Ninety-nine years ago, on 22 May 1921, a young corporal in the 3rd South African Infantry Regiment died. What distinguished him was that he was a Chacma baboon. The story of Jackie the baboon has often been told and forgive me if you have heard it before. The reason for making it a Magalies Memoir is that Jackie was born in the Magaliesberg. Some details have become confused during a century of re-telling, but essentially the story is as follows:
Private Albert Marr and Private Jackie at the end of the war
Jackie was found as an infant by Albert Marr (some accounts refer to him as Andrew) on the family smallholding in Villieria, now a suburb of Pretoria on the southern side of the Magaliesberg. He had probably been orphaned by bounty hunters who were paid by the Transvaal government to shoot baboons raiding crops in the Moot Valley. Albert took the young baboon home and he was raised as a member of the family much like a human child. Jackie and Albert became inseparable.
In 1914 South Africa joined the Allies in the First World War and the two-year-old Union Defence Force called for volunteers to...
