by Michael King
Eight weeks later the New Zealanders reached South Africa days ahead of the first Australian contingents, and they were in action in northern Cape Colony by 9 December. On 28 December, Private George Bradford of Paeroa became the first New Zealand soldier to die on overseas duty when he succumbed to wounds as a prisoner of war. His bandolier was recovered and later became the badge of office for successive presidents of the New Zealand South African War Veterans Association (each office-holder would have his name inscribed on a chromium-plated .303 bullet case).
The fundamental cause of the war, as military historian John Crawford has noted, was ‘British determination to dominate South Africa and an equally strong Boer determination to resist the extinction of their independence’. The trigger was the rights of uitlanders or non-Boers in the Boer South African Republic (Transvaal). Most uitlanders were English. They were denied votes and subject to forms of indirect taxation that they considered unjust. By 1899 many uitlanders had abandoned their properties and possessions, and the Boers issued an ultimatum for the British to withdraw their troops from Transvaal. The Orange Free State aligned itself with Transvaal and, when the ultimatum expired, the British territories of Cape Colony and Natal were at war with the South African Republic, as was the British Empire as a whole. Richard Seddon was moved to offer New Zealand’s participation not only on grounds of imperial solidarity, but also because many uitlanders in Transvaal were goldminers of British stock, as he himself had been. He was profoundly moved by Britain’s readiness to go to war in defence of a colonial community.
Over three years, 1899 to 1902, New Zealand raised and despatched nine further contingents, the last two of which arrived too late to take part in significant action. In addition to providing their horses, volunteers were expected to take their own equipment, which cost about £25. The third and fourth contingents were funded largely by public subscription, and the fifth to tenth by the British Government. Altogether New Zealand contributed nearly 6500 men to the war effort and over £113,000 of public donations.
From the outset, many Maori were keen to enlist for service in the war. But they were prevented from doing so as a contingent by a British Government directive that ‘blacks should not be deployed against whites’. To some Maori this was a source of acute disappointment, and debate ensued over what precisely constituted ‘black’ and ‘white’. Hui such as one held at the Basin Reserve in Wellington on 28 March 1900 protested vigorously against the policy, but to no avail. Maori managed to enlist as individuals, however. Many such as Barney Vercoe, Tom Porter and Paki Withers took advantage of European names and features. They served with distinction, and the experience stood some of them in good stead for promotion within the Pioneer Battalion in World War I more than a decade later.
As New Zealand’s first war abroad, the South African campaign impressed itself vividly on the public imagination and provided cameos that were to become archetypical in the national mind. The spectacle of the rugged volunteer, for example, riding off to war with his own horse and equipment, was well captured by Denis Glover in the poem ‘I Remember’, part of his Sings Harry sequence:
Then Uncle Jim was off to the wars
With a carbine at his saddle
And was killed in the Transvaal
– I forget in just what battle
Indeed, the ‘Rough Riders’ with their dusty mounts, bandoliers of bullets, weaponry and swaggering gait evoked images every bit as romantic as those of the American frontier. The scenario in South Africa itself intensified the exotic conception people had of the theatre of war. Kopes or small hills overlooked barren, desert-like plains. The daytime temperatures soared and the terrain lacked shade. It was an abrupt contrast with the luxuriant New Zealand landscape and temperate climate. Most New Zealanders found these conditions intensely unpleasant.
For the first half of the war the imperial and colonial forces concentrated on attacking the Boers’ fixed positions, relieving towns besieged from the earliest days of combat and in general engaging the enemy’s army. The bulk of the action for the New Zealand contingents involved lightning attacks on the Boers’ highly mobile units, especially later in the war when the major Boer armies had been defeated and remaining threats to security came from commando bands that were energetic, resourceful and difficult to engage.
As might have been expected from their fitness and keenness, the New Zealand ‘troopers’ – as they came to be called – fought with distinction. They were remembered especially for their part in actions at New Zealand Hill, Sanna’s Post, Diamond Hill and Rhenoster Kop. One in every 48 men received official recognition for distinguished or valuable services. And one trooper, Farrier Sergeant William James Hardham of Wellington, won the Victoria Cross. The number of New Zealanders killed in combat, 59, was relatively low, however. A larger total died from the combined effects of disease (130), accidents (30) and wounds. The accidental deaths included sixteen New Zealanders killed in a train collision at Machavic on 12 April 1902.
Back home in New Zealand, the mood throughout the war remained highly jingoistic. A booklet commemorating the country’s contribution of troops and money identified their significance in these terms.
It is a glorious page in our history. The whole nation is aroused, and the Imperial spirit has taken a firm hold. If this war does nothing else than foster this feeling, it will not have been in vain. The little-Englanders have hidden their diminished heads, party differences have been sunk in the common weal, and the united action of our vast Empire has been an object lesson to the world. The old spirit of the mother is not lacking in the sons.
In sparsely populated rural regions such as the Coromandel Peninsula, parades of local volunteers and the unveiling of post-war monuments did a great deal to create and enhance special feelings of local identity and community cohesion. The Boer War was also in part responsible for the degree of nationalism that decisively ruled out the possibility of New Zealand’s federating with the Australian colonies in 1901.
The other face of jingoism was a strong intolerance of anybody who questioned or opposed New Zealand’s support for the war. Only five members of the House of Representatives opposed the motion to send New Zealand troops, and only one member of the Legislative Council, Henry Scotland. If Britain were in danger he would defend her, said the London-born Scotland. But she was not. And she was breaking a treaty to deprive the Boers of self-government. Newspapers of the day dismissed this viewpoint as arising from ‘advanced senility’. Another parliamentary employee, Hansard chief reporter J. Grattan Grey, was dismissed from his job for condemning the war in a letter to a newspaper. Employees of the Westport Harbour Board were threatened with the sack if they continued to voice reservations about the war. In addition to a record of distinguished performance in combat, New Zealand had begun to establish a tradition of harsh treatment of wartime dissenters.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the troops at the front displayed less antagonism towards the Boers and less unqualified support for Mother Britain. Their literature and letters gave the South Africans credit for the manner in which they fought and for their considerate treatment of prisoners of war. Conversely they showed a degree of contempt for some of the overly disciplined procedures of English soldiers, for their rigidly close fighting formations, and for some of the more ridiculous distinctions made between officers and men.
On the home front the public hero of the war was Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred William Robin. Robin was not, as was widely supposed at the time, New Zealand-born. He came from Victoria, Australia, in his childhood. When at the age of 39 he was appointed commander of the first three contingents sent to South Africa, he became the first colonial anywhere to command a unit in defence of the British Empire. All his previous military experience had been in New Zealand and more senior officers in New Zealand with Imperial Army training had opposed his appointment. He performed with great ability, however, in the relief of Kimberley, and at Driefontein, Johannesburg and Diamond Hill. To the New Zealand
public he became a symbol of all that was worthy about the country’s contribution to the war. He was given a hero’s welcome in Dunedin when he returned home in May 1901. Later he became Chief of the General Staff in New Zealand and the Commander of Home Forces in World War I.
The South African War ended on 31 May 1902 with the signing of the Boer surrender at Potchefstroom. The experience of participation provided a hinge for New Zealand’s military history, a link between past and future traditions. In a literal sense it spanned the passage of the nineteenth century into the twentieth, and of Victoria’s reign into that of Edward VII, which began in 1901. This passage produced new precedents for New Zealanders. It established the principle that the country would involve itself in other parts of the world, and that it would do this to uphold British imperial power rather than simply to protect immediate national interests. There were, of course, elements of self-interest in addition to those of self-sacrifice: it was taken for granted that the Royal Navy would defend New Zealand’s coastline if the country was threatened with invasion. Fortunately, this belief was never put to the test.
The war was also the first in which New Zealand troops fought harmoniously alongside Australians, each recognising that they had more in common with one another than they did with British troops, thus laying the foundation for the ANZAC connection that was to be cemented so strongly more than a decade later at Gallipoli, and in North Africa during World War II.
The traditions that grew up about New Zealand fighting men – rugged, enterprising, ready to throw away the rule book when the rules were inadequate – also originated in the South African War. Commentators noted that in many respects, especially in their capacity to handle horses and move rapidly and safely through rough country, New Zealand volunteers had shown themselves to be superior to British regulars. The Times History of the War in South Africa went so far as to say that, after they had gained some experience, the New Zealanders were ‘on average the best mounted troops …’
Partly as a consequence of all this, the war also firmly established the New Zealand tradition of amateur soldiering. South Africa had shown that volunteers with minimum peacetime training could enlist in times of crisis and serve under professionals with verve and distinction. Once the war was over, these same men would return to civilian life and leave professional soldiering to a small clique of regulars. This too set a pattern for the next 50 years.
Another effect of the South African War was to create in New Zealand a sharper interest in the broad questions of national and imperial defence. Richard Seddon, who developed a plan to federate Hawai‘i, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and the Cook Islands into New Zealand, was allowed by the British Government instead to annex the Cooks in 1901 and Niue in 1905 – a gesture which could be interpreted as British gratitude for the country’s contribution to the South African War. Seddon wanted Samoa too, but New Zealand’s assumption of responsibility for part of that territory would have to await the defeat of Germany in World War I. There was nothing in New Zealand’s early administration of these islands, through resident commissioners, that suggested a special gift for a colonial role.
Sir Joseph Ward, when he became Prime Minister after Richard Seddon died unexpectedly in 1906, took up military and naval policies with a gusto that embarrassed some of his counterparts from other colonies. At both the Colonial Conference in London in 1907 and the Imperial Conference in 1911, he made some rash promises. One was to offer Britain two battleships to be paid for by New Zealand, only one of which, HMS New Zealand, would actually be built. Another was to provide a blueprint for an ‘Imperial Parliament of Defence’, a proposal rejected by other prime ministers. The message was clear, however: New Zealand expected the Empire as a whole to be prepared for future international conflict, and it wanted to share in both the planning and conduct of future wars.
Implicit in all this was the conviction that the Empire as a whole would never put a foot wrong in matters of principle and foreign affairs, and that anyone who crossed Mother Britain was likely to be wrong and did so at their peril. A pamphlet popular in New Zealand at the time preached that the ‘genius of the British race is rooted in justice, truth, honour and consideration for the rights of others. The continued exercise of these principles has given virility to the race.’ Another reiterated the New Zealander’s ‘double patriotism – [that] of his own country and the wider patriotism of the great Empire to which he is proud to belong’. With such principles emphatically in view, the Liberal Government passed the 1909 Defence Act, which established a territorial force recruited from compulsory military training. It was designed to create an adequate system of national self-defence and to allow the country to mobilise rapidly in the event of Empire-wide emergencies.
The first of those emergencies occurred in 1914. After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in June, a system of alliances and rapid mobilisations pitted the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary and Germany) against the Franco-Russian alliance. And when Germany swept into Belgium in order to outflank France, thus violating Belgium’s neutrality, King George V, who had replaced his father, Edward VII, in 1910, declared on 4 August 1914 that Britain and the British Empire were at war with the Central Powers. While the invasion of Belgium was the trigger, the real motive for British intervention was an attempt to prevent Germany dominating Europe.
Few New Zealanders understood this sequence of events. But most welcomed the fact that the country, as part of the Empire, was now at war with Germany. It seemed that at last an opportunity had arrived to put to the test the virtues and the preparations of the previous decade. John A. Lee remembered the climate of the time. ‘I was walking through the country … and the people cheered. You could understand it – a long period of what was comparative prosperity … no great events happening for a long time … [Everybody] rushed of course to enlist. That was the spirit … [Folks] sang patriotic songs and they cheered … [They] talked about the great sacrifices of young men that would be made.’
It was left to the parliaments of the individual dominions to decide the extent of their contributions to the war. New Zealand legislators, led by the bluff Northern Irishman William Massey, had no doubts about the need to be involved in the war. In addition to imperial sentiment, they were influenced by the fact that New Zealand’s prosperity rested on its market in Britain and the need to keep the sea trade routes open. They offered the British an Expeditionary Force on 5 August and the offer was accepted by telegraph on 12 August. Volunteers were called for from the territorials and these men went into intensive training under professional officers at camps in the four main centres.
On 15 August a 1400-strong advance party of troops sailed for German-occupied Samoa, and at this point some of the less than satisfactory aspects of New Zealand’s preparation for war became apparent. When the New Zealand Government asked the Colonial Office in London about German forces in Samoa, Sir Lewis Harcourt cabled back, ‘See Whitaker’s Almanack.’ A search of the Almanack revealed nothing about Samoan defences. In addition, the convoy carrying the troops may have passed within 25 km of cruisers which were part of the German East Asiatic Squadron. The operation was successful none the less and the New Zealand commander accepted a German surrender in Samoa on 29 August. It was the first Allied occupation of German territory in the war.
The remainder of the initial Expeditionary Force – some 8500 men and 3800 horses – continued training under the overall direction of Major-General Sir Alexander John Godley. Godley, a nephew of John Robert Godley, one of the founders of the Canterbury settlement, was an English professional soldier on loan to New Zealand to supervise the reorganisation of the country’s defence forces. At the outbreak of war he became General Officer Commanding the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, whose Main Body of troops sailed from Wellington on 16 October. At this point it was envisaged that the New Zealanders would be taken to France to counter the German advance along the Western Front. But the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the wa
r on the side of the Central Powers changed the strategic picture and the convoy of New Zealand troops and the Australians who had joined them en route disembarked instead in Egypt, to complete training there and, if necessary, defend that country from Turkish attack.
On 3 February 1915, two months after their arrival, New Zealanders went into action for the first time. A Turkish force that had trekked across the Sinai Desert launched an attack on the Suez Canal at Ismailia. The Nelson Company of the Canterbury Infantry Division filled a gap in the canal defences and repulsed the attack with the assistance of Indian troops. The Turks suffered heavy losses; the imperial forces only eighteen, of whom one, Private William Arthur Ham of Canterbury, died of wounds, thus becoming New Zealand’s first casualty in the war.
The greater part of the Expeditionary Force’s early time in Egypt was spent in training at Zeitoun Camp near Cairo. Men ran up sandhills with heavy loads, dug and filled in trenches, and launched mock bayonet attacks. They were joined by steady waves of reinforcements from New Zealand, including a 439-strong Maori contingent, and they were linked in training with a combination of Australian brigades and divisions, thus forming the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps: ANZAC.
Before going into action together against the enemy, however, the Australians and New Zealanders turned on some of their Egyptian hosts on Good Friday 1915 in the so-called ‘Battle of the Wazza’. This was a riot in one of Cairo’s more notorious streets, in which several hundred troops set fire to brothels while thousands more looked on. The action was allegedly taken in retaliation for three grievances: bad alcohol (it was rumoured that the suppliers urinated in it to make it go further); a rise in prices; and the isolation of troops with venereal disease in special compounds. An official inquiry failed to identify any individuals responsible, but Australian witnesses claimed that New Zealanders had been more heavily involved than they had.