Commando

[Citizen X]

1. I love History especially all aspects of the second world war;
2. During 1941, the British wanted a specialized force that would be able to land on nazi enemy lines and literally strike fear and havoc in Nazi operations. The British looked to history for a never before used tactic, namely guerilla warfare by the Boers who were called commandos in the Angle/Boer War;
3. Lieutenant-Colonel D. W. Clarke suggested the use of the name commando based specifically on the sheer effectiveness of the Boer commandos during the Anglo/Boer war;
4. As history now tells us these British commandos were specialized raiding units which were deployed behind enemy lines;
5. The word commando comes from the Afrikaans word Kommando which historically meant very mobile infantry group by horse;
6. In the second english/boer war some 70 000 Boers called Kommados carried out guerilla warfare or asymmetric warfare against 450 000 heavily armed and well organized British forces;
7. A lot of people are unaware of the ugly heinous atrocities that the British inflicted on the Afrikaners during this war. You see all the Boer men would leave their wives and families behind(at home) and form Kommandos to fight the British. The British realized that even under torture their wives would not give away their location so the British resorted to dirty warfare in which the burned down houses and crops and killed lifestock;
8. The British went even further, they formed hell hole concentration camps in which Afrikaaner woman and children were kept and literally starved to death;
9. I just find it interesting that the British would look to South African history for a name and tactic that actually contributed significantly to the allies winning the second world war

[Blurock]

I avoided history at school, but have since grown a great interest as it puts the world in perspective. The atrocities of the British against the Afrikaner is well documented and is still a great shame on the British. Originally fuelled by the greed of Cecil John Rhodes.

At the outbreak of the Boer War the Kommando's were called up to gather in certain major towns. Each district had its Kommandant reporting to a General.

Being farmers and used to hunting, the typical Boer soldier reported for action armed with a Mauser, a bag of biltong, a bag of beskuit (rusks) and maybe a blanket and extra shirt. He had to have at least 5 bullets by order. The call up was treated almost as a weekend hunting trip. "ons gaan nou Rooibaadjies skiet" (we are now going to shoot redcoats). Later called Khaki's as they changed to khaki when they realised that the red uniforms made them easy to spot by the Boers.

Fathers and and sons, cousins, uncles, neighbours. Everyone gathered as if for the nagmaal (communion) or a wedding. No-one was prepared for the massive influx of men to the designated towns. Who would feed them? Where would they sleep? It was a logistical nightmare!

Eventually they moved out into the veld and some were loaded onto trains to Kimberly and other areas where they would confront the British army. Being used to living outdoors they would hunt for food while making war. The Brits started burning farms when they realised that the Boer kommandos were being supplied by the women who stayed behind on the farms.

[tec0]

I dislike the taste of the second world war… Too many people had to die and this is on all sides. One forgets that many of the fallen was not war mongers and did not agree with what was happening.

We forget that when the flags are down that these warriors where covered with mud and blood and their objective where to keep their loved one's safe.

I will not deny that some where driven by hate other vengeance but all of them shared the same pressure and hardship. They faced the same dangers and had the same objectives.

That said war made many advances both technological and biological, but I fear it did not accomplish the peace that so many have died for…

[Dave A]

At a family gathering some time ago, and during the idle chit chat a brother-in-law was saying how bad the Germans were because of their concentration camps during WW2. So I pointed out that actually it was the British who invented concentration camps during the Boer war.

Turns out said brother-in-law considered himself British and denied that the wonderfully ethical Brits could ever do such a thing rather strenuously.

Took him about three months to get out of his blue funk when the point was confirmed by the undisputed master historian of the family.

[Blurock]

Interesting fact I learnt from Discovery just the other day; the Lee Metford was considered the rifle of WWi and was still used by the outbreak of WWii. It is still considered one of the top 5 of all times.

Yet in the Boer war, every Tommy wanted to trade their Lee Metfords for Mausers, the Boer guns. This was because the Boers shot all the s#!t out of the Tommies at Maagersfontein, Spioenkop, Majuba and other battlefields. The Boers were far better shots even with the much slower Mausers. The Boers in fact wanted the much improved Lee Metford!

Just a correction on the numbers employed:

The Boer forces had a potential of 54 000 men but never more than 30,000 - 40 000 were empIoyed at any one time as many went back to their farms to tend to farming matters and family. In contrast, the British forces grew to 450 000 at the height of hostilities. Casualties were as follows:

British soldiers: 7 792 (killed) 13 250 (deaths from disease)
Boers: 6 000
Women and children in Concentration Camps: 26 370
Blacks in Concentration Camps: 20 000+ (Official British figure: 14 154)

[wynn]

The Boers also invented trench warfare, although not the sophisticated trenches of WWi if you could call them sophisticated?

When setting an ambush they used to dig foxhole trenches on top of a hill and shoot from different positions making the Brits think there were more Boers than there actually were.

When the Brits got too close they would scamper down the back of the hill and ride off to the next ambush.

[tec0]

At a family gathering some time ago, and during the idle chit chat a brother-in-law was saying how bad the Germans were because of their concentration camps during WW2. So I pointed out that actually it was the British who invented concentration camps during the Boer war.

Turns out said brother-in-law considered himself British and denied that the wonderfully ethical Brits could ever do such a thing rather strenuously.

Took him about three months to get out of his blue funk when the point was confirmed by the undisputed master historian of the family.

Slowly history will be rewritten as the pious hides the many truths.

[adrianh]

Athought for Dave
It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
Bill Vaughan



Then there are those who got it horribly wrong:
To throw bombs from an airplane will do as much damage as throwing bags of flour. It will be my pleasure to stand on the bridge of any ship while it is attacked by airplanes."
Newton Baker, US minister of defense (1921)

I do not believe there is the slightest chance of war with Japan in our lifetime. The Japanese are our allies.... Japan is at the other end of the world. She cannot menace our vital security in any way.... War with Japan is not a possibility which any reasonable government need take into account.
Winston Churchill

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
Simon Newcomb , 1902, eighteen months before Kitty Hawk

Airplanes suffers from so many technical faults that it is only a matter of time before any reasonable man realizes that they are useless!"
Scientific American (1910)

[Justloadit]

Where are they to eat their words?

[Citizen X]

I love your disclaimer, may I borrow it?

[IanF]

What is interesting is how SA history is being rewritten.
I was taught about the Mfecane and Defecane in history at school and how this left the vacuum for the great trek. Now this is being rewritten

During the last half of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, dramatic developments transformed the nature of African societies, and altered the demographic shape of South Africa. These have been referred to as the Mfecane (for Nguni speakers) and Difaqane (for Sotho-Tswana speakers) on the highveld. Before the 1970s, scholars generally thought that these changes derived from the growth of the Zulu kingdom under Shaka in southeast Africa, and that the changes had begun to occur at the end of the eighteenth century. Since the early 1990s such views have been modified. It is now accepted that the Zulu were by no means the only ones responsible for the warfare that spread throughout the southeast African coastal areas and the inland regions.

Now it is generally recognised that other African chiefdoms responded just as vigorously and innovatively to the changing conditions of the late eighteenth century. The geographic focus of the process has been expanded to include the interior of South Africa, and the beginning of the Mfecane has been extended backwards from about the 1790s to the mid-eighteenth century. Geographically, the sphere of the Mfecane has now been broadened to include communities of the entire western highveld. Link

So history is being rewritten in the eyes of our present situation this is quite a process to watch and makes you think about how slanted history is!

[Blurock]

So history is being rewritten in the eyes of our present situation this is quite a process to watch and makes you think about how slanted history is!

It is always advisable to get the story from both sides and to come to your own conclusions, which should be somewhere in the middle. There are heroes and coward on both sides. There are victories and lost battles, but the victor gets to write history.

Fortunately the truth has a way of getting out, either by letters or word of mouth accounts of the people who were there, or by reporters, official documents or recorded news. That is the reason why we should NEVER allow the ANC to curb the freedom of the press!

[Blurock]

At a dinner in 1989, I complemented our elderly host on the most beautiful yellow wood dining room table.

He explained that it was an heirloom from his late grandfather who was a sergeant in the British army, posted as a guard at a concentration camp. His grandmother was a prisoner there and the two married shortly after the war.

The table was part of the furniture which was buried on the farm and recovered by the family after the Boer War. Apparently many of the Boer women buried their valuables in expectation of the raids by the British forces who torched and looted the farms in retaliation to assistance given to the Boer forces.

There are many letters in the British museum and archives confirming this and giving a witness report of the atrocities.

[wynn]

I think we must bear in mind that even if their were no black tribes in certain areas of the country during the 1800's, the law during the last hundred years or so forbade blacks from owning land in the greater part of the country even if they had the funds to buy it.
This is more the bone of contention, they are not contesting the homelands for instance although I feel that should be put in the pot for calculations as well?