My 78 year old mother, born Algene Sparks, relates to this day a family story explaining the origins
of her Christian name. During early May 1934 in Bloemfontein, her father Captain Algernon Sparks,
while playing golf with a brother officer, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Pienaar, discussed the recent arrival
of Spark’s new baby girl. Options were considered and Pienaar suggested the feminine version of
Algernon, concluding the decision neatly in accordance with the patriarchal fraternal mores common
nearly eight decades ago to British and Afrikaner South Africans alike. The two men were old
comrades from the Natal colonial mounted policemen and later artillery officers who had served
together during the First World War German South West and East Africa campaigns.
This story endures because I am the product of a family, not untypical of many middle aged South
Africans, where historical identity awareness lingers concerning the military service grandparents,
parents and uncles and aunts performed with the Union Defence Force (UDF) during the twentieth
century World Wars. Such was transmitted to me from youth through fraternal discussions, old
photos, artefacts like medals, shell casings and today, personally, an understanding of South
Africanism. This was a political outlook originating through the magnanimous secular creed of
Afrikaner leaders Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, who despite the sting and despair of Boer defeat in
1902, strove towards reconciliation with their not always comprehending English-speaking
countrymen. Their goal was a broad white South African unity within a British Commonwealth
Dominion, reflecting the “best” of the two “races”, as this contentious definition was then
understood, drawing upon a common love and commitment of service to their country.
An ardent disciple of this torturously difficult political path was Daniel Hermanus Pienaar, who from
May 1940 to December 1943, till his premature death at age 49 in an air crash, had led his
“Springboks”, as UDF personnel were known, victorious against the Italians through the fighting in
Abyssinia and North Africa, as part of the British Commonwealth’s 8th Army facing Field Marshall
Rommel’s crack Afrika Korps. Here the South Africans endured the mixed fortunes of war: Deeply
felt setbacks of defeat and surrender at Sidi Rezegh and Tobruk, alongside the final victory at El
Alamein, the deciding desert war battle in Egypt, the second phase of which opened seventy years
ago this week – 23 October 1942.
Born on 27 August 1893 on the farm Bosduiwekop within the Free State Ladybrand district, in a flatroofed, four-roomed red brick homestead, Dan Pienaar was the second youngest of six sons and one
daughter. His father Willem Pienaar later relocated the family to farm near Wakkerstroom, where at
the outbreak of the Boer War, he departed with the two eldest sons to join the Transvaal
commandos, leaving Dan with his remaining siblings and mother to run the farm. In common with
numerous Boer families during Lord Kitchener’s grim scorched earth war strategy, the Pienaars were
relocated to a concentration camp. So from early 1901, Dan’s home was a confined tented location
in Pietermaritzburg. It was here that a child’s play accident with an axe resulted in Dan suffering
blood poisoning and him spending four months in a local military hospital. In contrast to the tragic
experiences of many Boer kinsfolk, his fellow patients, convalescing British tommies, lavished a
memorable kindness upon the boy. Pienaar later explained this experience resulted in two
important influences impacting upon his life: His tendency towards friendship and camaraderie with
those of British stock, along with his own Afrikaner people, and his determination to become a
soldier. However idealised this account rings, Pienaar who had only passed standard six, as far as the
Wakkerstroom farm school allowed, responded in 1911 to an advert calling for volunteers to join the
Natal Police, later transferring to the newly created UDF in April 1913. At the conclusion of his Great
War service, Pienaar was recommended for a battery commander’s course at Woolwich, England,
being evaluated 4th of out of 20 candidates and receiving an officer’s commission in the British Army.
However, he immediately returned home and continued his UDF career, marrying Eileen Lefler in
Pietermaritzburg on 25 May 1920 at St George’s Church, Fort Napier; the very same building used as
the hospital where the boy Pienaar had recovered two decades earlier. Pienaar’s war experience,
training and excellent professional reputation as an artillery specialist, resulted in him moving
quickly up the ranks within the tiny cash-strapped UDF.
A man of marked charm, warmth and charisma, Pienaar’s popularity was obvious amongst all
military ranks, as also in public occasions where he mixed as comfortably with backveld Boers during
wapenskous as at civic functions with English town community members. After General Smuts’s
narrow 5 September 1939 parliamentary vote victory over Prime Minister Hertzog’s minority
neutralist grouping within the United Party government, South Africa joined Australia, Canada and
New Zealand in supporting Britain by declaring war upon Hitler’s Nazi Germany. At this time Pienaar
had hit a nadir within his personal life, for in January 1937, his wife died from illness resulting in him
becoming increasingly cut off from his family of three young children. Pienaar now spent an
inordinate amount of time at work, including inevitable lengthy socialising in the officers’ mess and
developed consequentially, an unfortunate reputation for heavy drinking, alarming his closest
friends and subordinates. As the 1st South African Brigade under the now Brigadier Pienaar,
underwent training at Zonderwater for deployment to East Africa, he continued his excessive alcohol
use, even while supervising around the camp during working hours. Undeniably this constituted in
Pienaar’s case, an extraordinary statement of acquiescence by his superiors to this debilitating vice.
Indeed Smuts was conscious of the problem and in his eulogy at Pienaar’s funeral, stated: “He first
conquered himself and his own weakness”; this in reference to Pienaar successfully undertaking the
onerous responsibility of leading his mostly raw young volunteers into battle. For again, also possibly
idealised, Pienaar purportedly made the rigid decision to abstain for the war’s duration, while
watching his brigade at Durban harbour boarding their Mombasa bound troopship.
Pienaar was representative of those Afrikaners for whom a colloquial term would be bloedsappe,
who along with British South African community, also supported Smuts’s belief, now long historically
validated, that World War Two was an absolutely essential fight against an evil ideology. Pienaar
rejected assertions by some UDF officers and the parliamentary opposition that South Africa was not
threatened. Defence planning during the 1930s under Hertzog’s own defence minister Oswald Pirow
had appraised a scenario of the UDF potentially defending African (mostly obviously British) colonies
against an aggressive colonial power. The rise of the Italian Fascists from the mid-1930s and their
brutal 1936 conquest of Abyssinia constituted the most likely catalyst to such a scenario. Pienaar
argued, entirely correctly, that during war, South Africa’s border was not the Limpopo River. Aerial
bombing by German and Italian forces supporting Nationalists during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War
had sowed havoc upon civilians within Republican supporting towns and cities; a warning to the
complacent South Africans.
Domestically Afrikaner nationalism was surging forth under D.F. Malan’s Gesuiwede Nationale Party,
particularly during the 1938 Groot Trek Centenary Commemorations into the early 1940s. Although
Defence Force regulations barred members from active politics, Pienaar clearly harboured strong
views and fully embraced the philosophy expounded by his close friend Smuts. That Pienaar had
political interests could not have escaped the Prime Minister, aware of his own need to find leaders
capable of drawing more Afrikaner voters. Schisms abounded within Afrikaner politics of this period:
Hertzogites, Malanites not to mention a very large Ossewabrandwag component. All these still
mutually disagreed strongly with Smuts’s war policy and in totality, undoubtedly carried the majority
Afrikaner sentiment; a legacy of anti-British hostility dating from the Boer War, still within
generational memory. Some of this nationalistic maelstrom was pro-Nazi, particularly the
treasonous sabotage and intimidation carried out by the Ossewabrandwag. But Afrikaner nationalist
attitudes also existed amongst some volunteers who took the Africa Oath to oppose Axis forces
anywhere on the continent, whether for adventure, subsistence or professional reasons. It was
these Afrikaner troops particularly whom Pienaar believed could also be drawn into the South
Africanism he aspired towards. Indeed his close friend Brigadier Eric Hartshorne confirmed in his
book, Avenge Tobruk, published in 1960, that politics was a foremost discussion topic amongst
Pienaar and his officers. And while loyalty to Smuts personally was a consistent factor amongst
Pienaar’s inner circle, there was a regularly spoken about intention to create a separate post-war
“Soldier’s Party”, independent in political thinking, where veterans opinions and needs would
receive appropriate priority. This clearly was a forerunner of the Torch Commando led by Adolph
“Sailor” Malan during the early 1950s, another Afrikaner war hero who served with distinction in the
Royal Air Force; but unlike Pienaar had not commanded South African troops of all backgrounds.
The Springboks started arriving in North Africa from May 1941; beginning with the 1st SA Division
under Major General George Brink, which Pienaar was soon to command after promotion to Major
General. His original brigade was one of six after October, with the 2nd SA Division also in Egypt.
South Africa’s contribution in the desert war now stood at 100 00 men and woman; the larger part
were white, but the UDF volunteers also including significant coloured and black personnel, officially
providing non-combatant logistical support. Because the United Party government did not
emphasise the white troops’ identities in terms of language, no statistics were kept. But soldiers’
surnames provide one clue, suggesting the Afrikaans/English split fitted the general population
ration of 60/40. A deeply religious man who felt at times ill at ease amongst the usually well
educated Commonwealth commanders, Pienaar always stressed his determination to associate as
closely as practical with his men. When the Anglican Bishop of Pretoria visited the South Africans
and confirmed scores of them in a desert service, Pienaar was amongst his troops as one ordinary
communicant; simply identifying with them at this most solemn moment in their lives.
Although troops originally under Pienaar had already seen action, desert warfare was different from
the bush topography of East Africa, while the highly motivated and well equipped Afrika Korps were
far more formidable enemy than the usually lacklustre Italians. The North African campaign pitted
Commonwealth forces against Erwin Rommel, one of Germany’s most outstanding commanders,
whose method was mobile warfare and always attack - making use of the open flank which the
boundless desert inevitably ensured. Such resulted in the virtual destruction at Sidi Rezegh of the 5th
South African Brigade on 23 November 1941, a victory for which the Afrika Korps still paid dearly,
losing 72 out of 162 tanks to the Springbok artillery, blunting the German advance upon other
Commonwealth forces. Fifty kilometres to the south east at Taieb el Esem lay Pienaar’s 1st Brigade,
operating in the standard “box” static defence of desert war. Under Pienaar’s fire direction they
successfully defended themselves with artillery and British armoured support. In staccato radio
communication with his own divisional commander, Brink encouraged Pienaar to continue harassing
the Germans, bringing Afrikaans and Boer War slang into the North African desert: “Stuur elke dag
sterk afdelings omgeving omgeveer agt myl uit om hulle (Germans) los te steek. Die Rooies (British)
doen dit en neuk hulle op.
From the onset of the UDF troops “going north”, Pienaar was resolute to resist attempts by British
commanders that the South African units be split amongst larger Commonwealth formations; a
point that resulted in him clashing severely with several haughty British generals, inclined to use
their own and Dominion troops recklessly. The loss in June 1942 of the Tobruk garrison under Major
General Hendrik Klopper with two brigades of the 2nd SA Division, along with 20 000 British and
Indian troops, was a staggering demoraliser to the Springboks. The hapless Klopper was left with the
taint of surrender although historians have long demonstrated that British commander General Neil
Ritchie’s poorly planned and communicated withdrawal of the 8th Army, including Pienaar’s 1st SA
Division, had failed to strategise either a proper defence or timely withdrawal from Tobruk. Pienaar
was extremely sensitive about high casualty rates, knowing that the population of the Union was
small and the country was divided on the issue of participation on the British side.
It remained for the Commonwealth forces to stand at El Alamein where a 60 km bottleneck existed
between the sea and impassable Quattara Depression. Pienaar’s 1st Division formed a defence in
the northern part of the Alamein “box” and when the Afrika Korps 90th Division sought a
breakthrough at this point in July 1942, Pienaar’s artillery responded with vengence. But unlike Sidi
Rezegh and Tobruk, the Germans were driven back for good. The following second and final battle of
El Alamein from 23 October witnessed Pienaar’s men triumphant with the rest of General Bernard
Montgomery’s forces. Rommel was forced to retreat to Tunisia and final defeat during the following
year. On El Alamein Day this week, when a handful of remaining aged veterans will recall the battle’s
70th Anniversary; they will surely be mindful of Dan Pienaar; one of our long forgotten South African
heroes, whose care of his troops and political hopes of national unity, remain worthy of our
remembrance.