The rations, while not plentiful, were not such as people starve on. By 9 February the daily ration per adult had been reduced to one pound of meat (horse or ox) plus some sausage, four ounces of flour, four ounces of bread, and one-sixth of an ounce of tea. There was a great shortage of vegetables until it was discovered that a kind of wild spinach that grew everywhere was delicious. Food could also be purchased at auctions held at night, but prices rose steadily. Wits claimed that hens refused to lay eggs as soon as they learned they were worth 6s each, but in fact eggs never became more expensive than £1 17s per dozen.
George W. Willis wrote to his brother in New Zealand at the end of the siege: “The Military demanded delivery of all eggs and fowls. Over this question and the seizure of our cows and milk I got to loggerheads with them, and though threatened with arrest and imprisonment I compelled them to conditions by which we kept something for our families.” 12
To pass the time, soldiers and civilians arranged amusements for themselves. Since the Boers did not fight on Sundays, polo, cricket, football, and tennis could then be played in safety. Lotteries were held and bets taken on the date Ladysmith would be relieved. Concerts were arranged, and Isabella Craw described one:
Last night we went to the concert and simply enjoyed it immensely.... Men from the Naval Brigade (H.M.S. Powerful) contributed largely to the enjoyment of the evening, with comic songs etc.... The songs were many and varied by a recitation and a mouth organ solo, which was the item of the evening, by one of the H.M.S. Powerful gunners.13
The garrison had a balloon and, at least in the beginning of the siege, its ascension was an event. Isabella Craw decided that she would not like to trust herself to such an “airy arrangement” and that it did not appear “by any means comfortable or pleasant.” Count Gleichen, who made an ascent, complained that “there was remarkably little to see”—perhaps because he was made ill by the movement. Colonel Rawlinson said:
I went up in the balloon to 1,600 feet, and got a splendid view of the surrounding country in still, clear weather. I did not feel a bit sick, but was inclined to hold very tight. The Boers seem to be scattered all over the country around us, and not in any great numbers anywhere. Joubert’s camp is visible about half a mile behind Pepworth Hill. I found it difficult to spot the guns, as the balloon rocks about and keeps revolving so much that one cannot keep one’s glasses steady.14
The first shells landed in Ladysmith at 5:00 A.M. on 30 October 1899. Wakened from their sleep, the townspeople dressed hurriedly, excited but for the most part calm. People remembered afterwards one woman who, still in her night clothes, tied on her bonnet, snatched up her canaries and fled; most simply took to the streets, eager to see the action. Many, including one crippled gentleman who was wheeled out in a Bath chair, congregated on a slope just outside the town to watch. Isabella Craw described what it was like:
We got dressed, then strolled up the street. At every gate groups of men, women and children were standing talking over the latest rumours. We gathered at the corner by the Church.... While we were talking and the boom of cannon going every few seconds, another shell from “Big Tom” as we call it, burst not far away.... We all went in and had a cup of tea with the Barkers. After breakfast the shells were coming fast and thick.... At about half past nine ... we walked up to the hill behind the Convent to see what we could of the battle.... We remained as long as we could or thought it safe.15
Under the hard reality of daily shelling, attitudes changed and most began seeking shelters. The high banks of the Klip River which looped around the town provided good protection; many dugout shelters were made and people spent their days there. Everyone slept in his own bed, for there was no shelling at night, and the evenings were often pleasantly spent in the company of friends, sometimes enjoying those immersions in sentimentality Victorians loved: singing “Swanee River,” “Home, Sweet Home,” and “Mother Come Back from the Echoless Shore.”
As in the other besieged towns, people collected shell fragments and duds. One young man, trying to open an unexploded shell, was blinded when the powder exploded in his face.
Amid the shelling life continued to spring anew. Although no records were kept of births among the Bantu and Indian population, among the whites the first siege baby born was Tinta Siege Redvers Moore “at a farm on a hill in the centre of the defensive works,” according to H. H. S. Pearse. Eight days after a son (still living) was born to the Willis family, shells from the Bulwana gun burst so close to the house that mother and child were placed on a stretcher and carried under fire to a shelter on the riverbank. Willis wrote to his brother:
When it became advisable to have the boy baptised we christened him Harry Buller Siege, being then daily in “suspectation” that General Buller’s forces would relieve the town.... He is a fine child, and has been almost entirely reared on Mellins’ food.... He was for a long time affected with convulsive symptoms owing to strain on the nerves due to the shell explosions, but is now seemingly getting over the affliction. His mother bore up most bravely and never evinced any nervousness under the peculiarly trying time and ordeal she underwent, and the other children showed no fear at any time, and generally looked on the whole business, notwithstanding many ghastly and harrowing sights and experiences, as a time of more or less fun and excitement.16
Of the babies born during the siege it would appear that few, if any, other than Buller Willis, survived infancy. Isabella Craw, writing of the death of one, said: “It was born in a cellar the first week the town was shelled so it had a short, sad, little existence.”
The Boers had a naïve confidence in the effectiveness of their fine new cannons in the early months of the war, but they did little damage. Pearse wrote on 17 December: “Though more than 5,000 shells have been thrown into our defensive lines, and a vast number of these into the town itself, only one woman has been wounded so far, and not a single child hit.”
That the bombardments were relatively harmless can be accounted for by the ease with which shelters could be made in the riverbanks and the leisurely, God-fearing working hours of the Boer gunners. Not only was there no shelling on Sunday or after dark, but the gunners regularly stopped to take their meals and the British could always count on a good undisturbed half hour for their tea while the Boers took their coffee. There were, however, occasional exceptions. When shells fell on the Naval Brigade one Sunday an exasperated captain declared, “That gunner is a German. Nobody but a German atheist would have fired on us at breakfast, lunch and dinner the same Sunday.”17
Many developed a contempt for the guns and their shells. Pearse saw a woman knitting on the stoep of her cottage “and her busy needles only stopped for a moment when a shell burst in the roadway beyond, and then went on again as nimbly as ever.”18 The telegraph and postal clerks, having nothing to do, played cricket on the race ground within sight of the guns on Bulwana ridge, and Colonel Rawlinson wrote:
I spent a few idle moments watching the Imperial Light Horse play cricket. They kept a man to watch Bulwana Tom, and when he saw the flash he shouted “Here she comes!” The batsman pretended to play the shell, when, to his astonishment, it landed on the pitch about three feet from him. The concussion knocked him down, but he was not a bit hurt.19
The Boer guns mounted on Pepworth, Bulwana, and other hills around the town became familiar objects, and the soldiers gave them names: Puffing Billy, Fiddling Jimmy, the Meddler, Bulwana Tom, and Silent Susan or the Bulwana Sneak (so called because the shell from this gun, a 6-inch Creusot, arrived before the report); three 9-pounders were dubbed Faith, Hope, and Charity; and it was said that soldiers of the Devonshire Regiment gave a Boer pompom “a coarse name.” The British also christened some of their own guns: Lady Ann and Bloody Mary were the names given two 4.7-inch guns, and a pair of howitzers on Wagon Hill were called the Great Twin Brethren.
On the Prince of Wales’s birthday, 9 November 1899, the British fired a twenty-one-gun salute with shotted guns and cheers ran thro
ugh the regiments. The perplexed Boers manned their defences, expecting an attack. On the same day White released one of his 160 carrier pigeons (trained by the Durban and Coast Poultry Club) with a congratulatory message to the Prince.
Perhaps because there were so few casualties from the shelling, each death seemed more poignant. On 17 December a single shell blew six Natal Carbineers to bits and wounded three others; five severed legs were seen on the ground. When the young Earl of Ava was killed a sergeant paid him tribute: “You’d never take him for a lord, he seemed quite a lice gentleman.”20 Richard Harding Davis wrote: “He was a particularly gay, lovable, manly nature and he was brave to the edge of recklessness. ... His father gave the city of Ava and all of Upper Burmah to the British Empire; his son gave his life. And in return the Empire gives him six feet of earth by the muddy waters of the Klip River.”21
Of the nearly 600 deaths during the siege, only 59 were the results of enemy shelling, while 393 were from enteric fever. Dysentery was rife both in Ladysmith and in the Boer laagers. When the Boers ran out of chlorodyne (a popular anodyne composed of chloroform, morphia, prussic acid, tincture of Indian hemp, and other substances) they begged some from the British, who provided not only the medicine but some brandy as well. The Boers repaid courtesy with courtesy, and when Major Doveton of the South African Light Horse, a former mine manager on the Rand, was wounded in the shoulder they escorted his wife through the lines so that she could be with him.
Joubert generously offered to allow the British to establish a neutral camp for the sick, wounded, and noncombatants outside Ladysmith at a place called Intombi Spruit. A public meeting was held by the townspeople on 4 November to debate this. Charles Jones, who had been a transport rider in the First Anglo-Boer War, spoke up and said that it seemed to him they should not accept favours from their foes.
“But your wife and children are not here now,” a man called out.
“No,” said Jones, “but I can still say that if my wife and children were here, I would rather that they should trust to protection under the Union Jack with British soldiers than under the white flag at Joubert’s mercy.”
Rhetoric carried the day. It was decided that Joubert’s offer should be rejected, and the meeting ended with three lusty cheers and a singing of “God Save the Queen.” Neither the meeting nor the resolution had any effect upon General White, who sensibly accepted the opportunity to put his sick, wounded, and noncombatants out of harm’s way. The Boers even allowed a train to travel between the camp and Ladysmith daily without interference. In addition to the sick, wounded, women, children, old men, and medical attendents, a number of able-bodied men also decided to wait out the siege in the safety of the Intombi Spruit camp, and it was sneeringly referred to in the town as Fort Funk or Funkersdorp. It was a matter of indifference to White, who made little use of the civilian manpower available; even the 273-man Town Guard was disbanded.
As the siege dragged on, the sickness rate rose alarmingly. On 10 February, the 101st day of the siege, Pearse noted that the “death rate at Intombi Hospital Camp has gone up to fifteen in a single day. Since the date of investment four hundred and eighty patients have died there from all causes.”22 The week of Spion Kop there were 842 cases of enteric and 472 cases of dysentery. During the course of the siege, out of a garrison of 13,497 there were 10,673 hospital admissions. Of the forty-eight doctors of the RAMC and the Indian Medical Service, five were killed or died of disease.
In the atmosphere of danger and tedium thievery flourished. Dr. Kay was most indignant:
I lost a hat, a pair of boots, a white sunshade, a cigar box containing surgical instruments, a gold collar-stud, and a pair of Ross field glasses lent to a so-called friend who through deliberate carelessness had them stolen and also several boxes of tea tabloids. The disease develops so rapidly and becomes so acute that one suspects one’s dearest friend, and in self defence one almost becomes a thief oneself.23
The good doctor who kept surgical instruments in a cigar box did indeed become a thief himself, for when he suspected a friend of stealing nine matches from him, he stole from him a can of candle drippings.
The siege was the greatest event in the life of Miss Isabella Craw. Nothing before had ever been so exciting; nothing after would be—and she knew it. She collected on a tablecloth the signatures of all the important people in town and embroidered them. (This is now in the Castle Museum in Cape Town.) And she did something quite extraordinary which she described in her diary on 18 January 1900:
I did an awful thing today which I am afraid I will many a time regret, and that is to have on my arm tatooed:
1899
Ladysmith
Pro Patria
1900
No one knows it yet. I hardly know how to break it to Momma and the boys for I know they will say I am very foolish, as a good many have already told me. ... However, it can’t be helped now it is done.
The Christmas of 1899, the first Christmas of the war, seemed somehow special, not only in Ladysmith but throughout South Africa and in England as well. The Boers fired six shells into Ladysmith stuffed with Christmas pudding instead of powder, and each was engraved in bold capital letters: WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON. One contained a note which said, “Come on out and fight you cowardly English,” which rather spoiled the effect. For the shell collectors these were prize curios, and the finders were offered £5 each for them.
Major Karri Davies and Colonel Frank Rhodes organized a Christmas party for the 250 children in town. The officers bought up all the toys in the shops and provided four Christmas trees, which the women of the town decorated. Each tree was given a name—“Great Britain,” “South Africa,” “Australia,” and “Canada”—and above them were the folds of the Union Jack. A hall was gaily decorated, and a trooper of the Imperial Light Horse played Father Christmas. General White attended and was amazed that so many children remained in Ladysmith. After the presents had been distributed and the children’s party ended, the trees were removed and the young officers danced with the women of the town until midnight. But the day was a sad one for many, as it often is for those who must spend it far from their own firesides; perhaps this was particularly so for the men in the ranks. Sergeant W. E. Danton of the 2nd Rifle Brigade wrote to “My dearest wife and all at home”:
I thought of you all on Christmas Day. Tell Mother and Dad I drank their health with water you would not wash clothes in. Our food was beef and water, bread for pudding.... I can’t tell when this will reach you, but I trust in God that I shall be spared to write again and, in a few months, take you and the boy in my arms and never separate no more.24
There was no firing on Christmas Day except for the pudding-filled shells. Looking through the naval telescopes, those in Ladysmith could see the Boers celebrating too, and a number of women—some fashionably dressed, it was noted—were seen walking over the Boer positions. Women who stayed home sent gifts to their men at the front: silk handkerchiefs, spurs, food. The wife of State Secretary Reitz organized a group of women to bake cakes and pastry for the fighting burghers.
England remembered her soldiers in South Africa, and commercial firms as well as individuals sent gifts: Messrs. Willis & Co. sent 250,000 cigarettes and Messrs. Lyons sent 10,000 Christmas puddings. Some senders, full of good will but ignorant of geography, sent unseasonable gifts: a Lancashire firm sent 2,000 woolen comforters, and many sweltering soldiers received lovingly knitted balaclavas. One present was valued by everyone: a gift from Queen Victoria herself of a tin box of chocolate to each of her “dear brave soldiers.” The box, designed by J. S. Fry & Sons of Bristol, carried the Queen’s portrait and was bound with red, white, and blue ribbon. Every soldier in South Africa and on the high seas was to receive one, and the men had to sign receipts for them. An officer on board the hospital transport Nubia said: “The presentation of the Queen’s chocolate to the poor wounded chaps was a very pleasant but pathetic function. I wish Her Majesty could have seen the gl
eam of joy it brought to many a despondent sufferer.”25
The boxes were indeed valued highly. Some men refused £5 for theirs; two boxes auctioned at Christie’s in London were knocked down at £5 5s and £4 10s. Many sent the boxes home to wives, mothers, and sweethearts. A widow in Cheshire received her son’s chocolate together with a letter telling of his death and burial. Some of the empty tins are still to be found among the treasured heirlooms of the soldiers’ descendants.
Private James Humphrey of the 2nd Royal Lancaster Regiment credited the Queen’s chocolate tin with saving his life and asked that it be sent to the Queen. This was done, a doctor testifying that “had the bullet not been stopped by the chocolate, it would undoubtedly have passed through this structure into the abdomen, and have caused a fatal wound.” Sir Arthur Bigge, the principal medical officer, sent the tin of chocolate with the bullet still in it to the Queen with a note saying, “Your Majesty would doubtless wish another box to be sent to Private Humphrey.”
Boxing Day was not on the Boer calendar of holidays, and so the day after Christmas they resumed the war; the shells sent into Ladysmith were again filled with powder.
In early January 1900 the Boers made their only serious effort to crack the British defences when they launched an assault on a two-and-a-half-mile-long ridge known as the Platrand, located across the Klip River just south of the town. A hill stood at either end of the ridge: the larger, on the east, was named by the British Caesar’s Camp, and the other, on the west, Wagon Hill. Ian Hamilton, in charge of the defences on the Platrand, had only a thousand men, and these he concentrated in several small forts with gun pits and minor works between them.
Great Boer War Page 33