Episode 114 - Sarah Raal "the lady who fought" is bloody but unbowed

Episode 114 - Sarah Raal "the lady who fought" is bloody but unbowed

This week’s episode is dominated by a young woman who we heard about last week called Sarah Raal. While some of her exploits have been exaggerated for Nationalist reasons years after the Boer War, there’s no doubt that she was extraordinary by any measure. Remember she is in her early twenties and escaped from Springfontein Concentration Camp outside Bloemfontein heading to join her four brothers who were fighting with Commandant Nieuwoudt who was part of General Herzog’s commando in the Free State. It’s around November 1901 when she joins the commando, and immediately is thrown into the thick of action. Nieuwoudt and his men and one women head off to a place called Boomplaas. “I was apprehensive about going there as it was the scene of my previous capture” she writes in her biography published in English in 2000. The commando ended up in the small settlement of Excelsior which was only to become a town in 1910, well after the war ended. This is where Sarah caught sight of the mountains to the East which loomed in purple and grey tones, and appeared malignant. “The imposing mountains frightened me, they looked so mysterious and full of unknown danger that I felt as if some misfortune may befall us at any moment…” she writes. That was around 50 miles due east of Bloemfontein and the Sarah’s life became increasingly more desperate in the coming weeks. She was to face numerous skirmishes fighting alongside her Boer brothers, and as you’ll hear, Sarah became a target for the British who realised there was a woman fighting against them.

Episoder(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 Jul 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 Jul 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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Mai 201919min

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