Episode 96 - Blundering into a British blockhouse, the Dirty Dozen break up
The Anglo-Boer War21 Heinä 2019

Episode 96 - Blundering into a British blockhouse, the Dirty Dozen break up

It’s the third week of July 1901 and this winter has been cold even by the standards of South Africa’s high plains. As I’m writing this, snow has blanketed parts of the semi-desert known as the Karoo and it was no different then. And Deneys Reitz is close to this region. He had found a bolt hole near the Lesotho border where he’d been hiding out with a handful of fellow travellers and his German colleagues. They’d been able to bathe for the first time in months having found a copper cistern. Reitz recovered during his short stint of R&R and was itching to rejoin the war. By the end of June the small band led by Field Cornet Botha started back down the mountains heading towards the Orange River which is the border between the Free State and the Cape Colony. AS they descended they saw a rider approaching. It was a young man named Jacobus Bosman. He would have been shot as a traitor. But Mr Bosman said it was worth the risk, so Reitz and his German troop enlisted him. Unfortunately for Bosman, he should have listened to the advice for as we’ll see, his is not a happy ending. After three days of progress the Quixotic group, or the dirty dozen as Dutch historian Martin Bossenbroek calls them, are back on the flat open plains within sight of the Johannesburg-Bloemfontein railway line. By now Lord Kitchener’s blockhouse system is causing the Boer guerrilla army some problems because these are close together and crossing the railway line has become very difficult during the day.

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Episode 95 - A Concentration Camp Commission & Maxwell has a brush with dynamite under a skirt

Episode 95 - A Concentration Camp Commission & Maxwell has a brush with dynamite under a skirt

It’s mid July 1901 and it's a Southern Winter. We will also hear how the commanding officer in Pretoria, General Maxwell, meets a Petticoat commando member Johanna van Warmelo who unknown to him, is c...

14 Heinä 201920min

Episode 94 - The British break a Boer code and President Steyn is forced to flee wearing a nightcap

Episode 94 - The British break a Boer code and President Steyn is forced to flee wearing a nightcap

It’s the first week of July 1901 and the British are about to break the code both the Boers and the Dutch have been using which has meant London’s military planning at times has been beset by guess wo...

7 Heinä 201920min

Episode 93 - The ruinous war costs 1.25m pounds a week & Lord Kitchener receives a telegram

Episode 93 - The ruinous war costs 1.25m pounds a week & Lord Kitchener receives a telegram

The winds of war have been blowing cold across the veld, shrivelling the corpses that lie across hundreds of kilometres in all directions. It is the beginning of July 1901. Emily Hobhouse was so e...

30 Kesä 201919min

Episode 92 - Methods of barbarism and Magistrate Kidwell signs an oath of neutrality

Episode 92 - Methods of barbarism and Magistrate Kidwell signs an oath of neutrality

This week we spend some time in England as the political fallout caused by the Anglo-Boer war grows, and meet an unusual man called Magistrate Kidwell. But first, Emily Hobhouse finally presented her...

23 Kesä 201919min

Episode 91 -  Women are caught in an artillery barrage and a deadly blizzard sweeps across the veld

Episode 91 - Women are caught in an artillery barrage and a deadly blizzard sweeps across the veld

It’s mid June 1901. Winter in the Southern Hemisphere and in the Highveld or high plains of South Africa that means bitterly cold nights where the temperature can dip well below freezing. As I write, ...

16 Kesä 201922min

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

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 ...

9 Kesä 201923min

Episode 89 -  Emily Hobhouse pricks English consciousness & Reitz eats pork

Episode 89 - Emily Hobhouse pricks English consciousness & Reitz eats pork

IT’s June 1901 and there’s trouble brewing like a north sea storm around the British Isles. The main force behind this political hurricane is a diminutive but loud woman called Emily Hobhouse. While...

2 Kesä 201918min

Episode 88 - Reitz chases Mustangs on the plains and Jan Smuts becomes pessimistic

Episode 88 - Reitz chases Mustangs on the plains and Jan Smuts becomes pessimistic

Its the end of May and the guerrilla war has turned nasty as the coldest winter of living memory has started - bringing gusts of freezing wind which whipped through the Concentration Camps with their ...

26 Touko 201919min

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