Episode 104 - A hunchback leads Smuts to safety & Captain Gough's fatal cavalry charge
The Anglo-Boer War15 Syys 2019

Episode 104 - A hunchback leads Smuts to safety & Captain Gough's fatal cavalry charge

It’s mid September 1901 and Jan Smuts is about to face one of the most challenging moments in his illustrious career. He was only 28 at this point, yet was to achieve so much in the next few weeks and would forever be remembered as the remarkable soldier who led a tiny group of men into the mouth of the British Empire lion. His immediately challenge, however, involved the weather, rather than the British. In an event which became known in Boer storytelling as The Big Rain, his commando was caught on high ground and hammered by a biblical deluge that threatened to destroy his force A few days after crossing into the Cape Colony and being attacked by the Basotho, Smuts survived a second ambush by a British patrol that killed his three scouts as they rode to investigate reports of a large column nearby. That was at the aptly named Moordenaars Poort or Murderers Way. Among the dead was Neethling who was a friend of our narrator, Deneys Reitz, who has warned us how many of the members of the Rijk Section, the Rich section as they ironically called themselves, were going to die. Ironic because they were dressed in rags - one of the ten went further describing the band of brothers as the Dandy Fifth. By around mid-September they were riding into more hills, which of course is where moist air rises and it rains more particularly on the Southerly facing mountains of South Africa. It may be the first month of Spring, but it can still snow on the high ground and Smuts’ commando was caught in freezing weather. It rained constantly, sometimes sleeted, and the wind never abated. The continued lack of any sunshine made them even more dispirited, and Reitz began to wish he’d never left the Free State.

Jaksot(143)

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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