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'He is out on active service,
Wiping something off a slate ...': Kipling's Soldier |
DISEASE
Kipling, in his poem entitled South Africa, wrote: ‘So she
filled their mouths with dust, And their bones with fever ...’ He could have
been speaking of Ladysmith.
Siege diarists and letter-writers complained about
the dust, but in rainy weather the ground became a quagmire and it was hard to
know which was worse, especially for the soldiers under canvas. There was a
lack of fresh drinking water. The only supply for troops posted on the outlying
areas was the murky water of the Klip
River.
W A Poulton of the
5th Lancers recalled that when making tea, the liquid had to stand
for a while to allow the mud to settle at the bottom of the container. The flies were awful and it was no wonder that diseases spread quickly.
Although several hospitals were situated within the town,
with the permission of the Boers a tented camp at Intombi Spruit had been
established in the first week of November and to this facility many sick and
wounded were sent. By Christmas over 700 patients with enteric were
accommodated there. This number had more than doubled by January. Bella Craw
wrote: ‘It is time we were relieved … for the sickness is most distressing. We
are hearing every day of the death of someone we sent out to Indombi (sic) …
men are dying for want of attention and proper food …’
The exhausted medical staff were fighting a losing battle,
and themselves often falling victim to illness. Disinfectants and other medical
necessities were scarce, the water supply erratic and rations were decreasing
daily. Army biscuits were pulped for the sick. When the inevitable slaughter of
horses for food began, a meat extract known as Chevril was made. It may have been nutritious but people found it difficult to stomach.
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The Horse Memorial, Port Elizabeth, commemorates 300 000 horses
lost during the Anglo-Boer War |
Nurse Kate
Driver’s diary reveals the hell that was Intombi in the final weeks of the
siege: ‘The moans and groans that came to one from these wards through the
hours of darkness, and often rain, were more dismal and ghastly than I have
words to describe’.
HEROES & HEROINES
Eighteen nursing sisters served with the Natal Volunteer
Medical Corps during the siege. Some were mentioned in White’s dispatch of 2
December: Lucy Yeatman (in charge at Intombi), S Otto, Ethel Early, Margaret
Nicolson, Chrissie Thompson, Kate Driver, Kate Champion (who nursed the dying
William Dixon Smith, Lieutenant Quarter-Master of the Border Mounted Rifles,
and wrote a compassionate letter to his widow), R Davies, Santje Ruiter and
Elaine Bromilow. Another, Constance Addison, was the sister of a Durban doctor.
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| Dr Oswald Currie and family |
The Natal
Mounted Rifles later presented the nurses with silver shield brooches in
recognition of their services and Royal Red Cross nursing decorations were also
awarded. The doctors were equally dedicated, among them Dr Oswald J Currie who
came from India to South Africa to
work on the prevention of malaria. At the start of the war he joined the Natal
Carbineers as Surgeon Captain and proved indispensable at Intombi.
Let's not forget the courageous stretcher bearers
under the leadership of a young man named Mohandas Gandhi who was later to be
very famous indeed; and the nameless African runners who risked life and limb carrying
letters through enemy lines.
They were heroes all, as were the weary troops,
‘hungry and gaunt as ghosts’, who continued with their duties while wondering
where Buller was and if they were to be left to their fate.
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Stretcher bearers of the Indian Ambulance Corps: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
5th from left 2nd row |
RELIEF
Buller was on his way but progress was ponderously slow;
he seemed to go one step forward and two back. His troops suffered a disastrous
defeat at Spion Kop on 24 January and the final month of the siege had yet to
be endured – the darkest hour before dawn. It was the hottest time of year in Natal and the frequent
rains, while filling the water tanks, made the weather steamy. There was mud
underfoot and cloud-cover prevented the use of the heliograph so the besieged
felt completely cut off, with no cheering news.
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| Gordon Highlanders |
Rations were down to the bare
minimum and nerves were frayed. Watkins-Pitchford found a big Gordon Highlander
sitting at the side of the footpath, crying like an infant:
‘He had gone all
round the town and various camps begging for food, and finding none had given
way in this manner … for ½ lb of horseflesh and ½ lb of hard biscuit is little
short of starvation’.
By 21 February 1900 the Relief Force was again advancing across
the Tugela towards Ladysmith. Boer resistance was fierce and there were several
engagements with heavy losses on both sides, culminating in a decisive victory
for the British at Pieters Hill on 27 February. The Boers withdrew and the way
to Ladysmith lay open.
On 28 February riders could be seen approaching the town
and it became apparent that they were not the enemy, but British cavalry. The Natal volunteers, most of
whose horses had so far escaped slaughter, rode towards them, ‘yelling and
howling like packs of wild dogs. Caps and helmets were waved, guns frantically
brandished … and in a moment the two columns were merged into a struggling mass
of horsemen, besieged and deliverers mixed inextricably in one disorderly mass
of cheering, gesticulating, hand-shaking, back-slapping men. Tattered and lean
and brown, the one side with privation and exposure and long anxiety, and the
other with hard fighting and desperate derring-do’.
Relief had come.
