NEWSLETTER - MARCH 2022

February 10th saw an extreme ZOOM lecture in that it was so long as to need a third 40- minute session. The subject of the lecture was the Gedenksboek of Deadwood Camp, St Helena. The talk was given by Mike Marsh with some reading of newsletter slides by Joan Marsh.

It is an amazing document in that it records life in the Deadwood Camp on St Helena 1900-1902 as experienced by the Boers and written by the Boers as things happened. They were cut off via censors and saw a different conflict from that recorded in traditional history. The book has been in safekeeping for 120 years and this lecture was the very first presentation of the information. The book is written in Dutch and Joan Marsh has translated the entire book to English, which was used in the presentation.

Using numerous slides for his power point presentation, Mike had split the material into logical sub-sections e.g. pictures of St Helena, personalities, housing difficult PoWs, recreational activities, sport, newsletters and newspapers, connection with Napoleon, fundraising from the Netherlands and trouble with the census. There are many illustrations and a surprisingly large number of photographs.

Included in the book are numerous newsletters which Joan had translated into English (from High Dutch, because Afrikaans was only a spoken language at that time) and she read excerpts from these out when the said papers were interspersed amongst other topics.

The lecture is available in the Zoom library on the website
http://samilitaryhistory.org/zoomlib.html

A website containing the full digitised version of the book is available.

Let scribe@samilitaryhistory.org know in order to be sent an invitation to the next ZOOM meeting.

Our next zoom lecture will be on Thursday 10th March starting at 19h30

Speaker: Errol Back-Cunningham

Subject: The South African Motorcyclist Corps in East Africa during WWI.

Next zoominar will be on Monday 14 March 2022 starting at 19h30
Speaker: Robin Smith
Subject: The escape of the German warships Goeben and Breslau in the Mediterranean in 1941.

Approximately 200 of our members receive announcements of forthcoming meetings and are invited to join the meetings. We wish to encourage more of those who are missing out to become involved.

All you need is a computer, OR A CELLPHONE, and a data connection and you can become part of the meetings. You will need to contact the Society to be added to the invite list and then you are all fitted out. You then click on the link in the invitation just before the meeting starts and it will hook you up to join the meetings.

The beneficial side-effect of becoming Zoominati are that with your new found knowledge and experience, you can start Zooming with friends and family all over the world using the same facilities.

This has been sent to all members who paid during 2021. Most members whose copies were posted have already received them.

Members with an interesting presentation on any aspect of military history are sought for ZOOMINARS and ZOOMeetings. A nominal 30-40 minute lecture, supported by Power Point or similar slides / photographs, but not video, is required.

The Gedenkboek is a book of memories that was written by the Boer prisoners about their activities during their imprisonment on St Helena during the Anglo Boer War. The entire book was written in Dutch but has been translated to English and is available for members to access for information and research on the website.

It is obvious in reading the book, that there are two sides to most stories. This one gives the story from the Boer perspective, with their limited access to news from outside due to an efficient censorship process put in place by the English.

It is a magnificent book to read, with the newsletters detailing activities such as sports events, concerts, sword fighting and their efforts to raise money for the Widows and Orphans.

Particularly look at the newsletters and the Treaty and Census issues.

We have tried to keep the website such that it reflects exactly what is in the book. However we are adding an addendum that includes other Boer newsletters that were not in the original scrapbook and fill in some gaps.

All the original Dutch documents are included on the website for researchers.

The link is at
http://samilitaryhistory.org/lnkgedenksboekr.html

Read the book - you will enjoy it!!

We are advised that Tim Waudby, sadly, passed away on 16 February. He regularly attended meetings and had given us several interesting lectures, including about the Burma Campaign in WWII and the FW190.

He had celebrated his 100th birthday on 18th January.

Eastern Cape details contact    Malcolm Kinghorn    041-373-4469    culturev@lantic.net

Gauteng details contact    Joan Marsh     010-237-0676    joan@rfidradar.com

KwaZulu-Natal details contact    Charles Whiteing     082-555-4689    charlesw2@absamail.co.za