Monday, 4 April 2016

Beauty along our roads from a distant turbulent tragic past

Cosmos beauty along our roads

Today we are sharing our blog with Andrew Barlow.
He was born in 1931 and he attended school Wartburg Kirchdorf School.
He is a full-time novelist, historical and current affairs analyst with a love of coffee, horses and cats.
He was the Head Regional Magistrate of South African Department of Justice. Andrew and me at a gathering.

Where does one start with a story which still raises deep seated emotions?
Please read more about this "historical" flowers here

Along many of our roads all over South Africa the sides of many of our roads and often in the veld for long distances the Cosmos flowers are to be seen in Autumn.

They are beautiful and are in several colours.

Many motorists are so captivated by their beauty that they stop and look and and are entranced by the calm serenity and prettiness of these flowers.

Nowadays only a very few people know where and how these flowers came into the country.

The magic of Autumn in South Africa

During 1899 to 1902 the South African War was fought between the two Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal on the one side and the British Empire on the other side.

The total Afrikaner population of the two republics was about two hundred and fifty thousand people.

The British High Command believed that it would need only infantry to wage the war but soon found that against a highly mobile force of Boer Commandos mounted on their Boer Perde it needed ever increasing horse mounted soldiers.

Apart from the horses available in the country it had to import many thousands of horses from all the colonies and from other countries such as the United States and Europe and especially from the Argentine.
British troopers needed horses during the Boer War.
Those horses were sent, via ship, to South Africa.

Horses bound for war, transported via double stalls on a shade-covered ship's deck.
(Horses on Board Ship: A Guide to Their Management, by Captain M. Horace Hayes)

To feed these horses huge amounts of fodder had to be imported.

During the course of that war far more than five hundred thousand horses were used. Of these more than three hundred thousand died.

They died from sickness, from being killed in battles and skirmishes and in the case of the Commandos from being ridden to death.

In the fodder imported from Argentine were cosmos and khaki bush.
This photo is the khaki bush in bloom

Cosmos

Wherever the British horses moved across the country, all over the Free State, the Cape Colony and the Transvaal the seeds of these plants germinated and grew.

Along our roads, along many of our roads and in large parts of our veld these flowers are a beautiful reminder of a vicious war.

In Port Elizabeth there is a monument to these horses. Of a soldier holding a bucket of water for his horse.

Whenever I have seen that monument I have had great difficulty to hide my tears. Tears of sorrow that the most noble of all animals has had to die in a senseless human war.

The Horse Memorial (Cape Road, Port Elizabeth, South Africa) bears the words: "greatness of a nation consists not so much in the number of its people or the extent of its territory as in the extent and justice of its compassion" "erected by public subscription in recognition of the services of the gallant animals which perished in the anglo boer war 1899-1902"

If you pass the Cosmos Flowers along our roads salute the horses who brought this flower to this country.

The pink and white patches on the wheat fields

Dancing in the wind

Thank you for taking this trip along memory lane
Till next time greetings from South Africa
Sandra

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

The Castles of the veld

Blockhouses that look like fanciful little castles of the South African War in 1899-1902

They were all intended to keep the ever-mobile Boers from accessing British supply lines.

On a road trip through South Africa you'll often come across these little castles,

standing in a field or on the outskirts of a town or on a hill overlooking a highway.

Life in a blockhouse generally consisted of a few British soldiers under a hot tin roof.

More than 90% of their time was spent in boredom.

The soldiers kept themselves busy with gardening and the cleaning of equipment.

Then there was that 10% of white-hot action, when the Boers came visiting.

For the purposes of this blog post a 'masonry blockhouse' is a structure of mortared

stonework or concrete, one to three storeys in height, with a roof of timber and

corrugated iron, with rifle ports, windows and doors protected by loopholed

steel plates and with or without steel machicouli galleries.

A machicouli had a ‎Post-medieval use for through objects onto the enemy

It took 30 Royal Engineers all of 30 days, on average, to cut the stone and
construct one at a cost of £900.

Royal Engineers built a total of 441 masonry blockhouses through out South Africa during the War.

We would like to introduce you to the Reservoir Blockhouse at Harrismith

The Reservoir Blockhouse exhibit a gabled roof, with vertical corrugated cladding on the gable ends and the roof is cut back over the machicouli galleries. There is loopholes on each side of the entrance at first floor level. The small monopitch roofs and vertical cladding covering the galleries on the Reservoir Blockhouse at Harrismith represent another original variant to the design.

The oldest photo we could find of the Reservoir Blockhouse after completion

A photo taken during the War of the Blockhouse and its occupants.
They kept animals for companion and planted gardens
You can see this soldier and his dog

Today the blockhouse is a National Monument and it can be reached by foot in the

Platberg Eco Reserve. It is almost a 2 km walk