August is Women’s month!
Thank you to our ladies; without you SAMHSEC would be a drab affair indeed!
In appreciation for our ladies’ contributions, ladies have preference with SAMHSEC’s August speaker slots.
SAMHSEC meeting 14 July 2025
Helmoed Romer Heitman discussed German special operations in World War 2.
During the invasion of Poland, special forces were deployed to protect Romanian oil fields and chrome ore shipments from Turkey.
Special forces seized key points and cut telephone lines during the German invasions of Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. In Belgium, special forces captured Fort Eben Emael, key bridges and infrastructure to prevent flooding. In France, special forces captured the offices of the French Intelligence Services in Paris. Special forces secured vital German interests in the Balkans, including oil refineries and key transport routes.
After the Italian Armistice, a special operation succeeded in rescuing Mussolini. In March 1945, a special force based in Jersey conducted a raid on the port of
Granville in liberated France.
Helmoed’s presentation is in the SAMHS zoom library.
SAMHSEC RPC meeting 28 July 2025
The 28 July RPC marked the 5th anniversary of our Request the Pleasure of your Company (RPC) meetings on the last Monday of the month. RPC meetings were started in July 2019 to provide an additional means of communication between
members during the Covid lockdown. Average attendance to date is 34. Thank you to André Crozier for coordinating the speaker roster, to our speakers and members for attending.
In SAMHSEC’s RPC meeting on 30 June 2025, Robin Smith presented parts 1 and 2 of a 3-part series on relations between Britain and the Boers. Parts 1 and 2 covered the period between Britain’s Annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 and Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Part 3 in session 1 on 28 July covered the period between 1897 and the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in October 1899.
The 3 parts are in Robin’s summary below:
In 1895 Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the Third Earl of Salisbury became Prime Minister of Great Britain. He and President Kruger were soon at loggerheads and by 1899,
actually at war.
The Anglo-Boer War of 1899 was the second hot shooting war between Britain and the Boers; the first was in 1880-81. Conditions in the Boer Republic of the Transvaal precipitated an annexation by Britain. Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Carnarvon sent Sir Theophilus Shepstone to announce the annexation in Church Square, Pretoria, in April 1877. He was greeted enthusiastically at first, but the Boers soon came to regret their loss of
independence. The result was a rebellion and the First Anglo-Boer War when the Boers took up arms. After the Boer success at Amajuba in 1881, British Prime Minister William Gladstone chose to negotiate rather than recover their lost colony. This rankled with the British Army as a blot on their record.
President Kruger, as he now was, twice went to London to have the annexation annulled. But Britain would not give up their paramountcy over southern Africa. They maintained their right of suzerainty and the authority to regulate the foreign affairs of the Boer Republic in spite of the fact that the word ‘suzerainty’, but not the intent, was struck from the 1884 London Convention.
The discovery of gold in Barberton and on the Witwatersrand in 1886 changed the Transvaal from an impoverished farming community into a thriving industrial
entity. Kruger was concerned that the Boers were outnumbered by the Uitlanders, mostly British miners who had come to dig out this treasure. Thus, they were
refused franchise rights and were unable even to elect their own municipal government in Johannesburg. Petitions addressed to the President were ignored.
Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of Cape Colony, considered that the two Boer Republics obstructed his scheme to make Africa British from the Cape to Cairo. He supported the Uitlanders and their request for civic rights. Rhodes plotted with Secretary of State for Colonies Joseph Chamberlain to foment a rising in Johannesburg. The plan was for the Uitlanders to rise in rebellion and for Dr
Leander Jameson, Administrator of Rhodesia, to ride from Bechuanaland with 500 men to their rescue. It was a fiasco. Rhodes had sent a cancellation order to Jameson which arrived too late – he had already set out. Rhodes was forced to resign after Jameson and his raiders were captured. They were turned over to the British authorities and a British court gave them only light sentences.
The appointment of Sir Alfred Milner as High Commissioner and Governor of the Cape in 1897 was at a time when relations between Britain and the South African
Republic of the Transvaal were severely strained after the Jameson Raid of 1896.
It was also the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee to commemorate her reign of 60 years. There was a huge procession on Tuesday morning 22 June of 42,000 soldiers, the largest military force ever assembled in London, to the
ceremony on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral.
They were drawn from the many territories of the Empire to emphasise the breadth of her dominions, which covered a quarter of the world’s land surface and a fifth of mankind. In 1897, Britain’s Imperial progress was an object of global
awe and envy. The Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury was present. He had been guiding the destinies of the Empire for nine of the last twelve years. He was to carry on the task for a further five years. That day the Imperial sun shone brightly, but Lord Salisbury’s task was to keep it from setting.
President Kruger’s State Secretary, Willem Leyds was sent to Europe to renew negotiations with European powers. The 28 year old Colonial barrister, Jan Smuts was appointed State Secretary in his place.
On Sunday 18 December 1898, Tom Edgar, a boilermaker employed by E.W. Tarry’s Engineering Works, was shot dead by a Boer policeman named Jones. Jones was arrested and released on bail of £200, which caused a storm of indignation in Johannesburg. Petitions were drawn up and Milner decided that one containing 21,684 signatures and addressed to the Queen should be submitted as that
petition showed that the Uitlanders had substantial grounds for their complaints.
Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain suggested that a personal meeting between Milner and Kruger offered the best chance of an amicable settlement. They met in Bloemfontein on 31 May 1899. President Steyn was an excellent host.
Milner suggested that a more liberal policy towards the Uitlanders would greatly diminish British interference. Kruger responded that his independence would be
threatened if he granted too much. The Transvaal had been forced to take special precautions to avoid being swamped. Discussions continued for three more days with Milner remaining firm on the question of a five year residence franchise for the Uitlanders. Kruger’s response was “I will not hand over my country to strangers”. Milner then broke off talks saying that there was no requirement for action from either side as a result of the meeting.
Britain renewed a formal alliance with long-time ally Portugal, thus preventing the import of arms and ammunition through Delagoa Bay. Germany was offered authority over Samoa with America, with Britain withdrawing from the tripartite authority. Germany agreed not to meddle in Transvaal’s affairs in exchange.
Diplomacy continued, but finally on 9 October 1899, an ultimatum threatening war in 14 days was submitted to the British Resident in Pretoria, William Conyngham Greene. Lord Salisbury’s response was that Her Majesty’s Government deemed the peremptory demands impossible to discuss. Salisbury told the House of Lords that “If war must come, we had better take it at a time when we are not quarrelling
with anyone else”.
Robin’s presentation, all 3 parts, is in the SAMHS Zoom library.
In session 2, Malcolm Kinghorn discussed Rudyard Kipling’s poem Ford o’ Kabul River, which first appeared in The National Observer in November 1890. The poem recalls an incident during the 1878-1880 Afghan War that would probably
otherwise have been forgotten. The poem suggests that the incident happened at Kabul, but it was at Jalalabad, which is about 130 kms east of Kabul.
The 10th (Prince of Wales's Own) Royal Hussars had been in Afghanistan since the beginning of the First Anglo-Sikh War and were in Jalalabad by early February 1879.
With his headquarters at Jalalabad, General Sam Browne found himself under pressure from several fiercely independent tribes and decided to send two columns
to deal with the threat.
Brigadier General Macpherson's column was divided in two, with the infantry and artillery marching out before the cavalry, to advance against the rear of the enemy, while two cavalry squadrons, one each of the 10th Hussars and the 11th Bengal Lancers, would attack the enemy from the front. The cavalry rode out at 2130 on 31 March to cross the Kabul River 4 kms from camp.
The ford was generally considered safe, with a 10 metre crossing to a small island and water less than a metre deep. The next part of the crossing was much wider,
the more so due to the indirect line required to keep to the shallows. The river was running strongly.
The Lancers led the advance. The Hussars were ordered to keep close behind the baggage mules, which were behind the Lancers. With each man tending to move slightly downstream of the man in front, by the time the baggage mules were in
the second part of the ford, they were off course.
The Hussars blindly followed them into deep water and disaster ensued. Horses panicked and turned, weighed down with packs and saddles. The men fared no better with their heavy riding boots, and full ammunition pouches, swords and
carbines slung over their shoulders, kicked by the flailing animals in water up to 5 metres deep.
Alarm was raised at the camp when several riderless horses galloped in. Soldiers rushed down to the ford to see what could be done, which was not much by that time, other than lighting a bonfire on the island to aid visibility.
The following morning a search was conducted. Many of the dead cavalrymen had been severely injured by their horses. One officer and three troopers were found alive on a sandbank in the river. Nineteen bodies were recovered out of forty-six lost. Thirteen horses were drowned.
On 3 April, the nineteen men were buried in a communal grave in the British cemetery at Jalalabad. Lieutenant Harford's body was found a few days later. The only missing item of his equipment was his sword, which was found 1895 in the roof beams of an Afghan hut during the Chitral expedition.
The recording is in the Zoom Video library.
SAMHSEC meeting 11 August 2025
Barbara Ann Kinghorn is to tell us about Harnessing Art…
SAMHSEC Requests the Pleasure of your Company to talk about military history
on 25 August 2025
RPC meetings are opportunities for you to share your knowledge of a military history subject or book with fellow military historians. Presentations should last
approximately 15 minutes to allow time for sharing the pleasure of one another’s company. You can do any number of RPC presentations per year. Please contact André at andrecrozier@gmail.com if you want to share your knowledge.
SAMHS website www.samilitaryhistory.org
For interest: the site is now delivering over 8 million documents per year, up from 2-3 million a year ago. A full article or video is one document.
SAMHSEC says “Thanks, Mike!”
SAMHSEC
Chairman: Malcolm Kinghorn culturev@lantic.net
Secretary: Stephen Bowker stephen@stephenbowker.co.za
Speaker coordinator: André Crozier andrecrozier@gmail.com
Scribe: vacant
Field trip coordinator: vacant