Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902): Oliver John “Jack” Hindon
Wolfgang Witschas
Abstract
Captain Oliver John “Jack” Hindon (1874-1919) was a Scottish-born Boer military figure renowned for his bravery and his activities as a master train-wrecker during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, Hindon joined the British Army as a 14-year-old “band boy” and was sent to Zululand, where he deserted due to ill-treatment by a superior officer. He settled in the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR), became a mason and later a police officer, and identified strongly with the Boer people. He fought for the Boer forces during the Jameson Raid in 1895/96 and when the Anglo-Boer War broke out on 11 October 1899, he joined the Middelburg Commando. He formed a scout unit known for its success in disrupting British supply lines, particularly the Delagoa Bay Railway Line, by derailing trains and cutting telegraph wires.
Key words
Captain Oliver John “Jack” Hindon, Scottland, Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR), Britain, Jamison Raid, Second Anglo-Boer War, Middelburg commando, General Louis Botha,Danie Theron Scouts, “Dynamite Jack”,Delagoa Bay Line
Introduction
Oliver John “Jack” Hindon AKA “Dynamite Jack” , was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1874. His mother, Elizabeth Thompson, was a child bride and was married to a British army veteran officer, Thomas Hindon. He had a sister, Margret and the family regularly moved. When he became 14 in 1888, he joined the British army as a band boy and shipped out to South Africa as an army band boy at the age of 14, in Zululsnd. It must have been a tough go, because he deserted in Zululand and made his way to Wakerstroom in the ZAR.
Captain Jack Hindon
Photo: www.fotosearch.com
Background
Whatever his problems with the British Army, he certainly had no problem serving his adopted country. In 1896 he joined the Commandos that rose up in defence of the ZAR when Leander Starr Jameson attempted his rash filibuster to raise the Union Jack in Johannesburg. Hindon so distinguished himself that he was immediately made a burgher — a full citizen of the ZAR.
He became a mason and was involved in the building of railroad bridges in Vereeniging and Middelburg. Later he moved to the Lowveld and was again involved in building bridges in Godwana and Nelspruit. During his time in the Lowveld he contracted malaria. His doctor recommended that he move to the Highveld in the Johannesburg/Pretoria area, where there is no malaria. He went to Waterval Boven where he helped with the building of a railway tunnel and on the Delagoa Bay railway. He later became a police officer in the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek Politie (ZARP). He identified strongly with the Boer people.
Jack Hindon Boxed from 1895-1898. Middleweight from Middelburg ZAR
On 23 February 1903 he married Pauline Coetsee of Middelburg, were he settled.
Jack’s wife, Martha Pauline, ’n née Coetzee
Foto: geni.com
Jack Hindon died in 1919 in Pretoria South Africa.
Second Anglo Boer War (1899-1902)
When the Second Anglo-Boer War started on 11 October 1899, Hindon joined the Middelburg Commando. He participated in the following battles and skirmishes:
• Battle of Talana: 20 October 1899
• Skirmishes on 30 October 1899
• Battle of Chieveley on 15 November 1899 was an ambush on a British armoured train travelling from Estcourt to Colenso
in a reconnaissance mission. Boer forces
under the command of Louis Botha,
which comprised primarily the Italian
Volunteer Legion, ambushed the
armoured train, and derailed it, taking
most of the British soldiers prisoner
including Winston Churchill
• When the Boers on 17 November 1899 decided to occupy the town of Wenen, Hindon cut the telegraph lines
• Towards the end of November 1899 he alone conducted reconnaissance of the British forts on Devonshire Hill, between Lombardskop and Ladysmith
Tabanyama mountain range
Hindon became known when he, Henri Slegtkamp en Albert de Roos, on 20 January 1900 (shory before the Battle of Spioenkop), climbed a mountain top in the Tabanyama mountain range and occupied it. From here they continuously fired on the British left flank. The British returned with rifle fire an cannons fire.
Jack Hindon, Henri Slegtkamp and Albert
de Roos at Tabanyama with the “Vyfkleur” flag
©Pho: Jackie Grobler-versamelingSlegtkamp
Remark: The “vyfkleur” was a combination flag, uniting the colors of the two Boer republics at the time.
General Louis Botha was surprised that the were men on the mountain and was under the impression that the Boers had retreated.
Hindon and his two companions actually were provocative when they hoisted the Vyf Kleur. Their action resulted that the British did not attack and at 16:00 withdrew.
He distinguished himself at the Battle of Spioenkop, 23-24 January 1900, where he once again showed great bravery under enemy fire.
Jack Hindon the scout
It was after the battle of Spioenkop that he started to conduct reconnaissance work as a scout. He did valuable work at Pietershoogte with the Boers retreat from Biggarsberg during the beginning of February 1900.
In June 1900 Hindon joined the Danie Theron Scouts in the Orange Free State (OFS). Here he for the first time had attacked and looted British trains in the OFS and Western ZAR. On 18 June 1900 he participated in an attack on a British convoy between Kroonstad and Lindley. On 26 & 27 June 1900 the scouts again were involved in a skirmish near Lindley and the scout unit moved on to the Bethlehem area in the eastern OFS.
In August 1900 Hindon was instructed to form his own scout unit whose special duty it was to destroy the Britsh lines of communication, trains that transported supplies, food, ammunition and troops. Furtheremore to conduct reconnaissance and when necessary to courier messages between Boer General such as General Christiaan de Wet and General Louis Botha.
In October 1900 Hindon was promoted to Captain and was instructed to form anunit of 50 men. They were instructed to concentrate their attacks and derailment of trains on the Delagoa Bay line and the northern line from Pretoria to Pietersburg. They further had the order to cut telegraph lines between the various places were British troops were concentrated, to prevent any coordinated British attacks This unit quickly became a big “headache” for the British. “Hindons’ Scouts”, which proved so successful that Lord Kitchener stated that Hindon had caused him more problems than any other Boer. Hindon and his men would become “notorious train-wreckers”, particularly along the Delagoa Bay railway line where they fought under the command of General Ben Viljoen with Captain Henri Slegtkamp and his men. Hindon was given the nickname of “Dynamite Jack”; using dynamite to great effect.
From September 1900 until almost the end of the war, Jack Hindon and his men severely disrupted the British use of the Delagoa Bay Railway Line. However, their activities were more and more curtailed by improvements to the defence of the line from about August 1901 by means of blockhouses, barbed wire and frequent patrols.
During this time, a number of trains, bridges, culverts and even the railway track itself fell prey to Hindon and his ingeniously-manufactured special mines (now called IEDs: Improvised Explosive Devises) These were made by using Martini-Henry rifles sawn off about four inches (10 cm) in front of and behind the magazine, filing the trigger guard to leave the trigger mechanism exposed, placing the device in a carefully covered up hole under the tracks in such a way that the trigger was in contact with the dynamite and at just the right height to be affected by the weight of the train on the tracks, yet so little exposed that it went unnoticed. All surplus railway stones were carried away in a bag and great care was taken to conceal all traces of the mine. After a train had been immobilised using the mine, Hindon and his men would ride up to it and loot it. Even armoured trains, guarded by British troops, were attacked and often destroyed.
On 23 January 1901 an armoured train carrying Lord Kitchener as a passenger had a very narrow escape when it came under attack from Hindon en route from Pretoria to Middelburg. As the train approached Balmoral Station, signs of the enemy were noticed in the vicinity and special precautions were immediately taken to protect the train. A pilot engine was sent ahead to test the suspected part of the line, but it returned safely and reported that nothing was amiss. Still not convinced, Lord Kitchener gave orders that two heavy-laden trucks were to precede the pilot engine ahead of his train. His order was obeyed and his train followed slowly. The combined weight of the trucks and engine was sufficient to trigger the mine that had been planted on the track and the trucks were blown into the air and the pilot engine derailed. The train wreckers came out of hiding to admire their work, but this time their victims had escaped and they saw Kitchener’s train quietly backing down the line to safety. British reinforcements were rapidly summoned and, after a slight skirmish, during which Hindon and his men succeeded in capturing a number of prisoners, the train wreckers withdrew to safety to await another chance to attack the railway.
As the British began to pay more attention to the defence and protection of the Delagoa Bay Line, Captain Hindon was forced to adopt new methods of attack. During the day, more armoured trains were in use and Hindon’s men began to lay their mine’s during the night and watch the results of their efforts from a safe distance during the day. As a rule the British soldier was not much good at following spoor, and for this reason it puzzled Hindon that so many of his mines laid at night were being detected by the British and rendered harmless. It seemed as though the British were capable of following his tracks for distances up to 600 metres in the veld. Then one day, during an early morning reconnaissance, Hindon suddenly understood why the British were having such success in following his tracks: they were simply following the marks left in the dew. From then onwards, Hindon made sure that the mines were laid as early in the evening as possible before the air cooled and dew formed on the grass. The British again had little success in tracing his tracks after this discovery.
It became customary for the British to send an armoured train, with the engine located between a few reinforced trucks, ahead of each train. The front truck, normally carrying a few soldiers, would be blown up by the mine, leaving the engine unharmed. After the attack, the engine could be uncoupled from the damaged truck to return safely up the railway with the trucks still on the rails. Captain Hindon and his vigilant Lieutenant Slegtkamp became wise to this scheme and began to let the first armoured train with its load of British soldiers pass safely before they activated the mine to explode under the engine. This method was effective while there remained only a few blockhouses on the Delagoa Bay Line.
On 23 January 1901 an armoured train carrying Lord Kitchener as a passenger had a very narrow escape when it came under attack from Hindon en route from Pretoria to Middelburg. As the train approached Balmoral Station, signs of the enemy were noticed in the vicinity and special precautions were immediately taken to protect the train. A pilot engine was sent ahead to test the suspected part of the line, but it returned safely and reported that nothing was amiss. Still not convinced, Lord Kitchener gave orders that two heavy-laden trucks were to precede the pilot engine ahead of his train. His order was obeyed and his train followed slowly. The combined weight of the trucks and engine was sufficient to trigger the mine that had been planted on the track and the trucks were blown into the air and the pilot engine derailed. The train wreckers came out of hiding to admire their work, but this time their victims had escaped and they saw Kitchener’s train quietly backing down the line to safety. British reinforcements were rapidly summoned and, after a slight skirmish, during which Hindon and his men succeeded in capturing a number of prisoners, the train wreckers withdrew to safety to await another chance to attack the railway.
His sabotage efforts were so effective that the British commander-in-chief, Lord Kitchener, reportedly stated that Hindon had caused him more problems than any other Boer.
As the British began to pay more attention to the defence and protection of the Delagea Bay Line, Captain Hindon was forced to adopt new methods of attack. During the day, more armoured trains were in use and Hindon’s men began to lay their mine’s during the night and watch the results of their efforts from a safe distance during the day. As a rule the British soldier was not much good at following spoor, and for this reason it puzzled Hindon that so many of his mines laid at night were being detected by the British and rendered harmless. It seemed as though the British were capable of following his tracks for distances up to 600 metres in the veld. Then one day, during an early morning reconnaissance, Hindon suddenly understood why the British were having such success in following his tracks: they were simply following the marks left in the dew. From then onwards, Hindon made sure that the mines were laid as early in the evening as possible before the air cooled and dew formed on the grass. The British again had little success in tracing his tracks after this discovery.
It became customary for the British to send an armoured train, with the engine located between a few reinforced trucks, ahead of each train. The front truck, normally carrying a few soldiers, would be blown up by the mine, leaving the engine unharmed. After the attack, the engine could be uncoupled from the damaged truck to return safely up the railway with the trucks still on the rails. Captain Hindon and his vigilant Lieutenant Slegtkamp became wise to this scheme and began to let the first armoured train with its load of British soldiers pass safely before they activated the mine to explode under the engine. This method was effective while there remained only a few blockhouses on the Delagoa Bay Line.
On 13 February 1901, Hindon and 200 men successfully destroyed a heavily-laden goods train east of Balmoral. Working in conjunction with Lieutenant Slegtkamp and his men, Hindon poured a devastating flank fire on the British soldiers, who had taken cover in the water furrows on either side of the railway line, eventually forcing them to surrender. Clothing, tobacco, salt, bread, and other articles were taken away in trolleys by Hindon and his men.
On 11 March 1901, Hindon struck again between the Wilge River station and Uitkyk station near Balmoral. The mine exploded under the engine and again the British soldiers on the train took cover in the water furrows alongside the track. A twenty-minute exchange of fire took place between the British troops and the wreckers. The high banks afforded the British troops good cover, leaving the Boers with one option: to make a desperate charge under fire. The charge was successful and the Boers reached the water furrows, taking 35 British soldiers and three blacks prisoner. Clothing, blankets, foodstuffs and saddles were looted before the train was set alight.
Several more train attacks followed in the next few months and on 27 June 1901, Hindon successfully planned a crossing of the railway and, to add insult to injury, also destroyed an armoured train which was on its way from Middelburg to assist the British troops in the blockhouses adjacent to the section of the line where the Boers made their crossing.
On 04 July 1901 Hindon derails a train south of Naboomspruit and 31 Augustus 1901 he derails a train between Waterval and Hammanskraal.
Impact on British rail operations
Between June and mid-September 1900, construction engineers of the Imperial Military Railways (IMR) made repairs to the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay Railway Line. The IMR began to move troops and materiel along the line once the Komatipoort Station was finally occupied by the British forces on 25 September 1900. A total of 102 trains were used to transport troops from the eastern part of the ZAR to Pretoria from 26 September to 10 October 1900. However, during the period between September 1900 and July 1901, a number of bridges and culverts were destroyed as well as tracks damaged and trains derailed. Throughout the first half of 1901, the number of train derailments along the railway line gathered momentum. Trains were derailed on a daily basis and the line was often damaged at some point. These attacks were so successful that, from the beginning of October 1900, the IMR suspended the running of trains at night on the line between Pretoria and Waterval. Troop trains returning to Pretoria were routinely ambushed and it became clear that suitable defensive measures needed to be put in place if the British were going to be able to continue to use the railway.
The end of the Train wrecking
By July 1901, the Pretoria-Delagoa Bay Railway Line was so well defended by a string of blockhouses, a network of barbed wire joining them, an increased number of armoured trains, and deep trenches dug along both sides of the line, that Hindon decided that further attacks on the line would be futile and he took his men to the Northern ZAR. Just before the conclusion of the Peace at Vereeniging, in May 1902 Captain Hindon and several of his fellow train wreckers surrendered to the British. They were cleared of all infractions of the laws of war. When Lord Kitchener expressed his doubt that Captain Hindon’s train wrecking tactics could be justifiable under the international rules of war, Hindon defended his actions by responding that, earlier in the war, the British had adopted the same tactics: Firstly in Natal, when General White had ordered bridges and culverts to be destroyed in the vicinity of Ladysmith; later, when British troops had attacked and tried to derail trains on the Pretoria-Pietersburg Railway while Pretoria was being invested; and, finally, when British troops serving with Steinaecker’s Horse destroyed a train on the Delagoa Bay Railway Line near Komatipoort.
Although Hindon was born in Scotland and had served with the British Army as a young man, he was dedicated to the Boer cause.
Hindon was never captured and was considered a “Bittereinder,” a term for a Boer who continued to fight until the end of the war.
Post Anglo Boer War
Jack was married on 23 February 1903 to an Afrikaans woman, Martha Pauline Coetzee.
The marriage was childless.
Jack and his wife in 1904 followed fellow Boer war veterans such as generals Ben Viljoen and Piet Cronje to St Louis World’s Fair’ in St Louis, Missouri, USA to participate in the “Anglo-Boer War Historical Libretto”.
Their military performances were known as the “Boer War Circus”. Frank Fillis marketed the show as the biggest and most realistic military show in the world
There was a British camp and various Zulu, Swazi, Ndebele and Bushmen villages. The arena covered an area of 61 000 m², where soldiers participated in parades, horse races and sport.
Major battles of the Anglo Boer war were
presented twice daily. Each performance was two to three hours long and several generals and 600 veteran soldiers from both Boer an British sides participated. The highlight of the performance was when general Christiaan de Wet escaped on his horse by jumping 11m into a pool of water. Entrance fees varied from 26 cents to 1 Dollar and to visit a village an extra 25 cents. The total cost to build the production was $48 000 and the performances made a profit of $630 000 and an amount of $113 000 wss the profit the
St Louis World’s Fair made … indeed the most profitable event.
Thr program of the St Louis World’s Fair;
1904. Lord Roberts is on the left and General Cronjé on the right
Source: Wikipedia
The circus later moved to Coney Island were during the summer of 1905 to a field on marsh land, between Manhattan and Brighton. In 1905 the circus was declared Bankrupt and most of the Boer force participants were stranded with hardly enough money, Many of the Boer force participants were left penniless, stranded in New York. Many decided to stay in the USA
Jack and his were “adopted” by Irish Americans and they travelled betweem tje USAZ and Holland untol South Africa became a Union in 1910. During 1911 Louis Botha, them the Prime Minister, lifted Jack Hindon’s
exile and he wad a free man. At that stage he was already very sick. Some sources dsy it id from mslaria and other sources say that he was suffering from a neurological disease as a result of the war. With his return to South Africa settled in Middelburg, Transvaal.
Friends in government organised that Jack’s wife, Martha, had a job and that he could grt an invomr from donations.
Gustav Preller wrote a fictitious biography on the life of Jack Hindon, which had been sold to generate funds for Hindon.
When World War I started in 1914, general Louis Botha, then Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, suspected that Jack was part of the instigators. At that stage he was already blind, paralyzed and endured a lot of pain.
However Jack was very angry with regard to Botha’s accusations and wrote political articles which were seen as brilliant. The whereabouts of Jack’s articles on the Second Anglo Boer War, and early Afrikaaner nationalism and his views of his adopted country, is an enigma and historians today still are looking for the “lost manuscripts”.
Hindon died on 19 March 1919 in a Pretoria hospital at the age of 44. He is buried in the Middelberg-Wes-cemetary in Middelburg, not far from where Henri Slegtkamp was buried later.
Epilogue
Jack Hindon’s Legacy:
A South African military decoration, the “Jack Hindon Medal (JHM)”, was instituted in his honour in 1970 and awarded for diligent service in the (now defunct) Commandos, the rural defence component of the South African Defence Force (SADF) who met the following requirements:
• They were serving members of any commando of the SADF, holding the rank of Warrant Officer, Non-Commissioned Officer, or below
• They had not been awarded any other medal in recognition of outstanding devotion to duty or exceptionally diligent and outstanding service in the SADF
• They had completed not less than ten years’ service in the SADF
The Jack Hindon Medal is oval in shape and on the obverse is a representation, in relief, of the hoisting of the Vierkleur by Captain Oliver John Hindon, assisted by two comrades, during the battle of Spioenkop on 24 January 1900. The words ‘Jack Hindon’ are inscribed within sunbeams along the edge at the top and the words ‘Medalje – Medal’ along the edge at the bottom of the medal. On the reverse, in relief, is the embellished old coat-of-arms of the Republic of South Africa. The ribbon is 32 mm in width, yellow with a 1 mm green centre stripe and 4,5 mm green edges. The medal was discontinued by Warrant of 13 August 1975.
• A street is named after Jack Hindon in Pretoria North
• The Pretoria North clinic has been named after him
*
Wolfgang Witchas
References:
https:/samilitaryhistory.org/vol151im.html
https://samilitaryhistory.org/vol121da.html
https://af.wikepedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hindon
#SouthAfricanMilitary #HeroicLegacy #LegacyofValor