Episode 94 - The British break a Boer code and President Steyn is forced to flee wearing a nightcap

The Anglo-Boer War

It’s the first week of July 1901 and the British are about to break the code both the Boers and the Dutch have been using which has meant London’s military planning at times has been beset by guess work. Not that things have gone too badly in recent months for the British. The Boers have begun to surrender in larger numbers as it becomes clear that continued fighting was almost suicidal. There was only honour now, and when your women and children begin dying in concentration camps because you want to fight to the death, surrendering and ensuring your blood line isn’t such a crazy idea at all. Not that Generals Jan Smuts and Louis Botha from the Transvaal were for giving up just yet. It was really clear, however, that the British were not going to stop fighting although the war had now dragged on for 21 months. What the Boers did not know, was that their arch enemy in South Africa, the British commander in chief Lord Kitchener, had received a bit of shock from the war office in the form of a telegram. It outlined that the government was planning to trim his force of 250 000 by 110 000 men in order to save money. London was borrowing heavily to pay for the Boer war, and Kitchener was told in the telegram that he had until the end of Winter to ensure that Botha and Smuts and the hardliners General de la Rey and De Wet were defeated. As the code-breakers were breaking the Boer cypher, probably in their shirt-sleeves and late night oil lamps, back in South Africa the man who was the most determined to fight on was about to escape almost certain capture. Had he fallen into British hands now, it would have dealt the Boers a possibly fatal blow and it has been said by their own leaders including Christiaan de Wet, that the war may have ended then.