The Road to Infamy – Owen Coetzer

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The Road to Infamy – Owen Coetzer
Colenso, Spioenkop, Vaalkrantz, Pieters, Buller & Warren

When Tommy went to war on the grassy plains and brown hills near a town called Ladysmith, in Natal in 1899, he was ill-equipped and had no idea what he was in for. Manoeuvres on the Salisbury Plain and Aldershot wastes had not prepared him for fighting an enemy he could not see. But he was soon to find out that a bunch of Boers was a formidable foe.

The Road to Infamy tells the grisly story of the Natal campaign of the Boer War. It also tells the story of Sir Charles Warren, condemned by history as, the man who lost Spioenkop. ‘ Warren didn’t – but he was forever forbidden to speak out in his defence. But myths are perpetuated and rehashed as facts as time goes on. Even today, distinguished historians and official publications relish the myth of Charles Warren as the ‘British buffoon general’.

The truth, however, is vastly different.

Owen Coetzer uses the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the war as the genesis of his story. Roberts, White, Huller, Warren arid a host of other heroes of the British empire took the stand, in late 1902 and early 1903, to answer thousands of searching questions on their conduct – among which was why Dum-Dums were going to be Britain’s official bullet in 1899 and why the war had cost a staggering £230 000 000.

The author uses controversial pro-Boer reports and contemporary British. sources in his efforts. to vindicate the man who really masterminded the Relief of Ladysmith, Sir Charles Warren.