Petticoat Commando

In 1900, Pretoria falls to British forces, and a city's women find themselves behind enemy lines. Johanna Brandt chronicled her experience as a Boer civilian during the Second Anglo-Boer War, documenting the Siege of Pretoria, the bitter occupation, and the network of resistance that emerged among women who refused to surrender. Her account details the terrifying reality of British concentration camps, where Boer women and children died in staggering numbers, and the underground work of espionage and sabotage that women conducted from within their own homes. Brandt writes not as a distant observer but as a participant, weaving practical details of hidden messages and concealed weapons with the psychological toll of living under occupation. The result is an unapologetically partisan document from someone who believed her people were fighting for their very existence. It remains essential reading not for its political conclusions but for what it reveals: how ordinary women transformed their households into theaters of war when their nations marched off to battle.