Kitchener, who had been promoted to the substantive rank of general on 1 June 1902,[REF] was hosted to a farewell reception at Cape Town on 23 June, and left for the United Kingdom in the SS Orotava on the same day [REF].
In the Breaker Morant case five Australian officers and one English officer of an irregular unit, The Bush Veld Carabiniers, were court-martialled for summarily executing twelve Boer prisoners,[REF] and also for the murder of a German missionary believed to be a Boer sympathiser, all under unwritten orders approved by Kitchener.