Christiaan Rudolf de Wet first saw the light of day on 7 October 1854 in a rude Hartebeest house, the walls of poles and reeds plastered with mud and the roof of thatch, then occupied by his trekboer in the untamed wilderness between the Vaal and the Orange Rivers that the Voortrekkers had called the Orange Free State. There was a wild freedom for the Calvinistic Boer migrants in those days. Land in central southern Africa was there for the taking, as much as a man wanted; and there was seemingly limitless game to shoot. A man could live with a hand on the Bible and the other on his gun while he raised sheep and cattle in a manner reminiscent of man’s roots. It was in this lifestyle that the man who would one day command all Boer forces in the Orange Free State grew up.