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More Fake History About the Canadians on the Hill
Lots of fake battle pictures (all the ones here) were posed by photographers manning big cameras, and troops willing to pretend they were charging Boers on a hill.
Fake photos are usually easy to pick out because the pictures are very sharp, well composed, the men photogenically distributed across the frame, all eagerly fighting the enemy in their part of the photograph, and the corpses are well displayed up front.
Is the picture above often called "The Charge of the Canadians at Sunnyside" in this same category of fake attacks? The picture seems to share a lot with the other images here, all produced by commercial photographers making stereoscope photos for sale.
Below is a direct quote about the "Sunnyside" picture on a British web site dedicated to the history of war photography.
"Toronto Company's Baptism of Fire
- Second Boer War - Captain Holson, 1900
This is a picture of the Royal Canadian Regiment in action on Gun Hill on 18 February 1900 and according to an album owned by the Army Museum (United Kingdom) it was taken by a Captain Holson.
It shows the troops advancing uphill with fixed bayonets, taking advantage of what little cover is available as they move forward. It makes us think of what it might be like to go into action in these circumstances and wonder what awaits these men as they move on up the hill."
What haven't people claimed about this picture? The author of this is so wrong on key points, that right out the gate one wonders, are the Army Museum's records, with regard to the provenance on this photo, so poor that people are fudging information all over the place about it? How else could someone, who quotes Museum information, be so wrong?
He has the location different from every other writer we've seen, most of whom claim it is Sunnyside, where there is no Gun Hill...
The closest Gun Hill to Sunnyside, is Belmont, where the regiment was actually quartered and came from, to go to Sunnyside. But the Belmont Gun Hill is not steep like the one in the picture, the Canadians never fought at Belmont, and never anywhere in the vicinity, and certainly not on Feb. 18.
Again at variance with every other authority is that the Canadian infantry, as depicted in the photo, fought an action charging up Gun Hill on 18 February. It did not.
On Feb. 18, they fought at Paardeberg, not Sunnyside, and they didn't climb the Gun Hill that is there. Paardeberg's Gun Hill is not steep like the one shown in the picture. The low profile Gun Hill at Paardeberg was occupied by a Canadian gun team only. The infantry was fighting across the flat plain below.
Will anyone ever know where and when that photo was taken and of whom?
Why don't we just have done with it and dismiss it as another of the many Boer War faked "troops advancing" photos.
The quality of the photo is such that it was taken with a big plate camera - probably Thiele's unwieldy 10" x 12". So someone had time to set it up, probably on a tripod, arrange the men across the hill and tell them to pretend they were stalking the Boers up top.
Everyone is ducking, to keep from getting shot, except the photographer and his big camera... Shouldn't that be a give away?
It's all so highly suspicious, critical people will dismiss this as any kind of men in action other than play acting for a directing photographer.
Note in the stereoscope photo below how the Boers were careful to shoot all the downed soldiers close to the front of the camera, and nicely distributed across the frame...
Now are the "Canadians" charging real Boers, or auditioning for a job in Hollywood when they get back home...?
These are all a testament to how impossible it was to take photos of real men in combat on the front lines.
It makes the photographic achievement of Lt. James Cooper Mason all the more remarkable...
Those Faking Canadians...
Tradition holds that those are Canadians climbing the rocks at Sunnyside in January, 1900. Professor Carman Miller put them on the cover of Canada's definitive book on the Boer War, precisely because the Canadian Maple Leaf badge shows so clearly.
But it's a fake...
Note how the near helmet on the LIFE archival photo right, which is totally identical with the one on the Miller cover, has a completely different badge.
Carman left, has used a suitably patriotic Canadian maple leaf badge, of the kind the Canadians wore at the time. Well, sort of...
It's clear there is no reason for LIFE to have doctored its photo. But there are plenty of reasons why someone would put a Canadian badge over top of the other.
Who did this, and when, no one can say. Except that faking was done. And done by Canadians... And badly... Perhaps Carman had the wife do it at home, to save money. Authors in Canada are not well paid... The publishers keep most of the government grant money for themselves.
So a faked war photo adorns the cover of Canada's most important Boer War book.
We have not been able to trace the age of the LIFE photo, which comes from a much better master - and so closer to the camera original - than the one used on the book cover, or what badge it shows. To what unit does this soldier belong?
Once faking is detected in a picture, it undermines the credibility of the entire photo.
Now, look again!
The original helmet has a pronounced brim, like several others in the big picture. But in the book cover photo the area over the brim has been filled in with helmet white to get rid of the brim. It's a sloppy raggedy job, with noticeably fuzzy edges.
Canadian helmets had no brim. Fake badge, fake helmet... Will the fakery on this (supposed) Canadian war photo never end?
The first time we've seen this picture used - and so, hopefully, before subsequent faking was done with the camera negative - was in TG Marquis' Canada's Sons on Kopje and Veldt published in 1900 right.
Like Rosie diManno, who fancies herself a war correspondent - read propagandist - at the Toronto Star, and who would follow in his wake when penning on Afghanistan, he could hardly hold back the gush in boostering anything about Canadians who like to make war. And is just as accurate.
Contrary to his patriotic hype, the Canadians were only a part of Col. Pilcher's infantry, which also included other British units.
And Marquis doesn't know his cap badges either. That is, by no stretch, an RCR Canada maple leaf on those helmets. He probably took the advice of the Canadian War Museum.
But it now appears that the LIFE archival has been doctored as well. It looks like someone did careless Photoshop clone stamping on the back of the helmet - where the seam has jumped - and did not fix it. He was probably flying in part of another helmet. Other helmets show more brim fakery.
Above the array of faked helmets: the first 1 from Marquis 1900, very much the predecessor of the LIFE photo 2, though the latter shows fakery in the brim, the badge, and the jumping seam. Still an obvious match to the Marquis original.
The one used on Miller's book 3 is a really horrid fake and has no resemblance to the Marquis original anymore since it's been so badly doctored by a copyist, even though that was the obvious inspiration for putting this as the cover image of Canada's premier Boer War book.
These badges are all fakes when you compare them with the genuine James McKerihen badge right that he wore in South Africa as a member of the RCRs. Professor Marquis! How could you abandon your reasoning faculties so? You remind us so much of Rosie... What a pair of uncritical patriots...
Carman should have ignored the advice from the Canadian War Museum too. Clearly the experts there provided him with a God awfully doctored archival copy that makes it appear a Canadian Black man wore that fake smudge pretending to be an RCR cap badge. It's supposed to be black, not white....
The LIFE badge shows only the top part of the whole seen in the original.
We still have not found anyone who knows what this badge is...
This earliest badge looks more like the Russian imperial eagle, than a Canadian maple leaf. Could this actually be a previously unknown image of the Russians on the heights of Alma? Or the Israelites on the Mountain?
Why are these PHOTOGRAPHS - so it's not an artist's mistake - NOT showing the only helmet badge that C Company of the Royal Canadian Regiment was wearing on its helmets at Sunnyside, on Jan. 1, 1900?
Who's doing all the fakery and why?
Just like all of Rosie diManno's articles on Afghanistan, this picture has lost just about any credibility it ever had...
So now, are those really Canadians at Sunnyside, or Americans storming San Juan Hill, or circus actors in a Buffalo Bill reenactment, that are on the cover of Canada's most famous Boer War book??? Just ask Rosie; she'll tell you flat out...
And the Canadian War Museum underwrote this book and its experts vetted it!!!
Carman, who's a fine historian, is ill served by publishers who don't give a hoot about quality production in pictorials to illustrate the great information that he provides.
Will those faking Canadians never stop?
Here are three long pages of 43 - count 'em - Great Canadian Heritage Howlers from another Boer War book, produced by James Lorimer and the experts at the Canadian War Museum...
Great Canadian Heritage Treasure
What a fabulous discovery is a one of a kind Great Canadian Treasure from the Boer War - the personal helmet of Pvt. James McKerihen, C Co. Royal Canadian Regiment.