British officers talked of combat as so much sport. Men ordered to advance against Boer positions, called “beaters,” were to flush the quarry from their hiding places as in pheasant hunting. A captain in the Imperial Yeomanry declared that chasing Boer horsemen across the veldt was “just like a good fox hunt.” The first British commanding general in South Africa, the paunchy, double-chinned Sir Redvers Buller, ordered his soldiers not to be unsportsmanlike “jack-in-boxes” who ducked after standing up to fire their rifles. The war, however, failed to unroll like the good hunt it was supposed to
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