Episode 90 - Casualties, alcohol, prostitutes and a skirmish at an overgrazed Free State farm

This week we’ll focus on the British troops and discuss how British army tactics had changed, and the role that alcohol and prostitution played in the three year war. There were more 65 000 English casualties during the war and its effects tore across the Southern African veld between 1899 and 1902. 22 000 English soldiers died. To put this in perspective, 16 000 died in the Crimean War, fought ostensibly with muskets and canon, not smokeless magazine fed highly accurate rifles like the Mauser and Lee-Metford, nor the automatic canon called the pom pom, or the Maxim machine gun such as we’ve seen during this war. When conflict began English officers basically followed a system that they believed had been perfected over hundreds of years. What the military brains trust hadn’t taken into account was the effect of new technology. As I’ve explained since the start of this series, these men were caught between two continents, two eras and two worlds. Many grew up as the industrial revolution burst across England and Europe, but were also affected by the romantic era of battles that resonated for the entire 19th century. Admiral Nelson, the defeat of Napoleon, the charge of the light brigade, the suppression of the Indian subcontinent with its mysterious riches, the subjugation of the Sudan and India. Some of the fighting men had met veterans of the war on the Spanish Peninsular and had read or heard of the tales of heroism. But they were facing a 20th Century industrial war, where artillery had advanced and trenches were to become the preferred defensive method in order the escape the industrialised killing machines. The officers and men were steeped in tradition backed up by the narrative of an Empire in full flight, secure in its own history and positive about its future. Phalanx’s of infantry, steel and swords gleaming, marching in serried rows towards each other to fight a glorious battle, backed up by cavalry usually swinging around in some kind of flanking manoeuvre at speed. The Boer war was very different. It was fought at a distance at least between October 1899 through to December 1900. Then it morphed into a classic guerrilla campaign and the British troops came face to face with their enemy in an entirely different way. So this week we’re going to peek into the lives of some of these British soldiers. Its winter, early June 1901 and the war is stuttering. 240 000 British troops are now garrisoned and marching across South Africa mostly in Drives across the Transvaal and Free State, trying to mop up motley groups of Boers, the die-hards or bitter-einders, bitter-enders, as they’re known. Ordinary British soldiers in South Africa found life tedious, dreary and boring. Many wrote copiously about their experienced and as I’ve explained, this war was the first where rank-and-file men were educated through the development of the Victorian schooling system, so we have diaries, notes and letters from all classes. By June 1901 many Tommies began to display disorderly behaviour. As white colonials shied away from fraternising with blacks, Tommy Atkins created a huge hidden economy that ranged across the veld, following the columns of thousands of men. And they did fraternise with black South Africans directly. Often alcohol and prostitution played a part, but not always.