A Colonial, however, took pity on her, and spread a buck sail over the waggon under which the women and children had sought shelter from the rain. This kindly deed of the Colonial displeased the Colonel, and he severely took him to task about it. From Monday morning to Wednesday evening the women got nothing to eat, and again it was a Colonial who intervened. This man gave them some raw meat, biscuits, and a little coffee and sugar. But they had themselves to provide for fuel, and that on a bare hill where there was none to be found.
From Mequatling's Nek the women and children were conveyed to the farm of the late General Ferreira, on a trolley waggon loaded with seed-oats. It rained all the while, and they were drenched to the skin. They passed the next night under a buck sail with scanty covering. After spending nine days like this, Mrs. Koen was given a broken-down cart and two lean horses to return with to her house. She found it looted.
The Colonel had made the threat not to Mrs. Koen only. When he uttered the disgraceful words to that lady, he had already written a letter to her husband from Mequatling's Nek, dated 21st January 1902, in which these words appear:—
"I request from you proof that these boys [Kaffirs captured by Commandant Koen, and afterwards sent by him to Basutoland] are safe. Should I find, on the contrary, that you have murdered them, or should you murder others, besides other penalties, which you will assuredly not escape, I warn you that it will be beyond my power to control my Kaffirs in their action towards your women. I hope, however, that your assurance, accompanied by proof, that my Kaffirs are safe, will enable me to assuage my Kaffirs, and to continue to you that protection which I have hitherto been able to grant them."
Now, I ask, suppose that Commandant Koen had shot the Colonel's Kaffirs, could such a deed justify a British officer to set loose savages upon defenceless women?
Another woman declared that on the 9th of September 1900, a soldier, a Hottentot, and two Kaffirs visited her farm, Jolly Kop, in the district of Bethlehem. The soldier remained some distance off, but the others came to her, threatened to shoot her, and forcibly removed her rings from her fingers.
Many acts of unnecessary and reckless violence took place in relation to women in very weak condition. If the columns trekking about wanted to burn a house or take a woman away from her house, they seldom took into consideration whether a woman was ill or in a weak condition. There were officers and men who had neither heart nor eye for the weakness which is generally a guarantee and protection against violence. Here is an instance.
A woman was taken from the farm Omdraai, district Bethlehem, towards the end of March 1901, when she had been delivered of a child but one day.
Another, on the farm Tijger, district Heilbron, had a child of one day old. Notwithstanding this, on 20th January 1902 Colonel Rimington had her house burned over her head, and she was forced, ill and weak as she was, to totter out of the house so as not to be consumed by the flames.
The same thing had happened on the 1st of November 1901 to a woman at Vogelstruisfontein, district Heilbron. Her child was but two days old, and she too had to save herself from the burning house. Too often in this war it happened that the courtesy to women which chivalry dictates was lacking on the part of the British. Not only were our women treated with disrespect and contempt, but this contempt was as often accompanied by a large measure of cruelty.