With the Boer Forces

by Howard Clemens Hillegas

During the war there were many instances to prove that the Boer women of the end of the century inherited the bravery and heroic fortitude of their ancestors who fell victims to the Zulu assegais in the Natal valley, in 1838. The Boer women were as anxious to take an active part in the campaign as their grandmothers were at Weenen, and it was only in obedience to the rules formulated by the officers that Amazon corps were absent from the commandos. Instances were not rare of women trespassing these regulations, and scores of Boer women can claim the distinction of having taken part in many bloody battles. Not a few yielded up their life’s blood on the altar of liberty, and many will carry the scars of bullet-wounds to the grave.

In the early part of the campaign there was no military rule which forbade women journeying to the front, and in consequence the laagers enjoyed the presence of many of the wives and daughters of the burghers. Commandant-General Joubert set an example to his men by having Mrs. Joubert continually with him on his campaigning trips, and the burghers were not slow in patterning after him. While the greater part of the army lay around besieged Ladysmith large numbers of women were in the laagers, and they were continually busying themselves with the preparation of food for their relatives and with the care of the sick and wounded. Not infrequently did the women accompany their husbands to the trenches along the Tugela front, and it was asserted, with every evidence of veracity, that many of them used the rifles against the enemy with even more ardour and precision than the men. On February 28th, while the fighting around Pieter’s Hills was at its height, the British forces captured a Boer woman of nineteen years who had been fatally wounded. Before she died she stated that she had been fighting from the same trench with her husband, and that he had been killed only a few minutes before a bullet struck her.

While the Boer army was having its many early successes in Natal few of the women partook in the actual warfare from choice, or because they believed that it was necessary for them to fight. The majority of those who were in the engagements happened to be with their husbands when the battles were begun, and had no opportunity of escaping. The burghers objected to the presence of women within the firing lines, and every effort was made to prevent them from being in dangerous localities, but when it was impossible to transfer them to places of safety during the heat of the battle there was no alternative but to provide them with rifles and bandoliers so that they might protect themselves. The half-hundred women who endured the horrors of the siege at Paardeberg with Cronje’s small band of warriors chose to remain with their husbands and brothers when Lord Roberts offered to convey them to places of safety, but they were in no wise an impediment to the burghers, for they assisted in digging trenches and wielded the carbines as assiduously as the most energetic men.

MRS. OTTO KRANTZ, A BOER AMAZON

One of the women who received the Government’s sanction to join a commando was Mrs. Otto Krantz, the wife of a professional hunter. Mrs. Krantz accompanied her husband to Natal at the commencement of hostilities, and remained in the field during almost the entire campaign in that colony. In the battle of Elandslaagte, where some of the hardest hand-to-hand fighting of the war occurred, this Amazon was by the side of her husband in the thick of the engagement, but escaped unscathed. Later she took part in the battles along the Tugela, and when affairs in the Free State appeared to be threatening she was one of the first to go to the scene of action in that part of the country.

Among the prisoners captured by the British forces at Colesburg were three Boer women who wore men’s clothing, but it was not until after they had been confined in the prison-ship at Cape Town for several weeks that their sex was discovered. A real little Boertje was Helena Herbst Wagner, of Zeerust, who spent five months in the laagers and in the trenches without her identity being revealed. Her husband went to the field early in the war and left her alone with a baby. The infant died in January and the disconsolate woman donned her husband’s clothing, obtained a rifle and bandolier, and went to the Natal front to search for her soldier-spouse. Failing to find him, she joined the forces of Commandant Ben Viljoen and faced bullets, bombs, and lyddite at Spion Kop, Pont Drift, and Pieter’s Hills. During the retreat to Van Tonder’s Nek the young woman learned that her husband lay seriously wounded in the Johannesburg hospital, and she deserted the army temporarily to nurse him.

When Louis Botha became Commandant-General of the army he issued an order that women would not be permitted to visit the laagers, and few, if any, took part in the engagements for some time thereafter. When the forces of the enemy approached Pretoria the women made heroic efforts to encourage the burghers, and frequently went to the laagers to cheer them to renewed resistance. Mrs. General Botha and Mrs. General Meyer were specially energetic and effective in their efforts to instil new courage in the men, and during the war there was no scene which was more edifying than that of those two patriotic Boer women riding about the laagers and beseeching the burghers not to yield to despair.

On the fifteenth of May more than a thousand women assembled in the Government Buildings at Pretoria for the purpose of deciding upon a course of action in the grave crisis which confronted the Republic. It was the gravest assemblage that was ever gathered together in that city—a veritable concourse of Spartan mothers. There was little speech, for the hearts of all were heavy, and tears were more plentiful than words, but the result of the meeting was the best testimonial of its value.

It was determined to ask the Government to send to the front all the men who were employed in the Commissariat, the Red Cross, schools, post and telegraph offices, and to fill the vacancies thus created with women. A memorial, signed by Mrs. H.S. Bosman, Mrs. General Louis Botha, Mrs. F. Eloff, Mrs. P.M. Botha, and Mrs. F.W. Reitz, was adopted for transmission to the Government asking for permission to make such changes in the commissariat and other departments, and ending with these two significant clauses:—

1.—A message of encouragement will be sent to our burghers who are at the front, beseeching them to present a determined stand against the enemy in the defence of our sacred cause, and pointing out to those who are losing heart the terrible consequences which will follow should they prove weak and wanting in courage at the present crisis in our affairs.