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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
.Article – Online Historic Information | Military
.Page 322
had met in Capetown. It is such a puzzle to find your way in a village of bell tents, no streets or
names or numbers. There are nearly 2,000*people in this one camp, of which some few are men—
they call them “hands up” men —and over 900*children.
Imagine the heat outside the tents, and the suffocation inside! We sat on their khaki blankets,
rolled up, inside Mrs. B.’s tent ; and the sun blazed through the single canvas, and the flies lay thick
and black on everything ; no chair, no table, nor any room for such ; only a deal box, standing on its
end, served as a wee pantry. In this tiny tent live Mrs. B.’s five children (three quite grown up) and a
little Kaffir servant girl. Many tents have more occupants. Mrs. P. came in, and Mrs. R. and others,
and they told me their stories, and we cried together, and even laughed together, and chatted bad
Dutch and bad English all the afternoon. On wet nights the water streams down through the canvas and
comes flowing in, as it knows how to do in this country, under the flap of the tent, and wets their
blanket as they lie on the ground. While we sat there a snake came in. They said it was a puff adder,
very poisonous, so they all ran out, and I attacked the creature with my parasol. I could not bear to
think the thing should be at large in a community mostly sleeping on the ground. After a struggle I
wounded it, and then a man came with a mallet and finished it off.
Mrs. P. is very brave and calm. She has six children, ranging from fifteen down to two years,
and she does not know where any one of them is.*She was taken right away from them; her husband is
in detention of some kind at Bloemfontein, but not allowed to see her. She expects her confinement in
about three weeks, and yet has to lie on the bare ground till she is stiff and sore, and she has had
nothing to sit on for over two months, but must squat on a rolled-up blanket. I felt quite sure you
would like her to have a mattress, and I asked her if she would accept one. She did so very gratefully,
and I did not rest yesterday till I got one out to her. All her baby linen was in readiness at home, but
all is lost. This is but one case, quite ordinary, among hundreds and hundreds. The women are
wonderful. They cry very little and never complain. The very magnitude of their sufferings,
indignities, loss and anxiety seems to lift them beyond tears. These people, who have had
comfortable, even luxurious homes, just set themselves to quiet endurance and to make the best of
their bare and terrible lot ; only when it cuts afresh at them through their children do their feelings
flash out. Mrs. M., for instance. She has six children in camp, all ill, two in the tin hospital with
typhoid, and four sick in the tent. She also expects her confinement soon. Her husband is in Ceylon.
She has means, and would gladly provide for herself either in town or in the Colony, where she has
relations, or by going back to her farm. It was not burnt, only the furniture was destroyed ; yet here
she has to stay, watching her children droop and sicken. For their sakes she did plead with tears that
she might go and fend for herself.
I call this camp system a wholesale cruelty. It can never be wiped out of the memories of the
people. It presses hardest on the children. They droop in the terrible heat, and with the insufficient,
unsuitable food ; whatever you do, whatever the authorities do, and they are, I believe, doing their
best with very limited means, it is all only a miserable patch upon a great ill. Thousands, physically
unfit, are placed in conditions of life which they have not strength to endure. In front of them is blank
ruin. There are cases, too, in which whole families are severed and scattered, they don’t know where.
Will you try, somehow, to make the British public understand the position, and force it to ask
itself what is going to be done with these people ? There must be full 15,000*of them ; I should not
wonder if there are not more. Some few have means, but more are ruined, and have not a present
penny. In one of two ways must the British public support them, either by taxation through the
authorities, or else by voluntary charity.
If the people at home want to save their purses (you see, I appeal to low motives), why not
allow those who can maintain themselves to go to friends and relatives in the Colony ? Many wish
ardently to do so. That would be some relief. If only the English people would try to exercise a little
imagination—picture the whole miserable scene. Entire villages and districts rooted up and dumped
in a strange, bare place.
To keep these Camps going is murder to the children. Still, of course, by more judicious
management they could be improved ; but, do what you will, you can’t undo the thing itself.
To-day is Sunday, and all the day I have been toiling and moiling over the bales of clothes—
unpacking, sorting, and putting up in bundles. We were so glad of such odd things, such as stays and
little boys’ braces! I found some baby linen for Mrs. P. I do not think that there is a single superfluous
article. But what a family to clothe !
Now I must tell you their rations :—
Daily—
Meat, ½lb (with bone and fat).
Coffee, 2oz.
Wholemeal, ¾lb.
Condensed milk, one-twelfth of tin.
Sugar, 2oz.
Salt, ½oz.
That is all, nothing else to fill in. Once they sometimes had potatoes, seven potatoes for seven
people, but that has long been impossible. Soap also has been unattainable, and none given
home
Anglo-Boer-War
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