COMMANDO - Signed by Deneys Reitz and General Jan Smuts - who wrote the foreword

Publisher's red cloth binding.

331pp. Fold-out map at rear. Contents clean. Binding tight. Very good condition.

Signed by Deneys Reitz and General Jan Smuts on the half-title page.

Small bookseller's ticket at the bottom of the front paste down of the famous Thorold's Africana bookshop, which was located in the centre of Johannesburg for over a century.

Deneys Reitz's riveting memoir about his years on Commando during one of the definitive periods in South Africa's epic history. When war broke out between Britain and the Two Republics, the author, one of President F. W. Reitz's thirteen sons and still a teenager, along with his three elder brothers, answered the call to defend the independence of their fledgling and newly-founded nation against the onslaught of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.

Reitz's memoir is filled with many humorous scenes of everyday life on commando, which are then suddenly counterpointed with first-hand descriptions of desperate situations in the heat of battle. Some incidents are unforgettable and deserve mention.

One morning, before the British occupation of Pretoria, Deneys accompanied his father from his offices to the State School, where captured British officers were being held. One of the captives asked for an interview and requested that, due to the fact that he was a war-correspondent, and therefore a non-combattant, he should be released. The President replied that he was armed with a pistol when he was captured, to which the prisoner replied that in the Sudan war-correspondents were allowed to have pistols for protection. The President answered that, unlike in the Sudan, Boers aren't in the habit of killing non-combattants and that he must remain where he was. The prisoner then asked if he would mind forwarding some letters to his newspaper in England via Delagoa Bay. The President agreed and that evening, after having read the letters aloud to Deneys, he declared, "that Winston Churchill is a very clever young man!".

After numerous failed attempts to capture the wily General De Wet, the British authorities decided to focus all their attention on his movements through the Republics. This caused General De Wet to have to constantly evade capture where he could otherwise have been more useful as a fighting force. To counter this, General Smuts decided to take the fight to Britain and invaded the Cape Colony, forcing the British to divide their armies and, in consequence, alleviating the pressure on De Wet. Deneys accompanied Smuts on this raid and at one point the commando was surrounded in the Outeniqua mountains. With no immediate solution to their situation and on the brink of starvation, they decided to have a look around in the mountain forests for something to eat. This is where they came upon a plant that Deneys describes as "a strange growth" (Encephalartos Altensteinii). The trees were coning and the fleshy seeds seemed fit for consumption. For three days afterwards the greater part of the commando was in a half-coma and Deneys and his friends feared that General Smuts would not survive. He lay completely still during this period and only occasionally answered their questions with soft grunts. Deneys correctly observed that the plant appeared strange and out-of-place in its environment, as the Altensteinii cycad is today considered to be a living fossil and, needless to say, it produces very poisonous seeds. (Images of E. Altensteinii are added in image box for illustrative purposes only and are not part of this lot)

Reitz relates the incident of how General Manie Maritz was lured into an ambush by British-sided Hottentots at the mission station at Leliefontein, and, after barely having escaped, how Maritz returned the next morning to take his revenge. Reitz disapproved of this and describes how General Smuts, having visited Leliefontein a few days after the massacre, was extremely dissatisfied with Maritz. Ten years after the publication of Commando, Maritz would publish his own memoir and replied to Reitz's accusation by saying he understood why Deneys might think his actions were excessive, but that he wasn't the one who, due to one person's treachery, suddenly found himself with his back against the church door at Leliefontein, surrounded by murderous Hottentots, on that balmy afternoon, fighting for his life.

One morning Deneys was sitting on an ant hill in the veld, reading a newspaper. He was entirely rapt, even though the paper was a month old, as the Boers only got news from the outside world from what they could take off captured British soldiers or find at abandoned British camps. After reading the paper he stood up and proceeded to walk towards his horse. When he almost reached his mount he heard a loud blast behind him and saw that the ant hill he was sitting on, just moments before, was completely obliterated by a British bomb.

There is general consensus that Commando is one of the best memoirs ever written about the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. It should stand alongside Roland Schikkerling's humorous, soulful and poignant Commando Courageous, and Col. Jan Meyer's Kommando-jare as priority reading for anyone interested in this period of South African history.

This is a very special copy as it is not only signed by the author, but also additionally signed by Jan Smuts, who wrote the foreword. Winston Churchill once noted that one of the most intelligent people he ever met in his life was Jan Smuts. His signature appears on both the peace treaties of Vereeniging and of World War I. To date I've not seen another copy signed by Smuts and must assume that such copies are either extremely uncommon or already in collections. - Marais 2022