"The wagon that won the Boer War"

Enlarged from an official trial report of the war years · Tested against the report itself

The claim. In its enlarged form, the story says Studebaker wagons helped win the Boer War for Britain — Farm Collector's 2002 telling has the wagons among the things that "helped the British defeat the Boers in South Africa," and the same magazine records that "the British Army also ordered large numbers of Studebakers for use in the Boer War." The enlargement has a document underneath it, and the document is smaller than the story.

The record. The document is Lord Roberts's official report of the wagon trials, quoted verbatim in Timothy Howard's 1907 county history and set out in full in the Exports file: the Studebaker trial wagons proved "superior to any other make, either of Cape or English manufacture." That is the whole of the official finding — a comparative trial verdict on wagons, rendered by the British commander-in-chief's report. British orders followed, at the size the Exports file documents. No official report, British or American, and no period account reached, converts the trial verdict into a cause of the war's outcome; wars are not decided in wagon trials, and the record does not pretend otherwise.

What the record leaves. The trial verdict is supported, word for word, in the official report as quoted by the county history. The victory claim is not supported: it is an enthusiast enlargement, traceable in print to the collectors' literature of the present century, of a document that says something true and smaller. The Exports file carries the wagon's war at its documented size; this entry carries the claim at its.

Sources

1. Lord Roberts's official report of the wagon trials, quoted verbatim in Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County (1907) — trial wagons "superior to any other make, either of Cape or English manufacture"; set out in full in the Exports file of this record.
2. Farm Collector (Ogden Publications, 2002), "Let's Talk Rusty Iron" — the enlarged telling: wagons that "helped the British defeat the Boers"; "the British Army also ordered large numbers of Studebakers."
3. The Exports file in this record — the Boer War shipments at documented size.