My name is Gary Corken. I write historical fiction about ordinary people caught in the machinery of wars.
In a previous episode, you heard Jim Donnelly tell his story. A Belfast boy, Number Seventy-Four, who took the Queen’s Shilling because there was nothing else left to take.
This is the other side of the same war.
Johannes Erasmus — known to everyone who mattered as Rassi — was sixteen years old when the war began. He rode out from his family’s farm north of Krugersdorp in October 1899 with the Krugersdorp Commando, certain that the war would be short and the Boers would win it.
He was wrong about both.
Rassi is the protagonist of my novel Mama. He is fictional. But the world he moves through is not. The highveld, the commando system, the monument at Paardekraal, the journey south into Natal — these are drawn from the historical record.
What follows is Rassi’s story told in his own voice.
This is Episode One. The farm at the edge of the world.
Rassi’s story continues in the next episode — the Krugersdorp Commando at Colenso, December 1899. The same battle Jim Donnelly fought. The other side of the river.
Mama, Rassi’s story, and A Violent Shade of Orange, Jim’s story, are available on Amazon.
For the historical research behind these episodes, visit Sons of No Country on Substack.
I’m Gary Corken. Thank you for listening.
