From the Editor - Autumn 2025 Issue of Reconnaissance

                               

This is the "From the Editor" column from the Autumn 2025 Issue of Reconnaissance, the quarterly magazine of The Military History Society of New South Wales.

Welcome to the Autumn 2025 Issue of Reconnaissance.

When Pretoria, capital of the Boer Republic of Transvaal, surrendered to British supreme commander Field Marshal Lord Roberts in June 1900, a wave of relief rolled over the British Empire, along with a general expectation that the brutal and sometimes humiliating Anglo-Boer War was all but over. Few understood that the back of Boer resistance was far from broken, however, and that, deploying their cunning commando tactics, they would fight on for another two years, in some cases to the bitter end. But as Dr Barry Bridges points out in this issue’s cover feature, the task of managing the deep sense of disappointment and frustration flowing from the continuation of hostilities fell not to Roberts, who donned the laurels of victory and returned to Britain in December 1900, but to his Chief-of-Staff, Major General Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. Kitchener was a man of boundless ambition who eyed the British Empire’s plum military job, Commander of the British Army. Before long he was filled with dread at the prospect that failure to subdue the Boers would tarnish his reputation and deprive him of the Indian prize he coveted. As final victory eluded his grasp, Kitchener resorted to increasingly harsh and punitive methods visited on combatants and the civilian population alike, a strategy which in retrospect was a nascent form of “total war”. It appears credible that amongst the measures tolerated informally by Kitchener, if not openly condoned, was the practice of executing prisoners of war, supposedly in retaliation for similar actions by the Boers. Yet as the war dragged on and public support ebbed away just as the Germans, who backed the Boers all along, started to make a noise about violations of military law, Kitchener confronted the need to disassociate himself from allegations surrounding the treatment of prisoners. The curious trial of Breaker Morant and Peter Handcock, and their subsequent execution, was just one element of a broader effort by Imperial officials to suppress accusations that either Kitchener or other senior British officers had a hand in the killing of Boer captives. This effort reached all the way to Australia, to the consternation of the prime minister in office at the time.

Also in this Reconnaissance, John Haken gives us the rundown on aspects of Australian women’s service during World War II. This came in two general kinds. First, auxiliary military service as members of medical, nursing and aid corps attached to the various defence arms, army, navy and air force. Second, industrial service filling labour roles vacated by men who enlisted to fight in the war. The latter type was also organised along military lines and included the Australian Women’s Land Army. In particular, the auxiliary corps were so effective that some were promptly revived during post-war conflicts like Korea. Eventually the fall of barriers to women’s participation across social spheres saw their absorption into mainstream multi-sex units.

Our militaria feature by Dr Andrew Wilson tells the story behind the India General Service Medal awarded to Alfred Watt of Gartly, Scotland, for his service with the 2nd Battalion Seaforth Highlanders on the turbulent North-West Frontier of British India during the 1930s. Over this time the growth of nationalist sentiment amongst the Pashtuns of Peshawar province erupted into social unrest and even an armed uprising by rebels. The Seaforth Highlanders played an active part in some of the pitched battles fought to put down the rebellion.

Finally, I thank Dr David Martin for his in-depth book review of Phillips O’Brien’s The Strategists, Tom Lewis for his enlightening review of Richard Adams’ Politics and the General in Supreme Command and Desmond Woods for his review of Tom Lewis’ By Derwent Divided. 

The Editor,

Reconnaissance

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