by Allan Gordon | Nov 19, 2020 | Birthday, South African War 1899 - 1902
Lucas Johannes Meyer was born on 19 November 1846. He was the grandson of a Voortrekker leader and spent his early life in northern Natal. At the Battle of Ingogo, during the First Anglo-Boer War he was badly wounded and didn’t take part in the Battle of Majuba. After...
by Allan Gordon | Nov 19, 2020 | Battles, South African War 1899 - 1902
Balmoral is a town and railway station on the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay railway line. The object of the planned attack by Ben Viljoen and his commando was to capture the gun in the fort. On capturing the fort, which was manned by the East Kent regiment, no gun was found....
by Allan Gordon | Nov 14, 2020 | Deaths, South African War 1899 - 1902
Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts died of pneumonia on 14 November 1914 while visiting troops fighting in France at the beginning of the First World War. He was 82 years old. Roberts fought in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and was awarded the Victoria Cross for...
by Allan Gordon | Nov 7, 2020 | Birthday, South African War 1899 - 1902
Lieutenant-General Bindon Blood was born on 7 November 1842 in Jedburgh, Scotland. He is reported to have been related to Colonel Thomas Blood who attempted to steal the Crown Jewels in 1671. Blood was commissioned in 1860 in the Royal Engineers and spent some time in...
by Allan Gordon | Nov 6, 2020 | Battles, South African War 1899 - 1902
Doornkraal was a farm 10 km south of Bothaville in the Northern Orange Free State. The British forces were on the trail of Boer General de Wet who late in October 1900 was heading south from Potchefstroom. Three British columns were in pursuit with the one under the...
by Allan Gordon | Nov 5, 2020 | Deaths, South African War 1899 - 1902
Shortly after the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914, in poor health and suffering from depression, Colonel Robert George Kekewich took his own life at the age of 60 on 5 November 1914. He had been invalided from his command and hospitalized. During the South African War...
