Besieged by the Boers - a diary of life and events in Kimberly during the siege (1900) (14782028454)

Identifier: besiegedbyboersd00ashe (find matches)
Title: Besieged by the Boers : a diary of life and events in Kimberly during the siege
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Ashe, Evelyn Oliver
Subjects: South African War, 1899-1902 Kimberley (South Africa) -- History Siege, 1899-1900
Publisher: London : Hutchinson & Co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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ably fired at them when they werewithin range, though each waggon carried abig red-cross flag. And these are the gentleand inoffensive people that Olive Schreinerprates about ! Brutes! They are not evendecent savages, but just a cross between abushman and a baboon, only more ignorantthan either of their parents. On the 16th our men had another brushjust out to the north-west, one of them beingkilled and eight wounded. I only got oneof the wounded this time, as it was early inthe morning, and the message to fetch megot muddled somehow, so I was a little lateat the hospital. My man had four holes inhim, all from one bullet. It went throughthe outer side of his left thigh and throughhis left hand too, which was resting on histhigh at the time, but only one of the smallbones of his hand was broken, so he was soonall right again. On the 17th I had rather a slack afternoon,so we got Dr. Stoney to show us over theforts (to which he was doctor) up at thewaterworks reservoir. When we went out,
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XTbe Bombardment Begins 53 the shells were dropping at the reservoir, sowe got on to the veldt to one side of it, andlooked on a long way off at a brush whichwas going on in another direction. Our menwere out and trying to draw the Boers ; butthey, as usual, did not see it. Our seven-pounders were on a debris heap, and werefiring over the heads of our men at the Boers,who were far away hidden in a watercourse. The rifle firing was tremendous—almostentirely from the Boers, as we learnt later—and it sounded as if about ten waggon-loadsof wounded would be the result, but it wasnt.Only one of our men was hit in the calf ofthe leg—not a serious wound. Whether anyDutch were potted, we did not know—in fact,that was a thing we never did know. TheDutch paper I spoke of just now gavefull accounts of several of these skirmishes,and generally said : * Our loss was one manslightly wounded, but the English sufferedtremendously. Then in an out-of-the-waycorner you saw: Franz de Beer, who was