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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
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piled up and wedged in with such goods as they had been able to bring. They were tired and hot.
I went and spoke to several of them, and found in a truck the parents of the little boys I mentioned
earlier.
There were 240 packed in, and they followed us and our armoured train. On arriving here I saw
the Superintendent, who was at hand to meet the arrivals. He told me that after begging, borrowing,
and buying he had scraped together 25 tents for the 240 persons. So there will be more overcrowding.
I ran up to one of the Committee women to see if anything could be done in the way of getting them a
meal after their journey, but nothing had been known of their coming, and late Saturday night we could
not tell where to turn to procure either fuel or kettles, etc., to supply such an inrush of people.
April 15.
I am writing just these few lines before leaving this on Friday. I was much distressed to-day in
the tent of two women—sisters—whose children are wasting away. We have at last got a new
civilian doctor, who speaks Dutch, so I hope we shall move on a bit. Seven children died here the
few days I was at Capetown, and two since my return besides.
Mrs. —— has been taken to the hospital in town. She is very ill from a kick in the stomach by a
drunken soldier. Something internal. He was punished, I believe, but that does not cure her.
April 15.
All the afternoon I was kept in Mrs. L.’s tent by a downpour of rain. Half the tent floor was a
pool of water, which the Kaffir boy was vainly trying to bale out. Two pails caught the pourings from
the tent door. All around and above it dripped, making pools on the bedding and on the mats as we sat
huddled up—two Kaffirs, five children, Mrs. L., and myself—in the steamy atmosphere, till I began
to turn sick, as I generally do in the tents. When it rains at night as often it drips on them all night, and
makes little pools on the beds. No wonder children sicken and die. The cloth of the tents seems so
very thin and poor.
BLOEMFONTEIN,
April 22.
Here I am again in Bloemfontein. I arrived yesterday, taking 2 ½ days from Kimberley. The
camp work grows so vast and so rapidly that I feel it is almost impossible to cope with it. Here there
are now about 4,000, or double the number I left six weeks ago. At Springfontein I left a manageable
little camp of 500 ; now it has swelled to 3,000, and as we passed along yesterday morning there was
a trainload in the station of 600 more. It was pitiable to see them—massed in the train, many of them
in open trucks. It was bitterly cold, and I was wrapped in a thick grey Welsh shawl. All night there
had been a truly torrential downpour of rain, and water stood everywhere in pools. On the saturated
ground they were trying to dry themselves and their goods.
Some women were pushing their way to the platform to try and buy food for their children. The
soldiers would not permit this. I expostulated. The men said they were sorry for them, but they had to
obey orders. It was Sunday morning, and Springfontein’s one small shop closed, and I knew the
refreshment-room was the only place where food was available. Just then a little friend of mine ran
up from the Mission Station with a can of hot coffee for me. I had waved to them from the train as it
passed the house. So she and I went down the platform to the cluster of women and gave them the
coffee, and I took them all the food I had in the train with me. Fortunately I had just bought a twopenny
loaf (for 1s.), and I had some tinned meat.
A nice-looking woman with a very white face spoke to us. They had been travelling two days,
and no food given, and the children were crying with hunger. I gave my friend some money and told
her to buy all the food she could in the station and take it down to them, and devote the day to it,
leaving alone church. The girl promised, and I had just time to jump into my train. I would have
stayed myself and seen to it, but my permit was not stamped to break journey, so I could not do so. I
know she will do her best. She is only 15, but very womanly. As there was not additional shelter of
any kind at Springfontein, I heard the whole lot were to be sent on to Bethulie, for now a Camp is
forming there. It is endless and hopeless. I have just heard from a man who met the same trainload at
Edenburg that four children died on the journey.
If only the camps had remained the size they were even six weeks ago, I saw some chance of
getting them well in hand, organizing and dealing with the distress. But this sudden influx of hundreds
and thousands has upset everything, and reduced us all to a state bordering on despair.
More and more are coming in. A new sweeping movement has begun, resulting in hundreds and
thousands of these unfortunate people either crowding into already crowded camps or else being
dumped down to form a new one where nothing is at hand to shelter them.
About food, too. The superintendent of a camp is getting in rations for such a number, and
suddenly 200 more mouths are thrust in upon him, and things won’t go round. Last Saturday 200 or
300 families were without meat in Bloemfontein Camp for that day and Sunday. This would not
matter if there were an alternative food, but there is only the ordinary supply of coarse bread to fall
back upon, with black coffee and sugar.
No wonder sickness abounds. Since I left here six weeks ago there have been 62 deaths in camp,
and the doctor himself is down with enteric. Two of the Boer girls who had been trained as nurses,
and who were doing good
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