by Paul Terry
The quiet of the African evening was shattered by the roar of gunfire. Chaos reigned for a few moments and when the shooting stopped, the patrol rushed into the laager to find the Boers had galloped away, leaving behind their wagons and goods. Dead and dying horses were strewn around the camp. A search found one Boer—a man named Visser—hiding under a wagon. He had been shot in the heel.
According to Witton, Morant wanted to shoot the wounded man immediately but ‘he was prevailed upon not to do so, as the firing might attract the Boers’. Instead, Visser was placed in a wagon and the men of the patrol spent that cold night, sheltering below a kopje, their bellies rumbling in hunger. Early the next morning, word reached the patrol that they were urgently needed at Fort Edward, which was under threat from Boer attack. They were to return with haste. Before leaving, Morant questioned the prisoner Visser and claimed to have found him in possession of a British army shirt and a pair of trousers that had belonged to Captain Hunt. According to Witton, Morant informed his fellow officers that he intended to shoot Visser at the earliest opportunity. The patrol then burned the Boer wagons and rounded up their oxen before setting out for the fort.
At eleven o’clock that morning, they halted near a river where they slaughtered one of the captured oxen and had their first food in more than twenty-four hours. After breaking their fast it was time to deal with the prisoner Visser. Morant convened a ‘drumhead’ court martial and put the case against the prisoner. ‘This man,’ Morant said, ‘has been concerned in the murder of Captain Hunt; he has been captured wearing British uniform and I have got orders direct from headquarters not to take prisoners, while only the other day Lord Kitchener sent out a proclamation that all Boers captured wearing khaki [British uniforms] were to be summarily shot.’ Morant later described this order as ‘Rule Three Oh Three’, a reference to the .303 rifles carried by the Carbineers.
Morant then ordered the formation of a firing squad headed by Lieutenant Picton. The injured Visser was taken from a wagon and placed in a sitting position on an embankment about 20 metres from the firing party. The order was given and bullets spat from the massed rifles. Visser collapsed to the ground, still alive. Calmly, Picton finished him off with a single round from his pistol.
As commander of the patrol, Harry Morant had committed the first act that would earn him infamy in Australia. But had he cruelly ordered the murder of Visser or was he simply following harsh directives from a British command determined to win an increasingly desperate guerrilla war? It is a question that is still being debated today.
*
The Bushveldt Carbineers had been wracked by morale problems before the killing of Visser but, following his execution, tensions between the officers and men threatened to erupt into mutiny. After months of savage guerrilla fighting, the unit was a seething mess of hostility. Some of the troops particularly resented Morant for his efforts to discipline them. It was in this environment that he oversaw the deaths of more Boer prisoners.
On 23 August, Morant led a patrol to intercept a party of eight Boers who had been captured and were being brought into Fort Edward. Before leaving, Morant met with Captain Taylor and announced his intention to shoot the incoming prisoners. Taylor supposedly said nothing to dissuade him. That afternoon, Morant’s patrol rode out to take custody of the prisoners.
As Morant’s men returned to the fort, they met a British missionary of German descent, Daniel Heese, who was travelling in a wagon with an African driver. Heese attempted to assure the prisoners that they would not be harmed but a short time later—within just a few kilometres of the fort—Morant ordered the patrol to halt. The prisoners were lined up on the side of the road and questioned. When one said he was aware that Captain Hunt was dead, all eight prisoners were shot dead on Morant’s orders. As the bodies lay in the dust, Morant supposedly said: ‘That’s for Captain Hunt.’ It was later alleged that some of the prisoners were wearing clothing that had belonged to Hunt.
Appalled, the missionary Heese continued on his way, rejecting Morant’s warning against travelling alone. Six days later, Lieutenant Handcock found the bodies of Heese and his driver in long grass not far from the fort. Heese had been shot in the chest. Morant and his men had a strong motive to kill the missionary, who was a witness to the killing of the Boers, but there was no evidence to prove they had done it. Nonetheless, Morant and Handcock would be held accountable for it.
There was more killing to come. On 7 September, word reached the fort that another party of Boers was coming in to surrender. That afternoon, a patrol lead by Morant and Handcock found three Boers in a wagon. All three—an elderly man and his two sons—were shot dead. The youngest, who was seriously ill with fever, might have been only fifteen. None of the three was armed. Four months later, on trial for his life, Morant would claim he was following orders from the top.
Before that, though, Morant again distinguished himself in the field. When news reached the fort that the notorious Irish-Boer freebooter and train wrecker, Veldt-cornet John Kelly, was planning raids on the British in the Spelonken district north of Pietersburg in September, Morant asked to be sent after him. An intriguing exchange said to have taken place between Lenehan and Morant raises questions over whether standing orders did indeed exist to kill Boer prisoners:
Lenehan (in reply to Morant’s request): ‘But we particularly want this man brought in alive.’
Morant: ‘Alive! Don’t you know what a bloody scoundrel he is?’
Morant and Witton set off with thirty men on 16 September. Six days later, they caught up with Kelly, who was camped with his men and some women on the Thsombo River near the Portuguese border. As there were women present, Morant refrained from firing on the camp and instead surrounded the camp and laid low. At half-past four on the morning of 23 September, the patrol rushed the camp and took everyone prisoner, including Kelly. All were safely returned to Fort Edward. It was a spectacularly successful raid that cleared the area of its last Boer guerrillas.
Hoping these heroics would lift the cloud of the previous Boer killings from his head, Morant took two weeks’ leave to finalise the affairs of his friend Captain Hunt. But wheels were now inexorably in motion. On 21 October, Morant and six of his fellow Carbineer officers—including Handcock and Witton—were arrested after allegations about the killings were made by some of their men. They were held in solitary confinement while a case was assembled against them. The Australian government was not advised of their arrest and they were not given access to legal counsel until the day before their first court martial started at Pietersburg on 16 January 1902.
The cases against them would begin with the shooting of the prisoner Visser, and then the killing of the eight Boer prisoners. The hearings into the deaths of the three Boers and the missionary Heese would be held in February.
Their last-minute defence counsel was Major James Thomas, formerly a solicitor from Tenterfield. His hopes of saving the men boiled down to their claims that orders had been made to give no quarter to Boer prisoners. In evidence, Morant said those orders had come down through his dead friend Captain Hunt from Lord Kitchener’s military secretary. Of the killing of the prisoner Visser, Morant said he had been captured wearing British khaki and was shot after a drumhead court martial. Later in the hearing, he tried to absolve the men of Visser’s firing squad from blame when he said: ‘They were following my orders and thought they were obeying Lord Kitchener’s [orders].’
Morant added that he had not followed those orders until his best friend Captain Hunt was brutally murdered by the Boers. Under cross-examination, Morant was asked whether the drumhead court martial of Visser had followed the King’s Regulations. Morant’s reply was scornful and to the point:
As to rules and sections, we had no Red Book, and knew nothing about them. We were fighting Boers, not sitting comfortably behind barb-wire entanglements. We got them and shot them under Rule .303.
On the morning of 23 January, proceedings were halted in dramatic fashion wh
en a party of Boers attacked the fort at Pietersburg where the trial was taking place. Remarkably, Morant and his co-accused were taken from the cells and handed rifles. They helped to repel the Boer attack and, having done so, were promptly returned to custody and the case against them continued. At its end, the court retired without delivering a verdict
The case of the eight Boers started on 3 February. In a statement to the court, Morant said he knew the eight ‘belonged to the same gang that had maltreated and dishonoured the body of my friend and brother officer [Captain Hunt]’. He said the Boers were train wreckers and that he had previously been reprimanded for bringing in prisoners alive. However, the treatment of Hunt’s body had made him decide to do as other officers had already done—followed orders and shot prisoners. Handock, Witton and Picton also told the court that they had received orders not to take prisoners.
Their counsel, Major Thomas, argued the eight Boers were marauders and their killings should not be regarded as a lawless act at a time of war. The prosecutor, however, said the prisoners should have received a proper trial and that ‘it is seldom justifiable for a combatant to take the law into his own hands against an unresisting foe’. The case concluded and again, the verdict was reserved.
The case of the three Boers followed—the two men and the ‘boy’. Throughout, Major Thomas argued valiantly for Morant and the other accused men, citing the existence of orders to kill Boer prisoners and the gruelling nature of irregular combat as their defence. Copies of Australian newspapers quoting Kitchener as saying Boers captured in British uniforms should be shot were tendered to the court.
The case of the murder of the missionary Heese, started on 17 February. The prosecution alleged Handcock shot the missionary on Morant’s orders. Morant and Handcock denied it. The evidence against them was thin and on 19 February, they were found not guilty of Heese’s murder. It was the case that had most worried them and their acquittal fanned hopes that they would be cleared of the other charges. That night, two members of the courts martial panel delivered champagne to the men’s cells. It seemed that Morant and the others would soon be free.
But their hopes were dashed. A few days after the Heese verdict, Morant, Handcock and Witton were found guilty of murdering Visser and the eight Boer prisoners. All three defendants were sentenced to death, and were taken to a prison in Pretoria to await their execution. In a sign of hope, however, the court strongly recommended mercy for Morant on three grounds, including ‘extreme provocation by the mutilation of the body of Captain Hunt’. Mercy was also recommended to Handcock and Witton.
Witton’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but there was no mercy for Morant or Handcock. Kitchener had personally signed the execution order and had no intention of letting either man live. On 26 February, Morant and Handcock were informed the sentence had been upheld and that they would die at dawn the next day. That afternoon, they could hear the sounds of their coffins being constructed in the prison workshop. Meanwhile, Major Thomas rushed off to see Kitchener in the hope of getting a stay, but was told the field marshal was away and would not return for several days. That night, Morant and Handcock had a last supper in their cell and before dawn on 27 February, they were taken out of the fort to face a firing squad.
Morant and Handcock both asked for their blindfolds to be removed so they could face the men who would end their lives. Morant asked for a last cigarette and threw it away half smoked. He gave his cigarette case to the officer in charge of the firing squad and uttered his famous last words: ‘Shoot straight, you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!’ Then the rifles barked and the brave, reckless Harry Morant died instantly, his eyes still open and his mate Handcock dead beside him.
*
On the day of the execution, a highly distressed Major Thomas wrote a letter to a friend in Australia, saying the deaths of Morant and Handcock had ‘broken’ him. Thomas said the men died bravely but they were politically doomed ‘through the iniquities of the court of inquiry’. Poor Thomas was so bitter he could barely express his feelings but he was certain the executed men were not guilty. Thomas never recovered psychologically from the trial and execution of Morant and Handcock. Although he retained respect in his home town of Tenterfield, Thomas became bankrupt and was disbarred from the law. He died poor and alone in 1941.
The Australian newspapers reported the shooting of Morant and Handcock as ‘sensational news from South Africa’, but few questioned whether the verdict was just. Melbourne’s Argus said the executions were ‘the eulogy of British fairness’, while in the new House of Representatives in Canberra, Prime Minister Edmund Barton—who had been told little by the British Government—said it ‘would be unwise to come to any conclusions . . . in view of the conflicting evidence’. Barton added that he had been privately briefed on the matter but could not make any authoritative statement on what he had learned. It seemed that many Australians were happy to accept the British had done the right thing.
But a brave journalist, W.T. Goodge, could not hide his outrage at the death of his friend, Harry Morant. Pointedly, Goodge referred to the ‘assassination’ of Morant and Handcock, and said he would never believe Morant had murdered unarmed Boers in such a cowardly fashion:
He [Morant] pulled the bandage off his eyes when he faced the rifles, and the British Government blew his brains out. That’s all right; I don’t blame the British Government; they can’t blow out their own brains because they haven’t got any, and there’s nothing like trying to please the enemy all the time you’re at war, even if you have to make a regular circus of court martialling and shooting your own men.
It was widely reported that Morant was the son of the British admiral, George Morant, until the admiral indignantly published letters denying any connection to the ‘offensive statement’ that he had fathered such a scoundrel as Harry Morant. The admiral, according to the papers, was a venerable old gentleman who had made his name as a ‘pirate exterminator in Chinese waters’ and his word was not to be doubted.
In Sydney, Barty Paterson at first refused to believe the worst of Morant. In April 1902, he wrote an article for The Sydney Mail, in which he said Morant was a rogue but it was inconceivable to think he would take the life of an unarmed man. In May, he wrote to The Bulletin, saying, ‘I find it hard to believe that he killed anybody for gain. Reckless ne’er-do-well he was, but one finds it very difficult to think of him as a murderer . . .’
It is clear from Morant’s letters to Paterson that The Breaker had warm feelings for his fellow poet. Morant wrote to Paterson of things that interested both—hunting, horses and the bush. In Sydney, they had played polo together and enjoyed each other’s company at artistic haunts. It seems strange, then, that when Paterson had his final say on Harry Morant, his memories were not kind ones.
In his Sydney Morning Herald reminiscences in 1939, Paterson recalled that Morant had once conned a gymkhana committee out of £10. In the same report—which did not mention that Morant was a fellow balladist—Paterson also wrote a rather distorted account of the events that had led to Morant’s death, revealing his belief that Morant had been an underdog whose ‘one day of power . . . went to his head like wine’. These rather mean recollections did Paterson no credit and sparked an angry reaction from some of his readers.
Frederick Cutlack, who as a boy had known Morant, wrote a strong letter to the Herald, criticising Paterson for not remembering Morant by his pen-name, ‘The Breaker’. Cutlack, at least, was prepared to put his name to the defence of Morant.
Perhaps he [Morant] deceived some people, and left them angry; but he was known in all the back country from Queensland to the Lower Murray, and great numbers of other people of careless habits—or even some of scrupulous rectitude—loved him in spite of his faults.
No angel, Morant was nonetheless liked and admired by many. Perhaps a murderer, perhaps a scapegoat, his life and death made him part of Australian folklore—no mean feat for an Englishman who spent only half of his sho
rt life in Australia—and he deserved better from his one-time friend Barty Paterson.
It has been suggested that Paterson’s final shot was the result of jealousy for a man who was his equal in the saddle, a fellow poet, and, despite his waywardness, a man of immense charm and bravery. It is possible, however, that Paterson’s rather sour recollections were simply reflecting an older man’s natural conservatism, written at a time when the Empire he admired was once again on the brink of war. Whatever the reason, it would have been better for Paterson to have either tackled the issue of Morant’s guilt or innocence—or said nothing at all. After all, Harry Morant had then lain in his African grave for almost forty years and could not defend himself.
Morant and Peter Handcock lie in Africa still. Their grave marker is inscribed with a line from Matthew: ‘A man’s foes shall be those of his own household.’ In 1910, Kitchener unveiled a war memorial in Handcock’s home town of Bathurst. Handcock’s name was not on the memorial, prompting unproven claims that Kitchener had insisted on it being removed. It took more than half a century for this omission to be reversed and the name of brave, simple Handcock was added to the memorial in 1964, restoring to him some measure of posthumous honour.
George Witton was sent to prison in Britain where he suffered serious illness on at least two occasions. After strident protests, he was released from prison in 1904 but not pardoned. His book, Scapegoats of the Empire, was published in 1907, but few copies were available, prompting claims that the book had been suppressed by the government. It became more widely read after it was republished in the 1980s. Witton worked as a dairy farmer in Victoria and Queensland and remained bitter towards the British until his death in 1942.
Today, efforts continue to gain a posthumous pardon for Harry Morant. Although he undoubtedly had blood on his hands, a view persists that he was the victim of British injustice. Murderer or victim, he remains as much a part of Australia’s identity as other flawed men who died by order of the Empire. Like Ned Kelly, Breaker Morant polarises opinions today, and like Kelly, The Breaker died game.