It began with an action that reverberated around the world. It would have been a remarkable adventure had General de Groot done it alone, but it so happened that two newspapermen, a Frenchman and an American, hearing of the dissolution of the commandos now that the war was over, sought out old De Groot, thinking that he would provide a colorful story: the old veteran of the Great Trek who had fought first as a general, finally as a mere private. Also, since he had long ago been one of the heroes at Majuba, his return to civil life would be interesting to older readers.
But when they found De Groot and asked their first battery of questions about the impending surrender, he looked at them in amazement. ‘Can you men ride horses?’
‘We can.’
‘Are you afraid of bullets?’
‘Like everyone.’
‘Good, because I don’t like heroes. Ride with me and see how we surrender.’
He had regrouped with ninety men, mostly from the old Venloo Commando, but including sixteen older burghers from other districts who had little to go back to and wanted a chance to twist old Kitchener’s tail. They had fine ponies and, of course, the usual complement of black retainers. They also had two wagons carrying three of the wives, and when the reporters saw Sybilla de Groot, in her sixties, they gasped.
‘What’s she doing here?’
‘I don’t go to war without my wife.’
‘But the war’s over.’
‘Only the preliminaries.’
When the newspapermen finally grasped De Groot’s plan of action, they were shocked both at the boldness and at the fact that a man nearly seventy should have concocted it.
‘We want to give old Kitchener a signal that his war is still under way. He thinks he took over to receive salutes and break down the camps. He has a dreadful task ahead of him, and we want you to tell him so.’
‘If you do what you threaten,’ the Frenchman said admiringly, ‘he won’t need us to tell him.’
What De Groot proposed was to swing far west of Pretoria and Johannesburg, drop down some twenty-two miles below the latter city, and cut the railway line to Cape Town. Then, when English troops were everywhere, to gallop north as he had done before, right into the heart of their strength in Johannesburg district, there to cut the line again. Then, after a forty-six-mile gallop south, to strike the line again far from the first blow. Three nights, three directions, three strikes. It was confusing even to listen to; for an English general basking in victory it would be appalling.
Far out in the veld they left the two wagons and the spare ponies. As they prepared to ride in for their insane adventure, old De Groot took off his hat, kissed his wife, and told her, ‘One day, old woman … one day it will end.’
Casually, the Boers and the two correspondents rode east, calculating so exactly that at two in the morning, when guards were sleepy, they would have time in which to blow up the Johannesburg–Cape Town railway. They accomplished this with dispatch—a wild, violent eruption filling the night—then galloped at breakneck speed right toward the heart of Johannesburg, taking cover just before dawn.
All that day they watched English troops hustling back and forth, ‘In rather a panic,’ De Groot said.
At dusk they stayed where they were, but well before midnight De Groot, Van Doorn and Micah again led a dozen burghers up to the railway, lugging a huge supply of dynamite, which they fastened to the rails, detonating it from a distance. The explosive ripped the entire rail system apart, but before the debris settled, the Venloo Commando was galloping south over back roads to their third appointment. Again they spent daylight hours watching the frustrated troops, and once more at nightfall they resumed their riding. This time they galloped till almost dawn, when De Groot said, ‘They won’t expect us this far south.’ Calling upon his same team, he had one hundred yards of rail mined, and when the early dawn was shaken with the vast outburst, throwing lengths of rail high in the air, the Boers retreated out over the veld, then far north to where Sybilla waited with the wagons.
The American reporter wrote a story which covered front pages in all states: WAR IS JUST STARTING SAYS DE GROOT. He was so factual and outlined the daring Boer strategy with such detail that the reader had to be impressed. When the report reached England a shudder passed through the nation, with editors asking soberly: WAS CELEBRATION PREMATURE?
But it was the French report that captured the world’s imagination, for it told of Sybilla waiting in the veld, of Paulus taking off his top hat before kissing her, of the unbelievable daring in riding right into English strength, and of the coolness with which De Groot and his men handled their dynamite. What caused the story to be remembered, however, was the happy phrase the Frenchman coined to describe De Groot and his mission: AVENGER OF THE VELD. It sounded better in French (Vengeur du Veld), but even in English it was telling, and its effect was reinforced by something that General de Groot had whispered on one of the night rides. ‘He told me,’ read the report, ‘that now that the gaudy battles are over, the real war begins. Having seen him in action for three Scheherazade Nights, I can believe it.’
Now the old man faced a different problem. All the adventurers wanted to join him, and the name Venloo Commando flashed across the world. It struck in the north. It appeared out of the mist in the far reaches of the Orange Free State. Newspapers fought desperately to catch photographs of Sybilla de Groot driving her old wagon, or of her husband standing beside her with his tall hat in his hand.
He had ninety men, then a hundred and fifteen, and finally the maximum he felt he could handle, with Van Doorn’s help: two hundred and twenty. They were the best riders, men who could load and fire at a gallop, and they had no reason to halt anywhere, for they could not return to their homes.
When Kitchener found to his grim dismay that the Boers did not intend to surrender, as a defeated rabble should, he became distraught and issued orders that the farms of dissident commando members be burned to the ground, their fields ravaged and their livestock driven away: ‘They may fight, but they won’t feed.’
Before he left South Africa, Lord Roberts had applied this scorched-earth policy selectively, putting to the torch only those farms known to be collaborating with the commandos, but by the time Major Frank Saltwood was transferred from Buller’s defunct command to Kitchener’s, the practice had spread. ‘I really don’t think it will have much bearing upon the burghers,’ Saltwood warned when he studied the figures, but Kitchener was adamant, and for the first time Saltwood saw the steel in this man’s fiber. Clean-shaven except for a distinctive mustache, trim, rigid, accepting no nonsense from anyone, he seemed the right man for the unpleasant task of cleaning up the few recalcitrant rebels like old Paulus de Groot.
‘Shall we burn his farm?’ an English aide asked, and before Kitchener could reply, Saltwood volunteered: ‘That would be a mistake, sir. Already the man’s a hero. Simply create more sympathy.’ When these prudent words were spoken, Lord Kitchener stared at his South African liaison, trying to assess him: Is this man to be trusted to put England’s interest first, or is he infected with local patriotism? This time, however, what he says makes sense.
‘Do not burn the De Groot farm,’ Kitchener ordered, and for the moment it was spared, but when the wily old man continued to strike at unforeseen places, making fools of the English, Kitchener became coldly furious, and although he did not yet burn De Groot’s farm, he ordered a wide swath of desolation on either side of the railway leading to Lourenço Marques. As soon as this was done, the Venloo Commando swept in and cut the railway in four places, to the intense delight of the French correspondent who accompanied the raid.
This was important, because the press of the world, especially the cartoonists, turned savagely against Great Britain, lampooning both her and Kitchener as murderers and bullies. Hardly a day passed that the influential papers in Amsterdam, Berlin and New York did not crucify Kitchener, showing him as a tyrant burning the food needed for starving Boer women and children. When one of th
e noble lord’s English aides saw a selection of the worst cartoons, he grumbled, ‘Damned few of those great fat Dutch women are starving.’ But the corrosive propaganda continued, until it appeared that the entire world was opposed to England’s performance in South Africa, as indeed it was, save for countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which retained legal ties to the mother country.
The hero in this ceaseless barrage of pro-Boer propaganda had to be General de Groot—Vengeur du Veld and a cartoonist’s delight. He was an old man in a frock coat and top hat, and he was accompanied by a woman whose stately demeanor under all circumstances had won the admiration of all newsmen. Together they formed an irresistible pair, especially when an American photographer caught them holding hands beside their battered wagon. In London a brazen Cockney paperboy bought himself a stack of white envelopes, labeled them PORTRAIT OF GENERAL DE GROOT and sold them for sixpence. When the purchaser opened the envelope to find nothing, the cheeky lad cried, to the delight of those in on the joke, ‘Damn me, Guv’nor, ‘e got away again!’
Who was chasing De Groot in these eight frustrating months of 1901? Instead of the troops going home at Christmas, 1900, as Lord Roberts had said they would, some two hundred thousand had to stay on. To them, at one time or another, were added another two hundred forty-eight thousand, not all of whom were in the field at one time. De Groot had two hundred twenty men, but of course there were other equally insolent commandos operating; however, the disparity between forces was both enormous and enraging. The vast numbers of English troops ought to have been able to catch the commandos, but they didn’t; old De Groot and his wife ambled their way right through the traps set to catch them.
At one point when the summer heat was most unkind to the imported troops unaccustomed to the highveld, the following units, among many others, were striving to catch the Venloo Commando: from England, the Coldstream Guards; from Scotland, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders; from Ireland, the heroic Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers; from Wales, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers; from Canada, Lord Strathcona’s Horse; from Australia, the Imperial Bushmen; from New Zealand, the Rough Riders; from Tasmania, the Mobile Artillery; from India, Lumsden’s Horse; from Ceylon, the Mounted Infantry; from Burma, the Mounted Rifles; from Gibraltar, the 1st Manchesters; from Mauritius, the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry; from Egypt, the 1st Royal Fusiliers; and from Crete, the 2nd Rifle Brigade.
Earlier in the war the Boers, too, had help from outside. Adventurers from all nations, believing themselves to be fighting for liberty against aggression, had flocked to South Africa, and one important French colonel died in their ranks. There was an Irish regiment always eager to take a thrust at the English; a German and a Hollander contingent. Most tragic was a volunteer unit composed of one hundred and twenty-one idealistic Scandinavians, mostly Norwegian; in one of the earliest battles of the war almost the entire force was exterminated.
Such events were brilliantly reported, especially in the English press, for in addition to Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling came out to write about the conflict, championing the English cause in prose and verse; Edgar Wallace was a frenetic legman; Conan Doyle was afire with patriotism; H. W. Nevinson showed patrician restraint, and Richard Harding Davis the opposite; Banjo Patterson, who would become Australia’s Poet Laureate with ‘Waltzing Matilda,’ did excellent reporting; and in the closing days quiet John Buchan looked things over. A strange assortment of visitors filtered in as observers; Prince Kuhio, heir to the throne of Hawaii, appeared one day, and as the scion of a family always strongly pro-English, was invited to the front, where he pulled the lanyard of a big gun, firing his blast at the hidden Boers.
In August 1901, English pressure became so powerful that the Boer command decreed that wives must no longer ride with their husbands, and on a bleak hillside Paulus de Groot had to inform his companion since childhood that she must leave. She did not want to go; that mean farm at Vrymeer was much less attractive to her than riding with her husband into battle. She had no fear of war’s rigors; she wanted to share all things with Paulus, even though she suspected that sudden death or slow disillusion must be their fate. When Paulus remained firm, she became disconsolate.
‘You are my life,’ she said.
‘It’s the others. They made the decision. You must go home.’
‘Where you are is home.’
‘The rides will grow more difficult. The lines tighter.’
Thinking that this might be the last time she would ever see him, she knew that she must not cry. Instead she broke into an infectious chuckle. ‘Remember when we were married? After the last battle with the Zulu? And the dominee said in a loud voice, “Does any man know why this man and woman should not be wed?” ’
‘Good God, what a moment!’ the general cried, and then he, too, laughed.
‘And Balthazar Bronk, always a troublemaker for other people, shouted that the marriage was forbidden. That we had been raised as brother and sister.’
They stood silent on the dark veld, and then she took his hand and whispered, ‘You were never my brother, Paulus. After that night at Blauuwkrantz, I loved you always. And I always will.’
De Groot tried to speak, but no words came.
‘Get sleep when you can,’ she said, and they walked to the old wagon. He kissed her and helped her up, and she started up the hill.
Paulus remained holding his hat as she climbed to the crest. He did not expect her to look back, nor did she, but when she was gone, he prayed: Almighty God, forget the battles for a while and look after that woman.
When De Groot saw the first one, he shuddered. It was Lord Kitchener’s invention for ending the guerilla war. It was perched beside a vulnerable stretch of railway track, a device of admirable simplicity. It was made of corrugated iron and looked like one of those circular Spanish barns called silos, except that it was squatter. It consisted of two iron cylinders, one fitted inside the other, with enough room inside to house armed patrolmen. In the narrow space between the two cylinders rocks and debris had been jammed to give both protection and insulation. The top was enclosed by a conical roof, so that from a distance the contraption resembled a heavy, blunt cigar jammed into the earth.
Since the new device was obviously lethal and intended to halt the depredations of commandos, De Groot wanted to know as much about them as possible, and a man from the Carolina Commando, who had seen one after it had been blown up by a large force of dynamite, told all the burghers, ‘Very difficult to destroy. Manned by seven soldiers. Three little beds. Place to cook. And some have telephones to the next blockhouse.’
As the commando looked down the tracks they had expected to dynamite, they saw six more of the blockhouses, cheap to build, easy to erect, and effective in breaking the open veld into manageable units out of which a mounted commando would have difficulty in moving.
‘Look!’ Jakob cried, and at the far end of the line of blockhouses, soldiers were stringing barbed wire from one house to the next. ‘Kitchener’s building a fence across Africa.’
This was correct. Goaded by ridicule, the commander had given orders that the railway system be protected by these new-style blockhouses, and when the first hundred proved successful, he called for eight thousand more, some of them built of stone. Once a commando found itself driven against one of the fortified barriers, its retreat could be so cut off that capture seemed inevitable.
Not for Paulus de Groot. When he was trapped the first time, in southern Transvaal, there was no escape; barbed wire flourished everywhere, but the English troops still had to find him. At the darkest moment he told Van Doorn, ‘No army in the world ever found a way to keep all its enlisted men awake. Somewhere there’s a blockhouse sound asleep.’ He sent Micah to test the line for a weak spot, but when the Zulu scout crawled back he reported: ‘All manned. All awake.’
‘Try again,’ De Groot growled, and this time the scout isolated one iron fort in which all seven men seemed to be asleep. With a swiftness that
amazed some of the commandos, De Groot, Van Doorn and Nxumalo crept up to the house, worked their way under the barbed wire, and rushed the loopholes four feet above the ground, pouring in a deadly fire, killing all the occupants. Within minutes the Venloo Commando were cutting the wires that had restrained them, and after they had regained the open veld, one newspaperman quoted De Groot: ‘Lord Blockhead’s little toy houses cause us no worry.’
When cartoons across the world showed the noble lord playing with blocks while old General de Groot slipped away behind him, an enraged headquarters in Pretoria commanded: ‘That man must be brought in.’
Regiments from eleven nations applied pressure, and once again the old man was trapped within a barbed-wire hedge, with Canadians, Irishmen, Australians and Welshmen closing in. This time he adopted a simple device: rounding up all available cattle from unburned farms, he stampeded them toward a spot between two blockhouses, and as the frightened animals piled up against the barbed wire, they simply carried it away, while the Venloo Commando swept off to freedom yet again.
This time the cartoonists were merciless: ‘LIKE ULYSSES …’ And they showed De Groot and his men tied to the bellies of the steers as they galloped past a sleeping Polyphemus who looked exactly like Lord Kitchener.
‘All of them!’ he thundered. ‘I want all of them thrown into camps.’ So his men moved out to corral every woman and child belonging to the fighting Boers. They would be herded into camps of concentration, to keep them from feeding and supporting their menfolk. It was pointed out to Kitchener that there were already more than fifty thousand refugees in camps, many there at the behest of Boers themselves, for they had been unable to survive on farms without their men. ‘I don’t care if there are fifty thousand more!’ stormed Kitchener.