LION MAN

It was August, 1903 and Kruger National Park game ranger Harry Wolhuter was returning from a horse patrol accompanied by six black game guards, a string of donkeys carrying camping equipment and supplies  and three “Boer” dogs that guarded the camp at night. The water hole they arrived at was dry and, as it was late in the afternoon, Wolhuter decided to ride ahead to the next water hole, accompanied by Bull, one of the dogs.

 

Darkness descended quickly and soon he was following the rough trail dimly illuminated by a canopy of stars. As he rode along, he heard something running in the grass nearby and assumed it was a reedbuck, common to the area. Suddenly, he realized that the noises in the grass were being made by two lions running alongside his horse. Knowing they intended to attack his horse, he dug in his spurs and made a valiant attempt to escape, but the lions were too close.

 

As his horse responded to his spurring, he felt an enormous blow on his back as one of the lions jumped up onto the horse’s hindquarters. The frantic bucking of his mount dislodged the lion, but also sent Wolhuter flying out of the saddle and onto the back of the second lion running alongside. This animal immediately grabbed him by his right shoulder and began dragging him towards a nearby patch of bush where, presumably, the lion planned to dispatch and eat its prey! As he was pulled along with his face pressed into the mane of the lion and the back of his legs dragging along the ground, Wolhuter tried digging in his spurs to slow the lion’s progress. However, this only angered the lion, which shifted its grip on his shoulder adding to his extreme agony. He tried calling out to Bull but realized that his dog had probably followed the escaping horse, not aware that he was no longer on it.

 

As the slow progress towards a certain and painful death continued, Wolhuter remembered the sheath knife on his belt. He was not very hopeful that it might still be in the sheath, as it had often fallen out on less strenuous occasions. He manoeuvred his left hand around his back and was relieved to find the knife still in its sheath. He carefully pulled the knife out and began to consider whether he would be able to reach a vital spot on the lion. He felt carefully along the animals shoulder and stabbed it twice where he thought the heart to be.

 

The lion let out a roar and released its hold on Wolhuter, who immediately stabbed it again in the throat. Judging from the gush of blood, he believed he had severed its jugular vein. To his intense relief, he heard the lion move off through the grass and, despite the pain in his shoulder, managed to get to his feet. Unsure as to whether he had seriously wounded the animal and fearful of the return of the second lion, he looked about for a tree that he could climb using only his left arm. After a few attempts, he managed to find a suitable tree which had a fork in its branches about three metres off the ground.

 

Securing himself to the trunk with his belt in case he lost consciousness, Wolhuter realized that a determined lion could probably climb high enough to get at him, but his growing weakness from loss of blood ruled out any further attempts to find another tree. Resigned to stay where he was, Wolhuter struggled to remain conscious so he could listen for the arrival of his patrol and warn them of the presence of the lions.

From his perch in the tree, Wolhuter could hear the struggles of the wounded lion and what he thought was its death moan. However, his relief was short-lived as he became aware of the return of the second lion. It did not take this lion long to discover Wolhuter in his refuge and, on reaching the base of the tree, it reared up against the trunk and began to climb up. To Wolhuter’s intense relief, his dog Bull rushed out of the darkness barking furiously at the lion, which broke off its attempt to reach him and, instead, tried to catch the dog.

Each time the lion tried to climb the tree, the dog’s frantic barking distracted it to the point where it eventually withdrew a short distance, probably hoping Wolhuter would climb down from the tree.

Wolhuter knew better than that and his patience was rewarded by the sounds of the approaching patrol. At his shouted warning, they fired off a few shots to drive off the lion and soon had a large fire burning. As they were desperately short of water, Wolhuter decided they would continue on to the next water hole, where he knew his game guards could wash and dress his wounds. The march to the water hole was agonizing for Wolhuter and made even more fearful when the patrol realized that the second lion was following them. Fortunately, Bull and the other two dogs were able to keep him at bay.

The next morning, Wolhuter sent two game guards back to the scene of the attack to look for his rifle and the dead lion. They returned having found his horse and rifle, together with the skin, skull and heart of the lion to show him where his knife had penetrated the organ.

Now unable to walk, Wolhuter had his game guards make a litter from poles and blankets and the patrol set out on the five-day march to the nearest medical help at Komatipoort. The wounds soon turned septic and Wolhuter, in great pain and with a raging fever, lapsed in and out of consciousness. The doctor at Komatipoort, who lacked the medical facilities that Wolhuter required, sent him by train to Barberton Hospital. However, even there, doctors did not hold out much hope for his survival.

Fortunately, they had not taken into account the incredible toughness of the man and his will to live. Within two months of the attack, Harry Wolhuter was back at work in his beloved Kruger National Park.

The Lindanda memorial is a series of stone tablets  marking the locations of the initial attack by the lions, the place where Wolhuter was seized by the first lion and, set in a concrete cairn, the skeletal remains of the actual tree he climbed to escape the second lion. Visitors stopping at the memorial site are not allowed to get out of their cars. However, I don’t think that anyone, once having read the description of the attack on the various tablets, would feel like leaving the safety of their car.

That evening, when we stopped for the night at Skukuza rest camp, I made a point of visiting the Stevenson-Hamilton Memorial Library. I wanted to show my son, Brad, the wall-mounted glass display case that contained the actual skin of the lion and the knife that Wolhuter used to save his life on that desperate night over 100 years ago.

The full story may be read in my 2009 book, “The Queen’s Cowboys”, which is available on www.amazon.com/The-Queens-Cowboys-ebook/dp/B00AXAQP92.

 

The Bombers of Ballale - Continued

I spent the first of my three nights on Ballale trying to sleep on a wooden bench in a open shed next to the airfield. Plagued by ants and mosquitos, I decided to spend the rest of the night sleeping on the boat jetty that stretched out over the reef that surrounded the island.
The next morning, enticed by the crystal clear water lapping around the jetty, I decided on a quick swim. As always, I was careful to scan the white, coral seafloor for any ominous black shapes cruising nearby before I jumped in.

I had been splashing around for a few minutes when a sudden, overwhelming desire to get out of the water sent me scrambling up onto the jetty. As I stood there naked and dripping wet, I was horrified to see a shark, of no mean proportions, swim casually by and circle the end of the jetty before disappearing over the edge of the reef. I would be a liar if I did not admit it gave me quite a scare.

During my stay on the island, I came across and photographed numerous Japanese aircraft including an Aichi ‘Val’ dive bomber, lots of ‘Betty’ bombers and a few crumpled wrecks of the famous ‘Zero’ fighter. During all this time I had the unsettling feeling that I was not alone. But despite circling the island once or twice and criss-crossing it numerous times, I did not see a single human being until my bush pilot friend arrived to pick me up.

You can imagine how I felt when, on my return to Australia, my research on Ballale revealed that, towards the end of 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy shipped over 500 Allied prisoners of war, captured mostly in the fall of Singapore, to the island to construct an airfield. The prisoners were brutally ill-treated and, after the airfield was completed, the survivors were forced out into the open to die during Allied air raids, or were eventually executed and buried on the island.
A British website operated by the Children and Families of Far Eastern Prisoners of War, www.cofepow.org.uk tells their terrible story.

The Bombers of Ballale Island

The tiny, jungle covered island of  Ballale, one of the northernmost islands in the Solomons chain, is completely uninhabited. I had been given two reasons for this; firstly, so I was told, nearby islanders believed the island to be haunted and, secondly, the island lacked a good supply of fresh water.
I had arrived on Ballale in search of the wrecks of Japanese WW 2 aircraft that I understood were to be found the jungle that covered the island. As the sound of my departing aircraft faded in the distance, I set out, with sketch map in hand, to find a Japanese bomber. The jungle, particularly along the sun-drenched edges of the rough landing field, was as dense as anything I had seen anywhere in the islands. It took me a good 15 minutes before I found what I was looking for.

Towering 15 feet off the ground, it reared up out of the green foliage like some giant prehistoric monster, its nose festooned and splotched with growths of ferns, moss and lichen. It was a Mitsubishi G4M1 'Betty' bomber, standing on its undercarriage, complete with a blazing red hinomaru or Japanese rising sun insignia clearly visible under its wing.

My book, Pacific War Ghosts, is available in paperback and on Amazon Kindle. Lavishly illustrated with over 120 photos, Pacific War Ghosts tells the story of my numerous travels to the battlefields of the South Pacific in search of war relics.

Good News for Deon Meyer's Fans!

Benny Griessel is back in a brand new thriller. And this time he, with the help of his Hawks colleagues Mbali Kaleni and Vaughn Cupido, has to take on the top police brass, Britain's MI6, South Africa's own State Security Agency - and the temptations of the bottle.

In the beautiful Franschhoek wine valley, at an exclusive guest house, three bodies are found, each with a very professional bullet through the head. A fourth guest is missing. And he just might be a very, very important man in the fight against terrorism.

South African crime writer par excellence Deon Meyer's latest book, 'Kobra' was released on November 1st - Goeie nuus vir die van ons wie Afrikaans kan lees - unfortunately English speaking readers will have to wait until July 2014 when the English version will be available

The Young Lions - My latest Novel

An African Adventure Story

“Hello Aunt Emma, I’m glad to be here too.” She was tall and beautiful, with a fine figure only barely concealed by a diaphanous nightdress and a carelessly open dressing gown. Her long dark auburn hair cascaded over her shoulders and her pale, attractive face, wide set eyes and full sensuous lips took his breath away. Robert could not help staring at her in frank amazement. He found it difficult to equate this alluring woman with the tall, awkward girl he vaguely remembered while a young boy at Fairlee Manor in Scotland.
* * *
Action, adventure and erotic entanglements loom large in young Robert Hamilton’s future as he seeks to make his fortune in the rough and tumble world of the Johannesburg goldfields in the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Robert’s business interests and adventures in the wilds of South Africa, bring him into close contact with the Boer peoples of the Transvaal Republic. As the threat of a British invasion looms large over the country, his support for the Boer cause finds him on the opposing side to his fellow uitlanders – foreigners. He is dismayed to discover that both of his brothers have enlisted in Canadian regiments to fight on the side of Britain in the Anglo-Boer War.

Robbery the Easy Way!

When I first heard of Will Ferguson's book 419, I was intrigued and looking forward to reading it. All-in-all, it didn't disappoint.

Anyone who has ever been online is sure to have received an email promising huge sums of money for helping move millions of dollars around the world - and not just from Nigeria. What is the world coming to when crooks have become so lazy that they can no longer be bothered to stick a gun in your ribs in some dark alley!

The Nigerian scams are so patently laughable that it's hard to believe anyone would fall for them. But, unfortunately, they do. As does Laura's father in the opening chapters of 419...

A highly recommended read.

Tracking a Black Rhino

While reading Deon Meyer’s excellent book ‘Trackers,’ I was reminded of my attempt, many years ago I might add, to photograph a black rhino in the wild.

While a friend and I were visiting the Ndumu game reserve in northern Zululand, we engaged the services of an elderly ranger to lead us, on foot, in search of our quarry. For close to three hours we followed what he assured us was the spoor of a black rhino. (We agreed that this was a black rhino because the bushes it had nibbled on were at waist height. The black rhino is a browser, unlike its more docile relative, the white rhino which is a grazer.) Eventually, it dawned on us that our ranger/guide, very wisely, had no intention of encountering a black rhino while unarmed and on foot!

The truth be told, he probably saved not only his life, but the lives of two inexperienced would be wildlife photographers.

The Birth of a Novel

It usually begins with a collection of notes, reflections, snippets gathered here and there and finally a few ideas committed to paper or electronic media.

Then, when one is ready to start, there are emails to check, some requiring replies, the font and spacing to be selected and, thank goodness, some facts that need to be checked first. Once all the delaying tactics have been applied and exhausted, the start is made. Half a page in, usually it starts to come together and, if you are lucky, it almost begins to write itself. Your characters, if well chosen, take over and start to direct the story.

Only now do you begin to understand why you write at all!