Today I won’t only do a six word story – but I’ll throw in a bit of history and a few interesting facts about a hill just north of the town in Ireland where we live.
Spion Kop immortalised – history doesn’t lie…
I’ll include the link to the Wiki-P page here… only because it lists places where the battle and the place name was used in some form or other – to commemorate the battle and the people who fought. I must add – take anything from Wiki-P with a half bag of salt – and also, the South African spelling is Spioenkop… Afrikaans vernacular.
I will also note – the Boers gave the Brits a proper seeing to… and rightly so… how dare some foreign queen send troops to a remote outback and think her forces were going to win, just because they were her forces! OK so… now, each and every day I walk anywhere near the hill named Spion Kop here on the south east coast of Ireland – I will again reflect – with pride, on what my ancestors achieved back then!
But… I will note… we as a tribe, dealt with the eventual ramifications of an overwhelming force – we got over the bitterness and moved on. Yes, the very same nation who were eventually left at the mercy of the queen’s armies, soon joined the fight for freedom in the First World War – alongside erstwhile victors. There’s a lesson in there somewhere… maybe that we should learn from history and not try and change it to fit a narrative…
Probably the Irish’s struggle against the same monarchy that led to them naming the hill such?
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