The Boer Vikings of South Africa

[karl]

The following was unknown to my self until just of late. It has been a great many years since to have been in South Africa and yet, was not aware of Scandia solders to have fought in the Boer wars of those times.

There is a long list of the dead from those wars, but was to edit it out for reasons of brevity. As for as I know, I do not have any relatives to have served in those two conflicts.


Published on October 15th, 2013


The Boer Vikings of South Africa

By Lars Ericson

The second Boer War (1899–1902) was fought between the British Empire and the settlers of the Orange Free State and Transvaal. One forgotten part of history is that several Scandinavians fought and died for the Boer cause.
The Scandinavian Corps was founded just before the outbreak of hostilities at a meeting in Pretoria. Recruiting was mainly among Scandinavian miners around Johannesburg, but the corps also contained a number of sailors. The corps was mounted, and in 1899 they consisted of 9 officers and NCOs and 104 ORs (45 Swedes, 24 Danes, 18 Finns, 13 Norwegians and 13 others).

The CO was Captain Axel Christer Helmfrid Uggla (a railway engineer) from Sweden. On 16th October 1899 about 50 men of the corps paraded for President Krüger before leaving for the front. His second in command was fellow Swede (from Sundsvall) Erik Ståhlberg, the only officer who was a trained officer. Lieutenant Ståhlberg got about a week to try to give some basic military training to the force, where previous military- weapons- or equestrian training was scarce.

The corps tasks were mainly sabotage operations, but they also took part in the Siege of Mafeking and the battles at Magersfontein an Paardeberg.
They were present at the siege of Mafeking, were they served as mounted infantry and clearing mines laid by the defenders. They also demolished railway lines and took horses from the british. The second in command, Erik Ståhlberg wrote in 1901 after coming home about the siege: “The bombardment continues day after day. But it is not impossible getting new friends on the opposite side. Sundays and holidays hostilities cease and it is possible to meet the British in all friendliness, swapping meat for whisky!”


At the end of November the Scandinavian corps was part of the force sent out to meet the relief column. On 9th December the boer forces had entrenched themselves on a ridge, with the Scandinavians along with two other Boer detachments entrenched as outposts. The Scandinavian force was 3 officers and 49 men. Their task was to give warning and delay a British attack.

On 11th December, the Highland Brigade attacked. Captain J. Allum in the Scandinavian trenches tells: “It was a rainy, dark night, the men suffering from the cold, which at this time of the year can be severe. Everything was quiet until around 4.30 in the morning, when a few shots were heard on our right. Then silence for a couple of seconds, perhaps a minute that seemed to us, waiting tensely, as an eternity.
It was so silent you could hear your heartbeats. Suddenly a firestorm broke out at the foot of the hill on the Boer right flank, and in the next second the mauser’s began to smatter, the wounded screamed and the English hurrahs and commands sounded. This went on for about 15 minutes, then silence fell anew. The first assault was beaten back with heavy losses. The Boers had let the English, marching in formation, come very close before opening a devastating fire.”

I front of the Scandinavians were 4000 of the Higland Brigade: Black Watch, Seaforths, Argylls and the Highland Light Infantry. After the assault had been broken, the British artillery commenced firing. Before the next infantry attack. The Scandinavians were, according to Captain Ståhlberg, firing 18-20 aimed shots a minute. After half an hour firing 200 men of the Seaforths had worked around the Scandinavian right flank, and the losses among the defenders ros.

After renewed attacks with the bayonets the position was overwhelmed. 17 men had tried a countercharge, but only eight Scandinavians managed to get back in the boer lines, the rest killed or wounded. Every one of the prisoners had been wounded. It then appeared that the fight had been the result of a mistake. At 3.00 General Cronje had ordered the outposts to get back, but this had never reached the Scandinavians.

Captain Ståhlberg again: “After three hours our resistance is broken. Our CO, Captain Flygare falls in the beginning of the battle, shot in the heart. Lieutenant Berentsen is wounded and man after man falls, drilled by bullets. The Highland Brigade, with the Gordons on the right encircles us. In the final act they fell over us like hungry vultures, and our resistance is over. Carl Albert Olsson from Gothenburg tries to save his brother Edvin, shot in the head by pulling him under cover. He is attacked by two scots whose heads he smashes with the rifle butt, only to fall from several bayonet wounds.

The Swedish nurse Elin Lindblom, serving with the Scandinavian ambulance with the Boers tells: “Early in the afternoon came the seven men who had succeeded in escaping in the battle at Magersfontein (11), six unscathed, a Dane, Krohn, shot in the heel. The rest of the 49 Scandinavians who had been sent to the forepost, were dead or wounded and the wounded were prisoners with the English.
Our ambulance men had gone out with the wagon and in the evening they brought some of the wounded Scandinavians with them, among them Appelberg. He was shot in the stomach and died after a few days and he was buried after a post-mortem examination by a German surgeon. But during the whole day wounded Boers had come in one after the other, some of them wounded who needed bandaging to return to the battle, some in such a state that we had to find place for them in the tent as best as we could. The most seriously wounded man, apart from Appelberg, was perhaps a Boer, named Sauer, who was shot through the throat, and we feared that the spine was injured.

Scandinavian Commando before Magersfontein, with the Transvaal Republic flag.

We washed and bandaged them as best as we could and gave them water and food. A mobile ambulance cannot do much in these cases, but it was better than nothing. Our tent was entirely full by the evening. The battle continued uninterruptedly and it was impossible for our ambulance men to go to the battlefield where our men had fallen. It became quiet only after three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon and then they could go there, where they found eighteen dead and two wounded; all the others had been brought by the English to their ambulance.
The wounded were two Finns, Backman and Viklund, who were in such a bad state that the English had bandaged them provisionally and left them on the battlefield. They had considered them as hopeless. We also thought this, when they were brought to us on Tuesday evening. Backman was delirious with three bullets through the leg, the whole legbone splintered by a bomb, one bullet in the breast and out through the back which was fearfully torn; it was a miracle that he had not bled to death. Viklund was seriously shot through his tender parts and had one flesh wound in the arm as well as heatstroke owing to sunburn.

We feared that his spine was injured. They had lain on the battlefield from 5 o’clock Monday morning to 3 o’clock Tuesday afternoon in the burning sun and bitter night cold, robbed of all their clothes. For even here pillagers are found. We had a German surgeon who had no ambulance to work for and helped us to bring those who could be transported, to the hospital. The nearest hospital was at Jacobsdal, one day’s travel away or a little farther from our spot. They were sent to Jacobsdal with some of our men. Because Viklund was so seriously wounded we thought it better to keep him with the ambulance until we could see how his condition developed.”
The dead were buried on the battlefield, where a monument was erected in 1908.

The Mass grave of Scandinavians at Magersfontein, in the Northern Cape, South Africa.

After Magersfontein the Scandinavian Corps was sent to Bloemfontein, where they reorganized and received 80 men as reinforcements. They were part of General Cronjes command, which capitulated at Paardeberg on 27th February 1900. The Scandinavian POW were sent to St Helena, three of them escaping before the ship left Simonstown. Two let himself be buried in the sand while bathing, and a third jumped overboard with a lifebelt and a knife. All three reached the boer lines safely. The Scandinavian ambulance continued to serve until the end of the war.
In 1920, 15 members of the Scandinavian corps received the medal “voor de anglo-boeroorlog” at a ceremony in Stockholm, three of them nurses. Another 30 Swedes got their medal at the South African legation in Stockholm 1937, six of them receiving a “Dekoratie Voor Trouwe Dienst” as well.

The monument, which still stands at Magersfontein, was an initiative of the Swedish officer Erland Mossberg, who had served in the Cape Town Town Guard during the war. He was an officer originally in “Jämtlands Fältjägare” (translates roughly as “Jämtland Rifles”), the medical officer of Jämtlands Fältjägare was Josef Hammar, who had served in the boer forces. Mossberg started to collect subscriptions for a monument. The money were quickly raised, with support of national newspapers. The monument consists of a 6.5 metres high steel, with four corner stones 15 metres high representing the different Scandinavian countries. The names of the men killed is on the monument, which was inaugurated on 25th april 1908 by Pime Minister (and former Boer general) Louis Botha, an honour guard of the Kimberley Regiment present. The monument is placed some distance away from the scene of the actual battle, as the land owner of the battleground (a scot) didn’t want a monument to former enemies.

Presenter

Karl

[pieter]

Karl,

The Afrikaander boers descent from Flemish, French Huguenot, and German immigrants to South-Africa. They Scandinavian support for their cause is understandable due to the fact that there was popular support for the 'Boer'cause during the Anglo-Boer Wars.

Despite the loss of their two capital cities, Bloemfontein and Pretoria, and half of their army, during the Second Anglo-Boer war, the Boer commanders adopted guerrilla warfare tactics, primarily conducting raids against infrastructure, resource and supply targets, all aimed at disrupting the operational capacity of the British Army.

Each Boer commando unit was sent to the district from which its members had been recruited, which meant that they could rely on local support and personal knowledge of the terrain and the towns within the district thereby enabling them to live off the land. Their orders were simply to act against the British whenever possible. Their tactics were to strike fast and hard causing as much damage to the enemy as possible, and then to withdraw and vanish before enemy reinforcements could arrive. The vast distances of the Republics allowed the Boer commandos considerable freedom to move about and made it nearly impossible for the 250,000 British troops to control the territory effectively using columns alone. As soon as a British column left a town or district, British control of that area faded away.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Boer_War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War

Cheers,
Pieter

[karl]

Pieter

Thank you for your very informative reply. It is an important historical event of South Africa with many aspects that have effected todays prospective, one being the invention of concentration camps by Lord Kitchener. A tool to use against the Boers to break the back of their will and ability to fight. For previously, their wives and family kept the farms going whilst their men folk were away righting. In this manner, was the support needed by the fighters to carry on their fight against the Brits. The following is a bit of professionally prepared description of those events as follows:


The camps were formed by the British army to house the residents of the two Boer republics of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. They were established towards the end of 1900, after Britain had invaded the Boer republics. The English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during this conflict. The camps had originally been set up by the British Army as "refugee camps" to provide refuge for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for one or other reason related to the war. However, when Kitchener succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa in 29 November 1900, the British Army introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result. Kitchener initiated plans to "flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organized like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children.... It was the clearance of civilians - uprooting a whole nation - that would come to dominate the last phase of the war."

As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their "Scorched Earth" policy - including the systematic destruction of crops and slaughtering of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms, and the poisoning of wells and salting of fields - to prevent the Boers from resupplying from a home base many tens of thousands of women and children were forcibly moved into the concentration camps. This was not the first appearance of internment camps. The Spanish had used internment in the Ten Years' War that later led to the Spanish-American War, and the United States had used them to devastate guerrilla forces during the Philippine-American War. But the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time that a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which some whole regions had been depopulated.

Eventually, there were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children. Over 26,000 women and children were to perish in these concentration camps.
The camps were poorly administered from the outset and became increasingly overcrowded when Kitchener's troops implemented the internment strategy on a vast scale. Conditions were terrible for the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor hygiene, bad sanitation and food shortages. The food rations were meagre, there was a two tierallocation policy whereby wives and children of men who were still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others. The inadequate shelter, poor diet, inadequate hygiene and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid and dysentery to which the children were particularly vulnerable. Coupled with a shortage of medical facilities many of the internees died.

As many Africans became refugees as the war raged across their farms and with the destruction of their homes, they, like Boers, moved to the towns where the British army hastily created internment camps. Subsequently, the "Scorched Earth" policy was ruthlessly applied to both Boers and Africans; although most black Africans were not considered by the British to be hostile, many tens of thousands were also forcibly removed from Boer areas and also placed in concentration camps.

Africans were separately held from Boer internees. Eventually there were a total of 64 tented camps for Africans. Conditions were as bad as in the camps for the Boers, but although after the Fawcett Commission report conditions improved in the Boer camps, "improvements were much slower in coming to the black camps.". It is worth noting that Emily Hobhouse and the Fawcett Commission only ever concerned themselves with the camps that held Boer refugees. No one paid much attention to what was going on in the camps that held African refugees. It is thought that about 12% of all black African inmates died (about 14,154) but the precise number of deaths of Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned.
After 31 May 1902, surviving families were repatriated to their homes.

Karl

[JustJohn or JJ]

Apr 6, 2015 9:48:15 GMT -7 karl said:

The following was unknown to my self until just of late. It has been a great many years since to have been in South Africa and yet, was not aware of Scandia solders to have fought in the Boer wars of those times.

There is a long list of the dead from those wars, but was to edit it out for reasons of brevity. As for as I know, I do not have any relatives to have served in those two conflicts.


Published on October 15th, 2013


The Boer Vikings of South Africa

By Lars Ericson

The second Boer War (1899–1902) was fought between the British Empire and the settlers of the Orange Free State and Transvaal. One forgotten part of history is that several Scandinavians fought and died for the Boer cause.
The Scandinavian Corps was founded just before the outbreak of hostilities at a meeting in Pretoria. Recruiting was mainly among Scandinavian miners around Johannesburg, but the corps also contained a number of sailors. The corps was mounted, and in 1899 they consisted of 9 officers and NCOs and 104 ORs (45 Swedes, 24 Danes, 18 Finns, 13 Norwegians and 13 others).

The CO was Captain Axel Christer Helmfrid Uggla (a railway engineer) from Sweden. On 16th October 1899 about 50 men of the corps paraded for President Krüger before leaving for the front. His second in command was fellow Swede (from Sundsvall) Erik Ståhlberg, the only officer who was a trained officer. Lieutenant Ståhlberg got about a week to try to give some basic military training to the force, where previous military- weapons- or equestrian training was scarce.

The corps tasks were mainly sabotage operations, but they also took part in the Siege of Mafeking and the battles at Magersfontein an Paardeberg.
They were present at the siege of Mafeking, were they served as mounted infantry and clearing mines laid by the defenders. They also demolished railway lines and took horses from the british. The second in command, Erik Ståhlberg wrote in 1901 after coming home about the siege: “The bombardment continues day after day. But it is not impossible getting new friends on the opposite side. Sundays and holidays hostilities cease and it is possible to meet the British in all friendliness, swapping meat for whisky!”


At the end of November the Scandinavian corps was part of the force sent out to meet the relief column. On 9th December the boer forces had entrenched themselves on a ridge, with the Scandinavians along with two other Boer detachments entrenched as outposts. The Scandinavian force was 3 officers and 49 men. Their task was to give warning and delay a British attack.

On 11th December, the Highland Brigade attacked. Captain J. Allum in the Scandinavian trenches tells: “It was a rainy, dark night, the men suffering from the cold, which at this time of the year can be severe. Everything was quiet until around 4.30 in the morning, when a few shots were heard on our right. Then silence for a couple of seconds, perhaps a minute that seemed to us, waiting tensely, as an eternity.
It was so silent you could hear your heartbeats. Suddenly a firestorm broke out at the foot of the hill on the Boer right flank, and in the next second the mauser’s began to smatter, the wounded screamed and the English hurrahs and commands sounded. This went on for about 15 minutes, then silence fell anew. The first assault was beaten back with heavy losses. The Boers had let the English, marching in formation, come very close before opening a devastating fire.”

I front of the Scandinavians were 4000 of the Higland Brigade: Black Watch, Seaforths, Argylls and the Highland Light Infantry. After the assault had been broken, the British artillery commenced firing. Before the next infantry attack. The Scandinavians were, according to Captain Ståhlberg, firing 18-20 aimed shots a minute. After half an hour firing 200 men of the Seaforths had worked around the Scandinavian right flank, and the losses among the defenders ros.

After renewed attacks with the bayonets the position was overwhelmed. 17 men had tried a countercharge, but only eight Scandinavians managed to get back in the boer lines, the rest killed or wounded. Every one of the prisoners had been wounded. It then appeared that the fight had been the result of a mistake. At 3.00 General Cronje had ordered the outposts to get back, but this had never reached the Scandinavians.

Captain Ståhlberg again: “After three hours our resistance is broken. Our CO, Captain Flygare falls in the beginning of the battle, shot in the heart. Lieutenant Berentsen is wounded and man after man falls, drilled by bullets. The Highland Brigade, with the Gordons on the right encircles us. In the final act they fell over us like hungry vultures, and our resistance is over. Carl Albert Olsson from Gothenburg tries to save his brother Edvin, shot in the head by pulling him under cover. He is attacked by two scots whose heads he smashes with the rifle butt, only to fall from several bayonet wounds.

The Swedish nurse Elin Lindblom, serving with the Scandinavian ambulance with the Boers tells: “Early in the afternoon came the seven men who had succeeded in escaping in the battle at Magersfontein (11), six unscathed, a Dane, Krohn, shot in the heel. The rest of the 49 Scandinavians who had been sent to the forepost, were dead or wounded and the wounded were prisoners with the English.
Our ambulance men had gone out with the wagon and in the evening they brought some of the wounded Scandinavians with them, among them Appelberg. He was shot in the stomach and died after a few days and he was buried after a post-mortem examination by a German surgeon. But during the whole day wounded Boers had come in one after the other, some of them wounded who needed bandaging to return to the battle, some in such a state that we had to find place for them in the tent as best as we could. The most seriously wounded man, apart from Appelberg, was perhaps a Boer, named Sauer, who was shot through the throat, and we feared that the spine was injured.

Scandinavian Commando before Magersfontein, with the Transvaal Republic flag.

We washed and bandaged them as best as we could and gave them water and food. A mobile ambulance cannot do much in these cases, but it was better than nothing. Our tent was entirely full by the evening. The battle continued uninterruptedly and it was impossible for our ambulance men to go to the battlefield where our men had fallen. It became quiet only after three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon and then they could go there, where they found eighteen dead and two wounded; all the others had been brought by the English to their ambulance.
The wounded were two Finns, Backman and Viklund, who were in such a bad state that the English had bandaged them provisionally and left them on the battlefield. They had considered them as hopeless. We also thought this, when they were brought to us on Tuesday evening. Backman was delirious with three bullets through the leg, the whole legbone splintered by a bomb, one bullet in the breast and out through the back which was fearfully torn; it was a miracle that he had not bled to death. Viklund was seriously shot through his tender parts and had one flesh wound in the arm as well as heatstroke owing to sunburn.

We feared that his spine was injured. They had lain on the battlefield from 5 o’clock Monday morning to 3 o’clock Tuesday afternoon in the burning sun and bitter night cold, robbed of all their clothes. For even here pillagers are found. We had a German surgeon who had no ambulance to work for and helped us to bring those who could be transported, to the hospital. The nearest hospital was at Jacobsdal, one day’s travel away or a little farther from our spot. They were sent to Jacobsdal with some of our men. Because Viklund was so seriously wounded we thought it better to keep him with the ambulance until we could see how his condition developed.”
The dead were buried on the battlefield, where a monument was erected in 1908.

The Mass grave of Scandinavians at Magersfontein, in the Northern Cape, South Africa.

After Magersfontein the Scandinavian Corps was sent to Bloemfontein, where they reorganized and received 80 men as reinforcements. They were part of General Cronjes command, which capitulated at Paardeberg on 27th February 1900. The Scandinavian POW were sent to St Helena, three of them escaping before the ship left Simonstown. Two let himself be buried in the sand while bathing, and a third jumped overboard with a lifebelt and a knife. All three reached the boer lines safely. The Scandinavian ambulance continued to serve until the end of the war.
In 1920, 15 members of the Scandinavian corps received the medal “voor de anglo-boeroorlog” at a ceremony in Stockholm, three of them nurses. Another 30 Swedes got their medal at the South African legation in Stockholm 1937, six of them receiving a “Dekoratie Voor Trouwe Dienst” as well.

The monument, which still stands at Magersfontein, was an initiative of the Swedish officer Erland Mossberg, who had served in the Cape Town Town Guard during the war. He was an officer originally in “Jämtlands Fältjägare” (translates roughly as “Jämtland Rifles”), the medical officer of Jämtlands Fältjägare was Josef Hammar, who had served in the boer forces. Mossberg started to collect subscriptions for a monument. The money were quickly raised, with support of national newspapers. The monument consists of a 6.5 metres high steel, with four corner stones 15 metres high representing the different Scandinavian countries. The names of the men killed is on the monument, which was inaugurated on 25th april 1908 by Pime Minister (and former Boer general) Louis Botha, an honour guard of the Kimberley Regiment present. The monument is placed some distance away from the scene of the actual battle, as the land owner of the battleground (a scot) didn’t want a monument to former enemies.

Presenter

Karl