Identifier: besiegedbyboersd00ashe (find matches)
Title: Besieged by the Boers : a diary of life and events in Kimberly during the siege
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Ashe, Evelyn Oliver
Subjects: South African War, 1899-1902 Kimberley (South Africa) -- History Siege, 1899-1900
Publisher: London : Hutchinson & Co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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uld easily escape from the big hospital. The man whose head I bandaged up on the field was badly damaged — in fact, Shields said that when he took off my bandage, about a third of the mans brains fell out, and this is very nearly the absolute truth. Anyhow, he lived three days, and would probably have lived altogether, but they washed him, and, being a Boer, the shock to his system was so great that he succumbed. The history of the days fight was that our men drove the Boers out of the ridge from which they had been shelling the town with heavy loss, but as strong reinforcements of Boers came up, they very wisely retired, and did not attempt to hold the position. Watkins got out a few minutes before I did, and was right up in the firing line whilst the fire was still very hot, but he came out all right. Some well-known men were hit in this fight. One poor chap (he is one of the three men who rent my old house) got the middle part of his lower jaw smashed into splinters. It is a horrid wound, not dangerous
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Mitb C. 5» IRbo^ess Compliments 65 to life, but I am afraid the deformity that is left will be very bad. Most of the Boer prisoners were of the very lowest class, and came from Bloemhof, a little Transvaal town not far from Christiana, where I have been several times. Two at least of them came from Barkly West, where they had been working in some relief work that the Government had started for the benefit of poor whites. But this is Boer gratitude. Some of these prisoners had Free State news-papers on them, which gave us later news than any we had been able to get. These papers gave a letter from the commandant who was bombarding Kimberley, in which he said he had directed his shells to the middle of the town to do as much damage as possible. This, like firing on ambulances, is directly against the Geneva Convention, which lays down that bombardment should, as far as possible, be directed against fortifications, and not against private buildings. But the Boer cares for none of these things ; he is j

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