THIS PAGE IS PART OF THE DEFENDING VICTORIA WEBSITE 
12 June 1901
On the evening of 12 June 1901, the Left Wing of the
5th Victorian Mounted Rifles, E F G and H Squadrons, camped at Wilmansrust
in South Africa's central Transvaal.
The encampment was surprised when rushed in the dark
by the Boers at about 7.30 pm. Their first volley stampeded the horses
in H Squadron lines through the camp. The Boers were dressed in captured
khaki uniforms and turned up hats. It was impossible to tell friend from
foe by the light of dying campfires.
Victorian casualties were heavy. Killed was regimental
surgeon Herbert Palmer of Ballarat, and 18 NCOs and men. Five officers
and 36 NCOs and men were wounded.
The Victorians were part of a combined column commanded
by British Major-General S. B. Beatson, a stern disciplinarian. In the
week after the Wilmansrust engagement, the column remained in the vicinity.
For some reason General Beatson was deeply, but unfairly,
disturbed about the Wilmansrust action. Until then he had seemed keenly
impressed with the Victorians. Now, all that had changed. He was reported
to have angrily stated during a march that week:
'I tell you what I think.
The Australians are
a damned fat, round
shouldered, useless
crowd of wasters . .
. In my opinion they
are a lot of white-livered
curs . . . You
can add dogs too'.
The facts were very different,
with Victorian mounted troops being generally acknowledged as formidable
opponents to the Boer 'Commandos', and terrifying to them in some engagements.
General Beatson , however, later
found a group of Victorians slaughtering pigs for food. He is said to have
addressed them as follows:
'Yes, that's about what you
are good for. When the Dutchmen came the other night, you didn't fix bayonets
and charge them, but you go for something that can't hit back'.
The column returned to Middelburg
depot later that week. There was by then a state of mutual contempt between
the General and the Victorians.
On 7 July, when the Victorians
were ordered out on another operation. Trooper James Steele was overheard
by nearby British officers to say:
'It will be better for the men
to be shot than to go out with a man who called them white-livered curs'.
For this apparent refusal to
do as they were ordered, Steele and troopers Arthur Richards and Herbert
Parry were arrested, given a summary court-martial and sentenced to death.
Lord
Kitchener intervened in the aftermath of Wilmansrust.
British supreme commander Lord
Kitchener intervened. He commuted the sentences (Steele to do ten years
gaol, the others to do one year each). Controversy continued when a speech
in the new (Australian) Federal Parliament lingered on how the aftermath
of Wilmansrust was a disgraceful way to treat men who had volunteered to
go to the Boer War.
A court of enquiry earlier had
begun sittings three days after the disaster, at Uitgedacht. The Wilmansrust
camp had been under the overall command of a British officer, Major CJN Morris,
Royal Field Artillery. He had personally chosen the position of the picquets.
In another extraordinary outburst British General Sir Bindon Blood mentioned
the 'chicken-hearted behaviour of the officers and men generally of the
Victorian Mounted Rifles on this occasion. We must remember that they were
all a lot of recruits together, and that their behaviour was only what
was to be expected in the circumstances'. 
You
can read the Court of Inquiry's findings by clicking here.
Major-General
Sir Bindon Blood
Since it was acknowledged that
the picquets were insufficent and wrongly placed (the responsibility of
Major Morris who had personally selected their positions), the comments
of Sir Bindon Blood and General Beatson before him were grave slurs on
the Victorians. Major William McKnight, the CO of the 5VMR Left Wing
at Wilmansrust, called General Beatson to account for his 'gross insults'.
A belated apology by the General was curtly refused by McKnight. The Court
of Enquiry, meanwhile, had censured British Artillery Major Morris.
5VMR
Major William McKnight successfully upbraided a British General.
Melbourne newspapers heaped
criticism on General Beatson and his reported remarks. But it took a petition
to King Edward VII, and the personal representations of the Australian
Prime Minister Edmund Barton and prominent Australians then living in London,
to secure the release of the prisoners from an English gaol. They were
returned to South Africa and from there to Victoria.
Prime Minister Barton later
tabled a report on Wilmansrust by Victorian Major W. McKnight, who had
been present during the engagement. Because the convictions of troopers
Steele, Parry and Richards had by then been quashed, the complete report
was never made public.
Most people seemed glad the
whole horrible episode quickly faded away.
You can view the amazing monument
erected by the 5th Victorian Contingent, in memory of their fallen comrades,
when they returned to Melbourne by clicking here.
A strong defence of the 5th
Mounted Rifles and its humiliating defeat at Wilmansrust was provided by
Max Chamberlain in 1985, in his article The Wilmansrust Affair (Australian
War Memorial Journal No. 6; April 1985)
[The above was put together using the following
sources: Murray, Lt-Col P. L.: Official Records of the Australian Military
Contingents in the War in South Africa: Govt. Printer: n.d., 1911?
-- and the balanced viewpoint in Holloway, David: Hooves, Wheels &
Tracks: A history of the 4th/19th Prince of Wales Light Horse Regiment
and its predecessors: Regt. Trustees: 1990 and 'The Wilmansrust Affair':
Max Chamberlain: AWM Journal: No. 6: April 1985].
about Wilmansrust defeat
and subsequent controversy
National Archives of Australia
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