confused with political support. “It was no question of political sympathy” she wrote in a letter at this time “… on that score I always maintained a negative attitude…” It was now she was to make a telling decision. Her approach of working with government to find a solution had led to nothing. Worse, she was now aware that the censorship imposed by the British army in South Africa meant that the families in these camps were going to be facing an increasingly awful future in the frigid Highveld winter. She was going to fight the government in their own back yard, in London. The gloves were well and truly off.

It's the first week of July 1901 and the British are about to break the code both the Boers and the Dutch have been using which has meant London's military planning at times has been beset by guess work. Not that things have gone too badly in recent months for the British. The Boers have begun to surrender in larger numbers as it becomes clear that continued fighting was almost suicidal. There was only honour now, and when your women and children begin dying in concentration camps because you want to fight to the death, surrendering and ensuring your blood line isn't such a crazy idea at all. Not that Generals Jan Smuts and Louis Botha from the Transvaal were for giving up just yet. It was really clear, however, that the British were not going to stop fighting although the war had now dragged on for 21 months. What the Boers did not know, was that their arch enemy in South Africa, the British commander in chief Lord Kitchener, had received a bit of shock from the war office in the form of a telegram. It outlined that the government was planning to trim his force of 250 000 by 110 000 men in order to save money. London was borrowing heavily to pay for the Boer war, and Kitchener was told in the telegram that he had until the end of Winter to ensure that Botha and Smuts and the hardliners General de la Rey and De Wet were defeated. As the code-breakers were breaking the Boer cypher, probably in their shirt-sleeves and late night oil lamps, back in South Africa the man who was the most determined to fight on was about to escape almost certain capture. Had he fallen into British hands now, it would have dealt the Boers a possibly fatal blow and it has been said by their own leaders including Christiaan de Wet, that the war may have ended then.

The winds of war have been blowing cold across the veld, shrivelling the corpses that lie across hundreds of kilometres in all directions. It is the beginning of July 1901. Emily Hobhouse was so excited because finally, after weeks of cajoling, she would have an opportunity to put her report on the Concentration Camps setup by the British in South Africa to a proper public debate. It had taken a month, but she'd managed to keep her vow to those suffering in the Boer Camps where women and children were dying in large numbers. She was going to talk to a full audience at Queen's Hall in London. There she would tell the British people about the suffering of the civilians both black and white as Lord Kitchener's camps began to descend into a disease riddled hell. Winter meant temperatures below freezing, children were dying of measles and pneumonia at a rate of up to 30 a day per camp. And there were more than two dozen camps. Things would not work out as she planned, however. But the costs are also ratcheting up, now more than £1.25m a week which in 1901 was a huge amount.As we've seen, the election of 1900 saw the coalition under Conservative leader Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister and his nephew, Arthur Balfour, as Leader of the House of Commons, win a clear majority. While various major posts went to the Liberal Unionists, most notably the Leader of the House of Lords, the Liberal Unionist Duke of Devonshire, and Joseph Chamberlain, who became Colonial Secretary. It was partly Chamberlain's actions behind the scenes that eventually led to a new policy being formulated about South Africa in 1901. The coalition government decided to send a cable to Lord Kitchener, commander in chief of British forces in South Africa on the 2nd July. “‘we must now face the possibility that your winter campaign, however successful, will not conclude the war. Indeed the very success in reducing the larger commandos to small unorganised guerrilla bands may render some change in method necessary by the end of August…” This must have come as a shock to Kitchener, who had carefully manipulated reports back home indicating that he was on the cusp of victory. But the British intelligence system for all its shortcomings, was better informed. The leadership knew that the Commander in Chief was suffering the effect of being too close to the coalface to have all the facts. “The government does not think its either possible or desirable to continue indefinitely to spend 1 million 250 thousands pounds a week and keep in South Africa 250 000 soldiers to deal with an enemy who cannot be crushed simply because they are too few and too scattered.. estimated not to exceed 18 000 men… ”