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Part III—Opposing Centre and Periphery

Shoot Straight, You Bastards! Australians in the Boer War: the Breaker Morant Case

Martine Piquet

Résumé

Harry Harbord “Breaker” Morant (?1864–1902) was court-martialled and executed in February 1902 for killing prisoners during the Boer War. English-born, he had migrated to Australia in 1883 or 1884 and made a reputation for the two oddly juxtaposed aptitudes of taming wild horses (which earned him his nickname) and writing bush ballads. When the second Boer War of 1899–1902 broke out, he joined the South Australian Second Contingent and later joined the Bushveldt Carbineers in the rank of Lieutenant. His squadron was dispatched to the Spelongen region to counter the action of Boer commandos. Between July and September 1901 the detachment summarily executed a number of Boer prisoners, in accordance, they claimed, with Lord Kitchener’s orders “to make no prisoners”—which the British authorities denied were ever given. The fairness of the court-martial has since been disputed and, rightly or wrongly, Morant has become a folk hero in Australia, as a symbol of the reckless defiance of the underdog towards the authorities. This article tells the story of this singular episode of the Second Boer War and reflects on a few aspects of its perception in Australia.

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  • 1 The word “commando” will be used in its Australian acceptation, cf. The Macquarie Dictionary (Third (...)

1At 5 a.m. on 27 February 1902, Lieutenant George Witton was taken away from the Old Pretoria Jail, South Africa, to serve life imprisonment. A little later, Lieutenants Peter Handcock and Harry “Breaker” Morant were brought before a firing squad from Cameron Highlanders. They and four other officers had been court-martialled by the British Army for the alleged summary execution, between August and September 1901, of a Boer commando1 named Visser, a group of eight PWOs, a German missionary, Reverend Predikant Hesse, and another group of three Boer commandos—which they justified on the grounds that they had merely followed Lord Kitchener’s orders “to make no prisoners”. Handcock and Morant refused to be blindfolded. Looking straight at the firing party, Morant is reputed to have defiantly called out the famous last words: “Shoot straight, you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!”

2The debate over the fairness of the court-martial has since made those men symbols of the way in which Australians were treated as somehow lesser than the British—as they were the only colonial or British soldiers executed in the Boer War—, and has turned the colourful larrikin character “Breaker’ Morant into something of a folk hero. The story of this singular episode of the Second Boer War has been the subject of several academic studies, but also a source of inspiration for a number of fictional works, in particular the celebrated 1980 Australian feature film by Bruce Beresford, “Breaker” Morant.

  • 2 Morant’s talents for taming wild horses established his fame in the eastern Australian colonies as (...)
  • 3 Vid. Nick Bleszynski, Shoot Straight, You Bastards: The Truth Behind the Killing of “Breaker” Moran (...)
  • 4 Vid. Margaret Carnegie and Frank Shields, In Search of Breaker Morant: Balladist and Bushveldt Carb (...)

3The accounts, however, vary greatly as reliable sources are scarce and much evidence has in fact vanished, among which the court-martial proceedings. Uncertainty begins with Morant’s background. If “The Breaker”2 is famous for the manner of his death, not much is known about his origins. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of Admiral Sir Digby Morant, which the latter always denied, but which is thought plausible by some.3 Other sources point to a less gallant lineage and name his parents as Edwin Murrant, master of the Union Workhouse in Bridgewater, Somerset, England, and Catherine Riely, a schoolmistress.4 The date of his birth is equally uncertain, but is thought to be late 1864 or 1865.

4Morant migrated to Australia in 1883 or 1884. He first worked in a travelling circus, which took him to Charter Towers. There he married one Daisy May O’Dower, who would later become widely known as anthropologist Daisy Bates. The marriage was short-lived, and the reportedly hard-drinking womanizer Morant resumed a wandering life through the Australian Outback where he spent the next fifteen years roaming around the bush, living off a wide variety of odd jobs, mainly as a drover and horse-breaker on cattle stations, while writing and publishing bush ballads on the side.

5When the Boer War began in 1899, Morant was in Adelaide, South Australia. He enlisted with the Second Contingent of the South Australian Mounted Rifles, and after completing his training in South Australia, he was appointed Lance Corporal, but quickly rose to Sergeant. His contingent sailed for South Africa on 26 January 1900 and landed there a month later, on 25 February.

6In a South African natural environment not so different from that of Australia, Morant was able to valuably put his bush skills to use. Also having qualities of education and manners, he was engaged as a dispatch rider by General French, and later worked with the war correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, Bennett Burleigh. At the end of his twelve-month enlistment, he received good reports and accepted, but did not take up a commission in Baden-Powell’s South African Constabulary. Instead, he asked for a six-month leave to return to England. There he became close friends with Captain Percy Hunt, a fellow veteran of the war in South Africa, whose sister he became engaged to. The two men returned to South Africa in March 1901 and enrolled in the Bushveldt Carbineers (B.V.C.), a 320-strong regiment, raised in February to garrison the Northern Transvaal. It was one of a number of irregular counter-insurgency units specially formed by Lord Kitchener, then British commander in South Africa, after the great battles of 1899–1900. The British were now in control of the Orange Free State, and all but the northern part of Transvaal. However, the huge territory of the Republics made it impossible for the 250,000 British troops to control it effectively, allowing Boer bitter-enders to escape into the vast bush and continue to wage unconventional guerrilla warfare by blowing up trains and ambushing British troops and garrisons. Meant to counter Boer guerrillas on their own terms, those units, like their opponents, spent most of their time in the field, and were largely free of direct oversight from superior officers. Contact with the battled-hardened Boers was often brutal. As part of a ruthless response to the Boers’ unorthodox tactics, Kitchener also ordered the mass internment of refugees and prisoners of war, and introduced a scorched earth policy to deprive the commandos of their civilian support base and demoralise them. The court-martial debates were to hinge upon the question of whether or not orders were also given to “take no prisoners”, and shoot any Boer commandos caught “wearing khaki” to create confusion and gain strategic advantage.

7Based in Pietersburg, some 300 kilometres north of Pretoria, the B.V.C. proper was not an Australian regiment as is often thought, but a motley group of time-served colonials, about 40 % Australian and 30 % English, which also included Americans, New Zealanders, Canadians and a number of South Africans, among whom surrendered Boers recruited from internment camps. The new unit was launched on 21 February with Major Lehnehan, an Australian, as commander, and seven other officers, including Veterinary Lieutenant Handcock and Lieutenant (later Captain) Robertson. Later appointments included Lieutenants Morant, Hannan and H. Picton, and Captain Hunt.

8The history of the B.V.C. would have remained unremarkable if its reputation had not been stained by a series of outrages in the later half of 1901 in the reputedly dangerous Spelonken district, where they had been posted. As Boer guerillas were being pushed north, the B.V.C. established a command post in a farmhouse—renamed Fort Edward—about 140 kilometres north of Pietersburg. Unfortunately, British Captain Roberston, proved unable to maintain discipline. In mid-July, he was dismissed and his squadron replaced, after a group of six Boers, apparently intending to surrender, were all shot. Discipline was restored when Major Lenehan commissioned Captain Hunt to assume command of an almost entirely different detachment, with Lieutenants Morant, Handcock and Witton among the new officers.

  • 5 Scapegoats of the Empire: The True Story of Breaker Morant’s Bushveldt Carbineers (1907) London, Sy (...)

9Now part of the interest aroused by the “Breaker” Morant affair is that establishing the facts remains a challenge. The court-martial proceedings being lost, the only three remaining primary sources known are the report of the trial published in The Times in April 1902, George Witton’s first-hand account of the events of 1901–02 in his book Scapegoats of the Empire published in 1907,5 and a letter written by Witton to Major Thomas in 1929, which was kept secret at Witton’s request until 1970. For lack of more reliable sources, it will probably never be possible to determine for certain either the precise circumstances of the killings Morant and other members of the B.V.C. were accused of, or the exact sequence and nature of the events leading up to their arrest and sentencing to death.

10Nevertheless, Act I of the ‘Breaker’ Morant drama opened on the night of 5 August 1901 at a Boer farmhouse ominously called “Duiwelskloof” (Devil’s Ravine), about 130 kilometres east of Fort Edward, where Captain Hunt had led a patrol of eighteen men to capture the owner of the farm, Boer commando leader Viljoen, believed to be hiding there with a party of twenty men. When they got on the spot, eighty were lying in wait for them. A fierce strife ensued, but caught under heavy fire, the B.V.C. patrol eventually had to withdraw. The death count included Viljoen and thirty-five Boers of his commando, Captain Hunt and one Sergeant Eland, the son of a local Boer farmer. Another British trooper, Yates, was captured by the Boers, badly beaten and held prisoner for two days. The exact circumstances of Captain Hunt’s death are unclear. Witnesses testified he had been left behind by his retreating men, wounded in the chest but still alive. Whether he died of his wounds or was killed by the Boers, his body was found lying in a gutter the next day, naked and badly battered. Hunt’s neck had been broken, his face stamped upon by bob-nailed boots, and his legs slashed with long knife cuts. Later allegations that the body was also castrated were never ascertained.

11On hearing of the news of his friend’s death, now de facto leader of the B.V.C. as most senior officer after Hunt, a “demented” Morant—in Witton’s words—took every man available and set off in hot pursuit of those responsible, ordering to “give no quarter”. Hunt was buried the following day by Reverend J. F. Reuter and Hunt’s native servant, Aaron, at nearby Reuter’s Mission. Morant arrived an hour after the burial and therefore never actually saw Hunt’s body himself. Yet the two men confirmed the troopers’ statements about its sorry condition, and Morant convinced himself Hunt had been tortured and murdered in cold blood by the Boers, and swore revenge.

12The following day, he led a patrol back to the Duiwelskloof farm, tracked the Boers until they were sighted at dusk. The impatient Morant prematurely opened fire and all but one, Visser, wounded in the ankle, got away. Morant wanted to shoot him immediately, but was dissuaded. When a message arrived the next morning that the lightly manned garrison at Fort Edward was about to be attacked, Morant decided to return immediately. At this point, he searched Visser and found items of a British uniform which he identified as Hunt’s. Quoting orders “direct from headquarters” and citing Kitchener’s “no prisoners” proclamation, he told Lieutenant Witton and others that Visser must be shot at the first opportunity. Halfway through the day, when the patrol stopped to eat, a firing party was called for and Visser was executed.

13By the time Morant and the patrol got back to Fort Edward, the garrison was no longer in danger as a convoy under Lieutenant Neel had arrived from Pietersburg the previous day, just in time to reinforce Captain Taylor against the Boer attack. During the assault, one Carbineer was wounded and several horses shot, and Captain Taylor had a native shot for refusing to give him information about the Boers’ movements. Lieutenant Picton then returned to Pietersburg with Neel. The full activities of the recent patrol, including the shooting of Visser, were reported to headquarters, without receiving any official comment.

14More killings followed. On 23 August, Morant intercepted a group of eight prisoners from Viljoen’s commando who were being brought in under guard. He ordered them to be taken to the side of the road and shot. About a week later, reports began to circulate that a missionary had been shot along the Pietersburg road about twenty-five kilometres from the fort. Sent out to investigate with a patrol, Lieutenant Handcock found the body of a German missionary called Reverend Predikant C. H. D, who had been killed while travelling in a cart. After the shooting of the eight Boer prisoners the week before, Morant and Handcock had remained behind to make arrangements for the burial of the bodies. They had noticed a buggy heading for Pietersburg. Morant had gone to enquire and found the missionary who duly produced a pass signed by Captain Taylor. Morant advised him not to return to Pietersburg alone, but the man went on his way. A native reported he had later seen Lieutenant Hancock ride in the same direction as Hesse, heard shots and found the body of Hesse’s servant before fleeing from the scene.

15Shortly afterwards, hearing that three armed Boer commandos were heading for the fort, Morant took Handcock and several other men to capture them, and they too were shot. On the same day, Major Lenehan arrived at Fort Edward on a rare visit. Morant persuaded him to let him search for a small Boer unit led by an Irish-Boer commando called Kelly. Morant’s patrol left Fort Edward on 6 September 1901, with orders to capture Kelly and his men and bring them back alive if possible. After a week of hard riding, they were able to charge Kelly’s laager, and Morant himself arrested Kelly at gunpoint. A week later they returned to Fort Edward with the Kelly party and from there, escorted them on safely to Pietersburg. The British commandant, Colonel Hall personally sent Morant a message congratulating him on the success of his mission, after which Morant took two weeks’ leave.

16Act II of the Morant drama occurred when the Fort Edward detachment was suddenly recalled to Pietersburg in October 1901. On the 8th, freshly discharged members of the B.V.C. reported the irregular actions of their officers in the preceding months. On 24 October, acting under instructions from Pretoria, Colonel Hall had Major Lenehan, Captain Taylor, Lieutenants Handcock, Witton, Hannam, Picton and Sergeant-Major Hammett put under arrest. All but Taylor and Picton were Australian. Lieutenant Morant was taken into custody on his return from leave. No charges were made at first, but the prisoners were kept in solitary confinement. Kitchener ignored Major Lenehan’s protests and request to be allowed to inform the Australian government of his situation.

  • 6 The six known charges brought against the seven officers were: 2 July shooting six Boer prisoners ( (...)

17A court of enquiry sat daily to take evidence from witnesses about the conduct of the Fort Edward officers. Two weeks later the prisoners were finally informed of the charges against them.6 Major Lenehan was charged with neglecting to report the shooting of Trooper Van Buuren B.V.C. The latter, a local surrendered burgher enlisted in the Carbineers, who had been the witness of the shooting of the six Boer prisoners of war in the incident that had led to Robertson’s dismissal, had informed their families. Two days later, Lieutenant Handcock had taken Van Buuren out on patrol, from which he never returned. He had been shot on Roberston’s order for his treason, but reported to have died in action.

  • 7 According to Witton, a patrol of Lieutenant Hannam’s men on a reconnaissance had come upon a Boer l (...)

18The other men faced charges relating to the unlawful killings committed between August and September 1901, i.e. that of Boer commando Visser, that of the group of eight Boer prisoners of the group of three intercepted commandos, that of Boer civilian adults and children when firing at a wagon,7 and that of the German missionary Hesse. In December, the accused were notified that all but Hannam and Hammett were to be tried by court-martial. Three months after their initial detention, on 15 January 1902, they were given copies of the charges against them and informed that they would be defended by Major J. F. Thomas, an inexperienced lawyer, who in civilian life had been a solicitor in Tenterfield, New South Wales. Just before the court-martial, Colonel Hall was suddenly removed from his post at Pietersburg and transferred to India. The B.V.C. were disbanded and reformed into the New Pietersburg Light Horse, the name they kept until the regiment was dispersed at the end of the war.

19Act III was the court-martial, which began the following day. Its validity remains the central issue in the Morant case, but the disappearance of the original trial records has prevented full investigation. In the absence of official records, historians have had to rely on Witton’s account.

20The first case brought to hearing was that of the shooting of Boer commando Visser, captured after the death of Captain Hunt and executed on Morant’s orders for allegedly being in possession of items of Hunt’s uniform. The accused admitted the killings but pleaded “custom of war” and “orders from headquarters”. Impulsive and defiant, Morant explained Hunt had told him he had received a “no-prisoners” order from secretary Colonel Hamilton “at Lord Kitchener’s private house”, and that everybody knew the instructions. On assuming command after Hunt’s death, he had believed them to be lawful. The claim that there ever existed a standing order from Kitchener to shoot Boer commandos caught wearing khaki was vehemently denied by the prosecution. Morant’s nerves apparently took the better of him when he fool-hardily started to vow to have Kitchener put in the witness box and cross-examined about the “no-prisoners” policy.

21An extraordinarily amazing event then occurred in the middle of the Visser hearings, when on 23 January, Boer commandos launched a surprise attack on the blockhouses at Pietersburg. Most incredibly, Morant and his co-accused were released from their cells and given arms. It is reported that they fought bravely and efficiently assisted in beating off the attackers. Their lawyer Major Thomas filed a “plea of condonation” which should have earned them clemency, but his request was dismissed. The court was then briefly moved to Pretoria for the end of the case. On the return journey to Pietersburg, the accused were again given arms because there were fears of a Boer attack on the way.

22At the conclusion of these hearings, the case was adjourned to allow the court to consider the verdict. No announcement was made about any verdict or sentence at the time. In fact all the verdicts and sentences were to be withheld until after the court-martialling.

23The trial on case of the eight Boers allegedly shot after surrendering opened on 31 January 1902. No hint was given to the men about the guilty verdict in the Visser case. The “Eight Boers” hearing had only just begun when the prosecutor was mysteriously recalled to England and replaced, along with two of the court members. The accused did not dispute the main facts but the defence pleaded that they operated against gangs of prowlers who were more like outlaws than organised commandos. This seemed corroborated by the looting of a property where Morant and his patrol had stopped over on their return from Duiwelskloof farm, during which the looters had stolen the owner’s wife’s wedding ring from her finger.

24Morant and Handcock next faced the charges of having ordered the killing of the three armed Boers intercepted as they were heading towards Fort Edward. Morant accepted full responsibility, claiming that they belonged to the party that had killed Hunt.

25In the Van Buuren case, Major Lenehan said he had reported the incident of the shooting to his superior, Colonel Hall verbally, which the latter could not confirm as he had since been posted in India. However, former Captain Robertson testified that after consulting with Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Handcock, he had decided to have the man shot for collusion with the enemy, but to report he had been killed in action.

26Captain Taylor, the Intelligence Officer in the Spelonken, appeared next before the court, accused of instructing the patrol to shoot the six Boers as they approached Fort Edward to surrender. He objected that his military command did not extend beyond receiving intelligence and had nothing with the shooting.

27The final trial, on the Hesse case, opened on 17 February. Handcock was charged with the shooting of the missionary, and Morant with instigating it. Morant’s alleged motivation was that he feared Hesse would report the killing. But there were no eyewitnesses to Hesse’s death. The entire case was based on the testimony of a native who thought he had seen Handcock follow him. Besides, there was reason to suspect that Hesse might in fact have been killed by a Boer sniper, since he was shot once, from the front, apparently while driving his buggy. On the other hand it had taken several days for rumours of Hesse’s death to reach Fort Edward, and a further two days to locate Hesse’s body—on Morant’s own orders.

28Although Major Thomas did his level best for his clients, the men’s fate was sealed. Taylor was cleared, Picton cashiered, and Lenehan reprimanded, discharged and sent back to Australia on the first departing ship. Morant and Handcock were acquitted of the charges related to the Hesse case, but they and Witton were found guilty of the other charges and sentenced to death by firing squad. Witton’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by Lord Kitchener. He was to be pardoned and released in 1904. Immediately after signing Morant and Handcock’s death warrants, Lord Kitchener went on trek, which made it impossible for Thomas to secure their reprieve. The men were shot the next day. They were given a decent burial by fellow Australians outside the confines of the prison, and they rest to this day in a common grave a few yards away from the military section of the Church Street Cemetery of Pretoria. Their grave were left unattended for many years, but after the release of Beresford’s film it became a popular place of pilgrimage for Australian tourists passing through Pretoria. In June 1998, the Australian Government spent $1,500 refurbishing the grave site, and the Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs has since then taken responsibility for the grave’s upkeep.

29If there is no questioning Morant and others in his regiment were involved in the deaths of a number of Boer commandos, critics are divided over the facts and significance of the case. Nevertheless, this seems to be a mostly Australian debate. Historians of the Boer Wars, including Australian ones, give the episode no more than anecdotal space in their accounts for indeed, the B.V.C. affair was of no major military or political decisiveness. In Australia the debate hinges upon the question of whether or not Morant’s ascension to the status of a national hero is justified and defensible.

  • 8 Vid. int alia, Craig Wilcox, Australia’s Boer War: The War in South Africa 1899–1902, Oxford, South (...)

30To Morant’s detractors, the Carabineers were unruly rogues and cold-blooded murderers who deserved their fate. They were fairly tried and executed as war criminals who had killed unarmed prisoners of war and civilians. In their eyes, the accused’s claim that they were merely following Kitchener’s “no prisoners” order was no valid excuse, either because they believe the controversial order was never issued or, because they adopt a post-Nuremberg stance and argue it should not have been obeyed. They point out that even if an order to take no prisoners had been lawfully given, the deaths of Boers who had ceased to resist and been taken prisoner in no way occurred in pursuance of such an order.8

  • 9 Nick Bleszynski, (2002), “Shoot Straight, You Bastards”: The True Story Behind The Killing of “Brea (...)
  • 10

31Morant’s supporters, on the other hand, argue that he and Handcock were unfairly singled out for punishment while many other British soldiers were known to have carried out summary executions of Boer prisoners. In their view, the two Australians were made scapegoats by the British, who wanted to conceal the existence of the “no prisoners” policy against Boer insurgents—a policy they claim had been promulgated by Kitchener himself. While developing the same argument, Australian author Nick Bleszynski,9 for instance, goes as far as to say that while Morant and the others may well have deserved disciplinary action, the show trial they were given aimed at appeasing the Boer government and help secure the Vereeniging treaty.10

  • 11 Edward (Ned) Kelly (1855–80) was a bushranger of Irish descent. He grew up on a poor selection in V (...)

32Unsurprisingly, perhaps, fiction has been on Morant’s supporting side, and the main vector in the fabrication of a new Australian rebel folk hero of the same stamp as Ned Kelly,11 a symbol of the reckless defiance of the underdog towards the authorities. Undoubtedly, Australians had some reason to believe they had not been given a fair deal and had been treated as a somewhat lesser ‘colonial’ breed. Due to military censorship, reports of the trial and execution did not reach Australia until the end of March 1902. The Australian government had, at no stage, been informed either of the enquiries into the misdeeds of the B.V.C., or of the courts-martial. Nor had Mrs Handcock been informed of her husband’s death: she learnt the news from the Australian press. Many Australians wondered why the two British officers both escaped with mere dishonourable discharges, while two of their fellow-countrymen were executed, which added fuel to the growing public resentment of the British military and British rule in general. The Defence Act passed by the Australian Parliament in 1903, limiting the offences for which sentence of death can be imposed by a court-martial, and requiring such sentence to be confirmed by the Governor-General, undoubtedly reflected public concern over the execution of Morant and Handcock. The same can probably be thought of the fact the Australian Government never again accepted to place Australian troops under total foreign command, nor accepted British Army justice in cases involving its soldiers and citizens. In World War I, for instance, although over 150 Australians were sentenced to death by British courts-martial, not one was ever executed as the Australian Governor-General always refused to sign the order.

  • 12 “Villains or victims?” Wartime Magazine, Australian War Memorial, (...)
  • 13 Denton’s later account of the Morant case based on official records, Closed Files (1983) is a more (...)

33For all this, although his execution caused a dispute about authority over Australian troops, Morant was not immediately accorded his semi-heroic status. At the time of his death, he was condemned by the Australian press, and most of his fellow-countrymen. The colourful image of an independent, laconic bushman crushed by English strong-headedness took decades to develop. In historian Craig Wilcox’s view, this only really happened in the later part of the twentieth century, even if Cutlack’s Breaker Morant: A Horseman Who Made History (1962), based on Witton’s Scapegoats . . .and Frank Fox [Frank Renar]’s, Bushman and Buccaneer, A Memoir of Harry “The Breaker” Morant (1902), certainly contributed to the creation of the Morant myth. To him, the romantic version of events, espousing Witton’s account in Scapegoats . . ., and making Morant a martyr and “a symbol of what may happen when Australian soldiers” lives are given over to foreign wars and foreign generals’, was taken up by “urban progressives . . .offended by Australia’s past”, who “were certain Morant must have been innocent simply because the dastardly Brits had shot him”, and whose “only recourse has been to conspiracy stories.”12 Among the “urban progressives” he had in mind were people such as writer Kit Denton in his romantic novel The Breaker (1973),13 Kenneth Ross with his play Breaker Morant (1978), or Bruce Bereford with his 1980 popular film adaptation—not to mention Nick Bleszinski with his 2002 “Shoot Straight, you Bastards” of which he is very critical. While his tone in undoubtedly provocative, he is right in thinking that Morant offers a poor model for a hero: shooting prisoners is hardly heroic. Beyond this, however, what he criticises is the misplaced patriotism of a section of his fellow-countrymen and a certain trend of political correctness. In fact, it is not even certain that Morant considered himself Australian as much as British—or simply English, which he was by birth. Who then were his reputed last words, “bastards”, aimed at: the British, as his supporters would suppose? fellow-soldiers undertaking the dirty task? was it just one last swaggering oath? or is it all apocryphal? We may never know.

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Bibliographie

Bleszynski, Nick. “Shoot Straight, You Bastards”: The True Story Behind The Killing of “Breaker” Morant. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2002.

Carnegie, Margaret, and Frank Shields. In Search of Breaker Morant: Balladist and Bushveldt Carbineer. Armadale, Vic.: H. H. Stephenson, 1979.

Cutlack, F. M. Breaker Morant: A Horseman Who Made History, With a Selection of His Bush Ballads. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1962.

Davey, Arthur (ed). Breaker Morant and the Bushveldt Carbineers. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 1987.

Denton, Kit. The Breaker. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1973.

Denton, Kit. Closed file. Adelaide: Rigby, 1983.

Field, L. M. The Forgotten War: Australian Involvement in the South African Conflict of 1899–1902. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1979.

Jenkins, Graham. Songs of the Breaker. Hectorville: Book Agencies of Adelaide, 1980.

Packenham, Thomas. The Boer War. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1979.

Pollock, John. Kitchener. London: Constable & Robinson, 1998.

Renar, Frank. Bushman and Buccaneer: Harry Morant—His Ventures and Verses. Sydney: H. T. Dunn, 1902.

Ross, K. G. Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts, Melbourne: Edward Arnold, 1979.

Simmelhaig, Helen, and C. F. R. Spencaly. For Australia’s Sake: A History of Australia’s Involvement in Nine Wars. Melbourne: Nelson, 1984.

Todd R. K. “Morant, Harry Hoarbord (Breaker) (1864-1902)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, Melbourne University Press, 1986. 581–82.

Wallace, R. L. The Australians at the Boer War. Canberra: Australian War Memorial and the Australian Government Printing Service, 1970.

Wilcox, Craig. Australia’s Boer War: The War in South Africa 1899–1902. Oxford, South Melbourne: OUP, 2002.

Witton, George. Scapegoats of the Empire: The True Story of the Bushveld Carbineers. [1907] London, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1982.

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Notes

1 The word “commando” will be used in its Australian acceptation, cf. The Macquarie Dictionary (Third Edition revised and Updated), Macquarie University, 1998, p. 221: “1. A small specially trained fighting force used for making quick, destructive raids against enemy held areas. 2. A member of such a force. [Afrikaans, from Portuguese]”.

2 Morant’s talents for taming wild horses established his fame in the eastern Australian colonies as the only Englishman capable of riding a buck-jumper like a native-born Australian, and earned him his nickname. Under the penname “The Breaker”, Morant contributed some 60 poems to the Sydney Bulletin, including ‘Butchered to Make a Dutchman’s Holiday’ published on the eve of his execution, which read:

“In prison cell I sadly sit, / A damned crestfallen chappy, / And own to you I feel a bit— / A little bit—unhappy. // It really ain’t the place nor time / To reel off rhyming diction; / But yet we’ll write a final rhyme / While waiting crucifixion. // No matter what end they decide / Quick lime or boiling oil, sir? / We’ll do our best when crucified / To finish off in style, sir! // But we bequeath a parting tip / For sound advice of such men / Who come across in transport ship / to polish off the Dutchmen. // If you encounter any Boers / You really must not loot ‘m / And, if you wish to leave these shores, / For pity’s sake, don’t shoot ‘em. // And if you’d earn a D.S.O., / Why every British sinner / Should know the proper way to go / is: Ask the Boer to dinner. // Let’s toss a bumper down our throat / Before we pass to heaven, / And toast: “The trim-set petticoat / We leave behind in Devon.”

Within the columns of The Bulletin, his verse was contemporary with that of Henry Lawson and “Banjo” Paterson.

3 Vid. Nick Bleszynski, Shoot Straight, You Bastards: The Truth Behind the Killing of “Breaker” Morant Sydney: Random House, 2002, who contends there is strong evidence that he might indeed be the Admiral’s son.

4 Vid. Margaret Carnegie and Frank Shields, In Search of Breaker Morant: Balladist and Bushveldt Carbineer, Armadale, Vic.: H. H. Stephenson, 1979; or Craig Wilcox Australia’s Boer War: The War in South Africa 1899–1902, Oxford, South Melbourne, 2002.

5 Scapegoats of the Empire: The True Story of Breaker Morant’s Bushveldt Carbineers (1907) London, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1982. Also accessible at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks04/0400611.txt from Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook. Published five years after the trials, it is a detailed account of the entire Morant affair, explicitly accusing the British Army and Lord Kitchener of a cover-up, staging a show trial, and executing two Australian soldiers on insubstantial evidence as a matter of political expediency. Pardoned and released in 1904, thanks to a campaign supported by the second Australian Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin, Witton obviously wanted to clear his name, and proclaim his innocence (or cover his guilt). The chapters dealing with the court-martial contain such extraordinarily precise information that some critics consider there hangs a dark shadow of doubt over the veracity and reliability of this first-hand testimony.

6 The six known charges brought against the seven officers were: 2 July shooting six Boer prisoners (under Captain Robertson, before Hunt’s detachment arrived at Fort Edward); 4 July shooting Trooper Van Buren B.V.C.; 11 August shooting Boer Commando Visser; 23 August shooting eight prisoners and a German missionary, Reverend Predikant Hesse; 5 September shooting into wagons and killing two children; 7 September shooting two prisoners and a ‘boy’ (who was in fact 20 years old).

7 According to Witton, a patrol of Lieutenant Hannam’s men on a reconnaissance had come upon a Boer laager and opened fire, but ceased firing on hearing women and children screaming. Upon taking the laager they had found that a child had been shot and two little girls slightly wounded. The incident was followed by “wicked reports” of a “wholesale shooting of women and children”.

8 Vid. int alia, Craig Wilcox, Australia’s Boer War: The War in South Africa 1899–1902, Oxford, South Melbourne: OUP, 2002; Thomas Packenham, The Boer War. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1979; John Pollock, Kitchener. London: Constable, 1998. R. K. Todd, “Morant, Harry Hoarbord (Breaker) (1864–1902)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 10, Melbourne University Press, 1986, p. 581–582.

9 Nick Bleszynski, (2002), “Shoot Straight, You Bastards”: The True Story Behind The Killing of “Breaker” Morant. Random House Australia. Classed as “non-fiction”, this popular and controversial book is nonetheless misleading. It is researched and well written, but its author fictionalised the unknown parts using italics. This work was debunked by the academic historian Wilcox as a romanticised version of the event. (Wilcox in Weekend Australian Magazine, 23–24 Feb 2002 cf. Wilcox, Australia’s Boer War, p. 363–368).

10 www.awm.gov.au/people/267.asp

11 Edward (Ned) Kelly (1855–80) was a bushranger of Irish descent. He grew up on a poor selection in Victoria, and by the 1870s had become involved in local horse and cattle stealing. After he wounded a police trooper in 1877, Kelly and his gang (his brother Dan and two friends) lived as bushrangers in the Wombat ranges. They shot three of the policemen sent to capture them, held up a sheep-station, a bank, a police station and two hotels. Ned Kelly was eventually captured and hanged after a prolonged shoot-out with the police during which the outlaws were equipped with armours made from plough mould-boards.

12 “Villains or victims?” Wartime Magazine, Australian War Memorial, www.awm.gov.au/wartime/18/article.asp

13 Denton’s later account of the Morant case based on official records, Closed Files (1983) is a more critical view.

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Martine Piquet, « Shoot Straight, You Bastards! Australians in the Boer War: the Breaker Morant Case »Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens [En ligne], 66 Automne | 2007, mis en ligne le 10 décembre 2021, consulté le 28 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cve/10469 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.10469

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Martine Piquet

Martine Piquet is Professor of Anglophone studies at the University of Paris Dauphine (France). She has published numerous articles on Australian society, in particular on multiculturalism, the social and political situation of Aborigines, Reconciliation and the republic debate. She is the author of Australie Plurielle. Gestion de la diversité ethnique en Australie de 1788 à nos jours, L’Harmattan, 2004.

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