In the Woods with Tito and the Partisans
From Eastern Approaches
by Fitzroy Maclean
War breaks down the barriers which divide us in peace-time. Living as we did amongst the Partisans, we came to know them well, from Tito and the other leaders to the dozen or so rank and file who acted as our bodyguard and provided for our daily needs.
All had one thing in common: an intense pride in their Movement and in its achievements. For them the outside world did not seem of immediate interest or importance. What mattered was their War of National Liberation, their struggle against the invader, their victories, thei
With this pride went a spirit of dedication, hard not to admire. The life of every one of them was ruled by rigid self-discipline, complete austerity; no drinking; no looting; no love-making. It was as though each one of them were bound by a vow, a vow part ideological and part military, for, in the conditions under which they were fighting, any relaxation of discipline would have been disastrous; nor could private desires and feelings be allowed to count for anything.
But, for all that, the Partisans were not dull people to live among. They would not have been Jugoslavs if they had been. Their innate turbulence, their natural independence, their deep-seated sense of the dramatic kept bubbling up in a number of unexpected ways.
Tito stood head and shoulders above the rest. When there were decisions to be taken, he took them; whether they were political or military, he took them calmly and collectedly, after hearing the arguments on both sides. My own dealings were with him exclusively. From him I could be certain of getting a prompt and straightforward answer, one way of the other, on any subject, however important or however trivial it might be. Often enough we disagreed, but Tito was always ready to argue out any question on its merits, showing himself open to conviction, if a strong enough case could be made out. Often, where a deadlock had been reached owing to the stubbornness of his subordinates, he, on being approached, would intervene and reverse the decision.
One line of approach, I soon found, carried great weight with him: the suggestion, advanced at the psychological moment, that this or that line of conduct did or did not befit an honourable and civilised nation. By a discreet use of this argument I was able to dissuade him more than once from a course of action which would have had a calamitous effect on our relations. At the same time he reacted equally strongly to anything that, by the widest stretch of the imagination, might be regarded as a slight on the national dignity of Jugoslavia. This national pride, it struck me, was an unexpected characteristic in one whose first loyalty, as a Communist, must needs be to a foreign power, the Soviet Union.
There were many unexpected things about Tito: his surprisingly broad outlook; his never-failing sense of humour; his unashamed delight in the minor pleasures of life; a natural diffidence in human relationships, giving way to a natural friendliness; a violent temper, flaring up in sudden rages; a considerateness and a generosity constantly manifesting themselves in a dozen small ways; a surprising readiness to see two sides of a question. These were human qualities, hard to reconcile with the usual conception of a Communist puppet, and making possible better personal relations between us than I had dared hope for.
And yet I did not for a moment forget that I was dealing with a man whose tenets would justify him in going to any lengths of deception or violence to attain his ends, and that these, outside our immediate military objectives, were in all probability diametrically opposed to my own.
Tito – A Call to Action
As we entered, Tito came forward to meet us. I looked at him carefully, for here, it seemed to me, was one of the keys to our problem. ‘In war,’ Napoleon had said, ‘it is not men, but the man who counts.’
He was of medium height, clean-shaven, with tanned regular features and iron-grey hair. He had a very firm mouth and alert blue eyes. He was wearing a dark semi-military tunic and breeches, without any badges; a neat spotted tie added the only touch of colour. We shook hands and sat down.
How, I wondered, would he compare with the Communists I had encountered in Russia? From the members of the Politburo to the NKVD spies who followed me about, all had had one thing in common: their terror of responsibility, their reluctance to think for themselves, their blind unquestioning obedience to a Party line dictated by higher authority, the terrible atmosphere of fear and suspicion which pervaded their lives. Was Tito going to be that sort of Communist?
A sentry with a Schmeisser sub-machine gun slung across his back brought a bottle of plum brandy and poured it out. We emptied our glasses. There was a pause.
The first thing, clearly, was to find a common language. This, I found, presented no difficulty. Tito spoke fluent German and Russian, and was also very ready to help me out in my first attempts at Serbo-Croat. After a couple of rounds of plum brandy, we were deep in conversation.
One thing struck me immediately: Tito’s readiness to discuss any question on its merits and, if necessary, to take a decision there and then. He seemed perfectly sure of himself; a principal, not a subordinate. To find such assurance, such independence, in a Communist was for me a new experience.
I began by telling him the purpose of my mission. The British Government, I said, had received reports of Partisan resistance and were anxious to help. But they were still without accurate information as to the extent and nature of the Partisan movement. I had now been sent in with a team of military experts to make a full report and advise the Commander-in-Chief how help could best be given.
Tito replied that he was glad to hear this. The Partisans had now been fighting alone and unaided for two years against overwhelming odds. For supplies they had depended on what they captured from the enemy. The Italian capitulation had helped them enormously. But outside help was what they needed most of all. It was true that, from time to time during the past few weeks, an occasional parachute load had been dropped at random, but the small quantity of supplies that had reached them in this way, though gratefully received, was of little practical use when distributed among over 100 000 Partisans.
~
As the night wore on, our talk drifted away from the immediate military problems which we had been discussing, and Tito, whose initial shyness had long since worn off, told me something of his past. The gaps in his narrative I filled in later.
The son of a Croat peasant, he had fought in the First World War in the ranks of the Imperial Austro-Hungary Army. He had been sent to the Russian front, where he was wounded and taken prisoner by the armies of the Tsar. Thus in 1917, at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, he had found himself in Russia. All prisoners of war were set free, and he himself volunteered for the newly formed Red Army. He served in it throughout the Civil War. It was his first taste of the new ideas. He returned to his own country a convinced Communist.
The life which now began for Tito, or Josip Broz, to give him his true name, was that of a professional revolutionary, of a loyal servant of the Communist International. Of that he made no secret. In the new kingdom of Jugoslavia, of which he was now a citizen, the Communist Party was declared illegal almost as soon as it was formed, and severely repressive measures taken against its members. And so he spent the next twenty years in and out of prison; in hiding; in exile. Proudly, he showed me a photograph of himself which the Partisans had found in an old police register and which he kept as a memento of this period of his existence.
Then, in 1937, a new phase opened in his career. The Communist International were purging the foreign Communist Parties. In Jugoslavia they found that the Party had become badly disorganised and had fallen into grave heresies. A key point in south-eastern Europe was endangered. A reliable, determined man was needed to put matters right. Gorkić, the Secretary-General of the Jugoslav Communist Party, was liquidated, and Josip Broz appointed in his place.
He was a good organiser. In his underground army he made new appointments, allotted new tasks and established a new discipline. He would send for people and tell them what to do. ‘You,’ he said to them, ‘will do this; and you, that,’ in Serbo-Croat, ‘Ti, to; ti, to.’ He did this so often that his friends began to call him Tito. The name stuck. It grew to be more than a nickname. It became a call to action, a rallying point.
By the Light of a Flickering Lamp
From Eastern Approaches
by Fitzroy Maclean
With a jerk my parachute opened and I found myself dangling, as it were at the end of a string, high above a silent mountain valley, greenish-grey and misty in the light of the moon. It looked, I thought, invitingly cool and refreshing after the sand and glare of North Africa. Somewhere above me the aircraft, having completed its mission, was headed for home. The noise of its engines grew gradually fainter in the distance.
A long way below me and some distance away, I could see a number of fires burning. I hoped they were the right ones, for the Germans also lit fires at night at different points in the Balkans in the hope of diverting supplies and parachutists from their proper destinations. As I swung lower, I could hear a faint noise of shouting coming from the direction of the fires. I could still not see the ground immediately beneath me. We must, I reflected, have been dropped from a considerable height to take so long in coming down.
Then, without further warning, there was a jolt, and I was lying in a field of wet grass. There was no one in sight. I released myself from the harnass, rolled my parachute into a bundle, and set out to look for the Partisans.
~
After an hour or two’s ride we came to a tiny sunlit village, set high in the Bosnian hills. Its wooden houses clustered round a tree-shaded square. Above them rose the minaret of a mosque. Its name was Mrkonićgrad, or, as Sergeant Duncan called it, Maconochie-grad. In it were the Headquarters of the local Partisan commander, Slavko Rodić, with whom we were to have breakfast.
Rodić, a dashing young man of about twenty-five, came out to meet us, riding an officer’s charger captured from the Germans. With him were his Chief of Staff and his Political Commissar, a big jovial Serb with a long flowing moustache. Together we repaired to a peasant’s house where breakfast was ready. At the door a robust sentry armed with a sub-machine gun saluted with his clenched fist. A pretty girl, with a pistol and a cluster of murderous-looking hand-grenades at her belt, poured some water over my hands from a jug and dried them with a towel. Then we sat down to breakfast, some dry black bread washed down by round after round of pink vanilla brandy. We discussed all manner of topics, horses, parachuting and politics, but the conversation had, I found, a way of drifting back to the one subject which was uppermost in everyone’s mind: when were the Allies going to send the Partisans some arms?
While we sat there, messengers kept bringing in situation reports from nearby areas where operations were in progress. As they delivered their messages, they too gave the clenched-fist salute. Somehow it all seemed strangely familiar: the peasant’s hut, the alert young Commander, the benign figure of the Political Commissar with his walrus moustache and the hammer and sickle badge on his cap, the girl with her pistol and hand-grenades, the general atmosphere of activity and expectation.
At first I could not think where I had seen all this before. Then it came back to me. The whole scene might have been taken, as it stood, from one of the old Soviet films of the Civil War which I had seen in Paris seven or eight years earlier. In Russia I had only seen the Revolution twenty years after the event, when it was as rigid and pompous and firmly established as any regime in Europe. Now I was seeing the struggle in its initial stages, with the revolutionaries fighting for life and liberty against tremendous odds.
~
With enemy aircraft and troops patrolling the neighbourhood it was not, it appeared, advisable to continue our journey to the Headquarters until evening, and we for our part were glad of some rest. In a nearby orchard we lay down in the shadow of some plum trees. The sunlight, filtering through the leaves, made a shifting pattern on the grass. The last thing that I remember before going to sleep is the noise of a German aeroplane droning high overhead in blessed ignorance of our presence.
When I woke up, the sun was down and it was time to start. The Partisans had a surprise in store for us. Drawn up in the village square was a captured German truck, riddled with bullet holes, but apparently still working. Two or three Partisans were pouring petrol and water into it, and another was cranking energetically. A crowd of small children were climbing all over it. An immense red flag waved from the bonnet, though whether to denote danger or to indicate the political views of the driver was not clear. It was a great occasion. Feeling unpleasantly conspicuous, we piled in and drove off.
The track took us along the shores of a lake, with hills running steeply down to it on all sides. We followed it for some miles. Then, all at once, the valley narrowed and we found ourselves looking up at the dark shape of a ruined castle rising high above the road. Round it clustered some houses, while the lights of others showed from the other side of a mountain stream. From somewhere nearby came the roar of a waterfall. Still at top speed our driver swerved across a shaky wooden bridge and jammed on his brakes. We had reached our destination: Jajce.
We had hardly stacked our kit in the house which had been allotted to us when Velebit, who had temporarily disappeared, came back to say that the Commander would be glad if I and my Chief of Staff would join him at supper. Clearly a Chief of Staff was a necessity; in fact, while I was about it, I might as well have two, one British and one American. Accordingly both Vivian and Slim Farish were raised to that position. Sergeant Duncan became my Personal Bodyguard, and we set out.
With Velebit leading the way, we re-crossed the river and climbed up to the ruined castle on the hill which we had noticed earlier. As we picked our way through the trees, a Partisan sentry, stepping from the shadows, challenged us, and then, on being given the password, guided us through the crumbling walls to an open space where a man was sitting under a tree studying a map by the light of a flickering lamp.
Mr Churchill’s Reply Left Me in No Doubt
From Eastern Approaches
by Fitzroy Maclean
I was to fly to London forthwith and report to the Prime Minister himself, who would tell me what was required of me.
~
Once I reached London, I was soon put in the picture. Information reaching the British government from a variety of sources had caused them to doubt whether the resistance of General Mihajlović and his Ćetniks to the enemy was all that it was made out to be. There were indications that at least as much was being done by armed bands bearing the name of Partisans and led by a shadowy figure known as Tito. Hitherto such support as we had been able to give had gone exclusively to Mihajlović. Now doubts as to the wisdom of this policy were beginning to creep in, and the task which I had been allotted was to form an estimate on the spot of the relative value of the Partisans’ contribution to the Allied cause and the best means of helping them to increase it. For this purpose I was to be dropped into Jugoslavia by parachute as head of a Military Mission accredited to Tito, or whoever I found to be in command of the Partisans.
My inquiries revealed that in fact little or nothing was known of the Partisans in Whitehall. Three or four British officers had been dropped in to them by parachute a few weeks before, but there had been fierce fighting in Jugoslavia since their arrival and, through no fault of theirs, no comprehensive report of the situation from them had reached London. It was, however, believed that the Partisans were under Communist leadership and that they were causing the Germans considerable inconvenience (an impression that was principally derived from German sources). Their principal sphere of activity was thought to be in Bosnia, and it was there that I was to be dropped.
As to Tito, there were various theories concerning his identity. One school of thought refused to believe that he existed at all. The name, they said, stood for Tajna Internacionalna Teroristička Organizacija, or Secret International Terrorist Organisation, and not for any individual leader. Another theory was that it was simply an appointment, and that a new Tito was nominated at frequent intervals. Finally, the more romantically inclined claimed that Tito was not a man, but a young woman of startling beauty and great force of character.
A day or two after I arrived in England I was rung up from No 10 Downing Street and told that Mr Churchill wanted me to come down to Chequers for the weekend so that he could explain to me what he had in mind.
~
Towards midnight, in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, a memorable interruption took place. A message was brought in to Mr Churchill, who gave an exclamation of surprise. Then there was a scuffle and the film was stopped. As the squawking of Donald Duck and the baying of Pluto died away, the Prime Minister rose to his feet. ‘I have just,’ he said, ‘received some vey important news. Signor Mussolini has resigned.’ Then the film was switched on again.
As we went downstairs, I reflected that in view of this startling new development it was now more unlikely than ever that the Prime Minister would find time to attend to my affairs. But I was mistaken. ‘This,’ he said, turning to me, ‘makes your job more important than ever. The German position in Italy is crumbling. We must now put all the pressure we can on them on the other side of the Adriatic. You must go in without delay.’ Mr Churchill then went on to give me a splendidly lucid and at the same time vivid account of the strategic situation and of what he wanted me to try and do in Jugoslavia. I was amazed, as so often afterwards I was to be amazed, by his extraordinary grasp of detail in regard to what was, after all, only one of the innumerable problems confronting him.
After he had finished, there was only one point which, it seemed to me, still required clearing up. The years that I had spent in the Soviet Union had made me deeply and lastingly conscious of the expansionist tendencies of international Communism and of its immediate connection with Soviet foreign policy … If, as I had been told, the Partisans were under Communist leadership, they might easily be fighting very well for the Allied cause, but their ultimate aim would undoubtedly be to establish in Jugoslavia a Communist regime closely linked to Moscow. How did His Majesty’s Government view such an eventuality? Was it at this stage their policy to obstruct Soviet expansion in the Balkans? If so, my task looked like being a ticklish one.
Mr Churchill’s reply left me in no doubt as to the answer to my problem. So long, he said, as the whole of Western civilisation was threatened by the Nazi menace, we could not afford to let our attention be diverted from the immediate issue by considerations of long-term policy. We were as loyal to our Soviet Allies as we hoped they were to us. My task was simply to help find out who was killing the most Germans and suggest means by which we could help them to kill more. Politics must be a secondary consideration.
I was relieved at this. Although, as a Conservative, I had no liking for Communists or Communism, I had not fancied the idea of having to intrigue politically against men with whom I was co-operating militarily. Now, in the light of what the Prime Minister had told me, my position was clear.
Fisticuffs in the Playground
The excitement about the situation in the North had found a distinct echo among the schoolboys who, hearing what their elders thought of things, reflected these opinions vicariously when they discussed the matter in the playground. There were three distinct sections among the boys, just as there were three distinct sections among the village community.
One, a distinct minority, affected to stand outside the debate, too apathetic or aloof to argue either way, adopting a strictly Laodicean attitude that was distinctly unpopular. Of these the leader was the gaoler’s boy, John Tomory, who had imbibed from his father far-fetched socialistic ideas and who hinted that nothing mattered very much and that the whole thing was a put-up job in which the interests of the Boers, on the one side, and those of the Transvaal Uitlanders, on the other, were merely pawns in a damnable comedy played out by the capitalists.
The second section was fiercely pro-Boer, and wildly aggressive towards those who had anything to say in favour of the Raiders.
The third section joined forces with old Mrs Quakerley, protesting their loyalty to British interests and equally vehemently championing the interests of the Uitlanders.
Mr Mance-Bisley was too good a schoolmaster to be unaware of these undercurrents among his scholars, and far too sensible to try to turn them into other channels.
~
‘You would do me a kindness, Mr Quakerley,’ the rector said as he sat on Andrew’s tree-shaded stoep drinking tea, ‘if you would explain just what the position is. It’s most embarrassing, sometimes – I mean, one finds it so difficult to understand what these people really want. And as you know, it’s distressing to ... to ...’
‘You shouldn’t take any notice of what the boys say, Rector,’ said the old man smilingly. ‘They just repeat what they hear their elders remark. It’s so much hot air, Rector, nothing else. Of course I regret just as much as you do that these things are talked about. It must engender bad feeling in the long run.’
‘It does, it does,’ exclaimed the rector plaintively. ‘There was a most unseemly squabble in the playground this morning. I had to cane three of them and I don’t know whether I did the right thing, but one must have discipline. I’ve spoken to young Storam, but to tell you the truth, Mr Quakerley, I’m disappointed in the boy.’
‘You surprise me, Rector. I would’ve thought that Martin was the best head-boy you’ve had so far.’
‘So he is, so he is, in a sense. But since ... since all this excitement, Mr Quakerley, I don’t quite know what to make of him. Take this morning, for instance. It’s his duty to keep order in the playground. You know I don’t in the least object to a good stand-up fight if there’s something to be fought for, and the lads know it. Officially, of course, I’m not supposed to know when such affairs take place, and I take no cognisance of it officially when they do. But this morning’s squabble could hardly be overlooked.’
‘What actually did take place, Rector? Charlie told me his version.’
‘Ah yes, your grandson was implicated, but I let him off with a warning. It seems the whole matter started from one of these silly arguments about Jameson and the Uitlanders, and a free fight developed before the debate had lasted many minutes. When I taxed Storam, his excuse was that he could not prevent the lads from discussing the matter and that young Tomory and some of the others had “asked for it”, to use his own expression. Crest, I must tell you frankly, contributed not a little to the disturbance. At the height of it I found him perched on the fence singingGod save the Queen at the top of his voice.’
‘That’s his granny,’ said the old man with an indulgent smile. ‘Alice is fiercely militant, Rector, and Charlie is young. You must make some allowance.’
‘So I do, so I do,’ the rector’s voice became plaintive again, ‘but the whole thing is so thoroughly upsetting. There’s no rhyme or reason for it, and I simply can’t have it in my school.’
‘I quite agree, Rector, I quite agree. But it’s difficult to stop it. Your school population is, after all, merely a reflection of what lies outside, and I can tell you what you probably know quite as well as I do – that much the same thing goes on outside.’
‘This Raid has made a cleft between us here, Rector. You may not realise it, but I do. I’ve lived here all my life; I know what its influence is; and I think I can foretell what it’s going to be in the future.’
First Clanwilliam Mail Day after the Jameson Raid
From The Valley
by C Louis Leipoldt
Here, in front of the courthouse, the village, or at least the adult, adolescent and older juvenile male portion of it, congregated on mail days. Some of them came to get their letters and parcels, but the majority had no expectation of any postal harvest and loitered for the simple reason that attracts any crowd – the chance of gossip, of novelty in some form or other, of interest, of mild excitement, a chance ever present when the only link between isolation and the larger civilisation three hundred miles away lies in the arrival of the weekly mail. Such occasions were made the opportunity for the interchange of opinion, for discussion between the older and more sedate members of the community, and for mild bickering and horseplay between the juveniles, who on these weekly gathering-days were allowed more liberty of action than was usually considered advisable in so conservative a community.
~
Sam Chumley, the chief constable, was a colonial-born descendant of an 1820 settler family, well liked and respected in the village and district – not only because he was a good police official, but also because he was a good fellow, sympathetic with an understanding insight that had made him thoroughly cognisant of the different peculiarities of the various units in the community he served. His wife was the daughter of one of the local farmers, and at home he spoke English and Dutch with an impartiality that in time had done much to ruin his command of both languages. In that respect he could be called the most perfectly bilingual person in the district, and his services as interpreter were often called into requisition in court.
‘I think it’s high time,’ observed the rector plaintively, ‘that the government enforced the fine for these vexatious delays, Mr Chumley. Every mail day, for the last three months, the post-cart’s been late. It’s simply disgraceful. And today of all days.’
‘’Taint Seldon’s fault, sir,’ rejoined the chief constable, screwing his moustache point into a more tenuous end. ‘You must blame the driver. Not that Ampie isn’t a good driver. One must make allowances, sir. If you’ve driven in this heat, sir, as I have, you’d make ’lowances, sir. You want to stop, ’casionally, to give the mules a breather, sir, and to take a sopie yourself, sir.’
~
‘There comes the post-cart,’ said the magistrate. ‘Now we can get the papers, and I can assure you I’m longing to read them.’
‘I, too,’ said the rector. ‘I should really like to know why they lost. There must have been some reason for it. Of course, the weather may have had something to do with it, but I can hardly accept that as a sufficient excuse. It seems to me sheer bad management.’
‘Oh no,’ said the chief constable, who had come up to them. ‘It’s just bad soldiering, sir. Against Cronje’s commando they had no earthly ... Besides, what can you expect after fifteen hours in the saddle?’
‘I was referring to the cricket,’ said the rector crossly, ‘not the fighting.’
~
The Reverend Mr Mance-Bisley settled himself in his study – for once glad to find that his wife had not yet returned from her round of visits – and opened his bundle of newspapers. He found to his astonishment that his Cape Times had a leading article in Dutch alongside the usual leader in English, and he read with strained interest the latest detailed communications from the North. They were unpleasant reading, and from time to time he took off his strong reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. He found – when he had finished reading all that the papers contained about the situation in the North – that he had no great desire to read particulars of Lord Hawke’s first match. Even cricket seemed to have sunk into insignificance before this disaster at Doornkop. And a filibustering raid such as that about which he had read did not seem like cricket. He recognised the fact that it implied something very much unlike cricket.
‘I really cannot understand how men can be such fools, my dear,’ he said to his wife when she came back. ‘It’s unbelievable. And the worst of it, my dear, is that it’s given British prestige a shock – yes, my dear, a shock. Mr Uhlmann tells me that I don’t understand, that I haven’t been long enough in this country to realise what it means. But I fancy I can realise it well enough.’
‘I should think so,’ said Mrs Mance-Bisley in her decisive way. ‘It’s incredible stupidity, that’s what it is. But that’s no reason why we shouldn’t have dinner, Claude. And remember you have your sermon to prepare. So come along.’
After the Peace of Vereeniging
From The Great Boer Escape
by Wille Steyn
When I stepped off the train at Norvalspont to have a meal, I met Commandant De Kock of Frankfort, a man I had known since childhood. I heard from him that my mother had died twelve months earlier, and that my brothers and sisters were in the concentration camp at Heilbron. This was a terrible shock to me, as I had anticipated our reunion for so many months, dreaming about what it would be like. Fortunately my younger brothers had succeeded in obtaining employment, which had enabled them to care for my mother during her last days.
A few days after arriving in Heilbron, the Provost Marshall summoned me, informed me that my movements were being watched, and that I should be very careful about where I went and what I did. I did not allow this to stop me from doing exactly as I pleased, for these were not the types who could prescribe to me what I should and should not do.
Heilbron had changed so much during my absence that I found life there almost unbearable. I stayed for about twelve days for the sake of my brothers and sisters, who were still in the concentration camp, and then left for the Cape Colony. I was planning to fetch the few horses I had left behind with friends.
To my amazement I found that the military authorities had taken my horses and sold them by public auction. I spent a lot of time and money in an effort to get back what was mine, but it was all in vain. I was at all times able to prove that they were my property, but under the circumstances nothing came of it, and I lost everything.
From there I went to Cape Town with General De Wet, and stayed there until he, General Botha and General De la Rey departed for England. Thereafter I spent two weeks in Stellenbosch and Worcester, and then went on to the farm Atties in the Van Rhynsdorp district.
I arrived there on a Tuesday evening. The following Saturday, the entire family went to town for the Sunday communion service, save for their son, Izak, who stayed behind on the farm with me.
After the evening meal Izak went to bed in one of the outside rooms, while I made myself at home in one of the rooms in the house. The war was over and there was no reason not to sleep peacefully. But I had just fallen asleep when I heard a bang on the front door. When I opened it, I was confronted by three soldiers, two standing on the veranda and the third holding their horses. The corporal asked where the head of the household was, and when I replied that he was not there, he asked my name. On my reply that I was Steyn, he said: ‘You’re the man I’m looking for. I have a warrant for your arrest, and to search your rooms.’
I replied that I was willing to go with them, but that I first wanted to see the warrant. He instructed me to fetch a candle, and when I turned around to do so, he followed me. I immediately thought that this was a soldier and that I should not trust him to enter a friend’s house. I asked him to wait outside, but he refused, so we went to Izak’s room together, where I lit a candle.
The corporal then showed me his written instructions. The document had been issued by the Commanding Officer in Beaufort West, and read as follows: ‘At eight o’clock this evening, Corporal Matterson and two men must leave for Atties, where they must arrest a certain Willie Steyn, who escaped from Ceylon last year. He must prevent Steyn from getting to his baggage before it has been searched thoroughly, and all documents in his possession must be confiscated. Steyn must then be taken to Clanwilliam forthwith.’
I found it absolutely impossible to understand the reason for all this, but it was clear that I had to go. So I got dressed, showed the corporal all the documentation in my possession, and after a few minutes we were on our way to Clanwilliam.
We arrived there on the Sunday afternoon, and I was taken to the commanding officer’s quarters. He was not there, so I asked to see the acting commanding officer. He turned out to be a lieutenant whose name I do not remember.
I explained to him that I had been arrested the previous evening without any reason, and that I required something to eat before seeing the commanding officer, Major Graham. He immediately instructed a soldier to bring some tinned meat and biscuits for himself, the two soldiers and the prisoner. I thanked him, but said that I did not eat bully beef and klinkers. I explained that I too was an officer, and not one who had commanded Hottentots. He said that I need not eat the food, and that is precisely what I did.
In the meantime Corporal Matterson was doing his best to find the commanding officer, in order to spare me a night in confinement. Eventually, after four hours, Major Graham instructed him to take me to Captain Ridout, which he did immediately.
Captain Ridout was sitting in his office, and as we entered he offered me a chair and asked Corporal Matterson to wait outside. He spoke in a confidential manner: ‘Mr Steyn, I’ll be honest with you, and I expect the same from you.’ He proceeded to tell me that I had been arrested on suspicion of trying to stir up a rebellion in the Van Rhynsdorp district. I immediately explained my situation, after which I was treated somewhat better. He promised to send a telegram to the general, who at that stage was in Beaufort West, and to do his best to have me released as soon as possible. In the meantime, he allowed me to spend the night in a hotel, after I had given him my word not to absent myself.
At ten o’clock the following morning Captain Ridout informed me that he had received instructions to release me, and a few hours later he took me back to Atties in his own cart. I stayed there for two weeks before returning to Heilbron to start work.
[Editor’s Note: We surmise that the ‘situation’ explained to Captain Ridout was that Willie Steyn was at Atties not so much to stir up a rebellion in the Van Rhynsdorp district, but to visit Lettie, the daughter of the owner of the farm Atties, Oom Izak van Zyl. This would explain why Willie was released without much ado. What is not conjecture is that Willie and Lettie later became man and wife.]
