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Delville Wood and South African Great War Commemoration Author(S): Bill Nasson Source: the English Historical Review, Vol Delville Wood and South African Great War Commemoration Author(s): Bill Nasson Source: The English Historical Review, Vol. 119, No. 480 (Feb., 2004), pp. 57-86 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3489999 . Accessed: 11/11/2013 03:35 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The English Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 105.233.150.95 on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 03:35:07 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions EnglishHistorical Review ? OxfordUniversity Press 2004 DelvilleWood and SouthAfrican Great War Commemoration IN May I920, JanSmuts, Prime Minister of theUnion of SouthAfrica, and a pushymember of theinner circle of Lloyd George's Imperial War Cabinet,wrote to the Poet LaureateRobert Bridges. He expressedhis regretat the loss of a largenumber of South Africansoldiers on the Somme and in Flanders,and expressedpersonal sympathyfor the familiesof fallenmen who feltthat their remains should not be lefton the WesternFront, but shippedback to the Union to be buriedand honoured in theirhome country.After all, the South Africanwar contributionwas uniquely deservingof national veneration:while Britainhad endedup havingto feedconscripts to itsimperial war effort, its South AfricanDominion had supplied only willing volunteer patriots. Turningto the Battleof the Somme,an artfulSmuts reflected pride and gloom in about equal measure.Although his country'scostly militarysacrifice there had been in a good cause,the muddy outcome of the 1914-1918war as a whole remaineda matterof heavyregret. For, what the GreatWar had leftwere 'the ruinsin whichpoor mankindis strugglingtoday'. Still, so as not to leave Bridgeswholly disheartened, Smuts sharedsome quiet optimism.This lay in the hope thatSouth Africa'stough contribution to the recentSomme campaignwould in timework to producesome 'spiritualregeneration' of European society, and that a propermemorial to Union losses in 1916would soon be erectedto commemorateAfrica's magnificent 'European sacrifice' in a sacrificialbattle for 'civilization' in the'Old World'.Venerating the loyal wartimeconduct of British Africa would be doingthe right thing for the rightreason. If thesignificance of thistangible legacy of theGreat War werenot to be takenseriously, concluded Smuts, 'the fateof thewhite race is goingto be verydark'.' On thatbasis, Pretoria's disproportion- atelylarge share of its burdenlooked unlikelyto be lessened. It is fairlyclear that forJan Smuts and othermembers of South Africa'sruling political establishment, the galloping idea of establishing a NationalWar Memorialon the Somme was meantto be morethan justsecuring a publicsite of mourningto payhomage to theUnion war dead. From its inception, it was envisaged as a spiky political commemorationof Dominion identityand achievementin war, a tracingin graniteand marbleof the colonial strengthsof the South Africancharacter across French soil. Here, the Union could suddenly narrowthe salt water frontier between Cape Town and Southampton. I. BodleianLibrary, Oxford, Bridges Papers, f. 132, J.C. Smuts to R.H. Bridges,ss May1920. EHR, cxix. 480 (Feb. 2004) This content downloaded from 105.233.150.95 on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 03:35:07 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 58 DELVILLE WOOD AND SOUTH AFRICAN There was littleneed to searchfor an appropriatecommemorative spot. The obvioussymbolic point on the Somme battlefieldhad to be DelvilleWood, a bushypatch of land to thenorth of thesmall town of Longuevalwhich, in July1916, had been a stifflydefended forested enclaveon theGerman second line. Invoked as 'thefull epic' of'tortured humanity',2 or the fabled'site of a South Africanepic',3 the Delville Wood battlewould go down in FirstWorld War historyas a celebrated icon of colonialsettler valour and sacrificialheroism under fire. The emblematiccase fora particularDelville Wood commemoration layin thecommitment of the3rd South African Infantry Brigade to the Somme offensive.A componentof the BritishFifth Army, this was a skilledand experiencedcontingent of white volunteers, many of whom had alreadyseen servicein the I914-15 German South West Africa campaign,or earlierin the 1899-1902 Anglo-BoerWar. In the time betweenits disembarkation at Marseilleslate in 1915and itsdeployment in actionduring the second stageof the Somme offensive,men of the 3,ooo-strong Brigadehad alreadyminted a distinctlyup-beat soldiering ethos, refractedthrough a vaulting 'Springbok' national identity. Portrayedin stylizedimagery as bronzedand big-bonedinfantrymen bred on the veld, these volunteerswere Africa'sEuropean elect, its 'colonial to use Griffith'smemorable archetypal supermen', Paddy phrase. Lined up behind its laurelledSpringbok emblem with its encirclingAnglo-Dutch motto, 'Union is Strength- EendrachtMaakt Macht', the Pretoriaexpeditionary force was eulogizedin the English South Africanpress as the essence of a sharp-lookingand superbly disciplinedBritish Dominion Army.5 Its assertiveidentity was a strikinglyidiosyncratic mix of burly physicalelements and underlyingvalues. At one level,a contagiouskind of diaspora'Scottishness' bound togetherBrigade Springboks, many of whom had been recruitedthrough the flamboyantlyScottish infantry formationsof the Union Defence Force, like the TransvaalScottish, Cape Town Highlanders,and the Cape-based Duke of Edinburgh's Rifles,as well as throughthe rolls of a networkof CaledonianSocieties. The force's 'militaryScottishness' was cemented furtherby its operationalattachment to General Henry Rawlinson's9th (Scottish) Division.Rawlinson, a veteran of the Anglo-Boer War, welcomed South AfricanScots empirepatriots to a command under which the male 2. JohnBuchan, The History of the South African Forces in France(Edinburgh, 1920), p. 63. 3. JohnKeegan, The First World War (London, 1998), p. 319. 4. PaddyGriffith, British Fighting Methods in theGreat War (London, 1996), pp. 59,177. 5. CapeTimes, y5 Aug. 1915; Rand Daily Mail, 22 Aug. 1915; Natal Witness, 26 Aug.1915; Pretoria Friend,i9 Dec. 1915;Diamond Fields Advertiser, 30oDec. 1915. 6. As used by JonathanHyslop, 'Cape Town Highlanders,Transvaal Scottish: Military "Scottishness"and Social Powerin Nineteenthand TwentiethCentury South Africa', unpub. conferencepaper, The BritishWorld Conference, University of Cape Town,9-II Jan.2002. EHR, cxix. 480 (Feb. 2004) This content downloaded from 105.233.150.95 on Mon, 11 Nov 2013 03:35:07 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions GREAT WAR COMMEMORATION 59 camaraderieof colonial 'Jocks' could blendwith the old warriorguilds of the Royal Scots or theArgylls. At anotherlevel, kilted Brigade infantry carried their own sense of what it meantto be, say,Transvaal Scottish. In thisrespect, a dash of fierceAfrica was the glass of fashion.As Springbokstrudged off for trenchwarfare training, the vocal imageryof 'Bonnie Highland' marchingsongs celebratedthe imaginedties of affectionand respect betweenCeltic colonists (and accompanyingEnglish and East European immigrantswho also took to pipes and kilts) and subject African societiesrenowned for their military prowess. Thus, thecoinage of 'Zulu Gaelic', 'Basuto Gaelic', and even Rhodesian 'Matabeleland Gaelic' underscoredthe colonialpresence of SouthAfrican combatants within an Old World 9th Scots Division.7 Equallypervasive were the customary trench chants, aimed at lifting the spiritsof exhaustedmen. Steeped in the crude discourseof an imitativeAfrican tribalism, exhortations commonly took the shape of Zulu war cries or mock Zulu dances. For white infantrymen,this make-believecultural affinity reinforced a potentmartial message: the fightingspirit of the 3rdSouth AfricanInfantry could matchthat of a nineteenth-centuryShakan impior war party. In fact,so attractivewas thishot-blooded narcotic that some white Springbokspainlessly became black. In snatchedrecreation periods, infantrymenrelished self-parody as le Zulu Blanc,blackening up with sootand makingthe most of burlesque opportunities 'to messabout and shout Usuthu!'.8Playing at 'Zulus' undoubtedlyprovided fleeting momentsof pantomimerelief from the daily brutality and drudgeryof serviceon theWestern Front.' The Somme Brigadewas also tightlyknit in two othernotable ways. One ofthese was itslocalized recruiting grid in 1915,drawing officers and men fromcollege schools,merchant houses, engineeringworks and miningcompany offices where they had frequentlyknown one another in peacetime.These were reliable individuals, including a toughrump of 'Scottish-English'citizen volunteers who had alreadyserved together underarms in puttingdown late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century ruralAfrican resistance and rebellion.A secondelement was itsweighty, middle-classSouth AfricanEnglish or Scottish-Englishand loyalist Anglo-Afrikanerorientation; cross-fertilization fostered social closeness, 10 and lubricatedthe springof a common,pro-British patriotism. Rondebosch School ix 7. BoysHigh Magazine, (I916), 41; The Selbornian,iii (i916),
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