A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

There is a big steam hooter at De Beers Mine, and, during the siege, whenever the lookout men saw the Boers preparing to shell the town, the hooter was sounded, and every one scuttled into shelter; and even now, whenever the hooter sounds, people start up and look inclined to run.

The civilians here cannot say enough for the way Mr. Cecil Rhodes worked during the siege; and his thoughtfulness and consideration for the women and children were beyond all praise. At one time he had many hundreds of them in safety down one of the mines, 1000 feet below the surface, and he took infinite pains to send them down suitable supplies; they were in fairly airy chambers, and had a good supply of electric light, &c. Of course the military people are not so enthusiastic about his assistance, but, naturally, they would not appreciate a man who always liked to have his own way, and do what he thought best—and who did it too!

The first thing the Boers did was to seize the waterworks, some miles from the town, and cut off the water supply; but the mine-owners came to the rescue by pumping water from a good spring in one of their mines that had caused them years of annoyance by rising and making the working of that mine a great difficulty; so the water question never caused them much trouble, though the Boers were constantly trying to damage the pumping machinery.

Though the water supply was fair the food supplies were very low; and a rich family, whom I know, told me they were intensely grateful to a neighbour who sent them a quarter of a bottle of port wine and half a packet of cornflour as a Christmas present. They were at that time drawing half their ration of meat in horseflesh, and, though some people say they could never touch it, I believe it was not at all bad, and one girl told me that a little donkey was "quite nice."

A good story is told of a colonel who was then up here. One night at mess he said, "Gentlemen, I am sorry to say we were only able to draw half our ration in beef to-day; this joint I am carving is beef, at the other end of the table the joint is horse: if any one would prefer to try it, perhaps he will carve for himself." No one got up, so the Colonel had to carve (small helpings) for all the mess. After they had finished an orderly came and whispered to him, and he said, "Oh, gentlemen, I am sorry to find I have made a mistake; I find this was the horse, and the cow is still at the other end of the table!"

There was so much sickness in the town that the doctors had a terrible time. In most cases it was suitable food rather than medicine that was needed, especially amongst the little children; and, besides the sickness, there were a great many wounded constantly being brought in from the trenches, or from skirmishes, and every available building was turned into a hospital.

I have just been reading Dr. Ashe's book, Besieged by the Boers, and it gives a good idea of the daily life up here, showing how men tried to go on and do their daily round of work in spite of the shells that were falling and killing not only men but women and children around them.

The thing that Kimberley people are most proud of is the big gun "Long Cecil," which was most cleverly designed and made in the De Beers workshops during the siege, the shells for it also being cast there; until that was built they had no guns of sufficient size to reply to the 100-pounder that the Boers were using with so much effect upon the town. It must have been a huge surprise to them when Long Cecil began to scatter shells amongst them, each one inscribed, "With C. J. R.'s compliments!"

The cemetery is sadly full of "siege" graves, and so many little children's graves amongst them. Strangely enough one of the De Beers engineers (an American) who was chiefly responsible for the building of "Long Cecil," was killed by a Boer shell only a few days after the gun was completed; and, just as an example of how we were surrounded by enemies even inside the town, I will tell you about his funeral.

In such a hot climate as South Africa it is always necessary that the funeral should take place within about twenty-four hours of the death; so that it is quite possible to be talking to a man in his shop or at his business in the morning, for him to be taken suddenly ill and die that evening, and the next day, before you have heard of his illness, for you to meet his coffin on the way to the cemetery.