In 1899, on the eve of the Boer War, Captain Charles Cox from Parramatta
took 100 Australian cavalrymen to train with the British army in England. These
military apprentices became British soldiers as well as Australian ones. But
everything went wrong. Publicity got in the way of cavalry drill which, in any
case, the Australians were allowed to shirk.
The debacle ended with Cox volunteering his little command for the Boer
War, with the British making him get the consent of his government and his men,
and finally with a murder on a lonely farm in South Africa. There was no more
talk of Australian fighting men morphing into colonial members of the British
army.
Still, the newspapers said the venture was a brilliant success, that
Australians had proved themselves natural warriors, that the British Empire was
stronger for what happenedall of which Australians rejoiced to hear. It was,
in the end, a kind of victory.
