In less than 36 hours we will be leaving Pretoria and Windhoek for Lokgwabe in Botswana on the great expedition to locate the Lost Battlefield in the Kalahari.

This will be the 12th expedition of its kind since 1990 when Wulf Haacke first attempted it. Haacke had 5 attempts but never came close. In 2010 Carsten Mohle set out on the first of his 5 attempts and in 2018 I tried twice, once with the legendary Elias Le Riche, the last eyewitness of the graves of the 13 German soldiers buried in the warm Kalahari sand on 16 March 1908.

It has been a hectic few weeks preparing for the expedition. Coordinating the travel arrangements of the members from four different countries had challenges of its own. At last we are ready. On Friday morning the SA delegation will leave Pretoria. We will consist of a team of metal detector specialists and a filming crew, amongst others. Carsten Mohle will leave from Windhoek tomorrow bringing with him Chief Hanse of the KharaKhoen, the tribe of Simon Koper.

We will all meet each other in Hukuntsi on Friday night where Carsten will do a presentation on his work so far. On Saturday morning we will proceed, first to Kaa Gate and then on to Sesatswe, 168 kilometers away on a dirt track, which will be our base for the week. The area is devoid of any kind of human activity and services. Read no fuel, water, nothing. We must be totally self reliant. I have arranged an aeroplane to be on standby for emergency evacuation and our only form of communication will be by satellite phone.

We will spend the entire week working through the area identified by us to be the actual site of the Great Battle. We will be looking for artefacts which could confirm our suspicions. In particular we will be searching for machine gun cartridges. The ultimate prize would be to find the actual graves of the two officers, Captain Friedrich Von Erckert, Lieutenant Oskar Ebinger and the 11 other soldiers.

We hope that the location of the battlefield will bring closure and reconciliation to the German and Nama families and we also hope that in future thousands of interested tourists will visit the area.

Our mission is sponsored by Mitsubishi. I hope to report briefly about that tomorrow evening, just before we leave.

This blog is about my book with the title The Scourge of the Kaiserbird and starts with Day 1, posted on 1 April 2018. That followed on “Dag 91: Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland“,  my 91 blog posts about the original Afrikaans version. In October I will be taking an expedition to locate the battlefield described in Chapter 37 of the book. My blogs are currently focusing on this great battle.

“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.