I was in All Saints church, Maid­stone, recently for a carol con­cert. All Saints is a mag­ni­fi­cent, if neg­lected, build­ing in the Eng­lish per­pen­dic­u­lar style, situ­ated in a town which has sac­ri­ficed charm for the con­veni­ence of a gir­at­ory sys­tem. On its walls are a num­ber of memori­als, but the brassy, Gothic ones — like the one above — are the ones that catch the eye. They com­mem­or­ate the dead of the Boer War.

That imper­ial insur­gency, at the begin­ning of the 20C, pit­ted the Brit­ish Army (so often dis­ap­point­ing, except when fight­ing the French) against the Afrik­an­ers [++cor­rec­ted from Afrikaan­ers++ see com­ment below].

And the West Kents, memori­al­ised on the wall, were a volun­teer force raised after the Boers inflic­ted a series of defeats on the regulars.

The West Kents were reserv­ists, a bit like today’s Ter­rit­ori­als. Over 100,000 served in South Africa dur­ing that three year war. You can read more about them in Stephen Miller’s Volun­teers on the Veld: Britain’s Citizen-Soldiers and the South African War, 1899–1902. The church wall records them dying of dis­ease, killed in action, and one unfor­tu­nate “acci­dent­ally shot” — “blue on blue” in the con­tem­por­ary euphem­ism. His­tory has robbed the proud brass plaques (paid for by par­ents who had lost their sons) of any con­sequence. The empire has fallen. The sun set.

Today, the Eng­lish are merely poorly-resourced aux­il­i­ar­ies for another English-speaking people. It isn’t dis­ease but homemade bombs (“IEDs”), land­mines and vehicle acci­dents that account for many of today’s deaths. Bri­tain has a fight­ing force of fewer than 25,000 (Maid­stone has a pop­u­la­tion of around 140,000), and its chief deploy­ments are not in Africa, but in south­ern Iraq and in Afghanistan.

Of course, Maid­stone still man­ages a cheer for its return­ing sol­diers. But there are no new brass plaques in the empty church. And there are no futile wars fought in the present.