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.

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Episode 87 - The sad story of Gert Bezuidenhout (12)& Deneys Reitz starts his Quixotic Cape Quest

This week we spend some time with Johanna van Warmelo and Deneys Reitz, the former who starts a new position as a nurse in a Concentration Camp at Irene outside Pretoria, and the the latter who has ju...

19 Touko 201916min

Episode 86 - General Louis Botha grows despondent while Reitz plays cat and mouse with the English

We’ve reached May 1901 and surprisingly, General Louis Botha is trying to reach out to Lord Kitchener who is the British Army commander of the over 240 000 troops in South Africa. Botha wants specia...

12 Touko 201918min

Episode 85 - Emily Hobhouse mobilises against the "gigantic blunder" of the Concentration Camps

It’s the first week of May 1901, and winter has come early in South Africa. As I mentioned last week, at this point social activist Emily Hobhouse was on board a ship heading for England after exper...

5 Touko 201919min

Episode 84 - Captain Phillipps frets about Tommy Atkins & New Zealanders learn a Maori War Cry

This week, we’ll track a Londoner who rode with Rimington’s Tigers then there’ll be a quick story about a Maori who arrived in South Africa during the war to fight, but also carried a Violin. At the ...

28 Huhti 201920min

Episode 83 - Boer Secret Service Spy Johanna van Warmelo and the Petticoat Commando

In this episode Easter Sunday had come and gone on the 7th April and for most combatants stretched across the vastness of the South African veld, it was characterised by fear and loathing. The concent...

21 Huhti 201920min

Episode 82 - Aborigine trackers, the Great Comet Viscara and the case of Gideon Scheepers

Deneys Reitz had broken his own leg in a freak accident and was still hobbling about, his compound fracture causing some pain. General de la Rey ordered him to a small medical camp behind the lines ne...

14 Huhti 201917min

Episode 81 - Black participation in the Boer War and Reitz breaks a leg

Deneys Reitz will experience a terrible wound to his leg and we will probe an issue that caused much gnashing of teeth - the role of Black South Africans in the war. A quick note for my American list...

7 Huhti 201920min

Episode 80- A Boer Rodeo near Swart Ruggens & General Bindon Blood makes his dashing appearance

When we ended last week, Deneys Reitz had rejoined General de la Rey along with his Dopper companions, and had been regaled by the prophet, van Rensburg in late March 1901. The General was aware tha...

31 Maalis 201917min

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