Breaker Morant

I recently watched this film again for the first time in ages – certainly for the first time since I passed the bar and became a practicing attorney.   Earlier I described it briefly as the best movie about the Boer War, but given that it’s practically the only film about the Boer War, that isn’t much of a distinction.

Boer War.  Actually this was the Second Boer War (1899-1902); the first one was 1880-81.   It took place in what is now known as South Africa.   The conflict was between Britain, using mostly conventional forces, and the local Boers, who were descendants of the original Dutch settlers and spoke Afrikaans, which is a variant of Dutch.  

   At that time South Africa included two countries, the South African Republic (aka Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State, which were independent of the Cape Colony, the main English-controlled part of South Africa.  In 1886, gold was discovered there, but there were insufficient Boers to mine it.  So a gold rush of outsiders, “uitlanders”, came in – mainly from Britain – to do this, and eventually outnumbered the Boers.  Johannesburg sprung up practically out of thin air.  The Brits insisted that these uitlanders be given equal rights and status, but the Boers refused, knowing they would lose control of the country.  After ultimatums passed back and forth, the Boers [Transvaal and Orange Free State allied together] declared war on England in October 1899.

In the beginning (1899), the Boers attacked British settlements in the Cape Colony and besieged Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley.   The British forces had been understrength and unprepared despite months of imminent hostilities and large arms purchases by the Transvaal. 

Then (January to September 1900) the British sent many more troops, broke the sieges, and invaded the Transvaal and Orange Free State, which put the Boers on the defensive. 

Once they realized they could not defeat the British by conventional means, the Boers then began a guerilla war (1900-1902).  The British, in the form of the ever-unpopular Lord Kitchener, responded by burning farms and moving the local population into camps.

If you have to put a lot of people together into another place, possibly in the middle of nowhere, you have to concentrate them into a camp:  thus, “concentration camp”, a term which later achieved even more notoriety during World War II, but here it was simply the British attempt to fight what had become a guerilla war by isolating the indigenous population and thus reduce the ability of the “fish” to swim in the “sea”.  However, even without explicit genocidal intentions, the camps were still unhygienic and unpleasant – so this policy engendered considerable antipathy for the Brits and sympathy for the Boers, particularly from the Germans, although in practice, notwithstanding this deluge of “moral support”, the Boers got almost no help from anyone.

            For all its controversy, the policy was effective at stopping the Boers from conducting their guerilla war, and eventually the Boers had to surrender, although offered the prize that the unified country would be given its independence – which it was, in 1910, as the Union of South Africa.

Movie.  Actually based on a true story.  Three Australian soldiers, Harry “Breaker” Morant (Edward Woodward), Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown), and George Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald) are put on trial for three separate crimes: 1) killing a Boer caught wearing their dead officer’s service jacket, 2) killing 6+ Boer prisoners, and 3) killing a German missionary.  The three soldiers are members of an anti-guerilla cavalry unit, the Bushveldt Caribineers.  They’re given a hastily assigned defense counsel, Major J.F. Thomas (Jack Thompson, later to surface as Lars Cliegg in “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones”) who has never handled a court martial – or even a criminal case – ever; his practice in Australia was wills and trusts in a small town.   Like in “My Cousin Vinny”, the attorney has to rapidly learn criminal procedure and get a firm handle on the substance of his case, which he very admirably (if predictably) does.  In fact, he quickly ascertains the manifest injustice of the whole legal farce against his clients, and his passion comes out consistently through the trial.

All three soldiers plead not guilty.  Their defense?  1) They were given orders to summarily execute any Boer wearing khaki (English uniform); 2) They were given orders by their captain to execute prisoners as they were behind the lines; 3) the German missionary was a spy, but the soldier in question (Handcock) claims an alibi – an erotic rendezvous with two Boer women (separately). 

The main soldier is Morant, with Handcock a close second, and Witton a distant third in terms of culpability.  Morant and Handcock were condemned and executed; Witton was given a life sentence but freed after three years. 

In particular, Morant invokes the “Rule of .303”, claiming that out in the field, amidst the madness and reality of combat, a different set of rules apply which cannot be understood by hidebound staff officers who never face enemy forces.  Moreover, the Australians are treated as undisciplined renegades, perfectly suited for the unpleasant and difficult task of dealing with Boer guerillas; like most agrarian-based unconventional forces, the Boers don’t wear uniforms and are indistinguishable from other civilians.

More specifically, however, the Aussies had indeed been given orders with respect to prisoners.  Unfortunately for them, the order on “khaki” was vaguely worded, and the order on prisoners was explicitly given by an officer who was killed in combat and thus unable to testify on their behalf.  In fact, it was that officer whose death they avenged against the man caught wearing his jacket. 

Nowadays, or even back in 1980 when the film was made, the defense that “I was only following orders” rings rather hollow.  It didn’t save the Nuremburg defendants, on trial for the Holocaust, from Allied gallows in 1946.  However, these orders seem to stem from common sense military necessity: enemy soldiers caught wearing our uniforms are legitimately treated as spies, and irregular forces operating behind enemy lines lack the logistics to transport prisoners, so enemies captured really have to be shot.  Recall in “Saving Private Ryan” when Upham successfully protests against shooting the lone German soldier – only to see that same soldier later shoot back at them just as Upham’s angry comrades predicted.  Thus, the “Rule of .303”.   

In the middle of the trial, the fort in which they were tried came under attack by a large Boer force, and the three were released to assist in its defense – which they did extremely well.  Then they were locked up again and the tribunal refused to give them any credit for doing so. 

Ultimately, though, the men were victims of a political decision:  the top brass wanted to make peace with the Boers, and felt that executing these Australians would show the Boers their good faith.  Like “To Kill a Mockingbird”, a spirited and conscientious defense – one which would, given a truly impartial trier of fact, have resulted in an acquittal – availed to naught against an unstoppable political reality acting against them. 

A few other topics I might as well cover while I’m here.

“On Location?”  The landscape and scenery of the movie were amazing.  Here I was thinking, “South Africa is a beautiful place.”  Not so fast.  It seems the entire film was made in Australia.  Perhaps the parts of South Africa which used to be the Transvaal were too heavily developed in 1980 to pass for 1900-era Transvaal?  Or they just didn’t have the budget to get everyone on a plane and film in South Africa.  I don’t know.  Presumably they didn’t have any Boer War veterans still alive to tell them if Australian wilderness in 1980 could pass for the Transvaal in 1900.  It’s still eye candy either way.

Kangaroo Court.  We’re familiar with the expression in today’s US:  a farcical legal proceeding with a predetermined outcome unfavorable to one side, probably the defendant.  And since the defendants here were Australian, the term seems especially apt.  But research indicates that “kangaroo” notwithstanding, the expression derives from claim jumping courts in 1849’s California Gold Rush, and has ZERO connection with Australia.  Go figure.