The Petticoat Commando Part 15

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 hardships.

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 perishing 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 cherishing _such_ a memory.

Small wonder to us then, when tragedies such as this were brought home to us, that in the camps the thin tents, torn to ribbons by the storm, afforded no protection to the scantily-clothed, half-famished inmates!

That the death-rate was not higher during the winter months we owe entirely to the overcrowding of the tents, there being in Hansie's ward at Irene many bell-tents, destined to accommodate six, holding from sixteen to twenty-three persons for many months. But what was an advantage during the winter months became a source of great danger when the heat of summer came.

To return to our story.

It was Hansie's privilege--yes, privilege--to act as one of the volunteer nurses from Pretoria during that very winter of 1901, and though it is not my intention to record in this book the experience connected with that period, I do not think it will be out of place here to mention an important result of that sojourn at Irene.

Mrs. van Warmelo visited her daughter in the camp for the first time on May 21st, and she was so much impressed by the misery she had witnessed that, on her return to Pretoria that night, she could not sleep, but tossed from side to side, thinking of some way to save her country-women from suffering and death.

Suddenly she was inspired by the thought, "Write a pet.i.tion to the Consuls!"

It was 3 a.m. when she got out of bed to fetch her writing-materials from the dining-room, and she then and there wrote a pa.s.sionate appeal for help to the Diplomatic Corps in Pretoria.

The Consul-General for the Netherlands, Mr. Domela Nieuwenhuis, to whom she took the pet.i.tion the following morning, advised her to lay it before the Portuguese Consul, Mr. Cinatti, who, as the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps, would bring the matter before the other Consuls, if he thought it advisable.

Mr. Cinatti, after reading the pet.i.tion, said the matter could certainly be taken up if Mrs. van Warmelo would get a few leading women in Pretoria to sign the pet.i.tion.

This was done within a few days.

Under injunctions to observe the strictest secrecy, nine prominent Boer women signed the doc.u.ment, and it was once more laid before the senior member of the Diplomatic Corps, who immediately called a meeting of the Consuls, the result of which was that a copy of the pet.i.tion, translated into French, was sent by the first mail to each of the ten different Powers they represented and also to Lord Kitchener.

General Maxwell, soon after these were dispatched, asked Mr. Cinatti to see him at once in his office at Government Buildings, where, in a long interview with him, he demanded from Mr. Cinatti the names of the nine signatories.

Mr. Cinatti said he was not at liberty to disclose them--that, in fact, they were not known (with the exception of the writer of the pet.i.tion) to the other Consuls. General Maxwell then pressed him to give him that name only, as he particularly wished to know who had drawn up the pet.i.tion.

This was refused, fortunately for Mrs. van Warmelo, for the penalty would have been great.

The military authorities left no stone unturned afterwards to find out who the women pet.i.tioners were, but without success, thanks to the great precautions taken by the Portuguese Consul.

A full month pa.s.sed and no reply came from Lord Kitchener.

A second pet.i.tion, more strongly worded than the first, was then drawn up, imploring the Consuls to intercede on behalf of the victims of the Concentration Camps and to inform the Powers represented by them, of the death-rate which threatened the Boer nation with extinction.

Again a meeting of the Consuls was called, at which three of them were appointed to form a committee of investigation:

Consul Cinatti, Consul-General for Portugal.

Baron Pitner, Consul-General for Austria.

Baron Ostmann, Consul-General for Germany.

Some of the other members at the meeting were:

M. Domela Nieuwenhuis, Consul-General for the Netherlands.

M. Aubert, Consul-General for France.