Boer Boy

Boer Boy is the touching true story of a ten-year-old farmboy’s traumatic but fascinating experiences during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902. When Charles du Preez and his father were discovered hiding in the mountains of their eastern Free State farm, they were taken prisoner by the English and transported in open coal trucks to Durban. From there they began a harrowing journey aboard the SS Aurania to the prisoner-of-war camps of Umballa and Solon in India, where Charles was the youngest inmate. Back in South Africa, Charles’s mother and siblings, apprehended while fleeing the Khakis during Lord Kitchener’s destructive ‘scorchedearth’ campaign, were interned in the infamous Winburg concentration camp. Based on an account Charles wrote later in life as well as other notable oral and documentary sources, including a diary kept by Charles’s mother during the war, Boer Boy tracks the Du Preez family’s wartime experiences. It culminates in Charles and his father’s repatriation to South Africa, where the family was reunited and returned home to the ruins of their farm to start again. Enthralling, poignant and richly informative, this is a valuable addition to the history of the Anglo-Boer War.