It stands, as it has for over a century,
In the shadow of the mighty Minster of York,
A memorial monument of a war,
A long time ago fought,
Far away, in Africa.
Built to resemble the old Gothic Crosses,
This eight-sided monument commemorates
The men and the women who went to war
In South Africa against the Boer.
Each side, a statue stands
Representing a particular group.
The Sailor—the sanitised version, of course—
Not the one that shows an Enfield gun,
But the “traditional representation”—one
That would not scare off possible recruits.
Far from merely steering ships,
British forces needed all hands on deck,
This war was not a sea war,
far from it, they had to journey miles inland.
The Regular Army stands in three:
The Cavalry, Artillery, and Infantry.
While they honour the fallen heroes,
They were also there for some slick PR,
To reassure the folk back home
That the British Army held it together.
Dapper, confident, and modern—
But it was all a lie.
The war was one huge miscalculation.
While in some respects they had updated,
In many ways they were old-fashioned.
They donned khaki to merge with the land,
Yet their guns sent smoke signals
As if announcing a new pope—
Clearly seen by cunning Boers
Hiding on Kopjes
With their powerful, smokeless weapons.
The Artillery brought a heavy arsenal,
A burden to bear and slow to set,
Making them sitting targets for
The surprisingly equipped and stealthy farmers.
Gallant cavalrymen on their steeds,
Brandishing short-barrelled carbines,
They, too, galloped into the fray—
But the Cavalry had had its day.
The stone cavalryman stood somber,
But he was pulverised by lightning in 1961.
Never replaced, a plaque there instead—
For now, horses have ceremonial roles
At the King’s Birthday Parade
or guarding a palace.
They are “mounted soldiers” now, horses
Used only as transport on tricky terrain.
Around the back, the other half of warfare:
Militiaman, Yeoman, Volunteer, and Nurse.
Civilians called when things went south,
After three defeats in a single week.
Many were bamboozled by the PR
And the alluring Queen’s Shilling,
Leaving livelihoods to end up dead.
They came ashore in Table Bay or Durban,
Sent inland aboard a puffing locomotive
To guard the tracks or bear the messages,
And at last, the humble nurse—
The “fairer sex” called to serve.
They set up field hospitals for the wounded,
The dying, and the destroyed living.
Epilogue
York tourists might wander past,
In awe of the Minster’s frontage,
Oblivious of the South African memorial.
But it made its impact on the citizen of York
Before Britain was again at war.
It served a double purpose:
To honour the dead, yes, but to propagandize—
To tell the boys and the girls
That the English were superior;
“Not to mess with us.”
But if I were to make a new memorial,
What would my message be?
It would be a place to reflect on loss
On all sides of the conflict.
I'd want numbers—big numbers—
To underline the cost to human life.
I'd want names of the dearly departed,
Not just Yorkshire names, but every person:
The African and the Afrikaner, too,
In alphabetical order, and not by rank.
I would want statues, not at attention,
But arranged as if in a room together.
Not just the workers, but their families:
The Boer, his vrou and kinders,
The Zulu family, the Xhosa, and the English.
There'd be no weapons on my monument.
This fellowship of nations would point instead
To a peaceful future
of coexistence.
