BLOEMFONTEIN
Captivity and Misery
The sight of so many people starving, eating anything to stay alive has always stayed with me.—Pieter Krueler
The second week of March 1900 witnessed just over thirty-nine hundred surviving Boers from Paardeberg being placed within a large series of corrals, made of both wood and strung wire. Many of the men had been separated and transported to Cape Town by railroad during the first week of March, with the remainder being corralled near Bloemfontein where families were kept together, including children. Those who had tents erected them, mostly handing over such comforts to the women and children who were already there. The first five months were bad enough, with the meager rations and lack of shelter. June through August, winter in the southern hemisphere, had been colder than usual. The rain had created a quagmire and pneumonia had broken out, killing hundreds in those few months. Pieter Krueler worried about his mother and siblings. If they were in a similar camp, how must they be faring?
Shortly after arriving he rejoined Koos Ley, who appeared to have been worked over by a few British soldiers. Many of the Boer men were handled roughly upon capture even after they were placed into the camp. (There had even been reports from women claiming to have been raped by British soldiers, which would not have brought any severe punishment to a British soldier under Cape law.240) Ley had a broken nose and possibly cracked ribs, as his sides were badly bruised and swollen, although he could move a little. It was difficult for him to breathe, and one of the women in the camp had tightly bandaged him to relieve the pressure. It did not take long for the two adventurers to plan an escape. If it was possible, they felt that they could get out of their open-air prison.
Lord Kitchener had long decided to remove the popular support network from the Boers in the field. His logic was that, if the civilians were rounded up and confined, it would deprive the Boers of food, hiding places, and above all, intelligence. The other hope was that the effect on Boer morale would move them to request an armistice, if not an outright surrender. In the event, the effect was exactly the opposite.
Another rationale was to protect the families of those men who had already surrendered, since reports had come in that these families were being removed from their land by the Boer leadership due to the actions of their menfolk.241 Reports of Boer properties being burnt out and families destroyed by the British reached the field men, further hardening their resolve.
Kitchener appointed two men to administer this sensitive issue: Major General John Maxwell would govern the Transvaal while Colonel Hamilton Todd handled the Orange Free State. Both administrators had to deal with the unyielding Cape Colony High Commissioner Alan Milner in order to secure everything from additional army rations to tents and mattresses. Each man was given a small civilian camp staff consisting of nurses, a doctor and one superintendent per camp.242
Women and children, most of whose men were still fighting, were not placed on the ration list to receive meat, the logic being that their suffering would induce their men to surrender. It also saved Kitchener money and helped save provisions for his troops. There was no fruit, milk or vegetables, and for those lucky enough to make the meat ration, a half pound of meat per day was authorized per family, if available. The origin and quality of the meat was sometimes questionable at best. The poor diet and lack of sanitary conditions created a public health disaster of epic proportions. This growing problem did not escape notice from the powers in London; Under-Secretary for War St. John Brodrick was not satisfied with the cables he received from Kitchener.243
Pakenham cites a letter Brodrick sent regarding the growing concern in Parliament:
One point, however, we shall have trouble about. I wired to you for a full report on the laagers for refugees. Pretty bad reports have been received here of the state of the Bloemfontein laager in Jany—insufficient water, milk, rations, typhoid prevalent, children sick, no soap, no forage for cows, insufficient medical attention… . I think I shall have a hot time over these probably in most cases inevitable sufferings and privations—war of course is war… . Tell me all that will help the defence.244
General Maxwell, the Transvaal military governor, had placed requests for all the necessary provisions to assist the civilians within his camp administration. Kitchener knew that he did not have these supplies, but that was not his response and reason for refusal. He informed Maxwell (thus Brodrick also being notified) that the camps were not meant to be comfortable; the people would simply have to make do. Soon over sixty thousand civilians would be caged in a series of camps, and many would not survive the remaining two years of the war. History has probably painted Kitchener properly, as he was not a ruthless man in this regard harboring an evil agenda. “He was simply not interested.”245
Pieter Krueler turned fifteen years of age in the hellhole that doubled as a latrine and watering station. Dysentery had weakened him as he became dehydrated. This was a common ailment, with the cause being the contaminated water. The great concern was that cholera or typhus would emerge. The more dehydrated the men became from their dysentery the more contaminated water they drank. This only perpetuated the illness.
Women boiled the limited amounts of water they could collect from the rain, with canvas and buckets being placed into deep holes to collect the rain as it traveled down small gullies carved in the ground. These small ravines channeled the water into the collection points. Canvas cistern bags were made by lining the sewn canvas bags with the stomach lining of slaughtered cattle. Each group posted a guard over their water points. The precious liquid was strictly rationed. Those with barrels guarded them jealously.
Once per month the British supply wagons arrived, bringing minimal amounts of food and other provisions. Each month, as the incarcerated population grew larger, the quantity of provisions supplied became smaller. Each new group of detained Boer civilians brought new stories of horror: farms and homes burnt to the ground, livestock taken to feed the British Army, and men of fighting age being shot outright in some cases. Each day the camps’ burial details had to find new real estate to place the deceased, as starvation and disease claimed ever more victims. Worse was to come.
Koos Ley had told Krueler that he heard that someone had fresh meat, and this was good news indeed. The last fresh meat they had seen was two months earlier, with those portions going to the women and young children. Upon arriving at the back end of the camp where the old post office building had been, they saw men stripping vultures of their feathers.
Soon they learned of how this banquet had been procured, as Krueler recalled:
Someone had somehow gotten their hands on a cat, and I had been told that there had been some debate as to when and how they were to slaughter it for food. One of the men had an idea, so they killed the animal and laid it out in the open. The man then rigged a makeshift net trap. Once a vulture or two landed to feed upon the carcass, they pull the rope, enveloping the birds. We finally got to see this in action.
Once the men took away the vultures they had beaten to death and decapitated, they reset the trap. Several more circling overhead would land, and upon starting to feed, the net, made from strips of canvas and ropes was pulled, folding over a couple more of the birds. One or more would sometimes fly away. I never realized how dumb those birds were. They had to see their brethren being grabbed.
Well, this source of food, as terrible as it was, helped the hunger of some, but for over three thousand people it was a drop in the bucket. Priority was given to the children. Soup was made from the carrion and eaten. I tried it. It was the worst meat I had ever tasted until later in my life, when this would have also been a welcomed relief from hunger, the kind of hunger that in some cases forced people to resort to cannibalism. I never saw this personally, and I would not want to see it. But I do know one thing. The count of the dead, especially children, was made daily. Not all of the bodies were taken out to the burial pits. I will say no more on this, but I believe you understand.246
By Christmas 1900 there had been several visitors to the various camps. One of these was the only civilian, a staunch spinster Englishwoman named Emily Hobhouse from Cornwall, who would become the captives’ best friend. Although Krueler and Ley never saw her, let alone met her, her name would become well known by the internees before the war was over.
Hobhouse had lived in a village near Liskeard, Cornwall, caring for her ailing father, an archdeacon. She took the opportunity to abandon her life and escape the strict confines of Victorian England and made her way to the Cape Colony where she pursued the antigovernment liberal agenda. Her cause was to reform the government’s position within the colonies, and she had, at that time, been the only British civilian to inspect the concentration camps.247
In June 1901 she appeared before Brodrick and gave him a full report, which tended to contradict the information the under-secretary had been receiving from Kitchener and other British officials in the Cape Colony. Brodrick was stunned. She then met with Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the liberal leader in Parliament, and again recounted her observations in great detail. The officials in the Cape Colony who may have been unaware initially, once informed by the investigation and presented with the evidence, subsequently disclosed all the horrors one could imagine, as well as the cover-up by Kitchener, and even more critical, by Milner.
Campbell-Bannerman was also shocked at Hobhouse’s report, as related by Pakenham: “The story she told was, indeed, shocking to anyone not committed to believe in the inevitability of war, and of harsh methods to end it. To CB it threatened to precipitate a political, as well as moral, crisis. … As she poured out her story—the wholesale burning of farms … the deportations … a burnt out population brought in by hundreds of convoys … deprived of clothes … semi-starvation in the camps … the fever stricken children lying … upon the bare earth … the appalling mortality… .”248
The subsequent report by another humanitarian, Millicent Fawcett, also raised eyebrows: “There was a touch of steel about Millicent, masculine steel (though she would never use that adjective as a compliment; men could be such idiots!), and a professionalism that made Kitchener look like a bungling amateur. She did not mince her words when she told Milner the facts of the deaths in the camps.”249
It was in the camp at Bloemfontein that Krueler and Koos Ley decided that they would escape. The death toll in the camps continued to rise from starvation, which made the prisoners more susceptible to disease due to loss of weight and weakening of their immune systems. The numbers for August through October 1901 are cited in Pakenham:
August—1,878 deaths among 105,347 white “refugees” and 467 among 32,272 coloured ones; September—2,411 deaths among 109,418 whites, about 600 among 38,549 coloured people; October—3,156 deaths among 111,619 whites, 698 deaths among 43,780 coloured people. These October statistics were now plaguehigh, proportionately as well as absolutely; 34.4 percent, calculated as an annual death rate for white inmates of all ages; 62.9 per cent for children in the ORC [Orange River Colony, which was a small contingent of the Orange Free State where much of the local commerce was transacted], 58.5 per cent for children in the Transvaal.250
The death rate in the camps was amplified primarily due to poor hygienic conditions, such as proper latrines, as well as bathing facilities. The British authorities also failed to provide adequate food, especially for the women and children, who were the most vulnerable. Most of the pregnant women miscarried, or had stillbirths. “Milner’s reaction verged on panic. The women and children would all be dead by the spring of 1903. Only I shall not be there to see as the continuance of the present state of affairs for another two to three months, will undoubtedly blow us all out of the water.’”251
Eventually, through the efforts of Hobhouse and Fawcett, and with the eventual support of Milner (who claimed to have been misled by Kitchener) and others, the death rates the following year in February would drop to 6.9 percent, and finally down to 2 percent.252 The horrors at the Mafeking camp, however, established the unprecedented death rate of 173 percent, only surpassed by the Holocaust in World War II and the treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese.253
Both Krueler and Ley had been ill, yet they fared better than the young children and older adults. Ley decided that they would try to seek out like-minded men, tired of slowly dying within the wire and fences. They had to be careful; it was quite possible that they could be sold out to anyone by their fellow captives for a reward of food, clothing, or even clean water. By the time Hobhouse made her presentations in London the two young Boers had a plan … and one fifth of the camp’s prisoners had perished.
Once a week a burial detail was sent outside the wire to dig mass graves in which to inter the dead. There was always a four-man British guard detail, armed and somewhat wary. However, the detachment did not always consist of the same individuals, hence the small chance of any individual familiarity between the prisoners and guards. There was a head count upon walking outside the wire to bury the dead every day, and another count as they came back inside. The dead were not counted, almost as if their captors had little concern. Once in a great while, an officer or civilian administrator would come and ask for a number of those who perished, “which was usually correct,” according to Krueler. After several months of watching the burial details and the mannerisms and methodology of the guards, the plan was hatched.
In September 1901, a new load of prisoners was brought in numbering two hundred or more. That was the largest single deposit of civilians at one time since the arrival of half of the Cronje group in March. There were also several dozen dead awaiting burial. In the last week of August, Ley and Krueler joined the burial detail, but not as gravediggers. Four of the older men who had families, men they had fought with and could be trusted, offered to carry them wrapped in the thin holed blankets, and place them in the shallow grave. The plan was risky. If the British remained at the site for too long the boys would run out of air. If they broke through while still daylight they would be shot if caught. They had to wait for a day when the burial would be late in the afternoon. On August 27, 1901 that day arrived.
Fourteen bodies, mostly women and children, were to be buried, and the usual call for volunteers went out. However, when the ten-man burial detail was formed, sixteen “bodies” were carried to the horse drawn cart. The sun would be down within two hours, so the soldiers made it a point to order the Boers to dig fast and hard. They did not want to be outside with the prisoners after dark. The usual grave depth was between five and six feet, the width being between four and five feet, the length dependent upon the number of dead to be buried stacked like wood.
These dimensions were ordered to prevent predation at the site, which was located almost a mile from the camp, by wild animals. Within two hours, the progress on the grave measured perhaps three to four feet deep, twelve feet long and three feet wide. The soldiers were not concerned with having the grave completed. The bodies were carefully placed into the trench, stacked to conserve space. The last two “corpses” placed into the trench towards the top were Ley and Krueler, still covered by the blankets loosely tied with rope.
Their escape was more than a dash for freedom. They were to take a detailed written diary of events to the most senior Boer official they could find. It was believed that if the senior leadership was made aware of the situation they might direct an assault to free the captives. The logic of this plan was evident. The problem was that the captives were unaware of the developments surrounding the war during their captivity, as the new arrivals were often not privy to the actual combat actions, being mostly civilians. In addition, by June military prisoners were no longer brought into the civilian camps, unless, like Krueler, they were young. Krueler and Ley were luckier than most. According to some reports, after April even teenaged boys were being shot in their homes by firing squads, especially if caught bearing arms or captured as messengers.
Krueler remembered the eternal minutes of his burial:
I was dropped into this hole. It was dark and I could not see anything, and breathing was difficult due to the wool of the loose fitting blanket. It did not help that I was also very nervous. I had thought about the possibility of being discovered, captured, beaten and even shot. It was not until that time I even thought about suffocating. It just never crossed my mind. Believe that! All the planning, the route we would take, the travel method, hoarding food in our pockets, even the compass I had made and the rough drawn map. All of this had been planned to the smallest detail. We had not planned on dying in the grave.254
The sound of the dirt being thrown on the grave passed, and one of the older men, who said the prayer in German, did so loud enough for the muffled voice to travel through the loose packed dirt. Once the soldiers formed up the detachment, the words of the soldiers informed the entombed men that they had perhaps an hour before the detail would be out of sight and hearing. They would wait even longer to be sure.
Krueler managed to free his right arm to move the heavy dirt from around his head and shoulders. He could hear the shuffling of soil and the panting of Ley nearby. In the dark, with the weight of the dirt pressing against their faces, where the air pocket had already been exhausted, they had no choice. Danger or not, suffocation was not an option. Upon opening a hole and working his head and torso towards the surface, the breach in the topsoil brought the greatest gift of all: fresh air. There was still a slight glimmer of daylight, so he decided to wait.255
Within a couple of minutes, he heard the heavy gasping of Koos Ley nearby. Neither said a word, but Ley found his hand and clutched it. They waited until dark. Krueler recalled: “The soil kept falling in on me, a little bit at a time, entering my mouth. I could not open my eyes anymore as dirt was getting in them, all I could do was breathe and spit out the soil. I heard Koos doing the same. We were lucky that it had not rained in over two weeks. If so the ground would have been damp and packed, and we would not have tried the escape. We would have never been able to get out.”256
After darkness fell Krueler extracted himself from the grave, finally clearing his nose, mouth and eyes of the dark soil. Ley had more difficulty, so Krueler assisted him in digging out. Ley had almost suffocated, as his right foot had been trapped under a corpse, preventing him from completely raising his head above the dirt.257
The two boys sat next to each other, catching their breath. They had to devise a new plan. Where would they go? How would they get there? They discussed stealing a couple of horses from the British corral located three miles away, but decided against the risk. Raising suspicion meant that there would be a search party, and if the rumors were true, anyone caught with a British horse, let alone escaping, would be shot. They filled the grave back in and eliminated their footprints leading away from the site. They decided to move at night on foot, heading north towards Boshof; they could cross the Modder River and more than likely be in friendly territory.
From there they hoped to get horses that they could ride to Hoopstad, then cross the Vaal River on to Klerksdorp. Ley had relatives there, or at least he hoped they were still there. The decision to escape could not have been more timely. A little more than a month later, in October, a typhoid epidemic broke out, killing an undisclosed number of internees within the camp. By the end of the month, the death rates at all the inspected camps reached the aforementioned 173 percent.258
The night of August 27, 1901 marked the beginning of a long foot trek for the two young men. Moving mostly at night, by the fifth day the boys were starving. They had swum the Modder at night and finally made Boshof, although the only life they saw were a few British soldiers. The enemy had apparently occupied the area and removed the locals, which proved the bulk of the rumors true to Krueler and Ley.259
On the evening of September 1 they decided to steal two of the horses tied in a small kraal at a British outpost. They couldn’t risk stealing saddles as they were stored in the one-story building housing the soldiers. Krueler decided they would remain hidden that night, watching for any sentry patterns, in case a guard was posted. Crawling to within fifty yards of the kraal, they noticed that there was no posted sentry.
Not long after midnight, and several hours after the light went out in the house, they entered the kraal. The horses did not betray their presence, and luckily it turned out that enough saddles and bridles, and even some saddlebags, had been left by the British troopers on the fence rails. And it turned out their luck was on a roll when one set of saddlebags had several maps and personal letters, which gave them reasonably good intelligence, although Krueler was less than impressed with the quality of the British maps and their lack of topographic detail.260
After cinching the saddles and quietly arranging the gear, they opened the gate and walked out with their mounts. For good measure, they also allowed the other five horses to escape, and they wandered off into the darkness. After several hundred yards, they mounted the horses, moving slowly for an hour until they were certain that they could not be heard or observed. Klerksdorp was approximately seventy miles away according to the map in Krueler’s hand, which took them another three days of travel on horseback. They still had not eaten since August 26. Krueler had become nauseous and thrown up violently several times over the previous few days. Ley looked as if he was about to die, and he still had his chronic dysentery.261
When they reached the outskirts of the small town, Ley noticed a Baobab root to which they could tether their horses. They waited until dusk and began to head towards the buildings on the outskirts of town. Waiting until long after sunset, they finally made their way to one of the houses. The absence of livestock was an indicator that things were not normal. Ley quietly pointed to a single-level home with the glow from a lantern visible through a window.262
“My uncle’s home, my cousin’s home is over there,” and he pointed to another structure a couple hundred yards away, barely visible in the darkness. Krueler stayed in place while Ley went forward, becoming a faint silhouette as he faded into the darkness. About twenty minutes later he returned, excited. “My aunt and a cousin are there, they are waiting for us,” he told Krueler.263
The boys entered the home, which seemed bare and Spartan in comparison to most of the dwellings with which they were familiar. Ley’s aunt Matilda was a large, happy-faced woman whose son was an inquisitive looking twelve-year-old, sitting in front of a hand-carved chessboard.
We learned from Matilda that the British had been through several weeks earlier, taken the livestock and grain that was stored in the barn. Koos’s uncle had been taken away by the enemy, along with any other male over the perceived age of sixteen. The women and girls had been left alone. I told her about the women and children brought into Bloemfontein, and Koos described the starvation diet, deaths and general condition of the laager. The only area still free of any major British activity was, as far as we knew, Orange Free State. That was where we needed to go.264
The boys ate their first real meal in almost a year, and managed to get hot baths and sleep in warm beds. That was the first actual bed Krueler had slept in since 1899, almost two years earlier. Ley was still in bad shape due to the dysentery, so his aunt crushed a compound of charcoal, flour, and water mixed with a variety of locally grown herbs for Koos to drink. She told Pieter to also drink the thick chalky compound, which he did, but not without some hesitation. They would wait and rest for a few days until Ley was healthy enough to ride. Having their clothes washed proved to be a disaster, as the threads holding the material together came apart.265
Matilda repaired their clothes and gave them additional newer clothing from her husband’s ensemble. She had no idea where he was, or even if he was safe. She decided that it would be best not to inform her neighbors that she had the houseguests, in case someone were to inadvertently mention the visitors and jeopardize the boys’ safety, as well as her own.266
After almost a week both boys were in much better shape. Taking the best of the maps from the stolen British saddlebag, Krueler and Ley looked at the positions marked on the document. If the map was marked correctly, and if the British positions had not changed, they would be fine. Any major developments beyond their knowledge could spell disaster.
They had no idea how old the map was with regard to the notations and markings. They did learn of certain events from Matilda, who spoke with some of the local women who gathered information on a regular basis. One of the women raised carrier pigeons, which the British never suspected as being a source of communication for the scattered Boer communities. Many of the locals also kept the birds for food. The woman received regular deliveries of information, using a dozen birds at a time. Many of the civilians in the village still did not know of the situation in the camps. Matilda informed them, without disclosing her sources.267
Prior to this, Hobhouse had done her job well and by April had an estimated count of the civilians being detained in the Transvaal: 21,105. By May, the House of Commons reported that the Orange River Colony contained 19,680 and Natal had 2,524 detainees. Under-Secretary Brodrick himself, going on his reports from Kitchener and his minions, erroneously stated that “many of the ‘refugees’ in these burgher camps were coloured people.” 268 The deaths recorded in May were “284 in Transvaal and 382 in the ORC.”269
These numbers did not seem particularly high to the members of Parliament, based upon the reports of “Joshua Rountree and a mission of Cape Afrikaners who arrived in England to lobby the liberals.”270 The only problem with the “Rountree Report” was that neither he nor his contingent had actually visited the camps, and had only brought forth information they were told from the self-serving Cape government administrators. The reason was that Rountree, despite a Parliamentary directive which included requiring the support of the local administrators, had been denied access to the camps, and was even restricted from entering Transvaal and Orange Free State by the military. Once this was reported, suspicions were aroused and later confirmed. Hobhouse’s report and full details were an eye opening revelation and confirmation of what the Cape government did not want discovered.
David Lloyd-George, voicing the concerns of many liberals, was appalled at what the British military was doing in the name of the United Kingdom, citing the actions of Gen. Bruce Hamilton, who had burned Ventersburg to the ground, collected the civilians, and placed clear notices that the families of men “on commando” would not be properly fed and cared for until the men surrendered.
This information, reported by the Reuters news organization, had prompted the creation of the term “concentration camp” as coined by MP’s C.P. Scott and John Ellis. The term was taken from the term reconcentrado, which was used by the Spanish when detaining Cuban rebels during the previous decade. Alarmed by the rumors circulating in London, it was Ellis who had sent Rountree, a relative of his, to the Cape Colony in South Africa to investigate the situation and report back to Parliament. The world was finally learning of the horrors of the concentration camps.
It is also important to remember that the First Hague Convention of 1899 had been convened at the request of Czar Nicholas II Romanov. The major nations had attended and laid out a charter to prevent mass destruction and contain violence during conflict. This convention followed the first Geneva Convention of 1864, organized by Swiss citizen Henri Dunant. The Second Anglo-Boer War was raging as the Hague Convention was in session, increasing concerns with regard to the articles being debated. It was due to the treatment of the Boer civilians in South Africa by the British that The Hague Convention would reconvene in 1907.
The report to Parliament during the summer of 1901 stated that of the 93,940 whites and 24,457 blacks in the camps, the deaths in May had been 550, June 782, and in July 1,675.271 By September 18, 1901, Hobhouse and her entourage had visited thirty-three of the Boer camps, although they never visited any of the camps for blacks.272 Ley and Krueler had experienced the British treatment firsthand at Bloemfontein.
In the second week of September, Ley and Krueler bid Matilda and her son farewell, and they rode northwest toward the interior of the Orange Free State. Prior to leaving, Matilda gave her nephew a Mauser that had been hidden from the British, along with twenty rounds of ammunition. She also provided leather-sewn bedrolls lined with wool for the chilly nights they would spend in the field.
There had been a rumor of a Boer garrison, she told them, still free of British occupation near Vryburg. The two boys hoped that this was true as they did not have the benefit of actual intelligence regarding friendly and enemy positions. Despite the fact that in May of that year 2,585 Boers had been killed or captured, with 2,277 in June and 1,820 in July, and more than 60,000 British soldiers were still pursuing their elusive enemy, Matildas information was correct.273
The boys spent two weeks in the saddle, rationing their meager food supply. The sound of rifle fire might bring unwanted attention, so they were very careful when stalking wild game to augment their rations. In addition, the circling of vultures over a kill could also betray their presence. They were able to bag a small antelope and skinned the animal, cutting the meat into strips and burying the rest of the carcass. At night they bedded down in draws, digging a fire pit to help conceal the flames when they cooked their meat. The night air was still quite cold that time of year, and without padded fur-lined coats they would have risked hypothermia if not for the wool-lined bedrolls Koos’s aunt had so thoughtfully provided.274
In mid September they came across a mounted eight-man Boer patrol. Krueler knew that they would be in the riders’ rifle sights until the visual confirmation was made. This group was an independent cadre, operating in the Orange Free State on harassment and interdiction raids. Their group had started out with more than twenty men, but over the last nine months more than half of their strength had been lost in running fights, most dying later from their wounds.275
These men knew nothing of the concentration camps and had heard only rumors of the battles around Spion Kop, Ladysmith, Kimberley, Colenso and other engagements. Krueler and Ley filled them in on all the details. The men were shocked. Their “intelligence” was flawed, to say the least, although the raiders were able to update Ley and Krueler on the local situation as they rode back to the Boer camp where the two young men were introduced to some of the locals. Krueler produced his British map, with some of the areas in the Orange Free State marked, as well as the letters and dispatches. The commandos were able to confirm some of the locations marked on the map.276
Three maps were of particular interest, since as of a month before one of the places on the map had not been in British hands. Krueler assured them that the map had been in his possession for a month. The commandos also informed the boys of the murders of twelve Boers captured by Australians the previous month. This would become known as the famous “Breaker” Morant-Handcock Case. In their hearts, there could be no surrender.277 Thus were born the “Bitter Enders.”
“That means we lost our base of supply in the south,” one of the men said aloud. These Boers had to absorb the fact that as far as they knew they were totally alone. They did know of Louis Botha’s peace offer, which had been given to the British in July, and was unknown to Ley and Krueler. Botha was allowed by Kitchener to cable Paul Kruger via the Dutch Consul-General in the Transvaal. The overture fell apart as the presidents of the Transvaal and Orange Free State maintained their position that independence was the only acceptable condition for peace. Orange Free State President Steyn himself had barely escaped capture during the same week at his laager along with Deneys Reitz.278 He was in no mood for negotiation.
The commandos informed the two boys of the mission of their detachment commander, Commandant Cornelius Wessels, who had been gone for two weeks on a reconnaissance mission. They also learned that their friend Deneys Reitz was with him. Their mission was to report to their twenty-eight-year-old leader Jan Smuts on any British activity. These men had been working to create a third front in the war to further divert and spread thin the massive British force of almost two hundred thousand, with sixty thousand focused upon finding them.279
Krueler learned that since his capture the commando bands had scattered, and were now trying to regroup, but there was no cohesion or concentration of effort. Individual groups did what they could, although in the end they were hardly effective. The group finally received a messenger on September 30: four days earlier, on September 26, Botha had launched a failed assault on the Zulu frontier. Due to bad intelligence Botha had lost fifty-six men.
In just a week this new commando (Wessels’), with Ley and Krueler, joined Smuts, who was preparing another large-scale mission with his force of two hundred men in Natal, headed toward Port Elizabeth. They fought a couple of engagements that were counterproductive, forcing the group to flee towards the Western Cape at Calvinia. For the next two months the men wandered aimlessly, foraging off farms and the land, conserving their ammunition, and hoping for the best. Since the previous year when Kitchener had taken command, total Boer forces had been reduced by approximately 50 percent, to around twenty-five thousand men.280
Obtaining recruits had been nearly impossible since there were not enough horses for even the men in the field; many had been sacrificed for food, killed in battle, or had succumbed to disease. By the end of December 1901 almost eight hundred Boers had been killed or captured.281 Botha’s men had been almost completely eliminated. There was even more bad news. General Christiaan De Wet’s brother Piet, a former Boer general himself who had been captured, was now fighting for the British. This was probably the worst, most demoralizing news of all.
Wessels’ commando, with Krueler and Ley, joined Christiaan De Wet’s force in the second week of December, and the general recognized the young messenger, slapping Krueler on the back. After hearing his tale of the last eight months, he realized that the war had taken a serious turn. “I have a plan, and I will brief the officers,” he said as he called his men together. His plan, after receiving reconnaissance reports, was to strike to the northeast. The Boers had skirted the many blockhouse pickets that were scattered throughout the region, and garrisoned by small British detachments, where they managed to avoid any major contacts. Operating from Lindley, De Wet saw his opportunity.282
On December 22 he received information that the British were encamped around Bethlehem, where the Royal Engineers had not yet completed a blockhouse section to the north. Krueler rode with Ley to survey the enemy positions. The incomplete blockhouse left a gap in the British lines that could be exploited. The British under Lt. Gen. Sir Leslie Rundle were spread out in four groups. The most alluring target (in De Wet’s opinion) was the four hundred men under the command of Major G.A. Williams, bivouacked at Groenkop near Tweefontein, on a knoll rising two hundred feet above the veldt.283
After Krueler’s reconnoitering, De Wet decided that Williams would be his target. They saw the food and the white tents of the British soldiers, who were apparently in a relaxed and unconcerned state; they had not even posted sentries on the avenues of approach. The few soldiers who patrolled did not guard the steepest side, the west face, just as with the Boers at Spion Kop and other critical engagements. Comfort was a dangerous frame of mind to fall into, and the Boers were masters at exploiting that factor.
De Wet patiently waited until December 25. At 0200 hours, after a Christmas Day prayer, the Boer leader moved his men up the hill. Piet Krueler described the event:
We climbed up the steep side, De Wet leading us. I was three men behind him, Ley being behind me. We heard a sentry, and then De Wet called for the attack. Soon everyone was screaming ‘storm! storm!’ The first twenty of us crested the knoll. We could hear and even feel the bullets fired in panic, and we swept the ridge over the top. More of our men joined us. We rushed through the camp and entered tents, firing as we ran, killing many of the British. Prisoners were taken with a sentry placed on each tent. The men were almost all caught completely by surprise. Within three hours, we took the kop. The dead and wounded were everywhere.284
The Boers had taken the kop, collected their prisoners and had suffered very few casualties. However, they did not have the strength to hold the prisoners nor maintain their grip on the knoll. De Wet stripped the prisoners naked, took their weapons, and had them march back to their command. Within two days, De Wet and his men collected the supplies, abandoned the kop, and rode on to Elandskop.
For the next two months Krueler and Ley rode reconnaissance, scouting British movements and reporting to De Wet. They reported the continued building of blockhouse fortifications, and the troop movements into makeshift garrisons. In February they were ordered to operate in the Transvaal, where Krueler recognized the terrain. He was home, but home had changed.285
The first week of February 1902 saw Lord Kitchener build up another force of over nine thousand men. Most were infantry, and an armored train was brought in as well. Krueler wrote the information down and sent it back with Ley to De Wet. Krueler stayed and maintained his vigil as he documented the fortifications, troops, and barbed wire linking the cordons. He even drew a map and estimated the various enemy strengths at the locations.
Ley arrived at De Wet’s camp and gave him the information two days later on February 7. By that time, the British force had covered a lot of ground. Thanks to Krueler’s information De Wet pinpointed the weakest point: the blockhouse at Kroonstad-Lindsey. That night he and Steyn launched their assault, cutting through the wire and losing only three of seven hundred men. De Wet had effectively bypassed the massive British force, outflanked them, entered their secure rear area, and forced the nine-thousand-man force to retreat to the security of their defensive line.286
Krueler and Ley continued their intelligence-gathering missions for the rest of February. They shadowed and monitored the enemy, and while their intelligence could not prevent a few captures, they did manage to provide information that prevented the defeat of the bulk of the commandos, including De Wet. Despite their best efforts, however, by the end of the month the British claimed capture of 778 Boers, twenty-five thousand head of cattle, two hundred wagons, and two thousand horses. The prisoners were sent to POW camps, sans clothing and boots.287
Krueler and Ley remained with Steyn and De Wet riding through the Orange Free State and Transvaal, and by March 14 they had joined Koos De la Rey in Western Transvaal. De la Rey was once again a Boer hero. On February 24 he had attacked a British column at Yzer Spruit, costing him 51 men, but the British lost 369, including Lord Methuen. Methuen, who was wounded in the thigh, would become the last British general captured during the war.288
De la Rey and his group were the primary targets for Kitchener, who was hunting the Boers down between Mafeking and Magaliesburg. Due to the Boers’ random successes costing Kitchener twelve hundred men and four artillery pieces, as well as livestock, De Wet, De la Rey and Steyn were atop the British hit list. Paul Kruger had gone to Europe for talks, and Schalk Burger with his six-man delegation was headed to Pretoria to discuss peace terms. The Boers in the field were unaware of most of these developments. All they knew was that starvation and death awaited the unlucky, while confinement and disease awaited the survivors.289
On April 10, 1902, Pieter Krueler celebrated his birthday, and De la Rey and Steyn went to Klerksdorp for their role in the peace talks. Lord Kitchener knew this, and he planned to use the opportunity to attack the leaderless collective. The British elements, led by Kitchener, Col. Sir Henry Rawlinson (later Gen. Lord), and Lt. Col. RG. Kekewich, moved on a farm called Rooiwal. Kekewich sent three thousand men to the left as the west flank defense. There were still another seven thousand British troops not far away.290
At 0715 hours, as the British advanced, they were spotted by over seventeen hundred Boers, who were in turn seen by the British. The lead officer of a forty-man military intelligence group, a Major Roy, spearheaded the British force. At first he was uncertain whether or not the Boers were Colonel Rawlinson’s men.291 Roy’s indecision would prove costly; when the Boers went to the gallop and fired a fusillade from the saddle half of Roy’s men were dead or wounded.
Krueler recalled the event:
I was riding on the right flank with Ley when General [Ferdinandus Jacobus] Potgieter threw his hand up, and the dozens of men in the first rank fired, at what I had no idea. I did not even see the British, since I was on the back slope of a small knoll and the lead element had just crested the top. The firing took me completely by surprise. I never even got a shot off, and still did not see what they were firing at until I reached the top. Then I saw more British advancing than I had in almost two years. Then General Kemp led a group of our riders towards the enemy, but this was not our group. Most of the British were infantry. The group led by Kemp was almost completely destroyed.292
Kemp led a hundred men while Potgieter took a like number into a head-on charge against the British infantry from almost a mile away, bravely facing the enemy rifle fire. They must not have noticed the British field guns, however, which opened up and tore their mounted ranks to pieces. There was no cover or concealment, only open terrain. Almost half the Boers were dismounted and lying on the ground within the first five hundred yards; many had been blown out of the saddle. Many of the British also fell, and being green and raw, many even deserted in fear. Potgieter was killed, shot through the chest and head. Fifty of his fellow commandos lay around him.293
Due to a lack of communication and Colonel Ian Hamilton’s fear of a Boer counterattack, it took an hour for the British to launch a pursuit of the remaining Boers. Only when he felt it was safe did he release Lt. Colonel Kekewich to pursue. The end result was that the British captured “fifty stragglers, the last of Methuen’s field guns, and a pom-pom which De la Rey had taken at Tweebosch.”294 (The Boer’s had captured artillery from Methuen’s force at Tweebosch on March 7.)
Krueler recalled the aftermath of the futile charge: “After the charge, which was quite something to see, we were ordered to retreat. We managed to leave the scene, but there was no way the men with the artillery could move the oxen fast enough, so the guns were abandoned. We killed more British than we lost, but then the British had more men to lose.”295
As his train pulled into Pretoria April 11, 1902, Cape Colony High Commissioner Milner wondered what the Boer contingent was up to. He hoped that they wanted to surrender, as opposed to sue for peace terms under conditions that the British (in fact, Milner) would find unacceptable, just as before. “Peace terms meant compromise, and he had admitted to his intimates, ‘there is no room for compromise in South Africa’.”296
The Boers had indeed come to discuss terms, not an unconditional surrender. Schalk Burger laid down the Boer offer; no annexation for the Orange Free State and Transvaal, independent governments with peace treaties between the Boer confederation and the Cape (ergo British) government, with further discussions on existing economic concerns. The offer was immediately rejected.297 On April 17 the negotiations were over.298 The greater problem was that not even the various Boer factions could agree on all the proposed terms. Many of the arguments consisted of restitution for homes destroyed and civilians detained, and especially payment for those who had died in captivity.
One of the greatest concerns preventing the British from ending the war too quickly was the imminent damage control operations regarding the concentration camps. The world was slowly becoming aware of the tragedy, and the liberals in Parliament, led by Lloyd-George and the perceived “pro Boer” collective, wanted answers. Milner knew, as did Kitchener, that in politics someone would have to play scapegoat to protect the empire’s image abroad and at home.
Milner’s assistant John Buchan was given the task of solving the nightmare of the camps and explaining the dead. One of the first positive actions taken was to create schools in order to prove to the world that the children were being educated above prewar levels. The appointment of doctors and health specialists reduced the 34 percent death rate per month average by October 1901, to between 3 percent and 6 percent by April 1902.299 The great irony of the fortunate reversal in these statistics is that they illustrated the ambivalence and disinterest of Lord Kitchener in the plight of the incarcerated Boers.
Meanwhile, De la Rey’s commandos, numbering some three thousand of the twenty thousand “bitter enders” still in the field, still scored some major successes. Despite the engagement of April 10 they were still a viable force. De la Rey had returned to the field following the collapse of the negotiations in Pretoria. Krueler recalled that he was “somewhat gloomy, not the vibrant character that he had always been. It seemed as if he knew there was disaster on the horizon.”300
The Boers elected a five-man negotiating team to represent their cause in the second round of the upcoming peace talks on May 15. Krueler’s assessment of De la Rey seemed to be accurate, for De la Rey was once again summoned, along with Botha, Smuts, De Wet and Judge Barry Hertzog, as part of the Boer council on peace talks. Steyn was too ill to attend the meeting. This time, Pieter Krueler went with De la Rey.
After a brief interlude the talks resumed on May 19.301 Once the preliminary terms were outlined they stated that the Boers would maintain governorship of the Orange Free State and that senior Boer officials would be the leaders of the South African government. The great divide between the two sides (at which De Wet exploded and left the room) was that the Boers would recognize King Edward VII as their sovereign. The Boers were never going to bow to a “foreign” monarch.
There were dozens of factors with which to contend, and this work will not go into all of them, since they are so eloquently described in Pakenham’s masterpiece, The Boer War. Suffice to say that the legal overlay that was finally negotiated did not resolve all the issues, hence the continued legal problems that would later become manifest with the creation of apartheid.
Lord Kitchener and High Commissioner Milner were opposed to each other regarding the terms of peace with the Boers. The two men perhaps hated each other even more than they hated their Boer enemies. Milner wanted the war to continue, reducing Boer assets, allowing the British to confiscate more property, and thus end the war by attrition.
Ktchener, for all his faults, was at least a pragmatist who saw the futility of wasting more lives. Kitchener could respect an enemy soldier more than a friendly bureaucrat who had never worn a uniform. Likewise, Ian Hamilton actually felt a deep respect for the Boer commanders and displayed empathy for their cause, and stated so publicly. Hamilton also saw through Milner’s thinly veiled ambitions.
The Boer leaders were also respectful of their British adversaries, and thought enough of Hamilton to invite him to Jan Smuts’s birthday party on May 24, where he sat with Botha, De la Rey and Smuts. Piet Krueler was also asked to attend, serving food and port wine to the guests. Halfway through the celebration, Smuts said to him: “Young Krueler, good to see you. What did you do on your birthday?” Krueler informed him of the short engagement where Potgieter was killed. “Well, then I suggest you sit down and have some cake, and some wine. I think you earned it.”302
They all bided their time over the next few days, holding various discussions until the final treaty went to the vote. Before midnight on May 31 at Kitchener’s HQ, Burger signed for the Transvaal, De Wet for the Orange Free State, followed by Ktchener and Milner for the crown. In five minutes the three years of costly war were over.303
Pieter Krueler had to start his life over. With the killing and hardship behind him, and his family gone, he felt lost, alone and afraid for the first time in his life. He was, after all, still only seventeen years old. He had one friend left in world, the ever-present Koos Ley, and the two young men would move along towards an uncertain future. Neither boy had heard anything of their friend Kuyt in the many years since he had disappeared. The Boer War would become a conflict with many unnamed ghosts.
The Boer War marked a turning point in modern history. Ending a century, it also ended an empire; beginning a century in which it started the Commonwealth. It was a rebellion and also a civil war, for there had been much intermarriage between the English and the Dutch. Further, it is to be remembered that the British had no tradition or precedent for governing such people as the Boers except in America, where their methods lost them their colonies.
Although the next several years were not generous to Pieter Krueler, he did not suffer, as he attended school and perfected his English. He also worked on several farms to make money. His intent was to return home and rebuild his family’s farm, which had been burnt to the ground by the British in 1901 while he was incarcerated in Bloemfontein. Little did he know that events far away would once again alter his life, and eventually plunge half the world into a new war.