It is well known that during the war feeling amongst the Boer women was even more intense than amongst the men. One Boer woman was heard to urge her husband to go and fight, saying: “I can get another husband, but I can’t get another Free State.”
During the late war, a certain “Tommy” was desirous of possessing a bullet-riddled helmet to show to his friends at home, so he started firing from behind a big boulder on which he placed his helmet. Of course, the helmet at once became the target for Boer bullets. Unfortunately, not one touched the helmet, but one bullet hit the owner of the helmet on the shoulder. “Tommy” thereupon removed the helmet from its exposed position, and, with a look at his injured shoulder, remarked: “That comes of cursed pride and nothing else.”
A Free Stater, captured during the war, tried to impress his captor by declaring that he was a Field Cornet. “I don’t care if you are a field big drum,” was the reply.
A certain Canadian trooper who came out here during the war was not favourably impressed with South Africa. “If I owned Satandom and South Africa,” said he, “I would rent out South Africa and live in Satandom.”
Shortly after the occupation of Bloemfontein by Lord Roberts’s army, Mr. Kipling visited the Free State capital. One morning at his hotel a stranger came up to him and said: “Is it possible that I have the honour to meet the author of ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’?” “Yes,” replied Mr. Kipling, “I have heard that piece played on a barrel-organ, and I would shoot the man who wrote it if it would not be suicide.”