Yevgeny Avgustus. A Russian Fighting for the Boer Cause Anglo-Boer War memoir LIMITED EDITION 2016

Yevgeny Avgustus. A Russian Fighting for the Boer Cause
Translated and edited by Boris Gorelik

Publisher: South African Military History Society, 2016
Pages: 52
ISBN 978-0-620-70253-9
Format: softcover, high-quality glossy paper
Illustrations: 40 black-and-white and 7 full-colour reproductions
Total number of copies printed: 200.

'[A] well-written, and well-translated tale ... There is much of interest in this slim volume and is a good read.'
Meurig Jones, The Anglo-Boer Wars

This illustrated monograph is a translation of the journal of Yevgeny Augustus, who joined the Krugersdorp Commando and took part in the battles of Spion Kop and the Thukela Heights. A man of literary talent, Avgustus vividly described his wartime experiences. It is an original view of the war from a Russian who fought for the Boer cause.

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'.... Yevgeny Augustus, a gifted writer who gives a dramatic account of the battle of Spion Kop – though his main contribution to the history of the war was to have pointed up what a shambles it was.'
 R W Johnson, London Review of Books

Author
Several Russian volunteers sent stories from the front to newspapers and periodicals in their native country, but, on their return home after the war, only one wrote a full-scale account of his experiences. Thankfully, he had considerable literary talent.

He was Second Lieutenant Yevgeny Avgustus, born in 1874. Avgustus kept a diary, and his memoir was based on the notes he had made during the war. His essays appeared in Russian, Polish and even French magazines. On his return, in 1902, his book on the Boer War was published.

In January 1900, Avgustus joined the fabled Krugersdorp Commando on the Natal front. The 25 year-old Russian infantry officer witnessed how fortune initially favoured the Boers and how it abandoned them in February and March. When Avgustus arrived at the front, the Boers were besieging Kimberley and Ladysmith, but within a month or so, the British had not only lifted the sieges but also marched into Bloemfontein.

'Soon after their arrival, on 23-25 January 1900, the Russians participated in one of the bloodiest battles of the Anglo-Boer War — the battle of Spion Kop. Augustus left a graphic and emotional description of this event. There are few other volunteer accounts of this — or, indeed, any other — battle of the Anglo-Boer War. Augustus was in the unique position of relating the experiences of the usually silent category of "rank and file soldiers" in this war because he was in the Boer army as a soldier, not an officer, but at the same time was a man of letters, capable of relating his emotions and feelings. Despite — or possibly because of — these strange circumstances, Augustus's memoirs are an outstanding source on the Anglo-Boer War in general and on the battle of Spion Kop in particular.'
 Apollon Davidson and Irina Filatova, The Russians and the Anglo-Boer War. Cape Town, 1998.

Source
In this monograph, we reproduce extracts from the essays Avgustus contributed to the journal, Varshavsky Voyenny Zhurnal.

Much attention is paid to episodes of the Battle of the Thukela Heights (February 1900), in which the Krugersdorp Commando played a prominent part. This battle began when the Siege of Ladysmith was in its fourth month. General Buller, commander of the British forces in Natal, had made several unsuccessful attempts to relieve the town garrison, including the attack on Spion Kop, also described by Avgustus.

Illustrations
The publication contains forty-seven black-and-white and full-colour illustrations, from the collections of Museum Africa, the National Archives of South Africa and the Ditsong National Cultural History Museum.

Excerpts from the monograph
'There were people who had gathered here from every corner of the world, like jackals to a bloody feast. Most of them had a shady past; apparently, many of them were wanted by justice in their countries; many had A Russian fighting for the Boer cause been drawn to the Transvaal simply by latent instincts of pillage and plunder. Throughout the war, the governments of the Republics did not expressly invite them to serve with them, or recruit them or pay salaries to the volunteers who came at their own risk. The Boers treated the modern crusaders with distrust, sometimes even with roughness.

Meanwhile, the volunteers kept streaming into the Transvaal in hundreds and thousands, spending all their money on tickets and arriving at Pretoria already penniless. Given the powerlessness of the authorities over them and the anarchy that reigned, a few of the volunteers remained in the cities, in comparatively safety, but most of them went to the front, to war, spoiling for a fight. What drove them there, to that carnage? What made them endure hunger and thirst patiently, compliantly, and to hold up their foreheads to the British bullets, without expectation of any compensation, or awards, or glory?

A Boer general once said, ‘All the European volunteers are either idiots or rogues’), yet there were people of convictions, with honest, idealistic aspirations, their souls inclined to bravery and swagger ennobled by the knightly impulse to help, to save the weak and oppressed. Many of them fell in bloody battle, and their bones are now scattered over the mountains and plains of the sultry Transvaal or sucked into the silt at the bottom of the turbid Thukela; many of them, with undermined health, ill or crippled, languish in British captivity. Those unknown heroes proved with their own blood that human beings can readily sacrifice themselves for others!'

'This is an excellent little publication, typically expertly edited by the producers of the South African Military History Journal.'
 Robin Smith, South African Military History Journal, June 2016.