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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
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stand the death-rate in the one at Bloemfontein to be very high, and so also in other places, but I
cannot possibly pay any attention to them myself. Why shouldn’t the Society of Friends send someone
if the war goes on, or the Aborigines Protection Society ?
Though the camps are called refugee, there are in reality a very few of these—perhaps only halfa-dozen in some camps. It is easy to tell them, because they are put in the best marquees, and have had
time given them to bring furniture and clothes, and are mostly self-satisfied and vastly superior
people. Very few, if any of them, are in want.
RAILWAY STAFF OFFICE, NORVALS PONT.
March 10.
I have already sat here seven hours waiting for the train, and it appears likely I may spend the
night in this office. I had no difficulty in getting my ticket for Kimberley, but was expressly told it
must be at my own risk.
I wish you could impress on the English public that one can’t speak generally about these
Camps, or the conditions of the women therein. One is very different from another. I mention this
because there is likely to be any amount of assertion and contradiction on this subject. All are
different, and the amount of discomfort depends upon various matters. (First) The Commandant.
(Secondly) Natural conditions, proximity of wood and water. (Thirdly) Distance from a base and
stores. (Fourthly) Presense of public opinion. (Fifthly) Date of commencement.
The earlier camps, of course, had opportunities of getting many necessaries, which are no longer
attainable.
KIMBERLEY.
March 12.
It was a melancholy journey to Kimberley. Our line took us through the battlefields, the now
historic scenes of the disasters. Belmont, Modder River, Magersfontein, came in succession, and we
could see the ridge towards which the Highlanders advanced, and the long, long trench where the
Boers lay and shot down the Blaok Watch. It’s all quiet now—the plain and the hills—nothing to
mark the spot but the trenches and the groups of graves.
March 13.
All to-day I have been in the camp—fortunately only 20 minutes’ walk from my hotel. It is the
smallest in area that I have seen. The tents, too close together, and the whole enclosed in an 8-foot
high barbed wire fencing, which is supposed to be impregnable, and cost £500. Sentries at the gate
and walking inside. No nurse ; an empty, unfurnished marquee, which might be a hospital ;
overcrowded tents ; measles and whooping-cough rife ; camp dirty and smelling ; an army doctor,
who naturally knows little of children’s ailments ; fuel, almost none.
A Commandant’s wife is here,with six children. It is so sad about her baby. A general came to
her home with his column to sweep her away. She is a delicate-looking, gentle woman, with a white
skin and beautiful scarlet lips, so seldom seen out of books. Her baby was only 17 days old when the
troops came, and she was very weak. She could not nurse the child, and, like all her children, it was
being brought up on donkey’s milk. This she explained to the general, who gave special commands
that wherever she went that donkey was to go, even to Vryburg and Kimberley. Well, by degrees, she
arrived in Kimberley, and the donkey came also to the town. But once she was in the camp that
donkey disappeared. They either couldn’t or wouldn’t produce it. The baby failed and pined. Friends
from Kimberley tried everything—cow’s milk, condensed milk—all no good. It was a splendid child,
and it dwindled to skin and bone. At last the new superintendent arrived ; they appealed to him, and
showed him the dying baby. At once he produced that donkey ; but it was too late. The baby had got
so weak it was past recovery. We tried what we could, but to-day it died. It was only 3 months, but
such a sweet little thing. The mother is much respected, and there is great sympathy felt for her. It was
still alive this morning ; when I called in the afternoon they beckoned me in to see the tiny thing laid
out, with a white flower in its wee hand. To me it seemed a “ murdered innocent.” And an hour or
two after another child died.
A terrible evil just now is the dew. It is so heavy, and comes right through the single canvas of
the tents, wetting everything. The night I slept at Norval’s Pont I found this out for myself. Though in a
marquee, with double canvas, all my clothes were damp through, and these people have to put their
things on saturated day after day. All the morning the gangways are filled with the blankets and odds
and ends, regularly turned out to dry in the sun. The doctor told me to-day he highly disapproved of
tents for young children, and expected a high mortality before June.
I am going to buy some mourning for this bereaved mother—don’t think that foolish or
extravagant. You would not if you knew how much these people think of a bit of black, and it seemed
to me the best way of showing some sympathy. She is in need of clothes of some sort, and her present
from England will be black instead of coloured.
March 15.
To-day I got the mother’s black clothes (all hers are burnt), and took them up. Another child had
died in the night, and I found all three little corpses being photographed for the absent fathers to see
some day. Two little wee white coffins at the gate waiting, and a third wanted. I was glad to see them,
for, at Springfontein, a young woman had to be buried in a sack, and it hurt their feelings woefully.
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