Book Review - Good-Bye Dolly Gray by Rayne Kruger

 Good-Bye Dolly Gray: the Story of the Boer War by Rayne Kruger

London: Pan Books, 1974 (first published 1959)    ISBN 03300238612

Apart from (even in?) South Africa, how many of the combatant nations remember the Boer War of 1899-1902? My hometown has a magnificent memorial in the main street commemorating the 250 Victorians who died fighting in South Africa, but I'm sure most passers-by these days assume the memorial is to World War One if indeed they notice it at all.

The Boer War was the progenitor of many things: blockhouses and barbed wire entanglements, concentration camps, armoured trains, mounted infantry, and not least the participation of most of the Empire. Kruger's book, originally published when some combatants were still alive, is a good "traditional" narrative history of the conflict, covering the military and the political quite well, the social less so.

"The Boers said the war was for liberty. The British said it was for equality. The majority of the inhabitants, who were not white at all, gained neither liberty or equality." This quote from the final pages of the book is pithy, and is not far from the truth. The Great Trek, undertaken the generation previous to that fighting this war, was undertaken so that the Boers could maintain their independence from the British, who had taken the Cape Colony and Natal for their own. The Orange Free State and Transvaal were in nearly all senses independent states, which both sides found acceptable.

That is, until gold was discovered in the Transvaal. The rush brought many foreigners (Uitlanders) to the state, mainly British. Fearing loss of control, the Transvaal government restricted the franchise of non-Boers. The Uitlanders complained to the Crown. The British had long harboured a desire to unite their colonies with the Boer republics to create a South African state. They thought that supporting the Uitlanders in their claim for representation may be a way to achieve such an outcome via the franchise and demographic takeover. So, like many other wars and revolutions throughout history, the fundamental cause of the Boer War was essentially about taxation without representation.

Militarily, the British Empire was always going to win a long drawn-out struggle. The best the Boers could hope for was to make Britain pay such a price that they would make terms. Eventually this is basically what happened in 1902, when the Boers recognised the suzerainty of the English and South Africa became a reality, but the Boers maintained their culture and language and eventually gained political preponderance over the new territory via their own demographic takeover. The War spilled much blood and spent much treasure to only reach a position that could realistically have been negotiated.

The opposing military forces could not have been more different in 1899. The initial British force, under General Buller (whose reputation suffered an irretrievable collapse during this conflict owing to his caution and tactical blunders) might have been wearing khaki and carrying modern Lee Metford rifles, but were old-fashioned in other ways. Their huge columns, with baggage trains consisting of thousands of carts drawn by oxen, officers that ensured that they brought with them champagne, baths and other luxuries, were no match for the Boers. Boer mobile commandos, who lived off the land (supported by many residents), were incredibly mobile owing to their horsed infantry that travelled without impedimenta, and were tactically supple as everyone had a say in how battle was commenced and fought.

Unfortunately the unique structure of the Boer fighting force also became a weakness as the war developed. With no fixed military structure, Boers came and went from the battle-ground as they pleased, and each commando could decide to engage how it chose to, whether that supported Boer strategy or not.

The British eventually dominated the battlefield through combining two seemingly opposing principles, which they fused into a strategy which eventually brought the Boers to the negotiating table. The first was to create units that copied the Boer way of fighting: mobile columns of mounted infantry, lightly equipped, that could cover distance quickly to bring the enemy to heel. The second was the construction of thousands of blockhouses - small forts that linked together into a military fence across the country. By using the mobile columns to push the commandos onto the lines of blockhouses, the British eventually wore down the Boer forces so much that their will to continue fighting began to fail. The Boers had hoped since the start of the war that their cousins who lived in Cape Colony and Natal would rise in rebellion and support them. This support did not materialise even after the Boers "invaded" the Cape and caused much trouble there. This fact also helped seal the fate of the Boers.

The British, while eventually "winning", also paid a heavy price. As many wars have, the Boer War brought down a government, and also a way of governing. The many failures of both politics and military during the war led to the British public losing faith in the rule of the upper classes. The Liberals took over politics, and the British officer class, where commissions were bought rather than earned, was dismantled after the war by Kitchener, who was the modernising leader of the forces in South Africa.

Kruger's book lists a catalogue of military blunders, with the British consistently underestimating the capabilities of the Boers, and the Boers suffering from too much or too little caution, often failing to press home their advantage or fruitlessly attacking points that were too strong. Early in the war the Boers laid siege to Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberly. They failed to take any of these places, and if they had the war may have taken a different turn.

By the same token, if Buller had moved more decisively and had more tactical nous, the Boers may not have won their early victories and in fact might have suffered defeats that may have led to them putting down their rifles much earlier than they did.

Kruger spends a few chapters on the political aspects of the war, particularly in England, but glosses over the politics of the participation of the Empire in the war, as well as the politics of the Cape Colony and Natal during the conflict. While he describes the concentration camps, again it is a side-issue in this book to the descriptions of the military activity.

If you want to get a grip on the military progression of the Boer War, Good-Bye Dolly Gray (the title comes from a well-known song from the era) is not the worst place to start.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Rorke's Drift by Michael Glover

 Rorke's Drift: a Victorian Epic by Michael Glover

London: Leo Cooper, 1975                                                ISBN 0850521823

This book has exceed expectations for me: I often find Leo Cooper/Pen&Sword books can be very militarily "geeky", diving down the rabbit-holes of equipment or drill, minute descriptions of tactical movements, which make the books of value only if the reader already has broader knowledge of the incident or battle in question. Thankfully Rorke's Drift does not fall into that category.

Although this is a short book (less than 150 pages) Glover has not only given us a blow-by-blow description of the action at Rorke's Drift, but also a close description of the disaster at Isandhlwana earlier in the day, and a concise exposition of the history of Southern Africa that had led to the situation where Cetshwayo's Impis attacked the British after they had crossed the Buffalo River into Zululand.

Glover well describes how it was as much British public opinion at home as it was activity on the ground that drove the British to expand their hold on Natal, which impinged on the Boers and also the Zulus, who were finding that the Boers were impinging on their land. The Zulu tribe had emerged as a successful warrior force, and their social structure almost required them to engage in battle (warriors had to have "washed their spears" in blood before they could marry).

In the clashes between Zulu and Boer, the British, given the times, naturally leaned toward supporting the white man over the black, and so gave an ultimatum to Cetshwayo to disband his army, something that he couldn't and wouldn't contemplate. That ultimately was the reason Chelmsford crossed the Buffalo in January 1879.

Glover explains quite clearly how the Zulus defeated the British at Isandhlwana - a combination of poor leadership, and poor use of the country doomed the British column - in open ground and in loose formation, less than two thousand British troopers armed with Martini-Henry rifles could not but succumb to an estimated 15,000 Zulu warriors. Conversely, in a well-led defense of a well-fortified position, approximately 150 British troopers could fight off 4,000 Zulus. Glover explains that it was much safer for the garrison to stay put than try to run, as in the open all the advantages lay with the Zulu warriors, but in a fortified position, the advantage lay with the British.

I won't go into the detail of Glover's description of both battles, other than to state they are well-written, clear, and concise. Along the way he puts paid to some of the images that might be in the reader's head from the movie Zulu (although the battle scenes do ring true). Bromhead was not young, and he and Chard worked well together from the start. The 24th Foot was a regiment of experienced and hardened soldiers. And Private Hook, far from being a shirker, was an out-and-out hero during the battle (and he was also in real life teetotal!).

Glover's final chapter looks at the politics surrounding the battle - the heroic stand at Rorke's Drift covered up for the disaster at Isandhlwana and so was boosted by those who's careers could have been ended by the loss of the first battle. There is no doubt that incredible heroism was shown by the members of the garrison, but one wonders whether the award of eleven VCs wasn't at least in part influenced by factors other than those which occurred during the Battle. Glover also makes clear the heroism of the Zulu warriors, who time after time flung themselves forward into a rain of bullets.

So, if you want a short history of the battle, and one that sets it in full context, and is good reading, I can recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Closed File by Kit Denton

Closed File by Kit Denton

Adelaide: Rigby, 1983           ISBN 072701739X

Kit Denton is most famous for his novel The Breaker, a fictionalized account of the life and trial of Breaker Morant and the atrocities of the Bushveldt Carbineers. When it was made into a popular movie by Bruce Beresford, awareness of the incident was heightened, which allowed Denton to spend more time and money on his researches. A little chastened that his fiction was being taken for fact (The Breaker used much artistic licence to create a good story), he wrote Closed File to try and set the record straight.

Set the record straight it (mostly) does, but that has not stopped many Australians to continue to clamor for a posthumous pardon for Morant, Handcock and the others based, it seems, on the fictional version of events. One wonders if these people have delved deeply into the evidence surrounding the incident.

The story of Morant, Handcock, and the Bushveldt Carbineers is fascinating, and it is easy to see why it makes such great fodder for film and fiction. By the time this unit was formed, the Boer War had entered its final, most brutal, phase. The Boers who were still fighting had retreated to the outer edges of the colony, and were mainly carrying out guerrilla-style attacks on British columns, trains, and collaborating farmers. The British were pushing the Boers further into the country, employing scorched-earth tactics to deprive them of supplies, and moving the population into the first-ever concentration camps.

The war had moved beyond set-piece battles and marching armies: the British had begun to fight fire with fire, forming small units of horse-borne troops, who lived out bush and tried to beat the Boer Commandos at their own game. These units often consisted of a preponderance of Colonials - Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans and Canadians - owing to these troop's superior bushcraft and horse handling skills. As the Colonial contingent's initial sign-on period drew to a close, those who wanted to stay signed on with these newly-formed units, which soon became filled with those who wished to continue fighting.

The Bushveldt Carbineers was an even more murky unit: formed and funded by businessmen in Pietersburg, its main task was to protect the railway lines in the area. It was not an official unit of the British Army - its members wore no insignia - and, operating in the rough and remote country of the Spelonken, oversight of its activities was limited.

The main actors in this drama centre around Harry Harbord Morant - "The Breaker". The main reason the incident is remembered at all is due to Morant's bush exploits and verse, which had garnered a following in Australia after his repeated publication, especially in The Bulletin. With mysterious origins (about which Denton can only speculate), Morant drank, gambled and versified his way through country Australia from Queensland to South Australia, from where he signed up with the South Australian Mounted Rifles for service in South Africa. It seems that he had a good time while serving with this unit, enjoying many "extra-curricular" activities, but at the end of his enlistment when he took a free passage to England, received a letter of commendation from his Commanding Officer.

Soon enough he was back in South Africa, to join the Bushveldt Carbineers with his good friend Frederick Hunt. It was Hunt's death and mutilation at the hands of a Boer unit that changed Morant's behaviour completely. That he "court-martialled" Visser and had him shot, and that he shot Boer prisoners was never denied. That he organised for Heese and Van Buren to be killed is highly probable - Handcock admitted to Witton that he shot Heese - and so even though it can be said Morant might have been provoked, it's clear that Morant, Handcock, Witton and Picton were guilty of heinous crimes.

Their defence at the trials - that they were following orders, and that other units had done similar things - was as spurious then as it would be now. In fact, members of the Bushveldt Carbineers refused to take part in such atrocities at the time. It is also hard to sustain the claims of British conspiracy and cover-up. The claim has been made that these men were scapegoats for all British atrocities, in a bid to try and improve relations with Germany, which was outraged especially by Heese's death (Heese was a German national). Denton points out that Morant and Handcock were acquitted of that charge. Denton shows that, as far as can be known, the trials were conducted properly, and the fact that the case files are no longer extant is down to the record-keeping protocols of the time, not some dastardly plot by the British. The discrepancies that are harder to fathom are the discrepancies in sentences, with Captain Taylor escaping punishment.

There was a controversy at the time in Australia, but it was not about the question of guilt or innocence, but that the newly-minted Australian Government was not consulted about the trial of its nationals. Australia had become a nation during the war, and it's clear that the British military leaders failed to take this political fact into account.

It remains to state that all war is hell, and that all lives lost in war are tragic losses. If we believe in the concept of just action in war, it's clear that fighters on both sides in South Africa were guilty of atrocities: the fact that others didn't face justice for their crimes does not mean that the sentence handed out in the Bushveldt Carbineers incident was in any way unjust.

For a clear-headed and informative guide to this incident, Closed File is worth reading.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell