Storm over South Africa: The Rutherford Chronicles

Storm over South Africa follows the lives and tribulations of a diverse group of characters through the Second Anglo-Boer War from 1899 to 1902 in South Africa. They belonged to different levels of the opposing societies, and the story follows their actual life-and-death experiences in this conflict. The characters include the seventeen-year-old son of a Boer president, a young shipbuilding dock worker and his military nurse girlfriend from the industrial northeast of England, and a young Canadian soldier who volunteered for Canada’s first campaign outside its borders. Involved too are such illustrious British participants as Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Frederick Roberts, and the generals Kitchener, Ian Hamilton, and Robert Baden-Powell, among others. Boer leaders involved include the generals Christiaan de Wet, Louis Botha, Koos de la Rey, and Jan Smuts. The reader is guided through the various twists and turns of the first major British conflict of the twentieth century from its beginning through to its end. The naivety and excitement of combatants in the lead-up to and beginning of the Second Anglo-Boer War was contagious. It pulled many naive young men into the maelstrom of combat. The failures, frustrations, disappointments, disillusionments, and suffering soon emerged. It is a tale of imperial arrogance, determination, stubbornness, innocence, love, and loss experienced in a rugged and alluring land far from the heart of the British Empire.