The Chairman, Jan-Willem Hoorweg, opened the meeting with the attendance statistics and notices. He thanked David Scholtz for organising and sponsoring the outing to Val for Boer 'n' Brit Day. He also mentioned possible outings to both Kedar Lodge and the Imperial Light Horse HQ later this year. The 50th anniversary of the MHS will be in October this year and details will be forthcoming.
The Chairman announced that Anne Samson will be coming out from the UK later this year and would be willing to bring out books - forms are available from MHS Secretary. Last month the talks given at MHS were recorded and are now available on Sound Cloud. Simply type in "soundcloud" in your Google search bar, when the main page of SoundCloud opens type in "sa military history society lectures" which will take you to our site. Just click on our page tab and you will then see all recorded talks. There is no need to sign in or register on the site.
The curtain-raiser was given by Verity Gorman of the East Rand MHS and titled Links between Irish and Afrikaner Nationalists Independence Struggles. Here we looked at the links between Irish and Afrikaner Nationalists struggles through the Anglo-Boer War and then in the Five Shilling Rebellion of 1914 and the Easter Uprising of 1916. This was an entertaining and humorous talk that was very well illustrated.
We were introduced to the famous Foxy Jack MacBride who was eventually executed for his role in the Easter Uprising and to Yeats' Muse, Maude Gonne, whom MacBride later married.
One of the links is those Irish in the Boer army who fought their own countrymen in the British forces. In the Five Shilling Rebellion, the Boers faced the same situation when the bittereinders fought against their own.
The Irish were highly regarded by the Boers in that they had the same hatred of the British and their passion for their land was worth fighting for to the very end.
The roles that the Irish played in the Anglo-Boer War were as guards of one of the great French Creusot fortress guns, or Long Toms, of Commandant Trichardt's Transvaal State Artillery: as dynamite squads/wreckers corps blowing up railway bridges and facilities (they had learned this skill on the mines of the Transvaal): they were also present at various battles, Newcastle, Talana Hill, Modderspruit, Colenso, Spioen Kop, Vaal Krantz, Tugela Heights, Diamond Hill and Dalmanutha.
We were shown the failure and disappointment of both the Boers and the Irish after they were crushed by the British.
The Five Shilling Rebellion took place in 1914 where Boer faced Boer on opposite sides. Our attention was drawn to the fate of these rebellious Boers as compared to the Irish Easter Uprising two years later, albeit with very different outcomes. Finally the treaties that were signed, sealing the futures of both countries.
The main speaker of the evening was Katherine Munro, a professor of Architecture at Wits, and her subject was Verdun - The Battlefields of Verdun in WWI ... Vicissitudes, Valour and Victory. One of the greatest war memorials to French loss in WWI is the Douaumont Ossuary at Verdun. It is a shrine, an ossuary, a memorial, a national cemetery, a place of eternal remembrance and a powerful symbol of French loss and grief. There is a theatre, a souvenir shop and all of this in close proximity to the cemetery. This is a strange place to most of us as ossuaries are unusual in northern Europe but there was almost no alternative as the remains of the soldiers were often unidentifiable and in such large numbers. Within the ossuary itself there are huge glass windows giving on to chambers where the bones are to be seen in heaping piles that reflect how they were found after the battle. It has become the starting point for exploring Verdun and for seeing how memorials have also become places of tourism and "edutainment". In trying to make sense of the Douaumont Ossuary and what it means, our speaker came to learn more about Verdun.
This year, 2016, not only marks the centenary of the battle of the Somme but also of the battle of Verdun, which lasted from 21 February to 18 December 1916 making it the longest battle of the War. French deaths at Verdun were 230 000 and casualties numbered 315 000 whereas German casualties amounted to 281 000. The French felt compelled to hold Verdun at all costs but it was the only offensive on the Western Front where the offensive was less costly than the defense. The Germans, under Eric von Falkenhayn, chose the salient around the old fortress city of Verdun because it was of such strong emotional value to the French that they would not retreat but it would also allow them to bring the maximum amount of artillery to bear on the defenders. They planned to bleed France to death and the battle raged with undiminished ferocity for months and with almost fatalistic valour on both sides... It has been argued that the battle of the Somme was part of a strategy and tactic to draw the Germans away from the intense fight at Verdun and indeed, on 1 July 1916, the Germans had to close down their operations at Verdun because of the pressure on the Somme. The Germans made yet a third offensive at Verdun in 1918.
The speaker and her husband visited Verdun to see the Douaumont Ossuary as part of her research into WWI memorial architecture. She discovered the tragic and fascinating history around the "Hell of Verdun" in WWI. She made a remarkable journey to a town with a rich history - the forts and battlefields that engulfed the best of French and German manhood. The forts are illustrative of a military strategy that failed. The battlefields resulted in the destruction of nine villages.
The Douaumont Ossuary
This year, 2016, not only marks the centenary of the battle of the Somme but also of the battle of Verdun, which lasted from 21 February to 18 December 1916 making it the longest battle of the War. French deaths at Verdun were 230 000 and casualties numbered 315 000 whereas German casualties amounted to 281 000. The French felt compelled to hold Verdun at all costs but it was the only offensive on the Western Front where the offensive was less costly than the defense. The Germans, under Eric von Falkenhayn, chose the salient around the old fortress city of Verdun because it was of such strong emotional value to the French that they would not retreat but it would also allow them to bring the maximum amount of artillery to bear on the defenders. They planned to bleed France to death and the battle raged with undiminished ferocity for months and with almost fatalistic valour on both sides... It has been argued that the battle of the Somme was part of a strategy and tactic to draw the Germans away from the intense fight at Verdun and indeed, on 1 July 1916, the Germans had to close down their operations at Verdun because of the pressure on the Somme. The Germans made yet a third offensive at Verdun in 1918.
Our lecturer found that her visit to Verdun led her into the extensive literature on this part of the Western Front. One of these books was "Before Endeavours Fade" by Rose Coombes who wrote this book because she was a tour guide on the battlefields.
Pat Henning
Scribe
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