Commando News Edition 13, 2022

WHY TODAY’S COMMANDOS TRACE
THEIR LINEAGE BACK TO SOUTH AFRICA’S
BOER WARS
While Australians may be familiar with
modern Special Forces units like the 1 st &
2 nd Commando Regiments and the Special
Air Service Regiment and most likely they do not
realise the term “Commando” actually originated in
South Africa during the Boer War.
The Boer Wars — the First Boer War (1880-1881)
and Second Boer War (1899-1902) — resulted from
diminishing relations between the Boer South African
Republic and the British Empire. When the British
seized the Dutch Cape Colony during the Napoleonic
Wars in 1806, the action created an irreparable rift
between the two sides. In the 1830s and 1840s, some
15,000 Boers began the so-called “Great Trek” from
Cape Colony across the Orange River to form two
independent Boer republics called the Orange Free
State and the South African Republic, sometimes
called the Transvaal Republic. When the wars kicked
off, and in the face of a numerically superior British
force, the Boers enacted an unconventional fighting
style that led to the world’s first commandos.
This short article will examine the origins of the
term “commando.”
The Boer Kommandos near Ladysmith, Natal, South Africa, 1900,
during the Second Boer War.
Wikimedia Commons photo.
“Kommando, or the way the Afrikaners spelled it, is
Dutch,” West said. “They were these hit-and-run type
guys — think of the American Revolution and Roger’s
Rangers. These guys were hunters and trappers and
were really good marksmen. Very similar to the
Kommandos.” The singular “Kommando” referred to a
unit of those guerrilla warriors. These attack-and-flee
tactics proved to be effective against the largely
conventional strategies employed by the British
Empire. Columns of marching British soldiers were
regularly surprised by Boer Kommandos on horseback.
“The big thing with the Kommandos is they were an allvolunteer
force because Afrikaners were farmers and
didn’t have a professional military force,”
Many Boer Kommandos consisted of skilled horse -
men who had grown up in the saddle. They were also
fine shots, having spent years hunting and protecting
cattle out on the veldt. Highly mobile, they preferred
ambush to other methods of combat, as it minimized
casualties. They disliked hand-to-hand fighting, and
their traditional method of attack was to lie in wait
among the rocks on a kopje (hill), behind which their
horses would be held ready. Photo courtesy of the
National Army Museum. Since the Kommandos were
rural people, they were loosely organized, didn’t wear
uniforms, and typically engaged in battles near where
they lived.
In addition to the heavy Dutch presence in South
Africa, the 88,000-strong Boer army used advanced
rifles purchased from the German company Deutsche
Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken during the Second Boer
War. Armed with some 55,000 German Mauser M1896
7.92mm bolt-action rifles, the Boers picked off
advancing British soldiers with ease.
"They would do a lot of small-unit things and just
chip away at these big columns of British,” West said.
“It was very difficult for the British to handle Kom -
mandos traveling light on horseback. It was like death
by a 1,000 cuts.”
Gen. Louis Botha, who assumed command of all
Boer forces in 1900, understood how effective sabo -
tage could alter the conflict from his experience in
sabotage during the First Boer War. On one occasion in
1880, he overheard British spies were crossing into the
Transvaal via rowboats belonging to nearby farmers.
Botha reportedly snipped the lines tying every boat
and pontoon near the shoreline, effectively preventing
COMMANDO ~ The Magazine of the Australian Commando Association ~ Edition 13 I 2022 39