A tale of love and war
MTHATHA-born author Dave Baker will be in East London on Tuesday to launch his latest novel, The Tame Khaki, a love story set during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902.
Young British officer Jack Whitelaw leaves his home and girlfriend in England to join his regiment in Natal but he is wounded in battle against the Boers and lands up in a Ladysmith hospital where he is nursed by a beautiful Dutchspeaking nurse, Rachel du Toit.
The two fall in love and face all sorts of problems created by the war.
When the English troops carry out the “scorched-earth” policy of burning down Boer farmhouses, the couple’s love is put to the test and Rachel leaves Ladysmith to assist her family.
At the end of hostilities and with the country in upheaval, Jack has to search for his lost love.
The story is poignant and very emotional at times, but readers will enjoy this historical novel.
The author, now 81, now lives in Durban. His father served as a fighter pilot during World War 1 and in 1925 he was head-hunted by the headmaster of then Umtata High School where he taught mathematics.
During World War 2 he served as an officer in the South African Artillery and was captured at Tobruk but managed to escape from a train taking POWs from Italy to Germany. However, he was later recaptured.
“My mother, a music teacher with a licentiate from the Incorporated London Academy of Music, followed him and they were married in East London the day she landed. I was educated at my father’s school, where I won the English prize in matric,” Baker said.
Baker played rugby for the Rhodes U19 team and later for the former Transkei region in the Border Rugby League. He was employed by a leading insurance company and two top short-term insurance broking firms, mostly in managerial capacities, and retired as the managing director of Alexander Forbes Swaziland in 2001 and spent the next 10 years working as a risk services consultant.
“My projects included standing in for managing directors of Alexander Forbes in other African countries, writing 23 training manuals for the International Colleges Group, upgrading and writing two textbooks for the Insurance Institute of South Africa and drafting fresh commercial and personal lines insurance policy wordings for Hollard Insurance Company.
“I then began writing creatively in my spare time and attended two Writers Write courses in Johannesburg. In 2012, I retired from consulting work to write novels on a full-time basis and participated in a writing course offered by my old school pal and author of Hold My Hand, I’m Dying, John Gordon Davis, at his home in Spain.”
DB: Reading did. From when I was about eight years old, my mother used to take me and my sister Ann to the Mthatha Public Library with her whenever she went – almost weekly. We would spend the time in the children’s section and come away with a book.
I cut my teeth on the Just William series by Richmal Crompton, then later graduated to the Captain Hornblower series, which led me to historical fiction.
Later, our amazing English teacher Ken Kirby whetted my appetite further by spending a good deal of the time in our history classes telling us about the historical novels he’d been reading involving Napoleon Bonaparte or his marshalls, like Soult. DB: My wife, Jacqui, and I spent a day in and around Ladysmith with an excellent historical guide, Liz Spiret, and I read two books – Regiment of the Line, written immediately after the war by an officer in the Devonshire Regiment, Colonel M Jacson, and The Bloody Eleventh by WJ P Aggett. I also dipped into two other books for background information about the British concentration camps.
Baker will discuss the book with Wildcoast FM radio announcer Peter Gladwin at 9am on Tuesday morning and the launch of the book is at 5.30pm at Old Selbornians Club, East London, that evening.
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