Subject: [Mil. History] Guerrilla Tactics


Article:


The non-pacified Maroons such as the Bonis, Brooskampers etc conducted a classic guerrilla warfare against the colonial master. They used force of arms, raids on plantations, stealing slaves, killing supervisors and plantation owners.
The non-pacified Maroons followed a pattern and thus the colonial military could more or less predict the employed tactics of the Maroons.

Examples: Every village had somewhere a kibrikondre (a safe haven) where they would hide food, women, children and they had there also provision grounds. (kostgrondjes or kitchen gardens). When the military had discovered a village there were always diversionary attacks to draw the soldiers away from their kibrikondre.

As they did not have the right amount of weapons and ammunition they would wait with an attack until the opponents were wading through a swamp or crossed a creek while they had to hold their weapons high and dry. The Maroons used booby traps like a kind of 'punji' stakes so that any soldier who would step on them could receive serious injury.

Maroon villages were mostly built on islands in the middle of a swamp.Or they lived on hills. They would avoid clearing the area around their villages. Some villages were reinforced with a stockade fence. They would avoid face to face battle and would attack only as it was to their advantage. They received intelligence of planned patrols from informers living on the plantation with whom they traded secretly.

Some odd tactics:

They would use 3 wariors one to fire the rifle, one in reserve without a rifle and the third to drag the wounded or dead to their hiding place.
They would make a terrible noise when attacked to create a shock action among the colonial soldiers. This would cause the soldiers to run away.
They were suspicious of Creoles slaves (slaves born in Suriname). They would execute anyone (male or female) who would run away or leave the village without permission.
They would have in tall trees observation/look-out posts.
On their return from a raid they would zig-zag and make numerous detours to make sure the newly captured slaves can not find their way back to the plantation.
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Met dank aan Albert Buys