Mike the Warthog

Tea party photoshoot I had with my daughter just before I cleared out of the #SANavy.

SADF female Soldier. 📷The role of female soldiers in the South African Defence Force (SADF) has evolved significantly over the years. Initially, women served in support roles such as administration, nursing, and communications. However, with the end of apartheid in the 1990s, women began to serve in combat support positions, challenging traditional gender norms. Today, women serve in various capacities, including combat roles, leadership positions, and specialized units. The military has implemented policies to promote gender equality, such as equal training opportunities and anti-discrimination measures. Despite advancements, women in the SANDF still face challenges such as gender-based violence, underrepresentation in senior roles, and cultural barriers. However, their achievements continue to inspire future generations of women and demonstrate the evolving nature of South Africa’s military.

Burgher commandos were voluntary, unpaid citizen-soldier units from the South African Republic and Orange Free State (1899–1902). They supplied their own rifles, horses, and food, electing their own officers. These farmers, often fighting guerrilla-style, utilized high-powered Mauser rifles and superior mobility to inflict major losses on British troops before turning to protracted guerrilla warfare.

Aerial view of Baragwanath Hospital (then called the Imperial Military Hospital, Baragwanath), Johannesburg in 1942. Credit: Adler Museum Bulletin

21 Squadron SAAF Baltimore's in formation over the Mediterranean

SADF 61 Mechanised Battalion Group. Originally established as Battle Group Juliet in 1978, 61 Mech emerged as a rapid-response force integrating infantry, armour, and artillery to counter SWAPO incursions from southern Angola into South West Africa (now Namibia).By January 1979, it was formally renamed 61 Mechanised Battalion and stationed at Omuthiya, with its tactical HQ initially at Otavi, later moving to Tsumeb. The battalion emphasized mobile warfare, leveraging Ratel infantry fighting vehicles, Eland armoured cars, Buffel and Casspir transports, and G5/G6 artillery to adapt to bush warfare conditions.

Photo from an old SAN.magazine showing a store keeper in a type twelve store,firstly he is a seaman and secondly the racks are empty, most likely taken in PK.when she decommissioned to be converted.

Workers of the South African Native Labour Corps stacking lorry radiators requiring repair at the Base Mechanical Transport Depot at Rouen, 31 May 1918. Credit: Imperial War Museum

Hollander corps camp April 1900; Camp of the Hollander Corps at Kroonstad before Lord Roberts march to Pretoria. This is probably the 2nd Hollander Corps, founded in 1900 and fought with the OVS Looks like their own flag they are flying.

Enteric Fever Bloemfontein During April 1900, in Bloemfontein, 249 British Troops die of Enteric fever. In total, 12,331 British soldiers died of disease, mostly enteric fever / Typhoid, during the ABW conflict (as opposed to 7,773 killed in combat) and at the height of the epidemic, as many as 25 British soldiers were dying each day in a single ill-equipped and overwhelmed military hospital in Bloemfontein. 60 orderlies also came down with the disease Over one thousand graves were dug in the Bloemfontein cemetery. At Paardeberg, the Modder River became heavily contaminated with faeces, dead horses etc. Few people knew at the time that boiling drinking water killed the bacteria, as a result, on reaching Bloemfontein there would be a Typhoid epidemic. To add to the woes, during the action at Sanna's Pos, C De Wet had captured the Bloemfontein Waterworks and sabotaged them by hiding some critical parts. He didn't destroy them. In spite of the British medical organization, it was still not enough to deal with the situation and was certainly criticized by experts, politicians and others. Under supervision of Surgeon General W. F. Stevenson, the PMO (attached to Lord Roberts’s staff) a number of buildings were seized and temporary hospitals established namely the Raadzaal, Grey College, Damesinstituut (Eunice), Greenhill Convent, St. Michael’s Home and attached Victoria Cottage hospital, St. Andrew’s College (Oranje Meisieskool), Volkshospitaal and the Industrial Home and Artillery Barracks! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who worked as a Medic during the epidemic “The greatest misfortune of the campaign, one which it was obviously impolitic to insist upon at the time, began with the occupation of Bloemfontein. This was the great outbreak of enteric among the troops. For more than two months the hospitals were choked with sick. One general hospital with five hundred beds held seventeen hundred sick, nearly all enterics. A half field hospital with fifty beds held three hundred and seventy cases. The total number of cases could not have been less than six or seven thousand--and this not of an evanescent and easily treated complaint, but of the most persistent and debilitating of continued fevers, the one too which requires the most assiduous attention and careful nursing. How great was the strain only those who had to meet it can tell. The exertions of the military hospitals and of those others which were fitted out by private benevolence sufficed, after a long struggle, to meet the crisis. At Bloemfontein alone, as many as fifty men died in one day, and more than 1000 new graves in the cemetery testify to the severity of the epidemic. No men in the campaign served their country more truly than the officers and men of the medical service, nor can anyone who went through the epidemic forget the bravery and unselfishness of those admirable nursing sisters who set the men around them a higher standard of devotion to duty. Enteric fever is always endemic in the country, and especially at Bloemfontein, but there can be no doubt that this severe outbreak had its origin in the Paardeberg water. All through the campaign, while the machinery for curing disease was excellent, that for preventing it was elementary or absent. If bad water can cost us more than all the bullets of the enemy, then surely it is worth our while to make the drinking of unboiled water a stringent military offence, and to attach to every company and squadron the most rapid and efficient means for boiling it--for filtering alone is useless. An incessant trouble it would be, but it would have saved a division for the army. It is heartrending for the medical man who has emerged from a hospital full of water-born pestilence to see a regimental watercart being filled, without protest, at some polluted wayside pool. With precautions and with inoculation all those lives might have been saved. The fever died down with the advance of the troops and the coming of the colder weather.”

Lord Roberts starts the great march North May 5th 1900: Lord Roberts army marches north crossing the Vet river

@_Ava_VT I am ugly, NOT stupid Of course I will take it

SERIOUS QUESTION: If somebody handed you $800,000 and said it's because you're ugly, would you accept it?

Today, May 4: “This day in our shipwreck and aeronautical wreck history” 1785: Brederode, this Dutch East Indiaman lost its rudder after striking an unknown reef four times in quick succession on the 3rd of May, off Cape Agulhas in the Western Cape. Attempts to turn it towards the beach to run it aground were unsuccessful, and with the hold flooding faster than water could be pumped, it was abandoned at sea around 04:30 the morning of the 4th, following which it foundered at sea. When the survivors reached the shore on the boats, a headcount revealed only 80 people were on shore, and with lights from the Brederode signalling, it meant that 12 people were left on board. The waves were too strong to relaunch the boats to rescue these 12 people and they were never seen again. 1932: Haliartus (pictured below), this steam-powered British freighter struck a rock in dense fog and wrecked near Ystervarkpunt/Bull Point near the Gourits River mouth in the Western Cape. By the 7th of May the stern had disappeared below water and the SS Chub had managed to salvage some of the cargo. 2006: Alexandros T, this Greek motor-powered bulk carrier foundered in deep waters off the south-eastern coastline of the Eastern Cape. Seven of the crew were picked up by the Fortune Express after it reacted to a distress call, but 26 lives remained unaccounted for and are presumed to have gone down with the ship.

@WmJRossHoefling Good morning

@thyphoidjack Good morning Mike !

South African Engineers and their attached Cape Corps and Native Military Corps Personnel serving with the British 8th Army in Tunisia during 1943, wore these Epaulets.

Ships anchored in Table Bay assembling for a Convoy during mid-1943