With the Boer Forces

by Howard Clemens Hillegas

2.—The women throughout the whole State are requested to provide themselves with weapons, in the first instance to be employed in self-defence, and secondly so that they may be in a position to place themselves entirely at the disposition of the Government.

The last request was rather superfluous in view of the fact that the majority of the women in the Transvaal were already provided with arms. There was hardly a Boer homestead which was not provided with enough rifles for all the members of the family, and there were but few women who were not adepts in the use of firearms. In Pretoria a woman’s shooting club was organised at the outset of the war, and among the best shots were the Misses Eloff, the President’s grand-daughters; Mrs. Van Alphen, the wife of the Postmaster-General, and Mrs. Reitz, the wife of the State Secretary. The object of the organisation was to train the members in the use of the rifle so that they might defend the city against the enemy. The club members took great pride in the fact that Mrs. Paul Kruger was the President of the organisation, and it was mutually agreed that the aged woman should be constantly guarded by them in the event of Pretoria being besieged. Happily the city was not obliged to experience that horror, and the club members were spared the ordeal of protecting President and Mrs. Kruger with their rifles as they had vowed to do.

The Boer women endured many discomforts, suffered many griefs, and bore many heartaches on account of the war and its varying fortunes, but throughout it all they acted bravely. There were no wild outbursts of grief when fathers, husbands, brothers or sons were killed in battle, and no untoward exclamations of joy when one of them earned distinction in the field. Reverses of the army were made the occasions for a renewed display of patriotism or the signal for the sending of another relative to the field. Unselfishness marked all the works of the woman of the city or veld, and the welfare of the country was her only ambition. She might have had erroneous opinions concerning the justice of the war and the causes which were responsible for it, but she realised that the land for which her mother and her grandmother had wept and bled and for which all those whom she loved were fighting and dying was in distress, and she was patriotic enough to offer herself for a sacrifice on her country’s altar.

MRS. COMMANDANT-GENERAL LOUIS BOTHA

CHAPTER XI

INCIDENTS OF THE WAR

In every battle, and even in a day’s life in the laagers, there were multitudes of interesting incidents as only such a war produces, and although Sherman’s saying that “War is hell” is as true now as it ever was, there was always a plenitude of amusing spectacles and events to lighten the burdens of the fighting burghers. There were the sad sides of warfare, as naturally there would be, but to these the men in the armies soon became hardened, and only the amusing scenes made any lasting impression upon their minds. It was strange that when a burgher during a battle saw one of his fellow-burghers killed in a horrible manner, and witnessed an amusing runaway, that after the battle he should relate the details of the latter and say nothing of the former, but such was usually the case. Men came out of the bloody Spion Kop fight and related amusing incidents of the struggle, and never touched upon the grave phases until long afterward when their fund of laughable experiences was exhausted. After the battle of Sannaspost the burghers would tell of nothing but the amusing manner in which the drivers of the British transport waggons acted when they found that they had fallen into the hands of the Boers in the bed of the spruit and the fun they had in pursuing the fleeing cavalrymen. At the ending of almost every battle there was some conspicuous amusing incident which was told and retold and laughed about until a new and fresh incident came to light to take its place.

In one of the days’ fighting at Magersfontein a number of youthful Boers, who were in their first battle, allowed about one hundred Highlanders to approach to within a hundred yards of the trench in which they were concealed, and then sprang up and shouted: “Hands up!” The Highlanders were completely surprised, promptly threw down their arms, and advanced with arms above their heads. One of the young Boers approached them, then called his friends, and, scratching his head, asked: “What shall we do with them?” There was a brief consultation, and it was decided to allow the Highlanders to return to their column. When the young burghers arrived at the Boer laager with the captured rifles and bandoliers, General Cronje asked them why they did not bring the men. The youths looked at each other for a while; then one replied, rather sheepishly, “We did not know they were wanted.” In the same battle an old Boer had his first view of the quaintly dressed Highlanders, and at a distance mistook them for a herd of ostriches from a farm that was known to be in the neighbourhood, refused to fire upon them, and persuaded all the burghers in his and the neighbouring trenches that they were ostriches and not human beings.

During the second battle at Colenso a large number of Boers swam across the river and captured thirty or forty British soldiers who had lost the way and had taken refuge in a sluit. An old takhaar among the Boers had discarded almost all his clothing before entering the river, and was an amusing spectacle in shirt, bandolier, and rifle. One of the soldiers went up to the takhaar, looked at him from head to foot, and, after saluting most servilely, inquired, “To what regiment do you belong, sir?” The Boer returned the salute, and, without smiling, replied, “I am one of Rhodes’ ‘uncivilised Boers,’ sir.” In the same fight an ammunition waggon, heavily laden, and covered with a huge piece of duck, was in an exposed position, and attracted the fire of the British artillery. General Meyer and a number of burghers were near the waggon, and were waiting for a lull in the bombardment in order to take the vehicle to a place of safety. They counted thirty-five shells that fell around the waggon without striking it, and then the firing ceased. Several men were sent forward to move the vehicle, and when they were within several yards of it two Kafirs crept from under the duck covering, shook themselves, and walked away as if nothing had interrupted their sleep.

In the Pretoria commando there was a young professional photographer named Reginald Shepperd who carried his camera and apparatus with him during the greater part of the campaign, and took photographs whenever he had an opportunity. On the morning of the Spion Kop fight, when the burghers were preparing to make the attack on the enemy, Mr. Shepperd gathered all the burghers of the Carolina laager and posed them for a photograph. He was on the point of exposing the plate when a shrapnel shell exploded above the group, and every one fled. The camera was left behind and all the men went into the battle. In the afternoon when the engagement had ended it was found that another shell had torn off one of the legs of the camera’s tripod and that forty-three of the men who were in the group in the morning had been killed or wounded. Before the same battle, General Schalk Burger asked Mr. Shepperd to photograph him, as he had had a premonition of death, and stated that he desired that his family should have a good likeness of him. The General was in the heat of the fight, but he was not killed.