Thread: Sixty Minutes- Boer War this Sunday

The unit he was in was S African rasied there was no aust army at the time. Australia as a country did not exist for another 12 months 1903 is federation he was there as a british colonial soldier the first time he went he was under british authority all the time not australian he was a pom anyway LT hancock was a from the colony of NSW.So for the people who said the australian govt should have been told remember there wasnt one to be told only the colonial govts of the colonies(british).

Originally Posted by Celtoid

It's a complicated issue all right but there are a few clear facts.

The British Government had a history of orchestrating and supporting genocide, you only have to look at what happened in Scotland and Ireland to see that. I assume similar happened in all their rambles into foreign territory. However, they were certainly not alone as most Imperialistic Governments and armies were the same. The Boers themselves if you believe what has been written, had scant regard for the lives of their perceived invaders (AKA the British) and the local natives.

I guess the thing for me is this. If the orders were real and Kitchener had the authority to give them, then both he and the British Government (at the time) were guilty of war crimes. If Breaker Morant followed them, so was he. As stated above by The Booger, the Germans and the Japs had no recourse with these claims either. As in modern times, if the perpetrators were Serbian or African or Middle Eastern, the Hague would wait regardless of rank or station. Why then is it different for an Aussie and the Brits?

I don't think we should let patriotism and the old anti-British rebel streak get in the way of the facts.

It would be distasteful for Australia to try to force the British government to pardon Morant and Co, just on the bases of him following orders. The act was just as much a crime as the order. Of course, if he wasn't following orders, it's a no brainer….same result…..War Criminal.

Maybe they should pursue the British Government for an apology for being the way they were.....

British were involved in other things just as bad. In 19th century China a "Tiaping" Christian Government arose which seeing the Harm Opium was doing banned Opium in China. But Britain sent in her gunboats and overthrew that Government inorder to sell Opium in China--very interesting History.

Originally Posted by THE BOOGER

The unit he was in was S African rasied there was no aust army at the time. Australia as a country did not exist for another 12 months 1903 is federation he was there as a british colonial soldier the first time he went he was under british authority all the time not australian he was a pom anyway LT hancock was a from the colony of NSW.So for the people who said the australian govt should have been told remember there wasnt one to be told only the colonial govts of the colonies(british).

Umm Booger, stop using that cheap calender.... The nation of Australia became federated as an independant nation on 1st January 1901. This was as a result of numerous meetings during the 1890's and successful referendums in each of the 6 (I think!) colonies which then became the states. I'd go more into it but for 2 things...


it would be a thread hijack

and


thats about all I got!!!


cheers ( and "go Australian" when you can people!!)


digger





PS OK the Breaker was a war criminal, so we shouldn't adore him ....ironic though from a nation that idolises a thieving, horse stealing, murdering,
cop killer who was entirely rightly hung.... (I refer to EDWARD KELLY for those who didn't guess) and have some who want a song about a suicidal sheep thief as our nations song, rather than a song that brags about how good we truely have it...??? go figure.


At least MORANT and Co were representing their 'country' (colony if you like) honourably until they "messed up".....

food for thought... although some would rather starve it!

Sorry Digger your right i was typing fast as was in 3 threads at same time 1901 it was you should read the comments on the light horse forum on the breaker hes not a hero there either
PS ned didnt call himself australian he was irish so he hated anything british police and postmasters the most

Maybe this is of interest,there are so many versions this is but one.
Harry Breaker Morant His short life (it spanned just over thirty-six years) was itself the stuff of romance and adventure; and he went through it like a swashbuckling cavalier, yielding often to human weaknesses common enough in the environment of his prime years, but always fighting back towards recovery. His death was romantic too, and may reasonably have arrived like the fulfillment of a destiny. Such, at any rate, will be the judgment of those who knew him. Some of his story is as old as that of the prodigal son. Although in the development of his personality he became completely identified with the land of his adoption, nevertheless he was not Australian by birth, but English-offshoot of English (or Anglo-Irish)county family stock. Heredity undoubtedly spoke out of him, but the environment that moulded his character in vital years was the Australian bush.

Harry Harbord Morant was born at Christmas time in 1865, at Bideford in Devon (he always said), the son, he also insisted, of Admiral Sir George Digby Morant. He was certainly well educated and he undoubtedly had some close connection with the gentry of Devon and Hampshire. Though there some doubt on the point of his ancestry.
Morant's early life in Australia is known only from fragmentary recollections by people who had known him. Using some of these recollections, he first appeared at Charters Towers in the Queensland outback country about the middle of 1884. He would then be nearly nineteen. How he arrived nobody can say. He was not a remittance-man, like many young Englishmen who occasionally appeared in Australia in those days on enforced exile from their homeland. He may have been cut off with something more than the proverbial shilling when he left England, but that is open to conjecture. Certainly he had to make his own way at that early age in a strange and rough land. It may be deduced from his letters later in life that while in England, or perhaps in Ireland, he had hunted while still a youngster and thereby nurtured his love of horses.

Some said he married in outback Queensland but that he and his wife quickly separated. However, no wife or widow of his could afterwards be traced. He left Charters Towers in a hurry after a horse-buying transaction, it's believed a cheque he gave was dishonoured. At the end of 1884 he was working in Hughenden, Queensland, on a newspaper, and he offered to buy a partnership in the paper, 'referring to a titled person in England who might finance him'. But the project evaporated, for no money came to hand. He is said to have left Hughenden suddenly after some trouble with a hotel bill.

Thereafter he drifted around Queensland until he got a job at Esmeralda Station as bookkeeper and storeman, weighing out the flour, tea, and sugar which by statutory provision was dispensed to swagmen travelling the road, officially looking for work or, as often, dodging it.

Morant in that particular job must have been ludicrous. He quickly exchanged it for work in the open among the cattle, droving and horse-breaking. Following these staple industries of the cattle country, he moved, like others of the bush fraternity, from one employer to another as demand fluctuated or boss and hand fell foul of each other. It was a hard-living, hard-drinking life, of a monotony broken only by change of scene, or by visits to some township or to the city to 'knock down a cheque', or by the excitement of a bush hunt. Horse-breaking meant not only schooling young station stock as they came on, but tackling the wild free horses to be found roaming the bush in mobs. Brumbies which at slack times station-hands would hunt down in hard riding and corral in the bush yards where a trial might be made of the likelier-looking specimens for breaking in. In this game, demanding all the skill and courage of the most accomplished horsemaster, and allowing few to emerge without a broken limb or two, Morant was outstanding. His reputation was known far and wide as Breaker Morant , and Morant himself used to boast that he knew every country hospital and every pub in outback New South Wales. He had an eye for appraisal of a horse second to none in any company; and, having mastered and proved his mount, he became in the saddle full partner with it in action, with an uncanny perception of just what that horse could do.

Such accomplishment has rarely failed to establish a man as a prince among his fellows.

With the outbreak of the Boer War in October 1899 'The Breaker' saw a heaven-sent opportunity.

Throughout Australia young men, and others not so young, responded to 'the call' with an enthusiasm hardly exceeded in the most jingoistic quarters of the 'the Old Country'. 'The Breaker' enlisted at once and found himself enrolled in the second contingent of South Australian Mounted Rifles.

In the camp of the South Australian Mounted Rifles, Morant won himself a place through sheer personality. He took readily to military discipline as something that helped to pull him together; and his horsemanship quickly earned respect among them, most of them younger than himself. He earned his Corporal's stripes almost at once. He was a Sergeant by the time they landed in South Africa early in 1900.

The reasons for the execution of Morant is still today clouded in mystery, Henry H. Morant was executed by firing squad in Pretoria, South Africa on the 27th day of February 1902 for deeds done to the Boers while under orders of Captain Hunt.

Lord Kitchener, who signed Morant's death warrant, was possible appeasing the German Emperor, since a German missionary also died in the confrontation between Morant and the Boer...but Morant had advised this missionary to defend himself from the dangerous Boers.

Who Knows the real truth..not I
John.

Originally Posted by The ho har's

yep I have a criminal past ..2 convicts plus Peter...1 stole a loaf of bread and we can not find out what the other did to deserve deportation.....As they say you can pick your friends but not your relatives

Mrs hh

....yeah but......it carries over into the genes....now exactly where did ya get all those landies?

Originally Posted by RobHay

....yeah but......it carries over into the genes....now exactly where did ya get all those landies?

Mrs hh

given that reply,should it read "Mrs shh" ???