the death of Captain Hunt

[winterbadger]

I was looking for something else and found this. I'm pretty sure many of my friends have seen the film Breaker Morant (I wager that gr_c17, at least, has seen it several times, as I have). This incident is a pretty crucial one in the hardening (as alleged in the story at any rate) of Harry Morant's character. How ironic it would be, in retrospect, if the allegations of atrocity were in fact true, but the perpetrators were (effectively) neutrals as regards the conflict, a possibility that, as the article notes, was not considered by *anyone* at the time.

The whole article on Harry Morant is (IMO) well written and interesting to read, an example of the good work that is done on Wikipedia, a resource that is too often simply poo-poohed out of hand as corrupted and useless.

A look at the final phase of the Second Boer War might give people today an insight into the eternal nature of counterinsurgency, as well as reminding us of the (sadly) ever-present danger of such varied powers as deadly force during wartime and military (and, of course, civil) courts to cover up inconvenient truths and to settle personal scores.

from the Wikipedia article on Harry Harbord "Breaker" Morant

The pivotal event of the Morant affair took place two days later, on the night of 5 August 1901. Captain Hunt led a seventeen-man patrol to a Boer farmhouse called Duivelskloof (Devil's Gorge), about 80 miles (130 km) south of the fort, hoping to capture its owner, the Boer commando leader Veldtcornet Barend Viljoen. Hunt also had some 200 armed native African irregulars with him, and Witton claimed that although "those in authority" denied the use of African auxiliaries, they were in fact widely used and were responsible for "the most hideous atrocities".

Hunt had been told that Viljoen had only twenty men with him. The Boers surprised the British as they approached. During the ensuing skirmish, both Barend Viljoen and his brother Jacob Viljoen were killed. Witnesses later testified that Captain Hunt was wounded in the chest while firing through the windows and Sergeant Frank Eland was killed while trying to recover his body. Witnesses later testified that Hunt was still alive when the British retreated.

Hunt's body was recovered the next day. It was found lying in a gutter, naked and mutilated; the sinews at the backs of both knees and ankles had been severed, his legs were slashed with long knife cuts, and his face had been crushed by hob-nailed boots. According to Kit Denton, he had also been castrated, but Witton makes no mention of this. Hunt's battered body was taken to the nearby Reuter's Mission Station, where it was washed and buried by Reverend J.F. Reuter and Hunt's native servant Aaron, who corroborated the troopers' statements about the condition of the body. The body of Jacob Viljoen was also found inside the farmhouse, also mutilated in the same way as that of Hunt. It was later proved that black witchdoctors came to the house after the skirmish, and removed parts of the bodies of both Hunt and Viljoen to use as "medicine" ("muti"). Witchdoctors believe that body parts (specifically the genitalia) from brave men make "strong muti", and both Hunt and Viljoen were regarded as such. The possibility that both men may have been killed, or at least mutilated, by the witchdoctors was not considered by Morant, or extensively explored during the court martial.

Comments

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[josh-cru.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that Wikipedia isn't well written or easy too read, its that it's possible that it could be one random persons opinion on the topic. Which could be bad depending on its use.
I, personally, enjoy Wikipedia because it is interesting. I looked up our ACW Battle before we played it to read about the history for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ball%27s_Bluff

[winterbadger]

It's not so much that Wikipedia isn't well written or easy too read, its that it's possible that it could be one random persons opinion on the topic. Which could be bad depending on its use.

Yes, quite so. It's just that I have run into a lot of people in my work life and social life who reject it as useless out of hand, which is just STUPID. Yes, there are random fanboys writing drivel, but there are also very smart, very well qualified people writing good stuff. It all depends on who the author is. And, yes, sometimes they are a bit monomaniacal :-) But that can be useful when writing an encyclopedia.

That's the other thing that gets my goat. I've been doing an online course, and we're all told every time that "Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for research papers." Well of COURSE! But not because it's cr@p (which is what's implied, and is more clearly spelled out when you question it) but because it's an ENCYCLOPEDIA. If someone doing a paper for a postgraduate course thinks that *any* encyclopedia is a good reference source for citable material, they've failed one of elements of Research 101. Encyclopedias are (if they are any good) a worthwhile *starting* point for research on a subject one doesn't know much about. But for the material one should be basing a paper on, one needs to dig far deeper into the subject than encyclopedia articles.

I feel like Professor Diggory; "What ARE they teaching children in schools these days?"

Oh, and welcome to LJ, Josh! :-)