The Last Horseman (41 page)

Pierce had done as he had promised and brought Edward home. Pierce did not object to the rain so much any more but he always remembered the warmth of the African sun. The Royal Irish had recovered Radcliffe’s body from beneath the dead horse and buried him atop a kopje above the valley where he had died, a place that saw the rising and the setting of the sun on each skyline. His mind’s eye saw Radcliffe on his horse in the warmth of the darkening valley and a small devil wind blowing the memories along with it.

He eased his book open to a page on which a poet had written that when a great man dies, people explore the horizon for a successor, but none comes and none will come, for his likeness is extinguished with him. Yet, because of his greatness, love shall always follow him.

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Like all great conflicts that can split communities and families there were Irishmen not only from the same country, city or town fighting each other in the Anglo-Boer War, but from the same neighbourhood. Echoes of the American Civil War.

At the outbreak of hostilities between the South African Republics and Great Britain, European countries adopted a strict neutrality, issuing instructions to their citizens that they should refrain from taking any part in the conflict. The German and Dutch governments gave direct warnings that no assistance was to be offered and that any vessel found to be taking supplies to aid South Africa against Great Britain would have its cargo impounded and the shipping line would be subjected to punitive fines. The German people might well have sympathized with the South Africans but Count Von Bülow, the German Imperial Chancellor, issued a statement that the policy of a great country should not at a critical moment be governed by the dictates of feeling, but should be guided solely in accordance with the interests of the country, calmly and deliberately calculated. French popular sympathy was clearly with the Boers but the Paris administration ordered the prefects throughout the country to remove from official minutes the resolutions of sympathy for the Boers which had been adopted by the provincial councils.

The Americans were fascinated by the South African/Boer War of 1899–1902. It was a spectacle of a farmer militia taking on the might of the British Empire and their professional soldiers – a conflict that reflected American’s own struggle for independence. They displayed as much interest in this colonial war as they did in their own fight against Spain a year earlier during the Spanish-American War. America was now a colonial power like Britain and the South African War created divisions within American society. In 1900 Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York, wrote: ‘The trouble with the war is not that both sides are wrong, but that from their different standpoints both sides are right.’ He insisted that the Republican administration remain neutral but felt that Britain was undertaking the same role of benevolent international policeman that he sought for the United States. He felt that the interests of the English-speaking peoples and civilization ‘demand the success of the English army’.

Some church ministers were also vociferous in support for the British. Bishop Joseph C. Hartzell – responsible for the American Methodist missions in Africa – proclaimed that only the British were fit to bear the white man’s burden in Africa and explained that the Boers considered the Africans to be children of Ham and treated them as slaves, but the British in the Cape Colony (to the south of the Boer Republics) gave Africans the franchise under the same conditions as their white neighbours.

Needless to say, the German-American Methodists heartily contested Hartzell’s assertions, claiming he had been influenced by the grant of free land for his missions by Cecil Rhodes – the great instigator of imperial expansionism in Southern Africa.

Mark Twain was not pro-British but was forthright in his opinion. ‘England must not fall,’ he said. ‘It would mean an inundation of Russian and German political degradations... a sort of Middle-Age night and slavery which would last until Christ comes again. Even wrong – and she is wrong – England must be upheld.’

Irish Americans saw the conflict through their own eyes and very differently to those who might have seen support for the British in purely economic terms. Gold and diamonds were part of international trade and the Boers were considered too backward to be stewards of the world’s resources. The arguments and passions raged – pro-British, pro-Boer. Irish, Dutch and German Americans raised support and money for the Boers while a group of American women married to Englishmen raised forty thousand pounds to charter, equip and staff a hospital ship, the SS
Maine
.

More Americans volunteered to fight with the British than with the Boers.

For Irish Americans the fact that Britain was at war meant it was their duty to oppose the nation that held their kinsmen in subjugation in Ireland. Irish Americans were prepared to strike against the hated Empire and even proposed to mount a raid by Fenians into Canada which was thwarted by Theodore Roosevelt who threatened to turn out the militia and throw them into jail.

Similar emotions as those experienced by the Americans – and also those in Britain who were against the war – swept the world. The Boer War of 1899–1902 was the second conflict between the British and the South African Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. These notes are not the place to recount the historical seeds of unrest that had begun two and a half centuries earlier, but when the British abolished slavery in 1834 the immigrant Dutch Calvinists – known as Voortrekkers (pioneers)
–
who spoke a vernacular form of Dutch known as Afrikaans, and who had settled the harsh land, undertook an exodus that became known as the Great Trek to escape from the Cape and Natal colonies ruled by the British. The Boers were determined to deny political rights to Africans and Coloureds (people of mixed race).

The first war in 1880 – which lasted all of ten weeks – ended in political defeat for the British (following three major military reversals) and a treaty was signed in 1881. From then onwards British political power and economic interest in the vast mineral wealth that South Africa held virtually predetermined another war between the Boers and the British. This imperial war was known by various names – the Anglo-Boer War, the South African War, and the War of Independence by the Boers – but whatever label history has placed on it, it was the cause of enormous suffering. The military lessons learned and tactics employed proved to be a precursor to the First World War, which followed a few years later. Artillery and trench warfare signalled the end of the great cavalry charges favoured by many of the imperial generals.

In 1895 a failed uprising by British immigrants, volunteers and Rhodesian troops – a scheme instigated by Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony – was considered by the South African general, Jan Smuts, as being the real declaration of war, but it was another four years before the Boer Republics themselves declared war against the British in October 1899. The might of the British Empire gave British politicians and generals a false sense that an easy victory would be achieved by Christmas. It is a perpetual mystery why politicians, in particular, seem never to learn the lessons of history.

The war caught the British unprepared. Troops were drafted from the Empire – India, Canada, New Zealand and Australia – and as tensions heightened volunteers joined the Boer Republics to fight in the Foreign Brigade. Irish, French, Scandinavians, Germans, Russians and, in at least one recorded incident, a Scotsman fought for the Afrikaner cause. In the years before the war began, the rush for gold and diamonds in the Transvaal Republic brought men from across the world, and many of them were Irish, who not only brought their strength and dreams to the goldfields but also secured their escape from British rule in Ireland. It was one of the vagaries of war that brought Irishmen to bear arms against each other.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Ireland was part of the British Empire. The Irish Republicans – known then as Fenians – had had little success in their bid for Home Rule. Their ranks were riddled with traitors and the British Army and Irish constabulary had little difficulty in keeping their activities under control. The Irish served in government posts: the civil service, the military and the navy. It was an inconvenient fact for the Irish Nationalists that more than fifty thousand of their fellow countrymen fought for the British Army during the Boer War and were often led by Irish generals. This constituted the greatest number of Irish troops in any campaign during Queen Victoria’s reign and many of these men were at the forefront of a number of key engagements, serving in Ireland’s thirteen infantry battalions and three cavalry regiments. These men forged a lasting reputation for courage and tenacity. It was this moment in history that I wanted to use in
The Last Horseman
.

It was never my intention to look over the shoulders of the towering figures who were the key players in this conflict: Cecil John Rhodes; General Sir Redvers Buller; and Field Marshal Frederick Lord Roberts, affectionately known as ‘Uncle Bob’, who had had resounding success in the campaigns in India. That Lord Roberts and Sir Redvers Buller were at loggerheads, and that military and political divisions between many of the commanders became entrenched during this conflict, had a negative impact on the execution of the war. Water and food was scarce – and in general terms so was the feeding of this vast army as supply lines were long and difficult to manage and often destroyed by the enemy.

The British Army were unprepared for guerrilla warfare. They were used to volley fire during their colonial wars, often against a poorly armed enemy; now they were faced by a determined group of men and women who fought for their homeland. The Boers were expert horsemen, accustomed to riding across vast tracts of countryside, and they often depended on their shooting skills to put food on the table. These ‘dirt farmers’, frontiersmen who scraped a living from the harsh land, formed themselves into commandos: groups of highly mobile fighters who could strike fast at the lumbering British. (The same term would be applied to shock troops used by the British in the Second World War.) During the South African conflict the British soldiers had no bush- or fieldcraft and the generals often insisted their men advance on their enemy in closed order – virtually shoulder to shoulder. Boer marksmen with their German Mauser rifles – which had an effective range of two thousand metres and a five-round magazine whose ammunition used smokeless powder making it difficult to spot – made short work of many a brave British Tommy who had never heard of, let alone trained in, fire and manoeuvre. Onward they went against the guns until they could fight hand to hand and deliver a terrifying death to the Boers entrenched on hillsides and the rock-strewn kopjes. Infantry bayonet attacks, and cavalry assaults with lance and sword, put the fear of God into the Afrikaners. The soldiers of the British Army took their poor conditions in good spirits, as cheerful and philosophical as soldiers often are in any campaign, despite exercising a soldier’s right to moan. They looked out for each other and held regimental pride close to their hearts.

Irish regiments’ and brigades’ exploits can be explored by reading any of the excellent non-fiction publications available on the Boer War, but the Royal Irish Regiment of Foot is a fictional unit, as is Belmont’s 21st Dragoons. The Royal Irish are an amalgam of different units, and I chose to pit them against the Boer Army and Liam Maguire’s commando from the Foreign Brigade at the great battle at the Tugela Heights in Natal (more correctly named ‘Thukela’) in mid to late February 1900. Across the Tugela River lay the steep, undulating ground of Pieters Hill, Harts Hill and Railway Hill, and General Fitzroy Hart’s (5th) Irish Brigade’s assault, along with other British regiments, was an exhausting attack over rolling hills to dislodge an entrenched enemy. Wounded soldiers were often left unattended in the field, their injuries seen to by their comrades only if circumstances permitted. In the first half of the war medical evacuation was crude and badly organized, and so too were the attempts to instil field hygiene. Poor water supplies forced men to drink whatever water could be found and this made a significant contribution to bringing down soldiers with enteric fever, typhoid and dysentery. (As Mulraney said: Drink from the Tugela and you’ll have the scutters.)

A field dressing was all the men possessed by way of medical supplies and they had to wait until they could be taken from the battle by Indian stretcher-bearers. Although my story does not directly relate the fighting done by colonial troops I learned from my research that India contributed more soldiers and ambulance workers than any of the other British colonies and that the largest number of Boer prisoners of war were held in camps in India. Unlike the British and colonial soldiers who fell in the Boer War the graves of Indian ‘auxiliaries’ who died in South Africa are not known, and the only memorial to them was erected by the Indian community. These soldiers’ contribution is seldom recognized but the comfort they afforded the wounded men in the field was significant. The Natal Indian Ambulance Corps was formed by a twenty-eight-year-old Indian lawyer practising in Natal: Mohandas K. Gandhi.