Weston Agricultural College, a boys’ school in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands originally built as a remount depot for the second Anglo Boer War, has unveiled a monument to animals that died during wartime.
Apart from its terrible toll on human lives, the second Anglo Boer War claimed hundreds of thousands of horses, mules and oxen. The scale of the tragedy, revealed in the discovery of mass graves on the farmlands, struck a deep chord with pupils and staff, which led to a plan to create a monument to honour the role and suffering of animals in war.
History teacher and museum curator Jeannine Tait and farm manager Warren Loader led the initiative after researching the history of the remount depot. Bones, horseshoes, bullet casings and various military artefacts found in the veld by schoolboys and staff are displayed in a school museum.
On May 31 at 2.10pm, timed to coincide with the start of the meeting 110 years ago that would end the war, a bugler sounded the Last Post. A mounted guard of honour stood to attention as horse bones were buried in a crypt beside the centrepiece of the monument, a pyramid of horseshoes.
Colonial Remount Depot No 6 was established in December 1900 on the Weston Commonage to care for battle-injured horses and mules and to train them for the barrage of war.
Houses were built for officers, barracks for other ranks and corrugated iron shelters for the horses. The officers’ private horses were housed in a stable “complete with windows and tongue-and-groove panelling”, says Loader.
A 600-bed tent hospital was set up at Mooi River and the doctors’ residence was built at the remount depot. This and two other buildings are registered as provincial heritage sites. The officers’ mess, stable blocks and the former hospital quarters are all in daily use.
In 1913 the Union government sold the 1 200ha remount camp to the Natal Provincial Association, which converted it into an agriculture and allied trades school, later to become Weston Agricultural College.
The spirit of the horses lives on at the school, where learners excel at horsemanship. Not surprisingly, a keen interest in South African military history is nurtured among learners through excursions to the many nearby battlefields.
Members of the public attended the weekend of tribute, which included a formal ball in military tradition, military and horsemanship displays, battle enactments and historical talks and tours of the farm. Other schools, individuals and animal-interest associations sponsored “dressed” horseshoes and floral tributes.
For more information contact Weston Agricultural College (Tel +27 (0)33 263 1328 (Jeannine Tait or Warren Loader) email [email protected] or Umvoti Mounted Rifles (+27 (0)31 700 1860 Maj Matthew Everitt)