Episode 2 of 3
Secret Recruitment
- When
- August 1899
- Where
- Mafeking
Baden-Powell began recruiting volunteers in secret in August 1899 to avoid negative political effects.
Many of his recruits were untrained and had never ridden before, making them unsuited for a mobile column. He had been tasked with raising two regiments of mounted rifles from Rhodesia, and the recruits' inexperience complicated that undertaking.
Sources
- Siege of Mafeking Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-22
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.