Castle Military Museum

05/10/2026

SOLDIERS YOU SHOULD KNOW: MAJOR P. J. PRETORIUS — A WW1 OPERATOR IN THE RECCE TRADITION

More than half a century before South African Special Forces produced the elite soldiers who earned the coveted status of operator after passing the notoriously demanding Recce selection and training process, Major Phillip Jacobus Pretorius, CMG, DSO and Bar, was operating deep behind enemy lines in East Africa in a manner that would have seemed remarkably familiar to them.

Pretorius was not, of course, a Recce operator — the Reconnaissance Commandos were still decades away. But judged by his methods, he was very much an operator in the older tradition of the South African verkenner: a military scout whose weapons were stealth, fieldcraft, initiative, intelligence and an extraordinary ability to function independently in hostile territory.

The photograph accompanying this post shows Pretorius as he was perhaps most at home — dressed as a hunter and fieldcraft expert. When the First World War came, those same skills suddenly acquired military value.

And perhaps his greatest single coup involved hunting an altogether different quarry.

THE HUNT FOR THE KÖNIGSBERG

The German light cruiser SMS Königsberg had been raiding Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean and had sunk the British cruiser HMS Pegasus at Zanzibar before disappearing into the vast Rufiji Delta in German East Africa.

The Royal Navy suspected she was there. Finding precisely where she was hidden — and determining how she could be attacked — was another matter.

Pretorius knew the country.

In January 1915 he was given the task of fixing the cruiser's exact position and discovering as much as possible about her. Operating from Mafia Island with a wireless operator and a handful of locally recruited men, he penetrated the maze of waterways, mangroves and enemy patrols. Within eight days he had succeeded. From the top of a tree, Pretorius finally looked down upon his extraordinary quarry: the Königsberg, heavily camouflaged with vegetation and lying only a few hundred yards away.

But finding her was only the beginning.

Pretorius returned to gather further intelligence. He investigated her armament and defences, obtained information from local sources and reconnoitred the channels through which an attack might be mounted. Critically, he identified a route usable by shallow-draught vessels and a position from which their 6-inch guns could engage the hidden cruiser. Admiral Herbert King-Hall subsequently requested the monitors HMS Severn and HMS Mersey.

The first attack failed. The monitors returned.

In July 1915 their guns finally battered Königsberg into a burning wreck, after which the Germans scuttled their ship.

Pretorius had not fired the guns that destroyed the Königsberg. He had helped make it possible for those guns to reach her.

Looked at through the lens of modern reconnaissance, the sequence is striking:

Pe*****te. Locate. Observe. Gather intelligence. Reconnoitre the approach. Report. Enable the strike force.

That was not the end of Pretorius's war.

When General Jan Smuts later assumed command in East Africa, he quickly recognised Pretorius's unusual abilities. Smuts had himself learned scouting in what he called the “severe school of the Boer War” and wrote that he could recognise the “real article” when he saw it. He gave Pretorius considerable freedom to operate in his own way. Pretorius became his chief scout.

For weeks and sometimes months he operated in and behind German lines, reading movement from spoor, abandoned fires, broken vegetation and other signs, while drawing information from local communities and his own askaris.

At Reata and Latema, Smuts sent him around the German flank at night to determine whether reinforcements were arriving. Pretorius discovered instead that the Germans were withdrawing — and followed them for eight days, observing their movements and strength before returning with his intelligence.

More than sixty years later, qualified Recce operator Koos Stadler would describe the philosophy of South African Special Forces Small Teams in strikingly familiar terms: very small teams, deep pe*******on, stealth, anti-tracking, concealment, independent action and intelligence as the objective rather than combat.

The technology separating Pretorius from the later Recces was enormous.

The principles were not.

Pretorius was not a Special Forces operator in the modern technical sense. That qualification and the organisation that bestowed it did not yet exist.

But his methods belong recognisably to the much older South African verkenner tradition — a tradition of reconnaissance, fieldcraft and independent action that would find an extraordinary modern expression in the Recces.

Major P. J. Pretorius had been practising many of the same fundamentals in the African wilderness more than half a century earlier.

Lest we forget.

02/10/2026

BEFORE THE RECCES: SOUTH AFRICA'S CENTURIES-OLD TRADITION OF THE VERKENNER

Long before there were Recces, there were verkenners.

For generations, South African fighting men depended upon scouts who could move ahead of the main body, read the landscape, follow spoor, find water, locate an enemy and return with reliable information.

But the South African verkenner did not suddenly appear during the Anglo-Boer War. His story reaches much further back — into the earliest military history of the Cape.

And it begins with the veld itself.

Long before European settlement, southern Africa's indigenous inhabitants possessed an intimate knowledge of their environment. Tracking, navigation, concealment and understanding the movement of men and animals were essential skills.

In Assegais, Drums & Dragoons, military historian Willem Steenkamp takes this story back to the Battle of Salt River in 1510, where Khoi warriors defeated a heavily armed Portuguese force. He describes the Khoi as experts in “veldcraft” who exploited terrain, surprise and mobility against an opponent with superior weaponry.

After the Dutch settlement was established in 1652, European fi****ms and military methods encountered this older indigenous tradition.

The result was something distinctly South African: the Commando.

From the late 1650s, mounted Free Burghers increasingly operated alongside VOC soldiers and Khoi allies. The emerging method was essentially Khoi-style mobility and shock tactics combined with fi****ms and horses.

These irregular mounted formations acquired the name Commando. Their development was not simply European warfare transplanted to Africa. It took place in Africa, in response to African conditions and with significant indigenous participation.

Over generations the veld became their school.

The Commando fighter needed to ride, hunt and shoot accurately. He needed to understand terrain, locate water, follow spoor and move rapidly across enormous distances. In this form of warfare, what increasingly mattered was not shots per minute, but hits per shot.

Mobility, horsemanship, marksmanship, fieldcraft and self-reliance became deeply embedded in the Commando tradition.

And from this environment emerged the verkenner — the scout.

He was the man who went ahead.

Where was the enemy? How strong was he? Where was he going? Could the river be crossed? Where could horses find water? Was there another route through the mountains?

By the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, verkenning had developed beyond simply being one of the skills expected of a capable burgher. Exceptional scouts such as Danie Theron and Gideon Scheepers became famous practitioners of the craft. The scout was becoming a military specialist.

During the First World War, Major P. J. Pretorius demonstrated how formidable this tradition could become in the hands of an exceptional individual. Operating in German East Africa, his hunting experience, tracking, navigation, concealment and ability to operate independently made him an extraordinarily effective reconnaissance soldier.

The technology changed.

The requirement did not.

By the late-1960's the SADF recognised that operations deep in hostile territory required a specialist capability that had to be formally selected, trained and housed within the military establishment.

Small-team operations, navigation, concealment, observation, fieldcraft, endurance, intelligence gathering and independent decision-making became deliberately institutionalised.

From this requirement emerged the SADF's Special Forces.

Their operators became popularly known as the Recces.

There was no unbroken organisational line connecting the early Commando, the Boer verkenner and the twentieth-century Special Forces operator.

But there was a remarkable continuity in the qualities demanded of them:

Fieldcraft. Mobility. Observation. Self-reliance. Initiative. Endurance.

Over the coming weeks, Soldiers You Should Know will tell the stories of some of the remarkable men who belonged to this long tradition.

Lest we forget.

29/09/2026

BRINGING A SOLDIER BACK TO LIFE — THE APENNINES, 1944–45

For more than eighty years he has sat silently on a mountainside.

A young South African soldier, thousands of kilometres from home, rests high in the Apennine Mountains of Italy. In his hands is a small stringed instrument. Below him stretches the magnificent Italian landscape, while somewhere beyond those mountains a war is still being fought.

The photograph appeared in Harry Klein's Springbok Record, published by the South African Legion in 1946 as an illustrated record of South Africa's participation in the Second World War.

Its original published caption begins with the words: “Januarie, Februarie, Maart.”

It describes a Cape Corps soldier of the 6th South African Armoured Division sitting high in the Apennines and playing old Cape folk songs. The accompanying text pays tribute to the Cape transport personnel who carried supplies forward over the difficult Italian mountain roads. Their contribution was substantial. Cape Corps personnel accompanied the 6th South African Armoured Division to Italy and served in many essential roles.

The fighting in the Apennines was particularly demanding. The South Africans advanced through mountainous country before confronting the German defensive positions around places such as Monte Sole, Monte Caprara, Monte Salvaro and Monte Stanco. Winter brought rain, ice, mud and bitter cold, making the work of the men carrying supplies to the forward troops particularly arduous.

Yet this photograph records none of that violence.

Instead, somebody pointed a camera at a young soldier enjoying a quiet moment with his music.

More than eight decades later, modern technology has allowed us to look at that moment differently.

Using artificial intelligence, the original black-and-white photograph has been carefully interpreted in colour and given movement. The soldier moves his hands across his instrument and smiles, while music once again accompanies a scene that has been silent since the Second World War. (Turn your device's sound on for the complete experience)

We do not know his name. We do not know exactly what he sounded like, what he was thinking as he looked across those mountains, or precisely what tune he was playing. The colour, movement and accompanying mandolin music in this video are therefore modern interpretations — they are not part of the original historical record.

But the man was real.

He served in Italy. He sat on that mountainside. He held that instrument. And somebody thought the moment important enough to photograph.

That is where new technology can offer museums something remarkable. It does not have to replace the original photograph or pretend to recreate the past with absolute accuracy.

Instead, it can provide another doorway into it.

For younger generations accustomed to experiencing the world through moving images, a photograph taken more than eighty years ago can suddenly become immediate. The anonymous soldier ceases, for a few moments, to be simply a figure in a dusty old black-and-white photograph.

He moves. He smiles. He plays again.

And across more than eighty years, we are reminded that history is ultimately not about photographs, uniforms, dates or battles.

It is about people.

Original photograph: Harry Klein (comp. & ed.), Springbok Record, South African Legion of the British Empire Service League, Johannesburg, 1946, p. 276.
AI animation, colourisation and musical accompaniment are modern interpretive additions by JJ Badenhorst (067 273 8038).

28/09/2026

SOLDIERS YOU SHOULD KNOW: OLIVEIRA MARTIN “OLLIE” GOMES — The Man Who Survived a R***e Gr***de Through His Chest

Few stories from the Border War illustrate the extraordinary combination of chance, human resilience and battlefield medicine quite like that of Oliveira Martin “Ollie” Gomes of 32 Battalion.

Gomes was an Angolan who became separated from his family during the turmoil of the Angolan civil war and eventually found his way south. Still only a teenager, he joined the SADF’s newly established 32 Battalion. Known to his comrades simply as “Ollie”, he went on to become an experienced operational soldier.

On the morning of 4 February 1983, Gomes was serving as a Corporal and platoon sergeant with Alpha Company, 32 Battalion, operating from a temporary base east of Mupa in southern Angola during Operation Snoek.

Gomes took a ten-man section to prepare a helicopter landing zone when r***e fire was heard coming from the temporary base. Realising that the soldiers left behind were under attack, Gomes immediately led his section back to assist. After the attackers withdrew, he followed them with his section until the sheer number of tracks — indicating a force of well over 100 men — persuaded him to return.

The enemy, however, was not withdrawing. They were regrouping for another attack.

During the subsequent fighting, Gomes was struck in the shoulder. The external wound appeared surprisingly small, and his comrades initially believed that he had been hit by shrapnel.
His condition soon deteriorated.

Gomes later recalled that while being evacuated by helicopter he realised that there was blood in his mouth, requiring a crew member to turn his head so that it could drain.

He was evacuated from Mupa to Ondjiva field sickbay, where a chest drain was inserted to assist his breathing, and then onwards to Oshikati.

X-rays finally revealed the extraordinary truth:
There was an unexploded M60 anti-personnel r***e gr***de inside his chest.

The gr***de had entered through his shoulder, fractured his second rib and penetrated both lungs, yet somehow missed his heart and major arteries.

According to the account recorded by Piet Nortje, examination revealed another extraordinary detail. The safety cap on the gr***de's nose had apparently not been removed before it was fired, preventing it from detonating on impact.

The medical personnel now confronted an almost unimaginable situation. Gomes was bleeding to death and urgently required surgery — but attempting to remove the gr***de risked detonating it, potentially killing the patient, surgeons and others in the operating theatre.

The theatre was evacuated.

The surgeon was Captain (Dr) S.J.P. “Paul” Eloff, a Citizen Force doctor with 22 years of medical experience who was also a senior lecturer in surgery at the University of the Orange Free State. Captain J.C. “Koos” Reyneke administered the anaesthetic.

The commander of the sickbay, Major Cornelius “Neels” de Villiers, arranged for an improvised protective shield to be constructed alongside the operating table using sandbags and an armoured side plate from a Buffel.

What followed was battlefield medicine at its most extraordinary.

A hole was burned through one of the gr***de's tail fins and wire and tent cables were attached, allowing the medical team to attempt to extract it while sheltering behind the improvised armour.

The gr***de refused to move.

Eloff then improvised a type of slide using the lid of a coffee tin, positioning it beneath the gr***de's tail fin. From behind the protective shield, another attempt was made.

This time the gr***de came free.

Knowing that massive bleeding could occur as soon as the projectile was removed, Eloff immediately returned to Gomes. The unexploded gr***de was still lying on the operating table and was in his way. Despite having been warned not to touch it, Eloff simply picked it up and handed it to the engineer officer, Captain H. van Vuuren, who carried it away. He then continued operating on his patient.

Approximately five hours after being wounded, Oliveira Martin “Ollie” Gomes was wheeled out of the operating theatre alive.
A few days later he was transferred to 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria for further treatment.

Gomes had survived a r***e gr***de entering through his shoulder, fracturing a rib and penetrating both lungs. He had then survived an extraordinary improvised operation to extract a live explosive projectile from his chest.

There are acts of courage involving advancing under fire or confronting an enemy. There are others involving medical personnel refusing to abandon a patient despite extraordinary danger. And sometimes there is simply the remarkable determination of a wounded soldier to stay alive.

Oliveira Martin “Ollie” Gomes experienced all three.

SOLDIERS YOU SHOULD KNOW is a Castle Military Museum series introducing remarkable and sometimes little-known individuals whose experiences form part of Southern Africa’s military history.

Lest we forget.

Source: Piet Nortje, The Terrible Ones: A Complete History of 32 Battalion. The detailed account includes recollections from Gomes and members of the medical team directly involved in his evacuation, treatment and the removal of the gr***de.

27/09/2026

🎨 WHEN MODERN ART WENT TO WAR: THE BIRTH OF CAMOUFLAGE

What could Picasso, Cubism and abstract art possibly have to do with military camouflage?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

When the First World War erupted in 1914, European armies entered a battlefield transformed by machine guns, long-range artillery and, increasingly, aerial observation. Hiding men, guns and installations from enemy eyes suddenly became a matter of survival. Remarkably, some of the people best equipped to solve this problem were artists.

France led the way. In 1915 the French Army established a specialist Section de Camouflage, commanded by the painter Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola. Its ranks included painters, illustrators, sculptors, theatre designers and other artists. Their task was essentially to deceive the human eye.

The connection with modern art was not accidental.

Cubist painters such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque had already been experimenting with breaking recognisable objects into fragmented planes, disrupting conventional perspective and confusing the boundary between an object and its surroundings. Military camouflage applied surprisingly similar principles—but for an entirely different purpose.

Guirand de Scévola later explained that, to distort the appearance of an object, he employed techniques similar to those used by the Cubists. Instead of using fragmented colour and form to create a painting, the camoufleurs used them to make artillery pieces, observation posts and military positions harder for an enemy to recognise.

The similarity was apparently not lost on Picasso. According to an often-repeated recollection by Gertrude Stein, Picasso saw a camouflaged gun in Paris and exclaimed: “It is we who have created that!” The remark may have been characteristically boastful, but the visual relationship between Cubism and camouflage was very real.

The same fascinating overlap appeared elsewhere.

German artist Paul Klee, later one of the great figures associated with the Bauhaus, served with German aviation units during the war and was employed, among other duties, in painting aircraft fabric. Meanwhile, the German Army increasingly experimented with disruptive colour schemes. In July 1918, an official order prescribed a remarkable camouflage treatment for steel helmets: large angular fields of colours such as green, ochre and rust-brown, separated by finger-width black lines. Every helmet was hand painted, meaning that no two were exactly alike.

At sea, camouflage became even more spectacular.

British marine artist Norman Wilkinson developed “dazzle” camouflage in 1917. Ships were covered with enormous geometric patterns of contrasting lines and colours. The intention was not necessarily to make a ship disappear, but to disrupt its outline and make it difficult for a submarine commander to judge its course, speed and range accurately. Vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth was among the artists employed in this work.

The result was extraordinary: merchantmen and warships became gigantic floating abstract artworks.

Modern military camouflage therefore emerged from several influences—science, observations of natural concealment, battlefield experience and artistic experimentation. But the First World War produced an extraordinary moment when avant-garde art and military necessity converged.

Artists had spent years learning how to manipulate what the human eye believed it was seeing.

Then armies discovered that this knowledge could save lives.

Sometimes the history of warfare can also be the history of art.

26/09/2026

SOLDIERS YOU SHOULD KNOW: HE FOUGHT AGAINST THE BRITISH... THEN BESIDE THEM AT DELVILLE WOOD
Nicolaas Johannes Vlok DTD, DCM

In 1900, Nicolaas Johannes Vlok fought against British soldiers as a Boer combatant during the South African War.

Sixteen years later, he stood shoulder to shoulder with British troops in the shattered trees of Delville Wood.

Few stories better illustrate the remarkable journey of South Africa and its soldiers during the early twentieth century.

South African military history is filled with remarkable individuals whose stories have largely disappeared from public memory. One such man was Nicolaas Johannes Vlok — farmer, Boer War veteran, officer, private soldier, sniper and decorated veteran of Delville Wood.

Vlok came from the Cape interior, with family connections to the Sutherland and Calvinia districts. During the South African War of 1899–1902, he fought on the Boer side against British forces, attaining the rank of Veldkornet. He was wounded during the conflict and his Republican service was subsequently recognised with the Dekoratie voor Trouwe Dienst (DTD).

But South Africa changed dramatically after 1902.

The former Boer republics and British colonies were eventually united in 1910 as the Union of South Africa. Men who had once faced each other across the battlefield now found themselves citizens of the same country.

Vlok was one of them.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, he returned to active military service. Surviving documentation records his appointment as a Lieutenant in Naude's Scouts on 3 October 1914.

Vlok subsequently saw service with Naude's Scouts during the Union campaign in German South West Africa, where South African forces under General Louis Botha campaigned against the German colonial forces. His later military attestation recorded that he had completed six months' service with Naude's Scouts.

Then he did something remarkable.

Vlok voluntarily relinquished his commissioned rank and enlisted for overseas service as an ordinary soldier.

On 18 August 1915, at Potchefstroom, the former Boer officer signed his attestation papers for the South African Overseas Expeditionary Force. He became:

No. 429 Private Nicholas Johannes Vlok.

A contemporary wartime press caption explained that this Boer farmer had "thrown up a commission & joined the ranks" in order to set an example to his comrades. It even claimed that hundreds subsequently followed his example.

Vlok joined B Company, 2nd South African Infantry and reportedly qualified as a brigade sniper. His next campaign took him to Egypt, where the South African Brigade fought during operations against the Senussi.

From the deserts of North Africa, Vlok went to the Western Front.

Then came Delville Wood.

On 15 July 1916, Vlok was wounded during one of the most famous and costly battles in South African military history.

He suffered wounds to his shoulder and right knee. There was an extraordinary historical irony in the shoulder wound: according to his later obituary, the German bullet struck him almost exactly where a British bullet had wounded him in 1900, when he had been fighting on the opposite side.

Sixteen years earlier he had faced British soldiers across a battlefield.

At Delville Wood he fought beside them.

A newspaper describing Vlok while recovering in hospital reported that, despite considerable pain, he remained "the life and soul of his ward."

His courage was recognised with the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM), and he was also Mentioned in Despatches.

But there is something larger in Vlok's story than the remarkable career of one soldier.

In 1900, Nicolaas Vlok fought with conviction for the Boer cause against British forces. After the creation of the Union of South Africa, he accepted a new constitutional order and again volunteered to serve his country — first as an officer in German South West Africa and then, after voluntarily relinquishing his commission, as an ordinary soldier in Egypt and France.

Vlok's life reminds us that loyalty to one's country and honourable military service can survive profound changes of government and political order.

South Africa would experience such transformations again. Decades later, men who had served loyally in different military forces and sometimes on opposing sides would find themselves serving together in a new South African National Defence Force.

Our military history therefore seldom fits comfortably into simple categories of victor and vanquished, friend and enemy, loyalty and betrayal.

Governments change. Constitutional orders change. Former enemies can become comrades.

Yet the ideal of honourable service to one's country endures.

The Castle Military Museum remembers No. 429 Private Nicolaas Johannes Vlok DTD, DCM — Boer veteran, officer of Naude's Scouts, German South West Africa campaign veteran, South African infantryman, sniper and decorated veteran of Delville Wood.

Lest we forget.

25/09/2026

THANK YOU, MEDIA24 — A PARTNER IN OUR SUCCESS

The Castle Military Museum would like to express its sincere appreciation to Media24, News24, Netwerk24 and Die Burger for the exceptional support given to the inaugural Military Heritage Weekend at the Castle of Good Hope.

In the weeks leading up to the event, Media24 provided the Heritage Weekend with a level of exposure that would ordinarily have represented a very significant promotional investment for an event of this nature.

Sponsored features on News24 and Netwerk24 introduced the event — and the story of 500 years of South African military history — to thousands of readers across the country. This was complemented by valuable coverage in Die Burger on 18 September, immediately before the Heritage Weekend.

Although Media24 was not a formal event sponsor, the value and reach of this coverage effectively made the group an important partner in the success of the Heritage Weekend.

For a relatively small museum organising an ambitious public heritage event, that support mattered enormously.

It enabled the Castle Military Museum to reach far beyond the community of military-history enthusiasts and collectors who already knew about the event. Thousands of people who might otherwise never have known what was happening at the Castle were introduced to the Heritage Weekend through some of South Africa's most widely recognised media platforms.

The excellent turnout on 19 and 20 September was ultimately the product of many organisations, volunteers, exhibitors, reenactors and individuals working together. Media24 deserves particular recognition as one of the partners that helped us get the public through the gates.

There is also a broader significance to this support. Heritage organisations can preserve objects, conduct research and create exhibitions, but our work achieves its greatest value when those stories actually reach the public. By giving the Military Heritage Weekend such substantial exposure, Media24 helped us fulfil that purpose.

The Castle Military Museum therefore proudly acknowledges Media24 — together with News24, Netwerk24 and Die Burger — as an important partner in the success of the 2026 Military Heritage Weekend.

Thank you for helping us take South Africa's military heritage to a much wider audience.

History preserved. History shared. History brought to life.

24/09/2026

Happy Heritage Day from the Castle Military Museum!

24/09/2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to2Eh5m_Ayc. THE HERITAGE GROUP BEHIND THE CAMERA

Our earlier post highlighted the Heritage Group's contribution to the Military Heritage Weekend — but their work in preserving and interpreting military history extends well beyond public displays and reenactment events.

This one-minute short film provides a glimpse of another aspect of their activities.

The production was made with assistance from the Heritage Group (HG), which supplied uniforms and military equipment to help the filmmakers create a convincing historical setting.

Over the years, the Group's extensive knowledge of military uniforms, vehicles, weapons, equipment and material culture has made its members a valuable resource for filmmakers, photographers and documentary producers. It is not simply a matter of supplying an old uniform or piece of equipment: historical accuracy often depends upon knowing what was used, when it was used, who would have used it — and how it should actually be worn or handled.

This is another important dimension of military heritage preservation. Collections need not remain behind glass. When properly researched and responsibly used, original and reproduction equipment can help filmmakers bring history to life for audiences far beyond the museum or reenactment field.

The Heritage Group has been supporting this kind of work for many years, providing equipment, research and technical advice to a variety of productions.

Have a look at this short film and see some of that contribution brought to life on screen.

Another example of Living History doing exactly what it was intended to do — taking history to the public.

Filminute2011 THE FALLEN Bauke Brouwer (South Africa)