Four Months Besieged: The Story of Ladysmith

by Henry H. S. Pearse

The reconnaissance under General Brocklehurst, above described, brought home to the garrison of Ladysmith their utter helplessness to prevent the isolation and investment of the town. Any doubt that may have lingered among them or the civil inhabitants was dispelled by the action promptly taken by Sir George White to try and secure the safety of these latter and his sick and wounded. The circumstances are related by Mr. Pearse in a letter dated 5th November:—

Sunday, 5th November.—There can be no doubt about the first effects of shell-fire on a beleaguered town. Let men try to disguise the fact as they may, it gets on the nerves of the most courageous among us, producing a sense of helplessness in the presence of danger. Nobody likes sitting still to be battered at without power of effective reply. Still less would he be content to stand inactive by while the wounded and defenceless were being shelled. These considerations no doubt influenced Sir George White yesterday when he sent a message to General Joubert asking that non-combatants with sick and wounded might be allowed to leave Ladysmith without molestation. It must have been bitterly humiliating for a soldier in command of ten or twelve thousand British troops, who have been twice victorious in battle, to feel that one reverse had resulted in making him a suitor for so much favour at the hands of an adversary. Whether the request ought ever to have been made or not, to say nothing of whether we ought to have been in the abject position of having to make it, is a question about which most civilians are at variance with the military authorities, seeing that the answer was a foregone conclusion. Its exact purport we do not know yet, but it amounted to a flat refusal, as most of us had foreseen, and was accompanied by alternative proposals which placed Joubert in the position of a potential conqueror—dictating terms, and our acceptance of these cannot be read by the Boers in any other light than as an admission of weakness or pusillanimity. Of course we know that it means nothing of the kind, but simply that Sir George White would not expose sick and wounded, with helpless women, children, and non-combatants generally, to the possible horrors of a prolonged bombardment. So long as they remained in town he would be righting with one hand tied, because he could not in that case place batteries in certain advantageous positions without the risk of drawing fire from Boer guns on Ladysmith and its civilian inhabitants. Whether this state of things has been mended much by Sir George White's acceptance of Boer conditions and Ladysmith's practical repudiation of them may well be doubted. As the matter is generally understood, General Joubert, while declining to grant Sir George's request, consented that a neutral camp for sick, wounded, and non-combatants should be formed at Intombi Spruit, five miles out on the railway line to Colenso, and practically within the Boer lines. They were to be supplied with food, water, and all necessaries from Ladysmith by train daily, under the white flag, and to be on parole not to take any part thenceforth in this war.

As a set-off against these conditions, Joubert undertook that the camp should not be fired upon by any of his men, or its occupants molested, so long as they observed the regulations imposed upon them. And he promised further that they should all be released, but still on parole, whenever the siege of Ladysmith might be raised or the Boer forces withdrawn. He gave no pledge, however, that his batteries should not be placed in such a position that they would be screened by the hospital camp from the fire of our guns, or that when he might choose to attack, the Boer forces would not advance from a point where we could not shoot at them without danger of sending shells and bullets among our own comrades and fellow-subjects.

Ladysmith's most representative men were dead against the acceptance of conditions which seemed to them all in favour of one side. They expressed freely, and without reserve, doubts as to General Joubert's good faith, and saw in his proposals only fresh instances of Boer cunning. Their sturdy manhood rebelled against arbitrary terms dictated by an enemy whose superiority, except in mere numbers, they naturally enough declined to admit. The weaker spirits might yield, if they would, out of timid respect for "Long Tom" and other heavy artillery, the shells from which, though they have done little harm so far, have a distinctly demoralising effect when they come screeching through the air and crashing into houses day after day.

In earlier stages of the bombardment people showed little alarm after they had got over the first shock of hearing a shell burst. Children were allowed to play about the streets, and women went shopping, according to the custom of their sex all the world over. Kaffir girls stood in groups at street corners, swaying their bodies as they beat noiseless time with their bare feet to the monotonous drone of mouth-organs or Jews'-harps, which most of them carry strung about their necks, wherewith to banish dull care in the many moments of leisure snatched from toil, and beaming broad smiles on every dusky swain who passed. But the rumour got about that General Joubert had threatened to bombard the town indiscriminately if our guns fired lyddite at his batteries, and this threat had unknown terrors for the simple, who did not realise that, whether discriminately or indiscriminately, Boer shells would continue to fall in Ladysmith streets all the same.

So far as I can find out, General Joubert never sent such a foolish message, but the rumour—possibly put about by Boer agents—served its purpose by inducing a timorousness in some minds, and men who had no fear for themselves began to get very anxious about the safety of wives and children. That was the keynote of a speech made by Mr. Farquhar at the public meeting yesterday, when he, as Mayor of Ladysmith, made official announcement of General Joubert's proposals. Mr. Farquhar is a cautious Scotsman, whose sense of responsibility in such a crisis would compel him to put the gravest phase of the case first. The Boer conditions, however, met with nothing but indignant protests, nobody venturing to raise his voice in favour of them except by way of comment on the utterances of some fiery orator, who was for asking the General to send back threats of dire punishment on every Boer if a shot should be fired into the town. Mr. Charles Jones, who was a transport rider in the Boer war of 1881, and carried Sir Evelyn Wood's despatches through the enemy's lines to a beleaguered garrison, was first to express in calm, manly words what was afterwards found to be the general feeling of the townsmen present at that meeting. Mr. Jones has won the respect of every Englishman who knows him by the steadfastness with which he stuck to his post when others were seeking safety in migration to Maritzburg or Durban. With firm faith in the leader under whom, as a volunteer, he saw active service, Mr. Jones believes that we should see our difficulties through, without asking or accepting doubtful favours from a foe. Somebody in the crowd ventured to say, "But your wife and children are not here now." "No," was the answer; "and I have no wish nor right to speak for fathers and husbands, who are at liberty to do as they please. But I can still say that if my wife and children were here, I would rather they should trust to protection under the Union Jack with British soldiers than under the white flag at Joubert's mercy."

There were men in that crowd who had to speak for those near and dear to them. Anxious-eyed and pale, with muscles knit into hard lines on their faces, one after another declared in voices that may have faltered, but still rang true as steel, that they and theirs would face their fate under the Union Jack. Archdeacon Barker, who has been ceaseless in his ministrations among the afflicted since fighting began, gave eloquent expression to the prevalent sentiment, as one who had kith and kin about him, and finished by saying that he would neither go to the camp selected by General Joubert, nor allow his wife and family to go. To this conclusion the meeting also came by general agreement, the dissentient minority being still free to do as they wished, except that no man who had taken up arms in defence of Ladysmith could accept the terms offered by General Joubert. Then the people gave three lusty cheers, and ended by singing "God Save the Queen," with an effect, the impressiveness of which was deepened by the thought that within a few hours Ladysmith would be under bombardment from all the thundering artillery our enemy could muster. But the resolution of this public meeting made no difference to Sir George White's decision, which was a practical acceptance of the terms formulated.

To-day has passed in peace, but marked by a very natural depression as we have seen train after train laden with sick, wounded, and non-combatants, go out to the neutral camp at Intombi Spruit, where these people will have to remain under a white flag so long as this humiliating investment of Ladysmith may last. To make the matter worse they were sent out at first with insufficient supplies for urgent needs, and with so few attendants that tents for all could not be pitched the same night. Even now many non-combatants have to lie in small patrol tents of thin canvas with a double slope, under the ridge of which there is barely room for a child to stand upright, and the camp is placed on ground so flat, near the river bank, that heavy rains might convert it into a mere swamp. There, however, General Joubert decided that the neutral camp must be pitched, and those who were too weak or spiritless to help themselves, must needs be thankful for such gracious concessions. Some, not quite satisfied with the protection this affords, are digging burrows deep into clay banks by the river side, where they will be even more liable to be flooded out. In strict justice it must be said that many sick and wounded went out, not of their own free will, but because, being under medical care, they had no option. The result of this is that men suffering from slight ailments, or whose wounds would not incapacitate them from duty longer than a week or so, are virtually prisoners of war, only to be released at the pleasure of the Boers, or until we reclaim them by force of arms. These are unpleasant things to write, but they are true none the less.

The Boer guns have preserved all along an absolute silence, which was not broken on our side until ten at night, when a sentry set off his rifle. This roused the whole camp, and soldiers everywhere stood to their arms until the cause of this false alarm was discovered.

November 6.—At daybreak this morning, Second Lieutenant Hopper, 5th Lancers, came into camp, having got through the Boer lines by a ruse as clever as it was sportsmanlike. He brought despatches from the General commanding at Estcourt. His difficulties show that though a soldier may get through the Boer lines, they are now tightening round us, and unless a British force strong enough to break through can be assembled quickly, we are in for a long siege here. Nobody gave the Boers credit for so much enterprise, and if Sir George White made a mistake, as I think he did, in not sending all the women and children away from Ladysmith when Dundee was abandoned, this error probably arose from faulty information, for which those who thought they knew the Boers and their resources were in the first instance responsible.