S
Sidney
Guest
Kruger's Gold: A novel of the Anglo-Boer War.
KRUGER'S GOLD: A GRIPPING, FAST-MOVING NOVEL SET IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN BATTLEFIELD OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO
In 1902, much like today, guerrilla fighters were challenging the might of the pre-eminent world power. Then it was the Dutch settlers called Boers fighting Great Britain for possession of South Africa. Today, Islamic extremists attack the U.S. and its allies anywhere and everywhere. The lesson from both: small forces are potent.
This is not a dry military history book, nor does the reader miss anything if, like this reviewer, he or she comes to it more or less ignorant of the Anglo-Boer War. The author, Sidney Allinson, has written the sort of gripping, fast-moving novel that keeps you turning pages long after bedtime. The characters and their loves and hatreds, their ideals and weaknesses, failures and triumphs, would have provided the human material for a thoroughly satisfying novel even if presented in an imagined setting.
The hero is a Canadian serving with the British Army, Lieutenant Harry Lanyard. Given the choice between disgrace before a court martial and leading a particularly hazardous mission, Lanyard takes the latter. With a rag-tag troop of Colonial mounted infantry, Lanyard is ordered to recover a king's ransom in stolen gold bullion - enough money to keep the Boers fighting for goodness knows how many more years. This gold had been looted by the Boer President, Paul Kruger, hence the book's title.
And hence also, the skilful merging of the fictional characters in the foreground of the story with the meticulously researched historical events that provide the backdrop. We are introduced to the tough Boer burgher fighters who adopted the title "Commando", to be handed down through the generations as the hallmark of military excellence. We discover to our chagrin that the war also fathered the concentration camp, a term synonymous with death. Although devised initially by the British as shelter for destitute families whose homes had been torched by one side or the other in this increasingly cruel and desperate campaign, disgraceful mismanagement reduced these camps to death traps.
Meanwhile the action continues: ambush, deception, espionage, mutiny, pitched battles and encounters with snipers - and all the time a forbidden romance struggling to survive across the invisible line separating friend from foe. Lieutenant Lanyard would be a real asset in today's Special Forces, but is this enough to gain his two objectives, Kruger's Gold, and the love of his life, Beth?
Advance copies of this book have stirred great interest among students of the period, some of whom have been brought up on "official" versions of events that omit what is unpalatable about your own side. The truth is that war brings out the best and the worst in mankind and there never was an unblemished battle record. Sidney Allinson pays his respects to Boers, Brits, and Colonials, and avoids any temptation to portray the fighting in terms of good guys and bad. To assist the keen researcher, the author includes a Glossary, Casualty Statistics, and Bibliography.
The book is presented in a handsome jacket carrying a contemporary action painting showing the Royal Canadian Dragoons in close-quarter fighting against the Boers.
-- Maurice Tugwell, Brigadier (Rtd.)
[To read a free sample chapter, go to: www.xlibris.com/krugersgold.html
"KRUGER'S GOLD" Quite simply a wonderful book.
Sidney Allinson's books are surprises. They can start off unassumingly and build up to rip snorting sagas of ceaseless adventure. In his finest work yet, Allinson doesn't even start off slowly. Kruger's Gold grips the reader at once and the pace never slows. As I read this action tale of the struggle a century ago between South Africa's Boers, and England and her "colonials," I was repeatedly struck with the idea this would be and should be a wonderful movie. Allinson's experience as a television producer may have given him that hot-shot cameraman's "eye" or it could simply be that any good yarn so stirringly told lends itself to theatre in the best sense.
On these pages, a segment of history that was soon obscured by two ensuing, bloodier world wars leaps to life. It is really the twilight of an era, with Europeans jostling for power and position and, in this case in particular, South African gold. Allinson fills in the historical perspective while following a Canadian soldier and his colonial troops who, late in the war, have been assigned to find the legendary government cache of gold that departing Prime Minister Paul Kruger was said to have stashed before leaving in 1900 for virtual exile in Europe.
Allinson writes sympathetically of the brilliant Boer commandos fighting to retain their homeland and their way of life. His story is not overly revisionist: the Boers have seized this land from the native tribes, after all, and even the most principled among them want to keep the blacks and "coloureds" in their place, lest their vast numbers overwhelm the white settlers. Even through a more politically correct prism, we must admire the self reliance of these men whose surprise tactics and talented marksmanship enabled them to strike at the enemy, melt away into the bush, and return to attack another day. Many if not most of the men have lost wives and children to the war; yet, while they can be ruthless, they treat surrendered prisoners with a decency and respect that arouses a sense of nostalgia in the reader. Their English counterparts do as well with their own prisoners, for the most part.
The story of the concentration camps where stranded Boer families and prisoners were placed to wait out the war is not as happy a one. Allinson paints a grim picture of these horrors where women and children and some men languished in filthy conditions with poor diets and disease and death dogging every step. A few selfless medical workers do their best, but there are no facilities and their supplies are woefully inadequate. The camps were not England's finest legacy to the history texts.
The romances in the book provide a lusty and pleasing counterpoint. Even the horses get to play a heart-warming role. And throughout the book, Allinson has peppered the story with fascinating historical minutiae, such as the Boer heroine not being allowed to play ragtime music, then the rage, because it was produced by black performers.
Read this book. It is a treat.
-- Renee.
www.xlibris.com/krugersgold.html
