Deneys Reitz, Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War (1929), chapters 9 and 10
book · consulted 2026-08-07
- Type
- book
- Repository
- Published 1929; consulted in the full-text editions at ourcivilisation.com and angloboerwar.com
- Reference
- Ch. 9 'The Battle of Spion Kop'; ch. 10 'The rest of our corporalship is destroyed'
- Consulted
- 2026-08-07
The citation as it was given
Reitz was seventeen and rode with the Pretoria commando; his corporalship was led by Isaac Malherbe. Ch. 9 records finding the body of John Malherbe, the corporal's brother, on Spion Kop on 24 January 1900, and the Pretoria dead being carried to Ladysmith and sent to Pretoria for burial. Ch. 10 records the corporalship destroyed at Pieters Heights on 27 February 1900 with Isaac Malherbe. WHY THIS IS CITED AND WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVE: this family's Johannes Barnard and Isaak Johannes Malherbe died on exactly those two days, in Natal and at Colenso. Reitz gives no ages and no patronymics, so the identification rests on two names and two dates. A modern account of the corporalship (Jenny Bennett, 'Professor Barnard and the Isaac Malherbe corporalship', 2009, drawing on C. J. Barnard) calls the leader 25 years old, which does not fit a birth of 1859. RECORDED AS A CONFLICT, NOT RESOLVED. [TO VERIFY]
Kept verbatim. This project contradicts published genealogies and corrects a family's own oral tradition, so every claim has to be checkable by someone who was not in the room.
What rests on this source
People
- Johannes Barnard Malherbe 27 March 1862 – 24 January 1900
- Isaak Johannes Malherbe 29 August 1859 – 27 February 1900