'commando' by deneys reitz: boers wearing khaki...

Well I've been researching the South African wars and this film is set in the period after most of the main battles like Kimberley, Magersfontein and Spion Kop were fought. The Boers were fighting a guerrilla war, on the run and many civilians who would have supported them were in 'concentration camps' which cut them off from their supplies (food, ammo, clothes). The Boers who were fighting at this time were called the 'bitter enders' because they were fighting to 'the bitter end' and they were almost always ragged and wanting for clothes. Thus they would loot the wounded or dead British soldiers (not to sure about the charge of 'mutilating' Hunt's body, though of course, this being war, some Boer may have taken some personal 'revenge' on Hunt dead or alive.) take their uniforms and boots, which the British then used as an excuse to declare them as operating outside the accepted 'rules of war' (using an army's uniforms is naturally in contravention of accepted rules as deceptive) and shoot them.

By the way, Denys Reitz's book is one of the sources of the Osprey book on Boer Commandos.

Hope this helps,
Tom

Being irregulars and/or guerillas, one can't expect British soldiers to treat the same as captured regulars. the rules of war rarely apply to such guerilla skirmishes.

What are they doing? Why do they come here?
Some kind of instinct, memory, what they used to do.

The Manual of Military Law (1899) - the red book - Outlined that enemy combatants found wearing British uniforms were to be considered spies.

I believe spies could be summarily executed by the commanding officer of the unit without trial... It was a long bow to draw to consider those wearing British Khaki of any description as being spies.. but it helped Kitchener to (at least partially) justify the shooting of prisoners.

If a trial was necessary then there were rules in place for how a `drumhead court martial' should be conducted - Again, outlined in the red book.

In the case of Visser (the Boer in the movie found wearing a piece of Hunt's uniform) the required ranks were not present to make the court martial a legal one. Applying the letter of the law this was regarded as murder (or whatever fancy label was applied to it) and was one of the crimes with which Morant and Handcock were charged and acquitted.... The firing party themselves were, oddly enough, not charged with murder on the grounds that they were following orders. The same Manual of Military Law contained rules that Morant and Handcock could be charged with bringing about a murder even though the actual murderers had not been charged.

B

Some soldiers express in the movie that the Boer they shot was probably wearing Khaki just to get out of the cold, not for trying to deceive the carbineers into riding into an ambush.

The guerillas were outlaws to the British and they acknowledged that they were really short of food and supply. When the Boer is caught in the Khaki coat, one guy says, "Most likely he was just trying to keep out of the cold."

How were the boers supposed to know?

Well, taking a military uniform isn't like taking some other random clothing. It's pretty serious stuff, and considered illegal by any military, I think. You can't just throw on a uniform taken from the enemy and expect them to "understand" or whatever.

Maybe they didn't know about the order to shoot boers with khaki uniforms, but if they were smart, common sense and logic should have told them that it's not smart to get caught with the enemys uniform on.