Clare Houston - An Unquiet Place

Alistair grasped this shift in conversation away from himself. ‘To someone local?’

‘Maybe,’ said Douglas, a smile curving his mouth.

‘Someone local to the car following us?’ said Alistair, raising an eyebrow.

‘Maybe.’ Douglas’s smile now widened into a grin.

‘You do know that Kathryn’s not a simple case? There’s a husband somewhere. The twins. If you’re going to get back into the dating game, she’s not the one to play around with.’

Douglas’s good humour didn’t falter. ‘Do I look like a player?’ Alistair glanced across at him, choking on a laugh when he saw Douglas’s exaggerated leer. Douglas composed his face and continued: ‘Anyway, we’re talking about you.’

Alistair looked away. ‘It’s complicated. Hannah’s not a simple case either. She’s not an open book.’

‘Your book,’ said Douglas, ‘is glued shut, my friend.’

To Alistair’s relief, the brown sign to Surrender Hill appeared on the side of the road, and they slowed to turn into the grassy field which was signposted as parking. Kathryn followed. As soon as her car had pulled to a stop, the twins piled out and galloped up the slope. They made straight for a stone plinth with a brass plaque cemented onto the top. The children ran their fingers over the raised letters and traced the circular medallion marking a national monument. Climbing onto the plinth, they both balanced on the top, turning in a circle and looking around at the grassy hillside. The sky met spectacular sandstone formations and hilly grassland in all directions.

Alistair pulled a wide-brimmed cricket hat from behind the seat of his Hilux. He unlocked a farm gate with a key from his pocket and led the others up the hill. The sun was hot on their backs but a slight breeze lifted the heaviness. The children followed, picking grass and chasing each other to and fro. Halfway up the slope, Alistair turned, his voice carrying on the breeze.

‘Let me give you a bit of background.’ He cleared his throat. ‘By July 1900, the war had been going on for nine months. The Boers had won significant battles in the early stages but British troops were pouring into the country and most of the towns in the Free State were occupied. The British General Hunter began advancing south towards Bethlehem. The great Boer General De Wet decided to abandon Bethlehem, and took to the hills of the Brandwater Basin.’ Alistair stopped to pick up a stick and sketch a diagram in a patch of sand. ‘Brandwater Basin is a kind of horseshoe shape – we are standing on the right prong, looking inwards.’ He stood up again, and pointed with his stick at the mountains surrounding them in every direction. ‘The Witteberg to the west, the Drakensberg behind us, and the Rooiberg, which we are looking at. This basin is a natural fortress where the president of the Free State thought his commandos could rest. General Hunter soon made it a giant trap. There are only six ways in and out of this basin, some of them only narrow paths. General Hunter planned to take each pass, trapping the Boer army inside.’

The others, who were now sitting in the grass, looked around with new insight at the view.

‘De Wet, astute as he was, realised the danger. He divided the commandos and planned to get everyone out over a couple of days, in different directions. He took President Steyn and two and a half thousand men, and escaped on the first night. He managed to get four hundred and sixty wagons and carts within a mile of a British camp, moving in silence.’

Kathryn shook her head. ‘That’s incredible.’

Alistair continued: ‘The problem, though, was that without his decisive strong leadership, the Boer generals left behind began to fight among themselves. The Boer leadership model was far flatter and less structured than the British military. Old General Prinsloo assumed command, but other Boers supported Paul Roux instead. They wasted time, the idiots, and soon it was too late. The British captured the first, second, and third passes. Unsurprisingly, Boer morale dropped horribly.

‘General Hunter was just brilliant. De Wet would have been the only match for him, but he was long gone. Hunter feinted, by taking a column and heading for Naauwpoort Nek – you know, the pass near Leliehoek?’ Alistair pointed his stick towards a mountain range in the distance. ‘The Boers quickly split their force to send reinforcements there. At the last moment, Hunter veered right and moved on Retief’s Nek, catching the Boers by surprise and bombarding their position. Major Generals Macdonald and Hamilton captured Naauwpoort Nek and Golden Gate. By 24 July, the basin was closed and the Boers were trapped. They had been completely outmanoeuvred. They took up a position on this farm, then called Slaapkranz, and the British met them here on 28 July. They blitzed the hillsides with artillery.’

Hannah looked around her, the breeze lifting a quiet rustle down the slope. The picture of that battle was strangely vivid, the assaulting roar of shells pounding the earth and rifle fire scattering the hillside. The contrast of that day and this heightened her senses, and it was not difficult to imagine a sharp smell of cordite burning her nostrils.

‘The next day, Prinsloo offered the surrender of all commandos in the basin. This angered the commandos loyal to De Wet and Roux, and one and a half thousand men managed to escape with their horses. De Wet was furious when he heard of the surrender. If the generals had followed his instructions, things might have been very different.’

Hannah thought of Rachel’s account of the loss of Naauwpoort Nek; of the resulting influx of British and the farm burning. Could that have been avoided?

Alistair began to speak again. ‘On 31 July, the Scots Guards, the Royal Fusiliers, and the Royal Irish stood in formation on this hillside as a guard of honour to receive the Boers. They unfurled the Union Jack and waited for the Boers to appear. The Boer generals Prinsloo, De Villiers, and Crowther appeared first, tall and upright on their horses. Then came the commandos. Proud men, dressed in dusty civilian clothes with slouch hats, they approached, throwing down rifles and ammunition in front of the British. And the men kept coming, lines of men on horses, winding down the steep slopes. Over four thousand men, including elderly men and young boys surrendered across the basin.’ Alistair turned to face the others, emotion clear on his face.

‘A British soldier wrote that the Boers halted in the road – and we’re talking about that road,’ he said, pointing to his left. ‘Imagine that road without the cutting. Dry, rutted gravel heading over the crest of this hill. An older man, tall and composed with a sandy beard, rides along the line of Boers, shaking hands here and there. When he reaches the head of the column, the men raise their hands in a kind of salute and say, as a goodbye, just the word, “Generaal”. It was General Prinsloo saying goodbye.

‘Two million rounds of ammunition and thousands of Boer rifles were burnt, and it is said that the bare patches of earth, which you can see near the plinth over there’ – he pointed to the memorial plaque near the cars – ‘are where those piles of metal melted into the ground, making the soil barren for over a hundred years.

‘The prisoners were marched to the closest towns and put on trains to Cape Town. From there, they were shipped to POW camps overseas to return only when the war was done. Many would die there, and the rest would not know if their wives and children were still alive or not. Because, of course, now began the awful process of civilian internment into the camps.’

Hannah looked up at Alistair from where she sat in the grass. She had been gripped by his narrative, transported back to the battle which had raged in that very spot. Her skin raised to goosebumps, though the sun was warm on her skin. ‘So the war carried on after the surrender?’ she asked.