At the time of my sojourn all the works were closed. In the town, as every hospital and ambulance was full to overflowing, the hotels were requisitioned for the sick. In front of the Victoria Hotel there were often strings of ten and twelve waggons bringing in the wounded.
Often at dusk a dray would pass, into which long, heavy cases of deal were furtively slipped.... The avowed losses were terrible enough. What were they in reality?
About the middle of December the War Office confessed to 7,350 men. At the beginning of February this number was doubled, and Buller's three attempts on the Tugela cost 1,046 killed, 3,785 wounded, and over 1,500 missing.
In March the numbers had swelled to 14,000. It was the unhealthy season, and sickness--enteric fever especially--made wider gaps in the English ranks than bullets. On May 10 over 18,000 men were missing, 5,000 of whom were dead.
On the Boer side the statistics are much more difficult to check, especially when one is confronted with such discrepancies as these: Rumours and reports stated the Boer losses at the Battle of Colenso, on December 15, to have been 8 killed and 14 wounded. But I find a report drawn up by the Red Cross Society in which the numbers are given as 77 killed and 210 wounded.
What is one to believe? In all ages belligerents have tried to conceal their losses, and this kind of juggling is, of course, much easier among incoherent groups like the commandos than in regular battalions.
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One day--it was June 10, I think--all the police of the mines were requisitioned to transport the wounded from the station to the hospitals. There were a great many, and they had been forbidden to say whence they came; the police were also forbidden to speak to them on any pretext whatever. Had something very serious happened? We never knew exactly what it was.
Pretoria had been occupied on June 5. The news that reached us came at long intervals, after manipulation by the censor, and was often of the most fantastic order.
The police regulations were most stringent. Everyone was ordered to be indoors, at first by seven o'clock, later by 8.30. The streets and squares were guarded by troops. Jewellers' and wine-merchants' shops and bars were closed by order. No one was allowed to draw money without a permit from the military authorities, and a limit--of £20 a week, I think--was enforced as to the amount, unless a special permission had been granted.