Breaker Morant
Harry 'Breaker' Morant (1864-1902) was an Anglo-Australian drover, horseman, poet and soldier whose renowned skill with horses earned him the nickname "The Breaker". Articulate, intelligent and well educated, he was also a published poet and became one of the better-known 'back-block' bards of the 1890s, with the bulk of his work appearing in "The Bulletin" magazine. His actions during the Boer War led to his controversial court-martial and execution by the British Army; his death warrant was personally signed by the British commander in South Africa, Lord Kitchener.
In the century since his death the handsome, roguish and talented Morant has become a larrikin folk hero in Australia and his story has been the subject of several books and a major Australian feature film. Even during his lifetime there was a great deal of conflicting information about this romantic but elusive figure, and many of the stories about him are undoubtedly apocryphal.
Early life
Accounts of Morant's life before the Boer War vary considerably and it appears that Morant himself fabricated a number of these romantic legends. His full name was either Henry Harbord Morant or Edwin Henry Murrant; he was certainly born in England, probably in Devonshire; his date of birth is believed to have been around Christmas 1864 or sometime in 1865.
Morant is often described as being 'well educated'. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of Admiral Sir George Digby Morant of the British Navy, a claim often repeated as fact by later writers, although the Admiral is said to have denied it. Other sources name his parents as Edwin Murrant and Catherine Riely. Although it is yet to be proven, Australian author Nick Bleszynski claims that there is 'strong circumstantial evidence' to suggest that The Breaker was indeed the son of Admiral Morant.
Through an unknown set of circumstances, the young Morant came into the care of wealthy Scottish author, soldier, hunt-master and and golfer George Whyte-Melville, who was regarded as the greatest British equestrian of his day. He is believed to have exerted a strong influence on Morant and taught him the riding skills for which he was to become famous.
Morant emigrated to Australia in either 1883 or 1884 and in settled in outback Queensland. Over the next fifteen years, working in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, the charismatic roustabout made a name for himself as hard-drinking, womanising bush poet and gained renown as a fearless and expert horseman.
Morant worked in a variety of occupations. He reportedly traded in horses in Charters Towers, then worked for a time on a newspaper at Hughenden in 1884 but there are suggestions that he left both towns as a result of debts. He then drifted around for some until he found worked as a bookkeeper and storeman on the Esmaralda cattle station.
On March 13, 1884 Morant married Daisy May O'Dwyer, who later became famous in Australia as the anthropologist Daisy Bates, but the couple divorced soon after; Daisy reportedly threw him out after he failed to pay for the wedding and then stole some pigs and a saddle. He then worked for several years as an itinerant drover and horse-breaker, as well as writing his popular bush ballads, becoming known to and friendly with famed Australian poets Henry Lawson, Banjo Patterson and William Ogilvie.
Military Career
At the time Morant voluteered for military service (in 1899), the formal federation of the Commonwealth of Australia was still two years away. Australia consisted of separate colonies, each of which were still subject to direct British rule and because the population comprised such a high proportion of British migrants, most Australians still had strong ties to "The Mother Country". Consequently thousands of Australian men volunteered to fight for Britain in the Boer War, which pitted British colonial forces against rebellious Dutch Boer settlers in South Africa, which was then also a British colony.
Evidently seeing it as a chance to return to England, Morant enlisted with the second contingent of the South Australian Mounted Rifles. While in Adelaide, Morant was reportedly invited to visit the summer residence of the South Australian governor, Lord Tennyson; after completing his training he was promoted to Lance Corporal and his regiment embarked for the Transvaal on February 27 1900.
In many respects the terrain and climate of South Africa is remarkably similar to that of outback Australia, so Morant was in his element. His superb horsemanship, expert bush skills and educated manner soon attracted the attention of his superiors. South Australian Colonel Joseph Gordon recommended him as a despatch rider to Bennet Burleigh, the war correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph; the job reportedly provided the debonair Morant with ample opportunity to visit the nearby hopsital and dally with the nurses. Morant rapidly rose to the rank of Lieutenant and after his first tour of duty he took six months' leave and returned to England, where he became close friends with Captain Percy Hunt; Morant and Hunt reportedly became engaged to two sisters at that time.
The Guerilla Campaign, 1901-1902
Following their defeats on the battlefield during 1899-1900, the Boer rebels embarked on a guerilla campaign against the British. In response, Lord Horatio Kitchener, the British commander in South Africa assembled and deployed a number of irregular regiments to combat Boer commando units and protect British interests in the region.
On his return from leave, Morant followed the lead of his friend Capt. Hunt and joined one of these irregular units, the Bushveldt Carbineers, a 320-strong regiment that had been formed in February 1901 under the command of an Australian, Colonel R.W. Lenehan. The regiment, based in Pietersburg, saw action in the Spelonken region of the Northern Transvaal during 1901-1902. The region was remote, wild and dangerous and was also in a particularly unhealthy malarial area, so the British had difficulty in finding troops; as a result many colonial soldiers were enlisted. About forty percent of the men in the Carbaniers were Australians, but the regiment also included about forty surrended Boers who had been recruited from the internment camps, and their presence was greatly resented by the Australians. The garrison was soon divided into two columns, one of which was under the command of Lt Morant, operating in the Strydpoort district, about thirty miles south-east of Pietersburg.
During the often savage guerilla campaign, there were numerous atrocities on both sides. Boer commandos took to stripping captured British prisoners of their khaki uniforms and using them to gain a strategic advantage in battle by masquerading as British soldiers; they also allegedly abused the white flag, blew up trains and murdered the survivors. Kitchener responded with equalt ruthlessness, ordering the destruction of Boer farms and the mass internment of refugees and prisoners of war in order to deprive the commandos of their civilian support base.
Although unknown to the general public and denied by the Army during Morant's trial, Kitchener himself issued an order that British and colonial troops were to shoot any Boer commandos they encountered who were dressed in khaki. This secret order, confirmed in a cipher telegram sent by Kitchener to Lord Roberts, the British Secretary of War, on November 3, 1901, was to be Morant's undoing.
Morant's unit was very successful in eliminating roving bands of enemy commandos from their area, forcing the Boers to transfer their activities to the Bandolier Kop area, on the northern fringe of the Spelonken. In repsonse, the Carbaniers moved north under the command of a British officer, Captain Robertson, and they established a command post in a farmhouse about 90 miles north of Pietersburg, which they renamed Fort Edwards.
By all accounts, Captain Robertson had great difficulty in maintaining discipline and some of his troops ran wild -- they looted a rum convoy, kept seized Boer livestock for themselves, and appropriated liquor and stills from the Boer farms they raided; according to George Witton's memoir, the situation was bordering on mutiny by mid-year.
On July 2, 1901 Captain Taylor received word of a disturbing incident -- a few days earlier, a group of six Boers had approached the fort, apparently intending to surrender, but they were intercepted by a British patrol led by Sergeant Major Morrison and on his orders they were all shot. When this news reached Pietersburg, the Fort Edwards detachment was recalled; after an enquiry, Robertson and Morrison were allowed to resign unconditionally. His squadron was replaced by a new one under the command of Capt. Hunt and which included Lts Morant, Handcock and Witton.
Events leading to Morant's arrest
Like so much of his story, the exact sequence and nature of the events leading up to Morant's arrest and trial are still hotly disputed and accounts vary considerably. While it seems clear that some members of the Carbaniers were responsible for shooting Boer prisoners and others, the precise circumstances of these killings and the identities of those responsible will probably never be known for certain. The following account is drawn mainly from the only surviving eyewitness source, the 1907 book "Scapegoats Of The Empire" by Lt George Witton, one of the three Australians sentenced to death for the alleged murders and the only one to escape execution.
With Hunt now commanding the detachment at Fort Edwards, discipline was immediately re-imposed by Lts Morant and Handcock, but this was resisted by some. In one incident, several members of a supply convoy led by Lt Picton looted the rum it was carrying, so they were arrested for insubordination and for threatening to shoot Picton. They escaped to Pietersburg but Capt. Hunt sent a report to Col. Lenahan, who had them detained. When the matter was brought before Col. Hall, the commandant of Pietersburg, he ordered the offenders to be discharged from the regiment and released. Witton explicitly accuses these disaffected troopers of being the people responsible for "the monstrous and extravagant reports about the Carbaniers which appeared later in the English and colonial press."
Back at Fort Edward, the seized livestock was collected and handed over to the proper authorities and the stills were broken up, but according to Witton these actions were resented by the perpetrators and as a result Morant and Handcock were "detested" by certain members of the detachment.
Witton arrived at Fort Edwards on August 3 with Sgt Major Hammett and thirty men, and it was at this point that he met Morant and Handcock for the first time.
The pivotal event of the Morant affair took place two days later, on the night of August 5 1901. Capt. Hunt led a seventeen-man patrol to a Boer farmhouse called 'Duwielskloof' (Devils Claw), about 80 miles east of the Fort, hoping to capture its owner, the Boer commando leader Veldt Cornet Viljoen. Hunt also had several armed native African irregulars with him and Witton claims that although "those in authority" denied the use of African auxiliaries, they were in fact widely used and were responsible for "the most hideous atrocities".
Hunt had been told that Viljoen had only twenty men with him, but this appears to have been a ruse and Viljoen was lying in wait with eighty men. The Boers surprised the British as they approached and during the ensuing skirmish Viljoen was killed, as was one of the troopers, Sgt Eland, the son of a local Boer farmer. Witnesses later testified that Capt. Hunt was wounded in the chest while firing through the windows and had to be left behind, but that he was still alive when the British retreated. Another trooper, Yates, was captured by the Boers, held prisoner for two days, stripped of all his clothes and possessions and was so badly beaten that after his rescue he had to spend several weeks in hospital.
When news Hunt's death reached the fort, it had a profound effect on Morant -- Witton says he became "like a man demented". He immediately ordered every available man out on patrol, broke down while addressing the men, and ordered them to avenge the death of their captain and "give no quarter".
Hunt's body was recovered the next day. It had been found lying in a gutter, naked and mutilated -- the sinews at the backs of both knees and ankles had been severed, his legs were slashed with long knife cuts, his face had been crushed by hob-nailed boots. According to Kit Denton, he had also been castrated, but Witton makes no mention of this.
Hunt's battered body was taken to the nearby Reuter's Mission Station, where it was washed and buried by Rev. J.F. Reuter and Hunt's native servant Aaron, who corroborated the troopers' statements about the condition of the body. Significantly, Morant did not see Hunt's body himself -- he arrived about an hour after the burial. He questioned the men about Hunt's death and, convinced his friend had been murdered in cold blood, he vowed to give no quarter and take no prisoners. Morant declared that he had on occasion ignored Hunt's order to this effect in the past, but that he would carry it out in the future.
The following day, after leaving a few men to guard the mission (which the Boers threatened to burn in reprisal for harboring the British) Morant led his unit back to the Viljoen farm. It had been abandoned, so they tracked the retreating Boers all day, sighting them just on dusk. As they closed in, the hot-headed Morant opened fire too early and they lost the element of surprise, so most of the Boers escaped. They did however capture one wounded commando called Visser.
The next morning, as they continued their pursuit, a native runner brought a message that the lightly manned Fort Edward was in danger of being attacked by the Boers, so Morant decided to abandon the chase.
At this point he searched and questioned Visser and found items of British uniform, including a pair of trousers which he identified as Hunt's; he then told Witton and others that he would have Visser shot at the first opportunity. When they stopped to eat around 11am Morant again told Witton that he intended to have Visser shot, quoting orders "direct from headquarters" and citing Kitchener's recent 'no prisnoers' proclamation. He called for a firing party and although some of the men initially objected, Visser was shot.
On the return journey to the fort, Morant's unit stopped for the night at the store of a British trader, Mr Hays, who was well known for his hospitality. After they left, Hays was raided by a party of Boers who looted everything he owned, even dragging Mrs Hays' wedding ring from her finger. When they arrived back at Fort Edward, they learned that a convoy under Lt Neel had arrived from Pietersburg the previous day, just in time to reinforce Capt. Taylor against a strong Boer force that attacked the fort. During the encounter one Carbineer was wounded and several horses were shot and it was at this time that Taylor had a native shot for refusing to give him information about the Boers' movements. Neel and Picton then returned to Pietersburg and
Other killings followed; on 23 August Morant led a small patrol to intercept a group of eight prisoners from Viljoen's commando who were being brought in under guard; Morant ordered them to be taken to the side of the road and shot.
About a week later, reports began to circulate that a German missionary, Reverend Predikant C.H.D. Hesse, had been found shot along the Piersburg road about fifteen miles from the fort. Shortly afterwards, acting on a report that three armed Boer commandos were heading for the fort, Morant took Handcock and several other men to intercept them and the Boers were shot.
Later the same day, Major Lenehan arrived at Ford Edwards for a rare visit. Morant persuaded Lenehan to let him lead a strong patrol out to search for a small Boer unit led by Field-Cornet Kelly, an Irish-Boer commando whose farm was in the district. Kelly had fought against the British in the main actions of the war and after returning to his home he had become a commando rather than surrender.
Morant's patrol left Fort Edward on September 16 1901 with orders from Lenehan that Kelly and his men were to be captured and brought back alive if possible. Covering 130 miles in a week of hard riding, they left their horses two miles from Kelly's laager and went the rest of the way on foot. In the early hours of the next morning Morant's patrol charged the laager, this time taking the Boers completely by surprise; Morant himself arrested Kelly at gunpoint at the door of his tent. A week later they returned to Fort Edward with the Kelly party and then escorted them 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
Then, in mid-October, the Spelonken detachment was suddenly recalled to Pietersburg and Fort Edward was abandoned until March 1902. On 24 October 1901 Colonel Hall ordered the arrest of seven members of the Carbaniers. Four were Australians: Major Lenehan and Lieutenants Handcock, Witton and Hannam; the other two, Captain Taylor and Lt Picton, were English. When Morant returned from leave in Pietersburg he too was arrested although no charges were laid at the time. A Court of Enquiry into the affairs of the Bushveldt Carbaniers followed and the War Office subsequently stated that on 8 October 1901 some members of the Carbaniers being discharged at Pietersburg on the expiration of their service had reported the irregular actions of the officers at Fort Edward over the preceding months.
The men were held in solitary confinement within the garrison, in spite of vigorous protests by Lenehan; he even wrote directly to Kitchener to ask that he be allowed to inform the Australian government of his position but Kitchener ignored the request. Meanwhile the Court of Enquiry held daily hearings, taking evidence from witnesses about the conduct of the Carbineers and two weeks later the prisoners were finally informed of the charges against them; in December they were again brought before the panel and told that they were to be tried by court-martial. Curiously, in the cases of Hannam and Hammett, the panel found that there were no charges to answer.
On hearing of the arrests, Kitchener's Chief of Police, Provost Marshall Robert Poore remarked in his diary: "… if they had wanted to shoot Boers they should not have taken them prisoner first" -- a view later ruefully echoed in his book by George Witton. With hindsight, while it is fairly certain that Morant and others did kill some prisoners, their real mistake -- in terms of their subsequent court-martial -- was that they killed the Boers after they captured them. As Poore noted in his diary, had they shot them before they surrendered, the repercussions might well have been considerably less serious .
According to a recent book on the case by Australian author Nick Bleszynski, Poore's diary confirms that there was indeed a standing order from Kitchener to shoot Boer commandos caught wearing khaki -- a claim vehemently denied by the prosecution when the defence tried to argue that Visser, the first Boer Morant had executed, was wearing khaki.
Poore in fact specifically noted that: "... Most of De Wet's (the Boer commando leader's) men were dressed in our uniform, so Lord K. has issued an order to say that all men caught in our uniform are to be tried on the spot and the sentence confirmed by the commanding officer."
Ominously, just before the court-martial, Colonel Hall was suddenly removed from his post at Pietersburg and transferred to India. The Carbaniers were disbanded and replaced by a new troop called the Pietersburg Light Infantry. On 15 January 1902 the accused were finally given copies of the charges against them and informed that they would be defended by Major J.F. Thomas, who in civilian life had been a solicitor in Tenterfield, NSW. The court-martial began the following day.
Court-martial
The court-martials of Morant, Handcock and Witton began on 16 January 1902, with the prosecution charging that between July and September 1901 the accused had been involved in the killings of more than twenty people including Boer civilians and children.
The first case was that of the shooting of the Boer commando Visser, who was captured after the death of Capt. Hunt and executed for allegedly being in possession of items of Hunt's uniform.
They were also charged with the murder of Trooper Van Beuren, a Boer member of the Carbaniers suspected of being a spy, whom Handcock stated had been killed by Boers while they were out on patrol. They were also charged with murdering the German missionary, Reverend Predikant Hesse who had been shot either because he was going to report the killing of Boer prisoners which he had just witnessed, or because he was suspected of being a spy. It was also alleged that, in a two separate incidents, Carbanier soldiers had opened fire on Boer civilians, killing several people including three children and a teenage boy.
Major Thomas argued that the killings of Boer commandos were justified because they were carrying out the direct orders of a superior officer -- i.e. Lord Kitchener's order to "take no prisoners". If Thomas had been able to prove this, the men might well have been exonerated, since it would be almost fifty years before the Nuremburg Trials established the precedent that following orders was not a defence in such cases. But for a commander of Kitchener's lofty position to take the blame for the actions of a few supposed renegade Australians made such an outcome unthinkable for the British. Not surprisingly, Kitchener (through Lt Col. Hamilton) categorically denied giving any such order, and his coded telegram to Lord Roberts was kept secret.
But according to Nick Bleszynski, the order was common knowledge among the Bushveldt Carbineers and other regiments well before Morant's arrival at Fort Edward in mid-190 and it was widely known among the troops that several other units of the British forces in South Africa had shot Boer prisoners.
Thomas tried valiantly to mount a solid defence for his clients, but the recent research by Bleszynski and others has also uncovered evidence that the British withheld crucial evidence about the "no prisoners" order, that they transferred important Army witnesses including Hall out of the country before they could testify, and that the court martial procedures were seriously flawed. Eminent Australian-born jurist Geoffrey Robertson QC recently described the trial as '... a particularly pernicious example of using legal proceedings against lower ranks as a means of covering up the guilt of senior officers and of Kitchener himself, who gave or approved their unlawful 'shoot to kill' order.'
In one of the most astounding events in this dramatic story, Boer commandos launched a surprise attack on Pietersburg during the trial. Incredibly, Morant and his co-accused were released from their cells and given arms; they fought bravely, in the direct line of fire, and assisted in the defeat of the attackers. Yet, in spite of this, and even though Thomas filed a "plea of condonation" which should have earned them clemency because of their roles in the defense, the request was dismissed by the court.
Although Major Thomas gave of his best, the outcome of the trial was a foregone conclusion. Morant and Handcock were found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad; Witton was also sentenced to death but this was then commuted by Kitchener to life in prison; Picton was cashiered, and Lenehan was reprimanded and discharged. Tellingly, all charges against the British Captain Taylor were dismissed. After signing Morant and Handcock's death warrants, Kitchener disappeared on tour, thus removing himself from any attempt to secure their reprieve.
Execution and aftermath
Just before dawn on February 27 1902 Lieutenants Harry Morant and Peter Handcock were led out of the fort at Pietersburg to be executed by a firing squad from the Cameron Highlanders. Both men refused to be blindfolded; Morant gave his cigarette case to the squad leader, and his famous last words were: "Shoot straight, you bastards! Don't make a mess of it!"
The British Army continued the cover-up of the case even after the deaths of the two men. There was no indication given beforehand that either the men or their regiment was in any kind of trouble, and due to British military censorship, reports of the trial and execution did not begin to appear in Australia until the end of March 1902. The Australian government and Lt. Handcock's wife, who lived in Bathurst with their three children, only learned of Handcock and Morant's death from the Australian newspapers weeks after their executions. After learning of his sentence, Lt Winton arranged to send two telegrams, one to the Australian government representative in Pretoria and the other to a relative in Victoria, but despite assurances from the British, neither telegram was ever received.
News of the executions excited considerable public interest in the UK and a summary of the trial was published in The Times on April 18 1902 but the British government announced in the House of Commons that, in keeping with normal practice, the court-martial proceedings would not be made public. The official transcripts of the court-martial reportedly disappeared soon afterwards.
In Australia, the executions of Morant and Handcock not surprisingly caused an uproar, no doubt amplified by the fact that Morant was already a well-known figure. The Morant case added fuel to the growing public resentment of the British military and British rule in general -- a feeling which, a decade later, grew into a major anti-British backlash as a result of the catastrophic Gallipoli campaign, in which thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops were needlessly slaughtered, and in the planning of which Kitchener played an integral part. Largely as a result of the Morant case, the Australian army never again accepted British Army justice in cases involving its own soldiers.
George Witton was transported to naval detention quarters England and then to Lewes prison in Sussex. Some time later he was transfered to the prison at Portland, Dorset and was released after serving twenty-eight months. His life sentence was overturned by the British House of Commons on August 11, 1905. In 1907, he published a controversial book about the Morant case, provocatively titled Scapegoats of the Empire. The book was reprinted in 1982 following the success of the 1979 film version of the Morant story.
Accounts of Morant's life
The story of Morant's life, exploits, trial and execution have been examined in several books and numerous press and internet articles but as noted above, each account varies very considerably from the other in both the facts presented and their interpretation.
As far as is known, the most important source, the official records of the court-martial, have not been sighted since the trial. There have been claims that they were destroyed, or that they were sealed in the British Army archives for 100 years, or that they are still in South Africa and were never sent back to England. All that can be said for certain is that the transcripts have not been extant since the trial and that not even the Australian government had access to them.
In their absence, three primary sources remain. The first is the report of the trial printed in "The Times" in April 1902; the second is George Witton's crucial first-hand account of the events of 1901-02, contained in his book "Scapegoats of the Empire", published five years later. The third is a revealing letter about the case, written by Witton to Major Thomas in 1929, which was kept secret at Witton's request until 1970.
However, Witton's book was virtually unavailable for more than 70 years, and here too reports vary as to the reason. There have been persistent but unsupported claims that the book was supressed by the Australian government and that almost all copies were destroyed; another version claims that they were accidentally burned in a fire at the publisher's warehouse. Whatever the reason, the outcome was the same -- until its reprint in 1982, it is believed that only seven copies of the book survived in various Australian libraries and in the possession of Witton's family, and this has clearly had a significant effect on historical writings about Morant and the Carbaniers.
The 1976 book "The Australians At The Boer War" by Australian historian J.W. Wallace gives a concise, and reasonably detailed account of Morant's military career, trial and execution although it contains almost no information about Morant's earlier life and omits a number of significant details contained in Witton's account of the events leading up to Morant's trial.
The most widely-known book is the best-selling Australian novel "The Breaker" by Kit Denton, first published in 1973 and inspired by Denton's meeting and conversation with a Boer War veteran who had actually known Morant. The book was subsequently adapted for the screen and filmed in 1979 as the successful Australian feature film Breaker Morant. These versions of the story have had a considerable effect in shaping public opinion about the Morant case, especially in Australia, but they too omit, condense or transpose many important details and include others (e.g Denton's claim that Capt Hunt had been castrated) which do not appear in Witton's book.
Although it is generally accepted that Morant and/or others in his regiment were involved in the deaths of some Boer commandos, historical opinion is still sharply divided over the central questions of the case -- how many were killed, by whom they were killed, and on whose orders?
Morant's detractors conventionally depict the Carbaniers as war criminals, rogue soldiers and cold-blooded murderers who were little better than the Boer guerillas they fought against and that they were fairly tried and executed for killing unarmed prisoners of war and civilians. British historical accounts of the Boer War tend to reflect this view and typically give little space to the matter. They also, predictably, tend to be highly favourable towards Kitchener.
The first major history of the Boer War since 1910 was that written by Thomas Packenham (Lord Longford), published in 1979. It is a major work, running to some 659 pages, yet the events of the Morant case occupy only a single paragraph -- although it must be admitted that Witton's book was not republished for another three years after that.
Nonetheless, Packenham addresses only one major question. He labels as "a misconception" the notion that there was any foreign political inlfuence on the case -- obliquely referring to the claims of German government pressure over the killing of Rev. Hesse. He effectively shifts all blame for the killing of Boer prisoners onto the Australians, exonerating Kitchener of any responsibility for the outcomes of the 'no prisoners' policy, and ascribing to him a simpler and "cruder" motive for ordering the executions. According to Packenham, evidence of his own army's indiscipline drove Kitchener "wild with frustration" -- clearly implying that Morant and his co-accused were simply out of control.
The 1998 biography of Kitchener by British author John Pollock likewise exemplifies the 'Establishment' view. Despite the great amount of research that has been done since Packenham's book was published, Pollock still manages to despatch the case in a mere two paragraphs; the names of Morant, Handcock and Witton do not even appear in the index.
Pollock prefaces his remarks about Morant by referring to many cases in which the supposedly kind and sensitive Kitchener had commuted death sentences passed against British soldiers -- clearly implying that Morant and Handcock must indeed have deserved their fate. His account of Kitchener's visit to Australia during his world tour in 1910 conspicuously fails to mention the highly controversial claim that Kitchener allegedly refused to officiate at the dedication of a war memorial in Peter Handcock's home town of Bathurst, NSW unless Handcock's name was removed from the list of names of the fallen. It was not restored until 1964.
Pollock admits that there were 'atrocities on both sides' during the Boer War, but largely glosses over the very serious question of alleged British war crimes against Boer insurgents, particularly in regard to the scandal of the internment camps set up to hold Boer refugees -- the original 'concentration camps' -- in which over 28,000 people died. Although he does admit that under Kitchener's command '... Boer rebels found wearing British uniforms might be shot without trial ...', he avoids stating directly that these were Kitchener's orders--the claim central to Morant and Handcock's defence at their court-martial.
Noting that the executions caused 'an outcry in Australia', Pollock briefly mentions the claims by 'friends of Morant' that the court-martial was 'a farce', and the claims that the Boers and the priest Hesse had not been murdered, but that they had in fact been killed 'in a raid that went wrong'. But, while he admits the case 'remains contentious', he ends on a decidedly pejorative note, describing the Morant story as 'a fertile field for fiction and film'.
Morant's supporters, on the other hand, argue that he and Handcock were unfairly singled out for punishment even though 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 were intent on concealing the existence of the "take no prisoners" policy against Boer insurgents -- a policy which, they claim, had been promulgated by Kitchener himself.
Australian author Nick Bleszynski is a leading proponent of the 'scapegoat' argument. He asserts that, while Morant and the others probably committed some crimes and may well have deserved disciplinary action, there is now persuasive evidence from several sources to show that the Kitchener 'no prisoners' order did indeed exist, that it was widely known among both the British and Australian troops and carried out by many disparate units. He also argues that the court-martial was fundamentally flawed in its procedures.
Bleszynski, like Denton and Beresford, believes that Morant and Handcock were given a show trial, branded as murderous renegades and then executed. This was done mainly in order to appease the Boer government and secure the peace treaty, but also to prevent the British public from learning that, however unpalatable their actions, the men had in fact been carrying out a standing order that had been issued by the British commander-in-chief himself.
The graves of Morant and Handcock were left unattended for many years, but after the release of Beresford's film it became a popular place of pilgrimage for Australian tourists. In June 1998 the Australian Government spent $1,500 refurbishing the grave site with a new concrete slab and a new marble cross.
References
- Denton, Kit (1973). The Breaker. Angus & Robertson. ASIN 0207126917.
- Bleszynski, Nick (2002), 'Shoot Straight, You Bastards': The True Story Behind The Killing of 'Breaker' Morant. Random House Australia. ISBN 174051081X.
- Packenham, Thomas (1979). The Boer War. Weidenfeld & Nicholson. ISBN 029777395X.
- Pollock, John (1998). Kitchener. Constable. ISBN 0094803404.
- Wallace, J.W. (1976). The Australians At The Boer War. Australian War Memorial/Australian Government Publishing Service.
- Witton, George (1982). Scapegoats of the Empire. Angus & Robertson. ISBN 0207146667.