Part 15 (1/2)
A systematic devastation of the two Boer Republics then took place.
Only the towns were spared; for the rest, the farms and homesteads and even small villages, throughout the length and breadth of the country, were laid waste. Trees were cut down, crops destroyed, homes, pillaged of valuables, burnt with everything they contained, and the women and children removed to camps in the districts to which they belonged.
Now, we are well aware that a savage foe would have left these helpless victims of the unavoidable circ.u.mstances of war on the veld to die, but the English are not only not savages and heathens, but they are one of the most civilised and humane Christian nations.
Concentration Camps were formed in every part of the country, and the women and children placed in tents on the open veld, near the railway lines where possible, or in close proximity to the towns.
The work of devastation, carried out by some British officers with loathing and distaste, and by others with fiendish exultation, was not completed in a few weeks or months. It was carried on right through from the time when the policy was decided on until peace was declared, and in the end nothing was left but the blackened ruins of once prosperous homes.
If ever there was a war of surprises, it was the Anglo-Boer war.
Instead of hostilities being brought to a speedy termination by the demolition of the farms, the Boer forces gathered and increased in strength and numbers by the addition to their ranks of men who had left the commandos and were again living on their farms.
Wives and children gone, homes devastated, there was nothing left for the men to live for.
Instead of being brought to submission by the drastic measures taken to compel them to surrender, they were transformed into raging lions, with but one object in view, the expulsion of their enemy from the land of their birth.
Not alone in the towns did the secret service do its work. As the camps grew in size and close supervision became more difficult, the spies crept in and out, bearing with them the information wanted by the Boer leaders, concerning the condition of the inmates.
In nine cases out of ten the earnest request of the women to their men was to fight to the bitter end--not to surrender on their account, but to let them die in captivity sooner than yield for the sake of them and their children.
Perhaps I may be allowed to say here that when Hansie was in the Irene Camp as volunteer nurse she knew nothing of the work of the spies.
Love and pity drew her to the scene of suffering.
The British did not count the cost when they began the system of gathering in the Boer families, any more than they did when they began their ”walk over” to Pretoria.
Not only had they to support women and children for an indefinite period after the devastation of the farms, but the entire maintenance of the scattered Boer forces fell to their lot. During nearly two years the Boers lived on the enemy, took their convoys, wrecked their trains, helped themselves to horses, clothing, ammunition, provisions--everything, in fact, that they required for the continuation of the war. To tell the truth, there was hardly a Mauser rifle to be found in the possession of the Boers at the end of the war, they having destroyed the rifles with which they began the war, for want of Mauser ammunition, and using only the Lee Metfords of the enemy.
Sickness broke out in the camps--scarlet fever, measles, whooping-cough, enteric, pneumonia, and a thousand ills brought by exposure, overcrowding, underfeeding, and untold hards.h.i.+ps.
Expectant mothers, tender babes, the aged and infirm, torn from their homes and herded together under conditions impossible to describe, exposed to the bitter inclemency of the South African winters and the scorching, germ-breeding heat of the summer, succ.u.mbed in their thousands, while daily, fresh people, ruddy, healthy, straight from their wholesome life on the farms, were brought into the infected camps and left to face sickness and the imminent risk of death.
Over twenty thousand dead women and children stand recorded in the books of the Burgher Camps Department to-day, as the victims of this policy of concentration.
Over twenty thousand women and children within two years! While the total number of fighting men lost on the Boer side, in battle and in captivity, amounts to four thousand throughout the entire war.
That this appalling result was wholly unlooked for, we do not doubt, but nothing could be done to prevent the high mortality until many months after the worst period was over and only the strongest remained in the camps. It was indeed a case of the survival of the fittest.
Let me briefly relate a tragic event of the war to show what the people of the camps went through and what little cause for surprise there is in the unprecedented death-rate.
During the winter of 1901 a blizzard pa.s.sed over the High Veld, the site of so many Concentration Camps, in the Balmoral district, and overtook a young lieutenant, W. St. Clare McLaren, of the First Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (the friend and playmate of Hansie's childhood's years at Heidelberg) with his men.
They were without shelter, their commissariat waggons being some way ahead, and crept under a tarpaulin for protection from the fierce and bitterly cold blast.
During that awful night Mr. McLaren took off his overcoat to cover up the peris.h.i.+ng body of his major, and when morning came he was found dead with five of his men, while around them, stiffly frozen, lay the bodies of six hundred mules.
The brave and heroic heart was stilled for ever, a young and n.o.ble life was lost in performing an act of rare self-sacrifice; but far away in ”bonnie Scotland” a widowed mother, smiling bravely through her tears, thanked G.o.d for the privilege of cheris.h.i.+ng _such_ a memory.