Field Marshal Ironside in Africa

I was asked a little while ago about General Ironside having served in South West Africa as a spy. The result was some investigation as surely I would have registered on such a notable having been involved in the 1914-1918 GSWA campaign. That we had a Goebels and a Goering serve in EA as well as a Trapp (but not related to the Sound of Music von Trapp), and Edward Grey’s brother…a name like Ironside should have stuck. But it also didn’t sound quite right. There would have been a lot said about such a personage serving in Africa during World War One – it must have been at a different time he was there, if he was…

All was revealed by discovering Edmund Ironside’s biography of his father Ironside: The Authorised Biography of Field Marshal Lord Ironside (2018). Ironside had served during the 1899-1902 war in southern Africa and had gone into the neighbouring German colony as a spy, working with John Buchan. However, a little more searching revealed that others knew this before 2018.

Already in 1987, an article in History Today discusses John Buchan using Ironside as one of his inspirations for Richard Hannay. According to Roderick (Rory) Macleod’s entry at King’s College London Liddell Hart Military Archives, Ironside was in South-West Africa until 1904. Macleod edited Ironside’s Diaries published in 1962. His exploits in GSWA are also mentioned in Brian Parritt, The Intelligencers: British Military Intelligence from the Middle Ages to 1929 (2011) and Nicholas Rankin’s Churchill’s Wizards: The British Genius for deception, 1914-1945 (2008).

Find a Grave has a summary of his service – I wondered how realistic his disguise as an Afrikaans Boer would have been, but this given his fluency in seven languages and having learnt them from a young age, this is plausible. Kitchener managed to disguise himself as an Arab in Sudan.

This little snippet prompts more questions about Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck having met Louis Botha around the time… (foreword by Thomas Ofcansky in reprint of East African Reminiscences) although I still cannot see Milner allowing an erstwhile enemy to meet a future enemy,

Swakopmund leads to …

A chance encounter at the OMRS Medal Convention in Nottingham, led me to see what was available online about Swakopmund and World War 1 museum displays. On a visit to the town in 2016, David had spotted some military uniforms and medals in the local museum. We had not picked up on this when we visited a few years before, leading to the thought that this might have been added for the centenary commemorations. It’s not clear whether this is the case or not, but a new exhibition was opened in 2015 in Windhoek.

Swakopmund has a rather interesting history dating back to 1892 and a rather interesting/unusual war memorial. Having been the launch spot, once captured, for the South African forces arriving by sea in 1914, the troops eventually moved inland, with Aus becoming a main focus. Gordon McGregor’s co-authored book on the campaign has some informative photos. In time, Luderitzbucht was to become the base port. The South Africans continued to use their base at Walvis Bay – according to the South African gazette of 1916 never to be called Walfish Bay.

The Museums Association of Namibia has information on a range of exhibitions linked to the German colonial period – scroll down past all the vacancy adverts.

And for some other books on the First World War in South West Africa, see Antonio Garcia’s useful military commentary in The First Campaign Victory and Jan Stejskal’s Horns of the Beast.

Zam-Buk in the GSWA campaign

Researching some background to the Legion of Frontiersmen, I discovered an article in The Mafeking Mail and Protectorate Guardian, Tuesday, March 30, 1915 (available BL eresources), entitled:

Censored Letter from German West
Severe Sunburn Cured
More Zam-Buk wanted

I’m a great believer in Zam-Buk – it’s my first port of call for virtually any ailment but the last thing I thought I’d come across was an article – not an advert – extolling the virtues of it. And surprisingly, it’s not a South African product.

Sergeant EA Andrews, Legion of Frontiersmen, Pretoria Regiment, GSWA, writing from Ischankaib, says: “During the time we were dodging around after the rebels in Pretoria District the order came that we could cut down our trousers. I cut mine down with the result that the sun burnt my knees simply awful. Fortunately I had a tin of Zam-buk in my kit, so applied it, and in a day or two my knees were quite better again. We have now all been served out with short trousers, and consequently all the boys have sunburnt knees, adn had it not been that I brought a few tins of Zam-Buk to German West with me my brother soldiers would be caused much pain and inconvenience. I supplied Zam-Buk with surprising good results. All the boys are high in their praise of Zam-Buk, and swear by it.”

Zam-Buk is unequalled for Sore Feet, Poisoned Wounds, Insect Bites, Chafing, Strains and Stiffness as well as for Sunburn.
Post one, two or even three 1 6d or 3s 9d tins today to your soldier friends, or on receipt of price the Zam-Buk Manufacturing Co, 9 Long Street, Cape Town, will send post free. Write plainly name, number, rank, Regiment, and where stationed.

An article turned into an advert supporting the troops. That though, was not all.

A translation of the article appeared in Xhosa in Ilange Lase Natal on 30 July 1915 – Ukuba pambili kuka Zam-Buk; Into Enkulu Efanele Abase Mpini.

I wonder what the take-up was.

For more on Zam-Buk, see the references at the end of the Wikipedia article. And apparently Houdini used the ointment as well.

The Caprivi Strip

The Caprivi Strip or Caprivi Zipfel, for those who don’t know of it, is a strip of land between Namibia, Angola, Botswana and Zimbabwe. It was named after German Count Caprivi, the German colonial minister between 1890 and 1894.

This little strip has been a fascination since I started work on my thesis in the previous century and discovered a reference to it having been loaned by Britain to Germany: a statement which appeared in Silvestre’s edited volume on Namibia. It was also one of the first victories of the First World War for the Rhodesian forces – Schuckmannsberg surrendered to Major A Essex Capell on 21 September 1914 after a two-hour negotiation. The German commanders responsible for the German town were Hans Kaufmann and Viktor von Frankenberg. In 2013, Schuckmannsberg, named after the Governor of SWA Bruno von Schuckmann in 1909, was renamed Luhonono.

The contentious nature of the strip continues. In researching material for a paper on the end of the First World War, I discovered that a petition was put to the UN in 2014 objecting to the treatment of the territory by Namibia. The petition argues that in essence this little piece of land is still under control of Her Majesty’s Government. It had its own agreement at Versailles separate to the South West Africa mandate which meant that when Namibia gained its independence in 1990, it was only the South West Africa mandate which was affected, not the Caprivi mandate.

What is remarkable too, in this petition is a note (p4) which reads:

The eight objective of this legal document is to demonstrate that Caprivi Strip is
inhabited by a people as defined under general international law and that all peoples inhabiting mandated and trust territories and colonies (i.e. sacred trusts of civilization) are entitled to be enabled by administering States to freely and without interference from any quarter, whatsoever, to exercise their inalienable and universal right to self-determination, failing which they have the right, including by means of armed struggle, to fight for independence as a last resort* as envisaged under inter alia UNGA resolutions 2105 (XX) of December 20 1965; 3070 (XXVIII) of November 30 1973; 3382 (XXX) of November 10 1975.

* This doctrine is based on the provisions of paragraph 3 of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads: “Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”

I had never realised that today it is acceptable/legal for a micro-nation (peoples) to take up arms and fight for their independence.

Writing this post on 11 November 2017 seems appropriate – the end of the war to end all wars and to give the rights of determination to small nations is something some are still struggling for, more than 100 years later.

Review: Louis Botha’s War: The campaign in German South West Africa, 1914-1915 by Adam Cruise

I came across Adam Cruise’s Louis Botha’s War: The campaign in German South West Africa, 1914-1915 as a number of colleagues asked if I had read it, mentioning in passing that my name featured in the bibliography. Having covered a fair bit of Botha’s politics and involvement in the war in my thesis (published as Britain, South Africa and the East Africa campaign, 1914-1918: The Union comes of Age), I was intrigued to see what Cruise had used, naturally assuming it would have been this publication. It wasn’t – it was a summary of a talk I had given in Boksburg on the Mining Magnates, the full talk being available on academia.edu and on Brenthurst Library‘s site. My curiousity was raised – what had he used?

By page xvi, I was aware that my expectation of discovering something new was not likely to be fulfilled. Ignoring the repeated myth that the South West Africa campaign was the first to ‘be brought to a conclusion in the Great War’, it was the statement that read ‘Only recently, after trawling the internet, did I discover more about Botha…’, followed soon after by ‘The only published account of Botha’s life’ referring to the ‘long out of print General Louis Botha: A Biography‘. In contrast to Cruise’s claim, there have been a few biographies on Botha: apart from that by Meintjies, Sydney Buxton Governor General of South Africa during World War 1, FD Engelenberg, Botha’s secretary and H Spender have all written biographies on the man. OpenLibrary, provides the clue to Cruise’s statement ‘only published account’ – online, although Spender’s account is also available online as is Engelenberg’s if you register for the site.

My concerns with the book resonated with those of colleagues whose specialist interests are more military in nature, and unlike the book by Tim Couzens where most of the errors can be explained, those in Louis Botha’s War seem to be the result of poor and speedy research and for that reason I’m not going to go into detail on them.

This has been a difficult review to write, and I’ve probably spent as much time pondering over these few words that I’ve written as what I did reading the book. It’s important to recognise the toil and effort which has gone into the production of a book and I am grateful to Cruise for putting the spotlight onto Botha – something which desperately needs to be done.

Overall, I’m definitely disappointed in the book and am concerned that it’s going to be seen as a significant text on Botha – which unfortunately it’s not. Cruise has ably pulled together various secondary sources on the campaign which, disappointingly, has resulted in generalised statements and myths being perpetuated. The result is another book narrating the events of the South West Africa campaign and the Rebellion. It provides very little insight into Botha’s conduct and role as Commander in Chief of the UDF and Premier of South Africa.

Having been so critical, there are some positives which need to be recognised. The book is very readable and provides an introductory overview of the campaign in South West Africa. It has some good photos as well as little titbits such as that about feral horses. Importantly, as mentioned above, it rightly raises the profile of one of South Africa’s greatest generals and politicians and all I can hope for is that it inspires a more indepth and rigorous study into the man (in the same way that Lindie Koorts has looked at DF Malan).