Millar the Fighter
There were sound reasons why Billy Millar should not have achieved any of his great achievements, right from his childhood.
William Alexander Millar was born in Bedford, a sheepfarming area of the Eastern Cape, on 6 November 1883 and had his first brush with death soon afterwards for he contracted typhoid fever, a common cause of death in those days when sanitation was less sophisticated.
Theo Samuels was the first South African to score a Test try and the first to die - of typhoid in Johannesburg in 1896. Alf Richards, who captained South Africa at rugby and cricket, was 37 when he died of typhoid in Harare in 1904. Gideon Roos, Paul's brother, caught Typhoid in the Eastern Cape and died of it in 1930 when he was 30. But little Billy Millar survived.
He was just on 18 when he ran away from SACS to join the British forces in the South African War. He was in the Cape Colony Cycle Corps which often used railway lines for getting about on what was called the 'war cycle', an Australian invention. They would cycle two abreast in groups of up to eight with rods across and back making the cycling group a tight unit. They were capable of speeds nearly 50 km an hour and were used to carry dispatches, assist in caring for the wounded and transporting stores. It could even be fitted with a Maxim gun. In the Cape the cyclists also protected the railway lines in North West Cape.
Of course, the Boers did not like these spies. Millar joined in 1901. His war was ended in 1901 when he took a bullet in his left shoulder. He was sent back to 1 Military Hospital in Wynberg where he was treated for the serious wound. He was told that he would be an invalid for the rest of his life. He could forget about playing sport. In fact on his discharge he was not strong enough to hold down a clerical job on the railway. But a doctor and a nurse were remarkably kind and encouraging. The doctor recommended walking, and Billy Millar became the Western Province walking champion for distances up to 50 miles. Boxing was recommended and Billy Millar became the Cape Colony amateur heavyweight champion. He was a determined man, working as a labourer for strength, and in 1893 he joined the Gardens Rugby Club, playing in their third team, which was their lowest team By rights he should not have been playing rugby.
In 1906 Millar was chosen for Western Province in the Currie Cup tournament in Johannesburg. The tournament doubled as trials for the team to be chosen for the tour to the UK, Ireland and France later in 1906. Loose forward Millar was a surprise omission, but then Bertie Mosenthal of Transvaal withdrew 'for business reasons' and Millar took his place, playing in 16 of the 19 matches, including the Test against England in which he scored the Springbok try in the 3-all match. When he went to the 1908 Currie Cup tournament he was the Western Province captain.
In 1910 the Four Home Unions toured again, this time a team representative all four countries. Millar captained Cape Town Clubs against them and then played for the Cape Colony who beat them 19-0, a huge score at the time, but he did not play in the first Test in Johannesburg because he could not get leave. But he captained the Springboks in the other two Tests, lost 8-3 in Port Elizabeth and won 21-5 at Newlands.
Then in 1912, when nobody could have imagined the horrific war to come, the Springboks went to the UK, Ireland and France. To the selectors Millar had no right to be the captain on that tour, if on the tour at all. In the Currie Cup tournament at Newlands in 1911, Jimmy Leck, the Griqua coach who was also the referee for the final between his side and Western Province, sent off the Province captain Millar for punching. In 1912 he was sent from the field in a club match. Even though azn after match tête-a-tête with the referee persuaded him not to report the matter, the selectors did not want Millar because he was too quick to anger. But they chose him in the team as the last player on their list. The selectors were George Stack (convener), Long George Devenish, Bill Schreiner, who remained a selector till 1953, Alf Lawton and Harold Bennett. They submitted their team to the Board. The Board, whose president at the time was Billy Simkins, overthrew the selectors' decision and made Millar the captain.
The Springbok tour was successful. They played 27 matches, winning 24, including the five Tests. Their 38-0 victory over Ireland was a rugby record. Millar missed the Tests against Scotland and England because of injury. At the end of the tour the great Sir Rowland Hill, who served on the RFU's executive for 49 years and was elected president three times and who had done so much for tours to and from South Africa, spoke at Millar's team on Board the Armadale Castle in Southampton in a farewell luncheon. In tears he ended his speech, saying: "It is, I think' the highest compliment I can pay these South Africans to say of them that on and off the field they have acquitted themselves as true sportsmen and, what is of greater importance, one observes in them an atmosphere suggestive of that old world chivalry which unfortunately seems to be disappearing in these days."
On the 1906 tour, Millar wrote to his fiancée, Melina Kate Johns, who was called May. On the 1912-13 tour Millar wrote to his fiancée, May Johns. Her father would not let her marry Millar because he had such a meagre job, working for Customs & Excise. His later life made a mockery of this.
In 1914 World War I broke out and Millar was about to join up. This time May's father gave permission and they married in Stellenbosch before he went to another war.
At the outbreak of the war Millar joined the Cape Town regiment the Duke of Edinburgh's Own Rifles, known as the Dukes, and off he went to German South West Africa under General Louis Botha, the Anglo-Boer War general who became the first South African prime minister in 1910.
In 1913 William Schreiner, who had been the prime minister of the Cape Colony from 1898 to 1900, was elected president of the South African Rugby Board in succession to Simkins, but Schreiner did not last long as he was appointed South Africa's high commissioner in London.
When Millar came back from South West late in 1915 he contacted Schreiner who opened the way for Millar to join the Coldstream Guards with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. The Guards had suffered heavy losses early in the war. He did not seem a welcome in the officers' mess as they rather resented the arrival of a colonial but then he captained the Public Schools Services team and his popularity was assured. Then his record in the war is astonishing
That was a brutal war, made more brutal by the incompetence of commanding officers who thought nothing of sending young men over the top to advance on the enemy. On the first morning of the Battle of the Somme over 20 000 British troops were killed. Altogether some 65 million men fought in the war, more than 9 million of whom died, an average of 6 000 a day. The battle deaths are apart from combat problems - the horrors of the trenches, the diseases, over 300 British troops shot for not wanting to advance against the Germans, depression and shell shock.
Millar was never shy and was shot seven times in World War I, most seriously the last time during the German Spring Offensive March 2018, just eight months before the war ended. In that offensive 75 000 British troops were taken captive, Millar one of them. His right elbow was shattered in a near fatal shooting. He was first missing but then turned up in a prisoner-of-war camp in Stendal in Prussian Saxony.
He speaks - lightly, as he always would - of his experiences in the camp right at the end of his autobiographical My Recollections and Reminiscences: "When I was lying, badly wounded, in a pestilential prisoners' camp in the German lines amongst a crowd allied soldiers, a French private, severely wounded in the arm, recognised me. He spoke English perfectly and reminded me of the game against France in 1912. A corporal of the Bedfords was also standing near by, also rather nastily wounded in the arm. He listened interestedly to our conversation of those cleaner, happier days and then addressed me: 'Excuse me, sir, but I often saw your team play in the old days, and I remember your match against England very clearly.'"
Millar went on to say: "Eagerly a French poilu, an English corporal and myself helped to while away the ghastly hours, while we waited for attendance, by long, interesting chat on Rugby." [Poilu is French slang for an infantryman.
Holland was a neutral country, and ambassador from Holland visited Stendal. As he walked through the ward, Millar addressed him in 'High Dutch', the language taught in South African schools before Afrikaans became an official language in the 1930s. The ambassador and the wounded guardsman talked and the ambassador recommended that Millar be repatriated. It was obvious that his fighting days were over and the Germans put Millar on a train down to the coast and headed for England - and hospital. He came back to the Cape in 1919 before returning to England to be demobbed and for further treatment to his arm.
His daughter Mary, who was born in 1927, remembers her mother dressing his wound which remained a problem, and Millar's refused to have it amputated. The wound certainly lingered.
Millar's father-in-law had regarded his job at customs and excise in adequate for marriage but his experience there landed him a big job in 1923 when he became the first general manager of KWV (Ko-operatieve Wijnbouwers Vereniging), then in dire straights but later a giant with its headquarters in Paarl, where the Millars came to live in 1924.
In 1924 the B&I Lions toured South Africa and the man with the gammy arm refereed the last two Tests of the series - a 3-all draw in Port Elizabeth and a 16-9 victory for the Springboks at Newlands.
In December 1942, Millar retired from KWV but lived on in Paarl. In September 1948 May Millar died of a coronary and Billy Millar died six months later after a stroke at home in Paarl.
He was 65 when he died, a man of astonishing achievements, none of which he had any right to achieve.