Springboks, Troepies and Cadres. David Williams
country may be valid for now, but the world has always proved to be an unstable place. Unthinking pacifism can be as dangerous as sabre-rattling militarism.
If there is a core purpose to this book, it is to remind us that the South African Army has been built on a great and unique tradition, one that should be sustained rather than abandoned. Future security depends on the army – in particular, its Reserve Force that is manned by volunteer part-timers – being supported to the degree necessary to ensure that it is a stable, well-trained, enthusiastic army of citizens who are prepared to do their duty. The country can only benefit, in war or peace.
1
The First World War
The campaign in German South West Africa
The Great War of 1914–1918, as it was once known, was essentially a European conflict whose origins remain a subject for debate. It caused unprecedented destruction and loss of life for the main protagonists, Britain, Germany and France. But in an age when imperial relations and possessions were very much a reality, many other countries became involved – hence the later description of the conflict as a world war.
At the outbreak of war, in August 1914, Britain requested the Union government under Prime Minister General Louis Botha to render “urgent imperial service” and seize control of German South West Africa, thereby denying Germany access to the colony’s harbours. This was achieved in a remarkable campaign in hostile terrain by Botha, a most skilful soldier/politician, who at the same time also had to put down a rebellion by bitter men who had been his Boer comrades-in-arms just a dozen years before, during the 1899–1902 war against the British Empire.
Botha’s campaign was the first fought by the newly created Union Defence Force (UDF). It also saw the genesis of the South African Air Force (SAAF) – the second oldest air force in the world – the first use of armoured vehicles in Africa, and one of the last cavalry operations (using horses and camels). The effect of the campaign on South African politics was also profound, preserving the emotional fault line within Afrikaner politics that eventually led to the accession to power of the anti-British “purified” National Party in 1948.
The success of Botha’s military campaign led to South Africa being mandated by the League of Nations after the war to administer this territory of some 815 000sq km (larger than the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany combined) once it had been taken from Germany in 1919. South Africa did so for the next 70 years, with major strategic and military implications that dominated the thinking of the Nationalist government in Pretoria until the fall of apartheid.
Gerald L’Ange, in his excellent book, Urgent Imperial Service, noted that the force that embarked on the South West Africa campaign was an extraordinary army:
It was not only that every man was a volunteer that made it remarkable, nor that it was led by the Prime Minister himself – sometimes riding a large white horse at the battlefront – or even that it was setting out on the only campaign planned, conducted and completed by the armed forces of any dominion of the British Empire entirely on its own in the First World War. What was remarkable about this army was the nature of the men in it.
Nearly half of the army consisted of Dutch-speaking commandos, the same commandos that only 12 years earlier had defied the might of Victorian Britain in the Anglo-Boer War.
These were the men who, with little more than their horses and rifles, had kept the most powerful army in the world at bay for four years … the fighting farmers whose successful tactics had changed the nature of warfare; the men who had seen the British generals, unable to defeat them in the field, resort in frustration to burning their farms and locking up their women and children in concentration camps, where many died long before their time.
Some of the Afrikaners, as they came to be called, had volunteered out of personal loyalty to Botha, perhaps also because they agreed with him that they were honour-bound, following the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the Anglo-Boer War, to help Britain in war. Some seemed to be in it simply for the love of a fight. General Coen Britz, when asked by Botha to join the war, responded: “My men are ready. Who do we fight, the English or the Germans?”
The campaign established a theme in South African military practice and culture: the combination of the Boer commandos’ mobility, social cohesion and initiative with the more orthodox and disciplined approach of the infantry regiments, which were made up almost entirely of English-speaking South Africans.
London gave Botha’s force two main objectives in South West Africa: to capture the wireless mast at Windhoek, which enabled communication with Berlin, as well as two other wireless stations at Lüderitz and Swakopmund, and to secure the ports of the territory.
Before Botha’s campaign could properly begin, his government had to deal with a rebellion led by several senior officers in the fledgling UDF, formed only two years earlier. They included no less a figure than the Commandant General of the UDF, General Christiaan Beyers. Others were General Koos de la Rey and Manie Maritz. The rebellion was put down, but not before some bitter encounters.
Commanded by Brigadier General Henry Timson Lukin, the 2 420-strong South African force consisted of five Permanent Force (PF) regiments of the South African Mounted Riflemen and two PF artillery batteries; a Citizen Force infantry regiment (the Witwatersrand Rifles); an artillery regiment (the Transvaal Horse Artillery); a section of engineers and an ammunition column.
The distances were huge, the land unforgiving. Movement was on foot or on horseback, with supplies transported by rail. “The long treks across this God-forsaken country are like a hideous nightmare,” reported the magazine of the South African Police. “The country now is simply rock and sand, rock and sand … Some parts are absolutely devoid of vegetation, while here and there one sees a few cacti. A few of the horses give in occasionally, but none of the men. The latter sometimes fall off their horses while asleep.”
The first major encounter with the Germans occurred on 26 September, at Sandfontein, a desolate locality mainly important for its water supply. According to one survivor of the battle, WS Rayner, “it seemed like hell let loose. There was an infernal din of shrieking, splitting, sickening shells, an interminable rat-a-tat of machine-guns, a cracking of rifles that rose in waves but never died down completely.” Poor intelligence had led to the South African force being surrounded and pinned down by heavy artillery fire, not least on the mounted infantry’s horse lines: “The poor, helpless creatures stood in rows having their guts blown out, and it looked as if their riders would soon be treated in a like manner.”
Eventually the commander, Colonel JM Grant, had no alternative but to surrender. Wounded by shrapnel, he was taken prisoner. His men, he said later, “had displayed great fortitude for ten hours under most trying conditions, and I felt that to commit them the a hand-to-hand struggle in the dark against overwhelming numbers would mean their certain annihilation and a useless sacrifice of life, as no military objective was to be gained by further resistance”.
Grant had lost a third of his force, and it would have been worse but for the accurate rifle fire of the infantry defenders and gunners at the koppie at Sandfontein. The German commander, Von Heydebreck, was so impressed by the bravery of the South Africans that he ordered their dead to be buried before his own.
However, Botha’s force slowly gained the initiative – in conditions almost prohibitive of military activity. “If it were not for the thousands of sheep wandering around the countryside,” wrote one soldier in the Natal Carbineers, “we would die of starvation … Some days we get half a biscuit and other days nothing, not even salt … All this living along the rocks, sand and thorn bushes and sleeping on the bare ground under the stars behind our saddles has reduced our clothing to shreds. Nobody shaves, we have no soap; our clothes are with dried animal blood … the soles of my boots completely came off, so I got a piece of wet bull’s hide, wrapped it round each boot, laced it up with wire and let the hide dry on my boots, hair outward.”
Repeatedly the Germans were taken by surprise by the speed at which the South Africans advanced, and by their tactic of outflanking the enemy. Botha’s advance on Windhuk (later spelled Windhoek) was a good illustration of how he approached his tactical options. Windhuk was