Commando - Of Horses And Men by Deneys Reitz

ISBN: 9780956774552

Publisher: The House of Emslie, November 2012

Paperback, 381 pages

1929. Deneys Reitz, who is now one of General Smuts's political lieutenants and a warm supporter of the British Commonwealth, fought through the South African War as our enemy. He enlisted on the outbreak of the war as a boy of seventeen and went through it to the bitter end. His father was President of the Orange Free State, and after peace was concluded he and his family went into exile. Later he returned to his own country; and later still fought in the Great War on the side of the Allies, first in West and South Africa, and then in France, where he was severely wounded, and where he came to command the First Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.

Commando abounds in interesting sidelights and portraits - Kruger, De Wet, Smuts, Kitchener. One of the most remarkable passages gives us a glimpse of the young Winston Churchill as prisoner of war in Pretoria. It is difficult to speak of this book in anything short of a string of superlatives.

The spirit of it is magnificent; the uncomplaining courage of the boy-fighter rouses memories of all the stories down the ages about unrecking devotion to an ideal. And not one of them is a finer one than this.