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By Root 3682 0

the most devastating blow of all. One night in November 1914, after a tiring ride across the highveld, General de Groot said to Jakob and Detleef, who had ridden with him, 'I feel tired.' A bed was made for the old man, the first he had slept in for the past ten days, and he began to breathe heavily. He said a most curious thing: 'I would like to see my Basuto.' So the little horse was brought to where he lay. Sixteen, eighteen, fifty . . . how many of these wonderful beasts had he ridden and out of how many traps? He tried to pat the munching animal, but fell back, too exhausted to complete the effort.

'Take him away,' Jakob told his son, but the old man protested: 'Leave him with me.' Toward midnight he rallied somewhat and told Christoffel, 'Lead the men toward Waterval-Boven. We always fought well there.' In some bewilderment he looked at Jakob and could not remember who he was, but then he saw Detleef, who had been so kind: 'Are you Detleef with the new name?'

'I am.' The old man tried to speak, fell back, and died. Born in 1832, he had witnessed eight decades of fire and hope, defeat and victory.

With his death, the last commando more or less dissolved. Christoffel Steyn made a valiant effort to hold the men together, and Piet Krause threatened to shoot any who deserted, but finally, even men like Jakob and Detleef drifted away, for as Van Doorn told his son-in-law, 'Piet, it's time to get back to the farm.'

'No!' the young schoolteacher pleaded. 'One more battle, just one big victory, and the Germans will come storming up from Mozambique to save us.'

'There are no Germans in Mozambique,' Jakob said, but Krause was so determined to pursue this logic that he maneuvered the men into a position from which they could not escape without giving battle, and in this fight Jakob van Doorn caught a burst of .303 bullets right between the eyes. Little of his head was left to be buried with the shattered trunk, and after prayers were said at his improvised graveside, Detleef said, 'Piet, I think we'd better go home.'

It was fortunate they did, for the very next day government troops surrounded the remnants of the commando and arrested Christoffel Steyn.

Then began the worst agony of this abortive affair, for Jan Christian Smuts discovered that Christoffel, in the years of peace following the end of the Boer War, had accepted a position in the South African army which he had never resigned. Technically he was a traitor, and while hundreds of other rebels had been dealt with leniently, Smuts was determined to prosecute charges against this officer. On an awful day in December 1914 a court-martial condemned Steyn to be executed. From the Afrikaner community, including many who had not supported the rebellion, came a cry of protest, voicing respect and admiration for this brave man who had conducted himself with such integrity during the forays of the Carolina Commando. But Smuts would not listen.

Piet Krause led a delegation of schoolteachers to Pretoria to plead for Christoffel's life, and Reverend Brongersma preached four tremendous sermons, two in Johannesburg, begging the government to show clemency, but to no avail. Only a few days before Christmas, Steyn was taken before a firing squad in Pretoria Central Prison, where he sang an old Dutch hymn: 'When we enter the Valley of Death we leave our friends behind us.' As the soldiers took up firing positions he refused a blindfold and continued singing until the bullets silenced him.

Detleef was torn apart by this tragic culmination of the rebellion: De Groot dead on the battlefield; Jakob buried in strange soil; Christoffel, of them all the most chivalrous, executed on a summer's morning; his own life shattered. That night he wrote to Maria, the rebel's daughter:

I fought alongside your father. I saw him at his noblest and his memory will always abide with me. He was executed most unfairly, and if I ever see that Slim Jan Christian Smuts, I will put a bullet through his brain, if he has one, which I doubt.

She, being a prudent young woman, showed the letter to no one,