Readers of this blog or of my book, The Scourge of the Kaiserbird will know about my obsession to locate the site of the Battle of Seatsub where 55 Kharakhoen Namas under the leadership of the Simon Koper as well as 13 German soldiers died on 16 March 1908. In October I will lead another expedition to that area.

What have we accomplished so far? We have learnt a dozen ways of how not to find the site. We have also found a certain number of relics confirming the presence of the temporary headquarters at a place called Geinab.

I mentioned before that Wulf Haacke, renowned herpetologist of the Transvaal Museum, conducted no less than five search expeditions in the 1990’s. Since the early 2000’s Carsten Mohle, a German field guide and ex-military man and his group have also carried out five search expeditions. I have personally also been on three expeditions, once with Mohle.

The area is totally devoid of all forms of human life and has always been like that, except when the KharaKhoen lived and hunted there. These people could survive without water when they had tsammas. So when enemy forces pursued them they always had the strategic advantage. All other humans will perish in the parch dry desert.

The German forces came from Aranos and Gochas in present day Namibia. They trekked with their 710 camels down the two river beds of the Aoub and the Nossob. Somewhere along these river beds the camels had their last drink of water on 10 March. They would only drink again on 18 March. On their backs they carried the meagre water supply of the soldiers. Imagine an expedition of that magnitude. It stands in stark contrast to the band of Namas who numbered less than 200 who had only tsammas to prevent them from dying from dehydration.

The camel mounted forces arrived at Geinab and rested there. That is where we found the relics. We found empty and rusted bully beef tins, water tins, horse shoes and even empty rifle cartridges and live ammunition.

It was from Geinab where the German expedition entered Bechuanaland’s territory. Somehow ( a story for another day) the Namas had left tracks and the Germans followed them for four days until they met up and the battle took place.

In October we will again be looking for relics of the kind we found at Geinab but at the site where we think the battle took place. We will be looking for a concentrated number of Vickers Maxim machine gun cartridges, using specially imported metal detectors.

The Scourge of the Kaiserbird,” originally published in Afrikaans as “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland,” is available from all leading bookstores in Namibia, through Namibian Book Market, and in South Africa from Upper Case, formerly Graffiti, in Menlyn Maine. Copies can also be ordered from kosiemarais@gmail.com  It is available on Kindle and worldwide in paperback from Amazon. Visit my Amazon author’s site by clicking on https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07HFTTQ2B where you can also place orders. 

 

We have several antique maps showing the approximate position of the battlefield and the graves. These maps have all been studied in great detail by several researchers, to little avail.

We do know that the battlefield is inside the Botswana side of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, close to the modern tourist trail called the Polentswa trail. We have narrowed our search area down to an area of a few hectares. We are going to search that area with very specialised metal detectors in October. During previous searches the metal detectors have been of the hobby type and was broken.

The Scourge of the Kaiserbird,” originally published in Afrikaans as “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland,” is available from all leading bookstores in Namibia, through Namibian Book Market, and in South Africa from Upper Case, formerly Graffiti, in Menlyn Maine. Copies can also be ordered from bestellings@kaiserbird.com  It is available on Kindle and worldwide in paperback from Amazon.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Simon Koper story is the fact that he survived the great battle at the Lost Battlefield near Seatsub but the leader of the Germans, Captain von Erckert was killed. Even though the Germans won the battle they suffered a moral defeat which hovers above them to this day. But more than that they were so annoyed by the great little man, Simon Koper, leader of the KharaKhoen Nama tribe, that they secretly offered him a pension on condition that he would never return to German South West Africa, Namibia today. The British colonial governementpaid the epnsion on behalf of Germany who reimbursed them.

Even though Simon Koper died on 31 January 1913 Germany continued to honour the contract by paying the pension for the benefit of his descendants until Bechuanaland gained independence in 1968 and became Botswana.

Above is a copy of the contract. Today it is in the hands of Elias le Riche, previous park warden of the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park.

I trust that once we find the battlefield and the graves Germany will be interested in renewing the terms of that contract, at least in a spiritual sense.

The Scourge of the Kaiserbird,” originally published in Afrikaans as “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland,” is available from all leading bookstores in Namibia, through Namibian Book Market, and in South Africa from Upper Case, formerly Graffiti, in Menlyn Maine. Copies can also be ordered from kosiemarais@gmail.com  It is available on Kindle and worldwide in paperback from Amazon. Visit my Amazon author’s site by clicking on https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07HFTTQ2B where you can also place orders. 

The last two days I have been blogging about the search for the Lost Battlefield in the Kalahari where on 16 March 1908 the final battle of the Nama war took place. In October I will once again go on an expedition to try and locate the battlefield and the graves of the fallen soldiers.

The battle took place on British soil, on 16 March 1908. To be more precise it took place in Bechuanaland, known today as Botswana. At the time Bechuanaland was a British colony as was South Africa. The pursuing Germans came from German South West Africa, known today as Namibia. As far as we know the German columns did not have the permission of the British government to enter either South Africa or Bechuanaland. It is possible that the transgression could have sparked an international incident but that is how it worked. The Germans felt obligated to do what they wanted to do and so they crossed over onto foreign lands, regardless of the consequences.

Naturally after the battle which left 55 Namas and 13 Germans including their leader Captain Friedrich von Erckert dead the Germans wanted to get back onto German soil as soon as possible. They hurriedly dug the graves and laid their men to rest, possibly intending to come back at a later stage to remove the corpses for reburial. That never happened because Germany and Britain were not on a friendly footing. It was 1908, six years before the outbreak of WW1 between these two countries. As time went by the already strained relationship only worsened.

Abandoning military graves is just not the style of any civilised government. It creates a very poor impression on their soldiers. Even today 111 years later Germany would like to erect proper memorials at the true site. Back then they did not have access to the area because of the political situation. The only thing they could do was to erect some or other memorial at the headquarters of the force which was Gochas. That is what they did and to this day the stones stand there, more than hundred kilometers from the graves.

I visited the cemetery in Gochas last year. It was locked. I had to drive to the municipal office and ask the official to come and open the gate. After a while the official arrived at the cemetery and simply cut off the lock with a bolt cutter. He said that he was unable to find the keys.

I strolled around the cemetery and soon found the stones with all the names of the fallen soldiers engraved on it. On it the inscription reads fallen somewhere “east of Paulsvolk”. It is assumed that it is a mistake and that it was intended to be Paulskolk but today nobody knows where Paulskolk or for that matter Paulsvolk is.

I asked around town about the story but nobody was aware of it. It is really strange that I have become so obsessed by the details but people who live so close to the site of the headquarters and the stones are not interested at all. I suppose that is the way of the world.

The Scourge of the Kaiserbird,” originally published in Afrikaans as “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland,” is available from all leading bookstores in Namibia, through Namibian Book Market, and in South Africa from Upper Case, formerly Graffiti, in Menlyn Maine. Copies can also be ordered from kosiemarais@gmail.com  It is available on Kindle and worldwide in paperback from Amazon. Visit my Amazon author’s site by clicking on https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07HFTTQ2B where you can also place orders. 

I am back on the tracks of the Kaiserbird, blogging, researching and writing in order to quell the fire this story has unleashed in my bosom. In order to write sense and not repeat myself too much I was compelled to re-read earlier blog posts. I urge my readers to do the same. Allow me just this one sentence before we carry on: Everything I wrote about in this blog concerns the events I have chronicled in the historical novel The Scourge of the Kaiserbird, but for the next two months my focus will be on the story I told in Chapter 37, the story of Simon Koper and his tribe.

Towards the end of the Nama War, in 1907, there was still a group of Namas in the far north-east of German South-West Africa who fought back. They were the !Khara-geiKhoen, also KharaKhoen, otherwise known as the Fransmanne, under leadership of the legendary Simon Koper. To the aggravation of the German commander, Captain Friedrich von Erckert, they regularly took part in raids on farms and would then retreat back into the colonies of the Union of South Africa and Bechuanaland, thus rendering the Germans powerless.

After conducting a thorough study of the habits and movements of the Namas, and with the consent of the British, Von Erkert planned a major offensive for March 1908. He was practically obsessive in his planning.

On 4 March 1908 710 camels, hundreds of German soldiers armed with machine guns, and their support staff travelled from Gochas and Aranos to the designated area. They put up camp at Grootkolk, on South African soil inside what is today known as the Kgalagadi Trans Frontier Park. Von Erckert’s scouts followed the tracks of the Namas eastwards.

On the afternoon before the assault troops were due to follow the tracks, a small group of officers from the lower ranks approached Dr Ohlemann, the medical officer, and requested him to declare Von Erckert mentally incapacitated as they feared that he would lead them to their death. The doctor refused, and the expedition continued on its way. The battle took place three days later and Von Erckert was the first casualty, a victim of his own obsession. Twelve German soldiers and 55 Namas died with him. Simon Koper escaped and spent his last days in Bechuanaland, Botswana today, as a free man.

Germany even paid Koper an annual pension anonymously to prevent him from ever setting foot in German South West Africa again.

For various reasons the precise location of the battlefield, as well as the graves of Von Erckert and the other soldiers, is unkown today. It is strange considering the facts that there were so many German soldiers present and that they even took pictures including the one above of the actual site.

On 12 October 2019 I will lead another expedition to find this site.

The Scourge of the Kaiserbird,” originally published in Afrikaans as “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland,” is available from all leading bookstores in Namibia, through Namibian Book Market, and in South Africa from Upper Case, formerly Graffiti, in Menlyn Maine. Copies can also be ordered from kosiemarais@gmail.com  It is available on Kindle and worldwide in paperback from Amazon. Visit my Amazon author’s site by clicking on https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07HFTTQ2B where you can also place orders. 

 

I am very excited to tell the world about the latest developments in the realm of the “Kaiserbird”.

First a little background. “The Scourge of the Kaiserbird” is the English title of the historical novel “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland” originally published in 2016. The English version saw the light last year. It is available from Amazon on Kindle as well as in print.

The story is set against the background of the German period in Namibia, 1883-1915 and features two storylines, that of Ernst Luchtenstein and that of the Nama War.

I became an obsessed student of the Nama War and that is what I want to tell my readers about in today’s blog post.

One can reason that the Nama War ended on 16 March 1908. That is the date generally accepted because that was the day that the last great battle took place. Historically one can take a different view but that is a story for another day. For today let us assume that the war ended on 16 March 1908. Why? What happened on that day? In a strange way that has become the story of my life, or so it feels these days.

In six weeks I will lead an expedition to locate the site of the great Battle of Seatsub or the Lost Battlefield of the Kalahari which took place on that fateful day. I romanticised the battle in “The Scourge of the Kaiserbird”. It is a marvellous but tragic story which I have personally told to so many people.

The Nama war was all but over in 1907 but they forgot to tell Simon Koper, also spelled Kooper or Cooper or Kopper or Copper. Simon was the leader of the Fransman and Velchoendrager tribe of Namas. Their home ground was in the far east of the country in the areas of Gochas and today’s Aranos, then known as Arahoab. They would often raid local settlements and then retreat into the desert. They were unique in one particular sense. They could live independently of water by consuming tsammas, Citrullus lanatus, a kind of desert melon. Because of that the German soldiers could not lie in ambush at water holes like they often did with the other Nama tribes.

Eventually a German officer Captain Friedrich Von Erckert launched a massive cross border operation mounted on 710 camels to locate and kill or capture Simon and his people. It is a long story but it ended on that particular date. Ironically Simon Koper escaped but Von Erckert and 12 of his men were killed, along with 55 Namas. Koper then stayed in Lokgwabe, Bechuanaland (Botswana) until his death on 31 January 1913.

The thing is that the site of the battle and the graves of the 13 German soldiers is unknown today. I have been on three expeditions to find it. A German group under Carsten Mohle has tried five times and in the nineties of the previous century Wulf Haacke also tried five times. This time I have joined forces with Carsten and the Botswana Nama Development Trust. We think we are very close to finding the site.

It is not easy to conduct these missions. There are lot of hoops to jump through, not the least being the embargo that the Botswana government has placed on research in national parks. There are no water or fuel in the area. We have to be totally self sufficient. Nevertheless we are going to try.

We are in the fortunate position of being sponsored by Mitsubishi with a vehicle. In the following weeks I will be telling readers more about this fascinating project.

The Scourge of the Kaiserbird,” originally published in Afrikaans as “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland,” is available from all leading bookstores in Namibia, through Namibian Book Market, and in South Africa from Upper Case, formerly Graffiti, in Menlyn Maine. Copies can also be ordered from kosiemarais@gmail.com  It is available on Kindle and worldwide in paperback from Amazon. Visit my Amazon author’s site by clicking on https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07HFTTQ2B where you can also place orders.