Military History

“I am inclined to think that the first experience of the Martini-Henrys will be such a surprise to the Zulus that they will not be formidable after the first effort.” Lord Chelmsford. 23 November 1878.

The Rifle

The outcome of the battle of Isandlwana, which took place on 22 January 1879 and resulted in the deaths of 1357 British and Colonial troops, shocked the “civilized” world. The British enjoyed overwhelming fire superiority – rifles, cannon and rockets, against spears. This meant that the Zulus had to close to about 30 yards before they could do much damage, whereas the British could kill them at far longer ranges.

Isandlwana Hill (Talana Museum)

The standard British-issue rifle used at the battle was the Martini-Henry. This was a falling block, single shot breech loading rifle, which was a vast improvement from the old muzzle-loaders and even Snider conversions previously in use.

The forerunner of the Martini-Henry was the Peabody rifle, invented by Henry O. Peabody of Boston in 1862. The breech block was hinged at the rear and, when the lever beneath the stock was operated, moved so that the front of the block fell clear of the chamber, allowing space for a round to be slid over the block and into the breech. The weapon had an external...

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...

In May 1900, Lord Roberts of Kandahar, Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces, was poised to culminate his illustrious military career by marching triumphantly into his enemy’s capital city and concluding the South African War. But it was a charade. There could be no victory without a vanquished foe and the Boer leaders were still at large with a fighting remnant of their army. Another two bitter years of warfare lay ahead.

Lord Roberts (National Library of Ireland)

In the city, rumours were rife and the people awaiting the British advance lacked information and were desperately worried and afraid. Morale was at its lowest. Bessie Collins, a loyal republican despite her English surname, kept a daily letter-diary addressed to her friend in Port Elizabeth. On 6 May: “We all feel that we are very near the end. One more stand and all will be over. Our hearts are heavy. We fear the worst. The men are so weary and faint hearted that we do not even know whether their officers will get them to make a last stand.” Her concerns were probably echoed by many in the town when a week later she recorded: “I cannot see the use of shedding more blood and only long for this awful war to cease. It is getting unendurable to...

The Battle of Diamond Hill took place on the 11 and 12 June 1900. Sir Ian Hamilton, one of the generals who took part in the battle, described it as the turning point in the South African War, so in this Memoir we look at what happened and why it was so important.

The Battle of Diamond Hill (from V. Carruthers. The Magaliesberg)

An earlier Memoir told how, as Lord Roberts, Commander in Chief of the British forces, prepared to occupy Pretoria on 5 June 1900, General Louis Botha left to rally the remnants of the Boer army. Botha had been persuaded to continue the war by the Free State President Martinus Steyn and further encouragement now came with the news that Christiaan de Wet’s Free State commandos were wreaking havoc with the extended British line of communication between Pretoria and Cape Town. British columns had been defeated at Lindley and Heilbron and rail links were repeatedly being disrupted. The Transvaal commandos were despondent and exhausted after months of defeat and retreat and many had returned to their farms thinking that the war was over. But, encouraged by Botha’s revived determination and the news from the Free State, a core of about 5000  burghers were still willing to fight on. They assembled at Donkerhoek pass, which today carries...

A little-known story in South Africa is the remarkable effort under the direction of Professor (later Sir) Basil Schonland, Director of the Bernard Price Institute of Geophysical Research (the BPI), at Wits, to design and build a radar set within three months of the outbreak of war in September 1939.

Britain took the decision earlier in the year to inform its Dominions of the secret device (then called RDF) for detecting enemy aircraft and ships by means of radio waves. A senior scientist from each of those countries was invited to England to be briefed on the technology. South Africa chose to send a military man then serving in London. Needless to say, he was non-plussed.

However, the New Zealand scientist, Ernest Marsden, called into Cape Town on his way home where he was met by Schonland. During their three-day journey by sea to Durban, Marsden briefed Schonland on all he had learnt at Bawdsey Manor near Ipswich.

On his return to Johannesburg Schonland assembled his design team: engineers from Wits (Guerino ‘Boz’ Bozzoli), UCT (Noel Roberts) and Natal (Eric Phillips). They were joined by the BPI’s physicist Dr Philip Gane. Their task was to design and build a radar set in order, as Schonland put it, “to learn the technique”.

Within just three months they had succeeded in producing a working system, consisting of a separate transmitter and receiver, each with its own rotatable antenna. The first trials were disappointing. No radar “echoes” were received from a test target...

The SA dagger was the service dagger of the Sturmabteilung (Storm Detachment) formed under Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm’s authority in 1921. Otherwise known as the Brown Shirts, the SA was a paramilitary group named after elite German forces from the Western Front in the First World War (1914-1918). Their primary role was to provide muscle at Nazi rallies and to counter the actions of opposition paramilitary groups. The SA soldiers were also used to violently intimidate civilians.

Ernst Röhm (Wikipedia)

The SA were modelled on Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts but wore brown uniforms due to their affordability. Near the end of the First World War, large numbers of brown uniforms had been ordered for Germany’s colonial forces in Africa and so were cheaply available in post-war Germany.

In 1933, Hitler commissioned Professor Woenne of the Solingen School of Commerce to design a dagger for the SA. For the design, Professor Woenne largely copied a dagger on display in the Munich City Museum. It was a German hunting dagger based on a 15th Century Swiss dagger pattern. The Munich City Museum’s German example included an image on the scabbard of the woodblock print called Dance of Death, created by German 16th Century artist Hans Holbein the Younger. The dagger on display was therefore known as The Holbein Dagger. 

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In the Curator’s Choice display of edged weaponry at the Ditsong National Museum of Military History, are Chinese double or paired swords from the early 19th Century. The swords are decorated with dragons that have five claws symbolising high rank. The museum’s Chinese paired swords may have belonged to either a Prince of the first rank or qinwang (Prince of the Blood) or a Prince of the second rank or junwang (Prince of the Commandery). 

According to legend, Chinese swords were first made well before 2000BCE. They are said to have been made of gold by a mythical hero named Suiren (fire maker) who also taught the Chinese people how to make fire and cook food.

Archaeological records suggest that the first Chinese swords were of bronze and were made during the Shang Dynasty (c.1700 BCE – c.1100 BCE). This period puts Chinese sword origins in line with European origins. Straight and double-edged Chinese swords (jian) date from the 7th Century BCE. The Chinese Jian was used by the people of Japan between the 3rd and 6th Century BCE before Japanese people began to adopt Korean swords and then develop their own famous designs.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368CE – 1644CE) swords were less prominent on Chinese battlefields due to the preference for a variety of bows and polearms. The popularity of polearms also meant that Chinese swords tended to be short one handed weapons. Nonetheless, the wealth of the Ming Dynasty brought a wide variety of new sword designs...

A 1:48 scale model of the Type VIIC German U-boat “U-96” was donated to the Museum in September 2019. The model is a true representation of the original submarine used in the Second World War (1939 – 1945) and was constructed by the donor, Mr Brian Echstein (see image above).

The Importance of the Donation

The original U-96 played a major role in the Battle of the Atlantic, a vital campaign of the Second World War. This campaign arose as a result of the requirement for Britain to sustain herself through strategic supplies sent by ship from her dominions and colonies around the world and, more importantly, from North America. The termination of this supply line would have eventually starved Britain and forced her to make terms with Germany. Adm Karl Donitz, commander of the German U-boat force, recognised the strategic importance of the U-boat and was of the firm opinion that this aim could be achieved with 300 U-boats on station in the Atlantic.

Supply routes to Britain 1941 (Wiki Commons)

The development of the U-boat was based on the following considerations: Firstly, Allied merchant shipping was the principle target and should be attacked with no restrictions; secondly, operations should be carried according to the strategy of tonnage sunk exceeding that of tonnage constructed. This would eventually strangle Allied...

The South African Border War had an immense social, cultural and political impact on South African society at the time. It resulted in unnecessary loss of life and much trauma, not only for the conscripted men, but also families back home.

The South African Border War, also referred to as the Namibian War of Independence or the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict (a war between a standing, professional army and an insurgency or resistance movement) that occurred in Namibia (the then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angola between 26 August 1966 and 21 March 1990. It was fought between the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), an armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). The South African Border War resulted in some of the largest battles on the African continent since World War II and was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War (information sourced from Wikipedia).

On 4 August 1967, military service became compulsory for all white men in South Africa over the age of 16 (conscription). Deferment to complete schooling or a university degree was granted, but very few of them were exempted from conscription. The end of military conscription was announced during 1993.

Although most young men did not have an understanding as to why they were conscripted into the South African military in the first place, followed by unanticipated indoctrinations, this article will avoid expanding or reflecting on the political ideologies around military conscription in South...

Middelburg is one of those towns one usually bypasses while travelling to the Loskop Dam, the Kruger Park or the Mpumalanga Escarpment, not realizing it offers interesting sightseeing opportunities.

There is a historic Dutch Reformed Church established by the controversial Reverend Frans Lion Cachet in 1866, when the community was still known as Nazareth. Later the town’s name was changed to Middelburg, as it was midway between the two principal Transvaal towns of Pretoria (Tshwane) and Lydenburg (Mashishing).

It contains an attractive railway station erected when the NZASM Delagoa Bay line was laid. By the time this railway line reached Middelburg, the town had already become an agricultural centre of some importance and the hub of the regional transport roads. Its railway station was expected to become important because of the nearby coal fields. As a result more care than normal, went into the design and construction of this station building.

Then, there is the very interesting and historical Municipal Cemetery, which one enters from Bhimy Damane Street.

For anyone interested in the history of the Voortrekker migration, there is the grave of Carolus Johannes Trichardt, eldest son of Louis Trichardt who was the leader of the ill-fated Trichardt Trek of 1835 – 1838, who explored large stretches of East Africa for possible settlement areas for the migrants.

For a student of the old Transvaal Republic, the cemetery contains a memorial to 26 British Soldiers who died in the campaigns of 1879 to 1880, following its 1877 Annexation by Great...