Boer War Page 51

Discovering Rare Canadian Historic Sites 2

You are listening to one of Canada's very first recordings, made c.1901, and featuring one of Canada's earliest recording artists, Harry Macdonough singing "Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight," a song popular on Canadian Gramophones as the casualty toll started to arrive from South Africa. It is the theme song for our television program.

The ten day Battle of Paardeberg started with an opening attack, on Sunday, Feb. 18, 1900, left wards across the field (below) as General Smith-Dorrien watched from Gun Hill in the foreground.

(left) We needed a British archival military map to help us locate the position of the Canadian Maxim machine gun, which stood here in the foreground, on the slope of Gun Hill, covering the attack, which culminated in the disastrous final charge across the field to the left. The result: "Bloody Sunday", Britain's worst day of casualties of the entire war.

"We then had a regular fusillade all day and were doing splendidly when Lord K. getting impatient ordered half the Cornwalls ... over the river to charge with the Canadians. I was horrified when I saw them moving forward to charge about 3.30 pm as I could see they had not a ghost of a chance..." - General Horace Smith-Dorrien observing from Gun Hill

A British military map helped historian John Goldi (left) find the spot (Paardeberg Hill in background), where the Canadians where hit by a wall of Boer fire when they stood up for that final mad charge (above right and below), on "Bloody Sunday". 

21 Canadians died here, including Capt. Harry Arnold from Winnipeg (right), and stretcher bearer Patrick McCreary from New Brunswick (below right).

The Boer trenches (foreground below), and the veldt over which they watched the onrushing Canadians charging from the direction of Paardeberg Hill (background), are unchanged in 100 years.

Historian Johan Hattingh (right) showed us the river bank where the Boer women and children had dug holes to escape the bombardment, and the slope down which they dragged hundreds of dead horses - who could not hide from the shelling - to the river during the night.

Hiring a professional guide to take you around battlefields is the common practice in South Africa because there is virtually no signage anywhere.

Below, the Boer laager which was the focus of the British bombardment, was just above the river bank behind Johan.

Some 2000 British soldiers, who drank water downstream, died of enteric fever from the contaminated water, including Sgt. Beattie from Toronto, ON (right). For years after, at memorial Paardeberg dinners, Canadian veterans referred to the deadly brew as "Chateau Modder" and "Dead Horse Soup."

(left) Another of two rare large magnificent lithos of the "Canadians at Paardeberg." This one features a wonderful likeness of Col. Otter (above), directing the Canadian attack as the Boer laager burns in the background. In reality Otter was in the rear; his second in command was in the front lines instead. (Found in Woodstock, ON)

In the same location as the pillow above, Hattingh picks up a remnant from long ago - corrugated iron used for protection by a Boer and riddled by bullet holes - which still litters the site and bear testament to the ferocity of the British rifle fire that once swept this quiet field.

31 Canadians died at Paardeberg and rest beneath markers in the cemetery (right). Some 300 British in all died, and some 100 Boers.

Paardeberg was the first major British victory of the war and an enormous psychological set-back for the Boers.

General Warren, left, still smarting from his disastrous defeat at Spion Kop only four months earlier, led British and Canadian troops in search of Boer guerrillas hiding in the desert-like Karoo. They were careless as they settled down for the night around the kraal and house, right.

Suddenly, the Boers launched a surprise dawn attack on the sleeping British and Canadian units.

The Canadians had their horses penned in this kraal while Capt. Mackie (below left) and Col. Sam Hughes (below right) slept in the farmhouse. They were asleep in the room below right, when they were wakened by gunfire on the sides of the house (below). 

Hughes would later claim he deserved the Victoria Cross for his heroic actions.

When Canadian gunners aimed over the heads of the Boers at their horses, the Boers, fearing they would lose their only means of escape, fled the scene.

Jack Randell, of the Royal Canadian Field Artillery, (above) poses proudly beside his 12 pounder at Cape Town. Weeks later, he would service the gun at Faber's Put as it fired, from where John Goldi is standing, over the horses in the kraal (beyond) and put the Boers beyond to flight.

"The Boers surrounded us on three sides and gave us hell. The horses ..... stampeded, and everything was confusion. Our artillery horses stood their ground, and after the drivers had taken them to safety behind the farmhouse, we opened fire with our twelve-pounders and machine-gun and soon had the Boers on the run. We lost twenty killed and about one hundred wounded out of a column of five hundred men." - Jack Randell

The first fatality of the Royal Canadian Field Artillery, Bmdr. W. Latimer, from Granby, PQ, occurred on this spot. He was only 21. He was buried here, but years later his body was removed to Kimberley where it now rests beneath this stone (left.)

The grateful citizens of Granby set up this memorial in his honour celebrated on an antique postcard. (Found in Oregon, USA.)

And Later: During World War I Sam Hughes would become Canada's Minister of Militia, in effect directing the Canadian war effort during World War 1. But in the end he would be fired for writing an intemperate memo to Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden, which in effect accused him of being a liar.