Great Boer War

by Farwell, Byron,,

  On the morning of 30 July 1900 Hunter formally accepted the surrender of Prinsloo with the Ficksburg and Ladybrand commandos at a place aptly named Verliesfontein (verlies: loss or bereavement). Sadly the burghers came up and threw down their rifles and ammunition. Some were mere boys; some white-bearded patriarchs. For them the war was over. All dreaded being sent to St. Helena, but St. Helena was already too crowded and the British had opened up a new prisoner-of-war camp in the mountains of central Ceylon at a place called Diyatalowa (“Happy Valley”). From the fountain of bereavement to the happy valley.

  Throughout the Brandwater Basin the surrender scene was repeated as the commandos turned in their arms to the nearest British unit. A British staff officer found Olivier 8 miles outside the basin and took his promise to stay where he was until he received instructions from Prinsloo, but Olivier had no intention of surrendering and he made off with all speed. Hunter thought this unfair: “I regard it as a dishonourable breach of faith upon the part of General Olivier, for which I hold him personally responsible. He admitted that he knew that General Prinsloo had included him in the unconditional surrender.”11

  A few burghers tried to conceal themselves in caves and other hiding places, but eventually most of these were flushed out. Strangely, even some who had made their escape—men of the Vrede and Harrisburg commandos—changed their minds and rode into Harrismith to surrender to General Hector Macdonald. By 9 August the British had captured 4,314 prisoners in and around the Brandwater Basin. They had also captured three guns (two of which were “U” Battery guns taken by De Wet at Sanna’s Post) and nearly 2 million rounds of ammunition, most of which was destroyed. The spot where they exploded it is to this day still bare of vegetation and littered with cartridge cases. They also took possession of 2,800 head of cattle, 4,000 sheep, and nearly 6,000 good horses.

  Among the Boers who surrendered was Pieter Schutte, twenty-two years old, whose sweetheart, Cecilia Senekal, wrote one of the war’s most beautiful songs: “Zeit gy Ginds de Blaawe Bergen?” (Didst Thou See the Blue Mountains?). The first of its ten verses is:

  Didst thou see those Blue Mountains

  where our friends were sold?

  Taken prisoner by the enemy

  and sent so far away.k12

  The belief that the burghers were sold out soon became general; De Wet certainly thought so: “The circumstances of this surrender are so suspicious that it is hard to acquit the man who was responsible for it of a definite act of treachery; and the case against him is all the more grave from the fact that Vilonel ... had a share in the transaction.”13

  Prinsloo did not have an opportunity to defend himself, for he died shortly after. So too did Piet Schutte. His sweetheart married his brother, and the song she wrote is now almost forgotten.

  33

  ADVANCE TO KOMATIPOORT

  It was now obvious: the Boers ought to give up. They could not possibly win. The capitals of the two countries, all of the towns of any importance, and most of the railway system were in British hands, as were about 15,000 prisoners of war. Most of the Free State army had surrendered. British troops swarmed over the land. President Steyn no longer pretended to have a capital; his government was where he dismounted for the night as, a fugitive, he fled north into the Transvaal with De Wet. There were some important defections. Piet de Wet came to his brother to ask if there was any point in continuing the struggle. “Are you mad?” De Wet answered, and turned his back. Piet de Wet had fought bravely and well, but now he had had enough. He mounted his horse and rode off to turn in his rifle and surrender.

  Still, many Boers, in spite of the hopelessness of their position, refused to give up and thought contemptible those who did. Christiaan de Wet never spoke to his brother again and even swore he would shoot him on sight. Over both countries there was sporadic fighting, and in the western Transvaal De la Rey had some striking successes. Kruger, interviewed in his railway carriage at Machadodorp, was asked if he did not feel that the war was over now that Roberts had captured his capital: “The capital! What is a capital?” he asked. “It does not consist of any particular collection of bricks and mortar. The capital of the republic, the seat of government, is here in this car. There is no magic about any special site.”

  Steyn, when asked why he continued such a hopeless struggle, would reply with another question: What hope had the two little republics at the beginning of the war of winning the fight against the might of England? If they had trusted in God at the beginning, why not continue to trust in Him?

  Roberts sent out columns to try to deal with De la Rey while other columns tried to catch the slippery De Wet (this became known as the First De Wet Hunt), but he remained convinced that he had only to capture the last 250 miles of railway on which Botha and Kruger were perched to end the war. On 23 July he launched his army along the railway towards Komatipoort, determined to force the fighting burghers to surrender or flee the country. Four days later Middelburg was occupied and the Boers began to retreat to the east. Buller meanwhile was slowly moving along the railway that ran from Durban to Ladysmith and on into the Transvaal through Volksrust, Standerton, and Heidelburg, joining the main north-south line just south of Johannesburg. Roberts was naturally eager to have this second, shorter supply line open for his use, but for a time the hunt for De Wet occupied his attention.

  Not for the first or the last time De Wet managed to outmarch and outwit the British columns sent to hem him in. Steyn wanted to meet with Kruger, so De Wet assigned the bulk of his force to accompany him on a wide swing north to reach Machadodorp while he with only 250 men doubled back towards the Free State. He counted on this movement to confuse the British and divert their attention from Steyn and the main force. He was right. He diverted so much attention to himself that at one point he was trapped, his little band pushed against the Magaliesberg, a 100-mile range of mountains about 40 miles west of Pretoria, with British columns moving in for the kill.

  De Wet rode up to a Bantu hut and consulted its occupant about the feasibility of crossing the mountains before him. The Bantu assured him it was not possible.

  “Do baboons go across?” asked De Wet.

  “Yes. Baboons do, but not a man.”

  “Come on!” De Wet cried to his burghers. “This is our only way, and where a baboon can cross, we can cross.”1

  Young Adriaan Matthijsen looked at the mountains soaring 2,000 feet above him and sighed, “O Red Sea!”

  Leading their horses, slipping and sliding, they forced their way up and then scrambled down the other side to safety, leaving the British columns holding an empty bag.

  The First De Wet Hunt lasted a month. When it was over Roberts collected his scattered forces and turned to his primary objective: capture-ing the entire railway line to Komatipoort. Buller was asked to cooperate by leaving his Natal-Transvaal railway and marching north to form the right flank of Roberts’s advancing army. Taking 9,000 men and 42 guns, Buller, with some trepidation, left the railway, source of all comforts, and moved to join forces with Roberts. For the first time he left tents behind, but he took with him half again as many wagons and carts in proportion to the number of troops as had Roberts on his march to Bloemfontein. Buller’s men would not want.

  Boer commandos under Christiaan Botha fell back fighting before Buller’s advance, while the main force under Louis Botha was also forced to retreat back along the railway. Kruger and his government moved their railway carriages still further east to Waterval Onder.

  Buller had orders from Roberts to place himself behind Dalmanutha, a village on the railway halfway between Pretoria and Komatipoort, and to attack the Boer flank. He had started to execute this when he received a report from the 19th Hussars that they had found the Boer flank at Bergandal, several miles west of Dalmanutha. This was surprising, but Buller changed directions to attack what was, in fact, the centre of the Boer line. Actually, the hussars had found a small gap in the Boer defences and assumed that it was the end of their line. F
or the British the mistake was a stroke of luck. Botha, knowing that Roberts always attacked the flank when he could, had left his centre weak in order to strengthen his flanks.

  The exact point at which Buller launched his attack was a small salient in the Boer line held by only 74 men of the Johannesburg police, the Zarps whom the uitlanders had so hated, under the command of Commandant Philip Oosthuizen. They were supported by 1,000 burghers ranged on either side, but behind and not directly connected to them. The Zarp position then was well forward and isolated. Against these 74 men Buller could throw 8,000 troops and bring to bear 38 guns.

  The battle began at eleven o’clock on the morning of 27 August with a three-hour bombardment of the Zarps’ position by all 38 British guns. It was perhaps the heaviest bombardment of the war. “Smoke and sulphurous gases and rocks shooting up into the air made the place look like a Vesuvius in eruption.”2 Roland Schikkerling of the Johannesburg Commando was positioned on the right of the Zarps where he had a good view of the bombardment: “I thought everything human had perished, even to the lizards and insects in the rent and battered rocks, and felt sick at heart to think that, while we looked idly on, this infernal fury should fall on these few wretches alone.”3 The Zarps, well entrenched, lay low. They could do nothing else. As one said later, “We dared not leave the post. We dared not—it was certain death.” When at last the bombardment ceased, two battalions of British infantry rose up and, bayonets bared, moved forward to the attack: 1,500 soldiers against what was left of the contingent of 74 policemen. Roberts himself had ridden up, and he and Buller watched the attack through their field glasses.

  As the infantry advanced across nearly 1,500 yards of open ground, the Zarps left alive raised their heads and opened a steady, accurate fire. A liver and white springer spaniel trotted in front of the advancing men, tail in the air, nose to the ground, sniffing at the puffs of dust raised by the bullets striking around him, puzzled by what caused them. The men advanced in rushes, and each time they threw themselves on the ground, the dog trotted up and down the prone line, puzzled by this behaviour too. Then a bullet struck him just behind the left shoulder and he went down, but when the men rose to move on, he too struggled up and hobbled painfully after them.

  Newspapers reported that as the Rifles rose for their final rush they gave a “ringing cheer,” but Lieutenant E. T. Aspinall reported that it was an inhuman yell and that the men, their blood up, cursed savagely—“Corporal Porter, a good judge, said he had never heard worse.” The Zarps maintained their cool, deadly musketry until the soldiers were almost upon them, then some turned and ran for their horses; others stayed on and fought to the end.

  Conan Doyle said of the Zarps: “No finer defence was made in the war.” They suffered 40 killed, wounded, or captured, including the severely wounded Commandant Oosthuizen; the British lost 12 killed and 85 wounded. When the heat of battle subsided a reaction set in among the soldiers, and a number busied themselves in binding up the wounds of the Boers: “One, a lad of about fourteen, with a severe wound in his shoulder, was the object of much pity among them and some were almost in tears about him, yet a few minutes before they would probably have put a bayonet in him.”4

  With the capture of the Zarp position the rest of the Boers lost heart and fled; the line crumbled. As was so frequently the case, the British failed to make a vigourous pursuit, and by nightfall most of the Boers had scrambled to safety.

  Everywhere the beaten, dispirited men fell back. Kruger and Steyn retreated still further to Nelspruit; Louis Botha was ill with quinsy, and without his voice the Boer leadership dissolved in confusion. Even he was for a time discouraged and wrote to Kruger suggesting that as the two presidents were now together they should discuss peace terms, for he saw no way of continuing the war.

  Roberts, anticipating an imminent end to hostilities, proclaimed the annexation of the Transvaal on I September 1900.

  At this point it was decided that Kruger, suffering from his diseased eyes, should go to Europe. It would have been too demoralising to have him fall into British hands; he was too old and ill for campaign life, and perhaps in Europe he could enlist the help of some of the European powers. Ostensibly it was to be but a six months’ absence, but on 11 September he crossed the border at Komatipoort and left the Transvaal, never to return. Schalk Burger was left as acting president, but the real leader of the Transvaal Boers was now Louis Botha.

  Steyn had joined Kruger just two days before the battle of Bergandal and stayed with him during the retreat to Nelspruit, but he had no intention of leaving South Africa or of surrendering. This iron-willed leader moved among the dispirited burghers breathing fire and exhorting them to fight on: “What answer can you give to your children when they ask what you have done with the independence you inherited?”

  The Boers continued to fight rear-guard actions, to snipe and to tear up the railway, but the British force pressing against them was overwhelming, and was made even greater by the release of the remaining 2,000 prisoners of war who had been held at Nooigedacht. Back along the railway line, east to the Mozambique border, the Boers were driven. Still, there were no mass surrenders. As long as they could retreat they would; they were discouraged but not completely demoralised, and they would not surrender if they could avoid it. It now appeared, at least to the British, that they would have to, that there was no choice left but surrender or flight across the frontier into Mozambique.

  Faced with what appeared to be certain defeat, the Transvaalers in this crisis arrived after debate among the leaders at a remarkable decision: they would reorganise their army. It hardly seemed the time to do this, but extraordinarily enough, this decision did in fact save them from annihilation. The best men and the best horses and wagons were organised into commandos of about 300 men, each under a commandant appointed by Commandant-General Botha, not elected; a field cornet commanded each hundred and a corporal each ten. This left a surplus of officers, all of whom were reduced to the ranks. At this time too a pay scale was introduced, although no pay was ever given. It was also decided to divide the Transvaal into five areas of operation with the burghers fighting in their own districts as far as possible.

  The Transvaalers with their streamlined fighting force now broke away from the heavy British columns to continue the war in other places and in other ways. Left behind at Komatipoort to face the British or flee over the border were some 3,000 men under two easily spared generals. Included in this force were the weak and the weary, the voetgangers and the sick, the faint of heart, the misfits, most of the foreign volunteers, the unnerved and unneeded of the government officials, and many Cape rebels.

  Although smaller in numbers, the Transvaal forces were more wieldy and effective, composed as they were of the strongest and staunchest, the enthusiasts who were willing and able to fight. They kept one Long Tom and a few field guns, destroying the remainder of their artillery; they took the most useful of the stores and set fire to the rest. Then in numerous small bands and in two large parties, one under Botha and another under Ben Viljoen, they trekked north into the wild bush veld, the “thirstland” —what is today the famous Kruger National Park. They were anxious to escape from the low country with its fevers and tsetse flies before the onset of hot weather, but they had to stay off the high veld until they were far enough north to escape around the British left flank. Roberts was alerted to the movement, but his troops failed to move fast enough to prevent their escape.

  Although unmolested by the British, some of the straggling groups of Boers lost their way and some were attacked by hostile tribesmen; animals died and men fell sick. Some lost all their horses and trudged along on foot. The sick and wounded, carried along on litters, were such a burden that their bearers, abhoring themselves for the thought, often wished them dead. It was a hard journey.

  After going far enough north to be out of reach of the British columns, they turned west and back onto the high veld to Pietersburg, their assembly point.

  R
emote Pietersburg had never seen so many men, horses, oxen, and wagons as had now descended upon it, and the girls had never in their lives seen such a magnificent collection of young men, ragged but spirited. Every evening the town vibrated to singing, dancing, and games of “Kiss in the Ring.” Schikkerling, handsome and ardent, wryly recorded that he “came away without any regrets to comfort me.”5

  When the reorganised Transvaal army rode north the burghers left behind at Komatipoort threw themselves into an orgy of destruction, blowing up or setting fire to supplies, guns, ammunition, locomotives. Only the railway bridge was spared, for the Portuguese had persuaded Kruger to forbid its destruction. The Portuguese, who had moved most of their 1,500 European troops to the frontier, offered good treatment to those who crossed the border and laid down their arms.

  By 22 September some 2,500 Boers and foreign volunteers had crossed over into Portuguese territory. Four out of five were completely destitute. All ended up at Lourenço Marques, an embarrassment and a worry to the local authorities. The correspondent for the Standard reported on the foreign volunteers: “A worse collection of scoundrels could not be found in Paris, New York, or London.”6

  The foreign military observers who had been with the Boers, concluding that the war was now over, also left the Transvaal. Captain Reichmann in his report to the American War Office tried to sum up:

  What I saw of the struggle of these simple farmers against the trained troops of the British empire was pathetic to behold; it was the old story of enthusiasm and valor as against organization and discipline, and it had the same invariable result. Yet the farmers were undaunted. When I took leave of Mr. Reitz, the state secretary, he was on horseback carrying bandoliers and carbine and leading three spare horses; he smiled and said to me, “If your people could fight eight years for their independence, we can!”7