Stephen Gray
MACBRIDE’S BRIGADE: IRISH COMMANDOS IN THE ANGLO-BOER WAR by Donal P McCracken (Four Courts Press, Dublin)
Under the Brixton Sentech tower there is a curious monument in memory of those who lost their lives fighting for the Boer cause a century ago in the various Irish Transvaal Brigades. Opened by Betsie Verwoerd in 1975, it has since fallen into neglect, become the drinking-place and outdoor toilet with the best-ever panorama over Johannesburg’s ridge.
Evidently, few care for the late Patrick Atkins anymore, in his slouch hat and bandolier, pickled in whiskey, wearing the green. You can no longer take tourists from the Emerald Isle there to weep over their independence-fighters; they would be deeply insulted.
To commemorate the brigades’ centenary, Donal McCracken of the History Department at the University of Durban-Westville has published this account of the wonderful 375 days of some 500 Irish volunteers, who shipped to President Kruger’s Transvaal Republic and became sworn in as honorary burghers.
They fought on the Tugela front, then delaying the British advance up from Bloemfontein – their Wreckers Corps blowing the bridges and lighting grassfires – and then (those that were left) to the bitter end at Komatipoort. In McCracken’s handling what was perhaps a mere chip of swashbuckling, roistering legend becomes a huge mosaic, well- documented and enormously involving.
Why did the Boers so love the Paddies? They were English-speaking and mostly Catholic, socialistic and sozzled. They lived on looting. Only 10 of the average muster of 120 had had military experience, and none knew how to ride a horse, although they were skilful at stealing them. Worse still, they lured into line against them 10 times the amount of loyal Irishmen, who had taken the queen’s shilling, and were disciplined and vengeful.
The brigade (commando is a better description) inevitably broke in two, was joined by an American-Irish Red Cross team who were not really medics, but tommy-hunters. To the Boers all that counted was they had a common ”hereditary enemy”, those cruel British colonisers.
Shining through comes that Major Robert McBride who, when facing a firing-squad at last for the Easter 1916 uprising back in Dublin, said (or is reported to have said): ”I have looked down the muzzles of too many guns in the South African war to fear death, and now please carry out your sentence.” May the rebel soul of ”Foxy Jack” gallop freely over our spaces on his ”Fenian Boy”, holding up his green flag.
According to McCracken, in Dublin there are 11 regimental memorials to Irishmen who fought on the British side in our war, and none to their treasonous burgher brothers in that Irish stew which boiled over so lethally in our landscape too.