In answer to your questions regarding the British prisoners now in your hands, the persons named are enlisted soldiers in His Majesty's Army, and have been acting under my orders. They should be treated as prisoners-of-war.—Ends.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
A. CURRAN,
Lieutenant-Colonel
Commanding Lydenburg.
To His Excellency Lord Kitchener,
Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's Troops in South Africa, Pretoria.
Your Excellency,
I am compelled to emphatically protest against the methods of your officers. Last April your Excellency's brother, General W. Kitchener, took our ambulance veldt-hospital, near Roos Senekal, and only after much trouble were a number of the vehicles restored to us. On that occasion, General W. Kitchener refused to return to me the slaughter oxen belonging to the field-hospital, saying that we could steal such oxen from the kaffirs. In consequence of those acts, my wounded were rendered without food, and robbed of means of transportation.
Now, again, a column of your troops, which was proceeding on the 9th or 10th inst. from Machadodorp across Witpoort, attacked a Red Cross hospital occupied by sick women and children, notwithstanding the patients were in charge of a certificated nurse, named Mrs. W. Botha. One of your officers, misled by a former burgher, who is now treacherously fighting against his own people, declared that the Red Cross was not genuine, and burned all the buildings and food found therein, placed the patients on open trucks, and removed them.
The first night of their deportation the sick patients and nurses slept in a camp at Steelpoortdrift, under the trolley waggons and in the bitter cold, and although the women and children were lamenting and weeping the entire night, their complaints were not listened to. I have declarations testifying to the most inhuman, heartless, and cruel maltreatment committed towards helpless women and children on this occasion.
Probably, your Excellency knows nothing about these incidents, and as regards the bona-fides of our ambulances, I wish to point out to you that British officers depend largely on the assertions of kaffirs, and especially on the allegations of traitors, and on the slightest provocation ignore the rights of the Red Cross.
The column referred to also burned, and plundered and destroyed many houses at Steenkampsberg, Witpoort and many other places, without there being one single shot fired in the neighbourhood by our burghers. And all this was allowed to occur in spite of your Excellency's promises at the meeting of the Commandant-General Botha at Middelburg.