‘Sherlock Homes’ visits Blockhouse
Although he hails from Britain, Simon Green is called the Sherlock Holmes of British Blockhouses in South Africa. In historian circles, he is known for his tenacity like the other great detective who is a fictional character of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
On Wednesday, 19 June, Green met up with stakeholders from Bela-Bela Heritage Foundation and Brandyne Arendse, a tour guide from KwaZulu-Natal, for a visit to the British Blockhouse situated in Paul Sauer Road, in Bela-Bela.
This structure known as the Warmbaths Blockhouse, was built in 1901 and formed part of the Naauwpoort – Pietersburg Blockhouse Line. The main objective of the Blockhouses was to protect the railway lines, bridges, and stations from attack by Boer guerilla forces. This particular Blockhouse is still one of the best-preserved Blockhouses in the country.
Green was born on the island of Jersey, in the United Kingdom, but his parents moved to England, and he grew up in Leads, and Yorkshire. At the age of 18 he joined the British Army and in 2002 made his first trip to South Africa as part of a British military program to provide training to the SANDF.
He went back to the UK after a period in South Africa, but alas it was too late, the love for South Africa was already rooted.
In 2006 he married a South African and moved here in 2007. He spent six years working for the arms manufacturer Denel, and later went into the private sector and worked for the G4S Security Group.
Green read an article in Getaway magazine about General Smuts and his Boer commando who invaded the Cape Colony during the Anglo-Boer War. In this article, he saw a picture of a British Blockhouse.
He was intrigued and his military engineering background drove him on a quest to find out everything he could about British Blockhouses in South Africa. He realized that information was scant, and it warranted a special study. He started his research, and according to him, the only good thing that came out of the Covid-19 pandemic was the time it granted him to finish his first book on the subject of Blockhouses.
In 2020 he published his book Anglo-Boer War Blockhouses – A Military Engineer’s Perspective. The book was an immediate success with historians, and Anglo-Boer War enthusiasts, and Green managed to shed a whole new light on the subject with information never before published on construction methods, and planning.
He immediately got to work on his second book, in which he endeavored to identify every Blockhouse that was built in South Africa, and of which any traces remain. In 2022 he published Anglo-Boer War Blockhouses – A Field Guide, and the book was immediately seen as an essential tool for any historian, and enthusiast.
Green is currently working on three new projects, Battlefields of the Frontier Wars, Frontier Forts of the Eastern Cape, and he also hopes to compile a Field Guide to Victoria Crosses that were won in South Africa.
Green also practices body stress release techniques, and he has helped numerous sufferers, especially of PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder).
