"We charged them, and they went on their knees begging of us to shoot them, rather than stab them with our lances, but in vain. The time had come for us to do our work and we did it."
Another Lancer boasts as follows:—
"I got hold of one Boer,"—he had taken an enemy prisoner,—"he did not know what I intended doing, so I made motions to him to run for his life. So he went, and I galloped after him with the sergeant's sword, and cut his head right off his body."
Another Lancer writes:—
"We just gave them a good dig as they lay. Next day most of the lances were bloody."
Now read this extract from a happy Lancer, and I will pass the rest:—
"Many of our soldiers are quite rich with the loot that has fallen to them. The infantry regiments profited to the largest extent. One Tommy secured a pocket-book containing 270 pounds in Transvaal money. Our boys are parading about now with gold watches, chains, and other trinkets."
He might have added with truth, that he and his comrades cut off many fingers in order to remove the rings, and that they are to-day wearing those rings on their fingers as souvenirs of their savage and bloody deeds.
May the day be not far distant when a humane and God-fearing people can erect a monument on that bloody battle field to perpetuate, from generation to generation, the memory of those loathsome deeds of pelf and murder committed by self-convicted British officers and soldiers on the plains of Elandslaagte!
We now mentally resolved to deal with every British soldier caught with a lance in his hand as the interest of humanity might demand, and marched on towards Ladysmith, the last resting place of many of Elandslaagte's cowardly murderers, and the grave of cold British steel. We came in sight of Ladysmith on October 27th.