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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
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land clean, burning farms and rounding up the people. Botha left 1,500 men to assist the fleeing
populace and, with 2,000 men, slipped away north through the British line. Although the operation
continued into April, only 1,332 Boers were taken. The positive result, from the British point of
view, was that over a quarter of a million head of sheep and cattle had been taken, hitting the supplies
of the commandos hard.
As the war continued lines of block-houses, partly intended to protect supply lines along the
railways, served, together with the barbed wire fences that ran between them, as nets to catch the
driven Boers.
See also:
Blockhouses; Concentration Camps; Lang Reit; Wools-Sampson, Aubrey.
Reference:
Carver, Michael, The NAM Book of the Boer War (London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1999); De Wet,
Christiaan, Three Years War (London, Archibald Constable, 1902); Marix Evans, Martin, The
Boer War: South Africa 1899–1902 (Oxford, Osprey Publishing, 1999); Reitz, Deneys,
Commando (London, Faber & Faber, 1929; Prescott, Arizona, Wolfe Publishing, 1994).
Dum-Dum Bullets
Both the British and Boers accused each other of using dum-dum (expanding or deformable) bullets
and exploding bullets. That bullets containing an explosive charge were used on purpose is most
unlikely, but that manufactured and home-made expanding rounds were employed is not to be
doubted, although on what scale these were used, in the face of official disapproval, is not known.
The rounds made at the British arsenal in Dum-dum in India, properly termed Cordite Mark V,
had a small cylindrical hole at the tip of the round which caused the bullet to expand on impact. This
was considered necessary against “native” adversaries. The British classified the Boer War as a
European conflict and therefore the non-expanding Cordite Mark II was prescribed for use. The
expanding effect could also be achieved by filing off the nickel casing of the round at its extremity.
Mauser ammunition of an expanding character was manufactured in the form of the soft-nose bullet,
one in which the casing ceased 5.5mm short of the tip, leaving a deformable nose. Such rounds were
intended for shooting heavy game. They were popularly called exploding bullets, though in fact they
contained no explosive. It is known that some dum-dum rounds arrived with British troops coming
from India and supplies of them were captured by the Boers after the Battle of Talana, 20 October
1899. Deneys Reitz writes of his accidental use of ammunition he had picked up for shooting game.
After the Battle of Nooitgedacht, 13 December 1900, where he fought under Assistant Commandantgeneral C. F. Beyers, he came across the body of a British soldier he had killed: “I was horrified to
see that my bullet had blown half his head away, the explanation being that . . . I had found a few
explosive Mauser cartridges . . . [and] kept them in a separate pocket . . . I was distressed at my
mistake, but there is not a great deal of difference
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