Forage is a big difficulty just now. The military give us doctors a forage allowance, dry mealies principally, but nearly all the cabs have stopped for want of forage for the horses, and the trams are going to be stopped next week, I hear. There are no horses for the milk or bread carts; everybody has to fetch his own. Presently there will be no carts in the place except the military ones, the doctors', and the hearse.
At last (January 10th) we have begun to feel the siege a little more acutely. On Monday the people who went for meat were told that they could only take half their allowance in beef; the other half must be taken in horseflesh or else gone without. Lots of people went without. We are not compelled to kill horses just yet, but as forage has become so scarce, plenty of horses which are now in fair condition must be turned out on the veldt, and there they will soon become very poor. The authorities therefore very wisely decided that they had better be eaten before this happened, and so started to kill them off.
Somehow one does not quite relish the idea of eating horse, but it must be simply because one has not been used to doing so. The horse is a clean enough feeder, and ought to be all right. Monday was not my meat day, but I went along on Tuesday and took my whack of horseflesh like the rest. By the way, I had managed for the first time on that day to get a meat ticket which allowed me to go in at the exit door and get my allowance at once without waiting. I had not before tried to do so, as I did not want to take an unfair advantage; but I found that a few people were getting these tickets who had certainly not such good reasons for wanting them as I had, so I waded in and got one too. I brought my chunk of horse home, and that night we had it for dinner. If I had not known what it was, I am sure I should not have known it from beef. It was tender and good enough for anything, but all the same it took some pushing down, and I did not take a second helping. I guess I am not hungry enough yet.
January 14th.—There is a very good yarn going around about the horseflesh; I don't know whether it is true or not, but it ought to be. Colonel Peakman, who is in command of all the mounted men here—Cape Police, Diamond Fields Horse, and Kimberley Light Horse—is the hero. The first day horse was served out, some of it was cooked for the officers' mess at the mounted camp. At the table Peakman said: "Gentlemen, I am sorry to say that we were unable to get all our ration in beef to-day and had to take part of it in horseflesh. This which I am carving is beef, the horse is at the other end, and any one who prefers it can help himself." Nobody did prefer it, and so they all ate beef and made a good dinner. When they had finished, Peakman suddenly said: "By Jove! gentlemen, I find I have made a mistake in the joints; this is the horseflesh and the other is the beef." It was just a dodge of his to get them started on the horseflesh. Since writing about our own experience of horseflesh we have had two more lots, both times steak, and this is as good as any one can want. It does not taste quite like beef, but is very good; even Agnes enjoyed it to-day.
All the week there has been a little shelling at intervals in the daytime, but nothing much. News of the column is scarce—in fact, we have given up thinking about it, and go along letting the evil of the day be sufficient for it, and you bet it is.
The talk all day is of food, and of the permits necessary to get it. The milk business has changed hands now. I think I told you the colonel was talking of commandeering all the fresh milk for infants and invalids, but he decided not to. Instead he has handed over the administration of the milk to a civil committee consisting of Mr. Judge, the Mayor (Mr. Oliver), Dr. Stoney, Dr. Mackenzie, Dr. Watkins, and myself. How I came to be there I don't know, but there I am.
A central depot has been taken for the issue of the milk, and we have been trying to get people, both dealers and private people, to send their milk to this depot. This has been done by publishing an appeal to all people who are strong and well to give up using milk, so that infants and sick folk may get it. We have given up ours now, and many people have done the same. The milk is served out at the depot, but only to those who have a medical certificate that they require it. The military hand over one case (forty-eight tins) of condensed milk a day to us, and tell us that we need not ask for any more, as we shall not get it. This tinned milk is issued in the same way—only on medical certificates.
After the first day's work we found that the demand so far exceeded the supply that to give everybody a chance we should have to make the quantity issued to each very small, so we cut down the fresh milk to half a bottle a day, and the condensed to one tin a week for each person, irrespective of age or illness or anything. This worked well as far as the fresh milk was concerned, but as one hundred and forty-four applied for tins, our forty-eight did not nearly meet the requirement. Tinned milk is more popular than fresh for several reasons: many babies can't take fresh at all, a tin is supposed to go farther than seven half-bottles, and saves sugar besides, and a tin has only to be fetched once a week, whilst the fresh needs fetching every day. Of course the quantities are quite insufficient, but we hope to get on better and be able to give larger quantities of fresh milk in a few days' time. The tinned milk problem is hopeless unless we succeed in persuading people who are now getting tins to take fresh milk, and for the reasons above given I don't think there is much hope of that.
Of course the dealers who send in their milk are paid for it, and the people who get orders for it have to pay at a little under the price given to the dealers, but as the De Beers Company sends a big lot of milk free, there is a profit on the whole thing enough for working expenses, and also to allow a certain amount to be given away to poor people who need it.
This is the first time we have been allowed to do anything at all by the military. One day this week I had to write to the colonel about some red-tape difficulties which the Army doctor had put in the way of people getting their food, and I suggested to him very circumspectly that in matters which affected the health and feeding of the people, we all thought that we doctors who knew the town, the climate, and the people might be advantageously consulted. He was very nice, and saw at once that my objection to the red-tape difficulty was sound, and so he altered the routine, but he flatly declined to ask any opinion from the general body of the doctors, as they might have ideas which would "affect the military situation." This is the stock answer to everything.
I believe food (cheese) has been stored until it has gone bad, as if it were issued, it would "affect the military situation." One is often very much tempted to say, "Oh, damn the military situation; let us have a little common sense for a change." The colonel blarneyed me a bit all the same. He said that he should always be glad to talk over medical questions with a single sensible man like myself, but he could not be badgered by all the doctors at once.
Later on in the day he ran across me, and did consult with me over the scurvy amongst the natives. Usually the natives in the compounds get fruit and vegetables enough to prevent their getting scurvy, but since we have had to depend on ourselves for fruit and vegetables the supply has fallen very far short of the demand, and of course the native supply has gone to a large extent to the Europeans. As a consequence, heaps of them have developed scurvy. Nine hundred is the number now on hand.
Gardner Williams had consulted me on the same point earlier in the day. The problem was what we could give the natives, as there was practically no lime juice and no vegetables at all, and they must have vegetable stuff of some kind, or they would all die. I worried over the thing all day, trying to think of something that grew in sufficient quantity and yet was not used by Europeans, and at last I think I struck it.
You have somewhere a small photo, which I sent you when I was at the hospital, of Bishop and myself standing by a clump of those big aloes—they are not really aloes; it is a wrong name, but they are always called so. There are heaps of them all over the town, as they make a very good fence. Now I remembered that in Mexico the natives make a drink of the juice of these things by letting it ferment, so I did not see why the fresh juice should not be used as a vegetable drink for these scurvy boys. And by-and-by I struck a better idea still, and that was to give them the fresh green shoots from the vines. There are many useless shoots on a vine which are cut off to prevent it running too much to wood. When young they are soft and succulent, like the young shoots of a rose-tree, but are refreshingly acid, like sorrel, and I think they should do splendidly. The Company has thousands of vines at Kenilworth, and so they have the medicine (if it turns out to be so) ready to their hands. I told Williams and the colonel these ideas, and they started right away on the vine shoots. The boys like them immensely, and eat them readily. I hope it will be a success, as I shall get some kudos if it is, and the natives will get better. The aloe juice will perhaps be tried later, if the supply of the other stuff should give out.
The native question has been, and is still, a very serious one. At the beginning of the siege we had a good many thousand natives in the compounds—quite fifteen thousand, I should think. Of course these needed an enormous amount of food, and when the siege began to be prolonged, various efforts were made to get rid of them. One big body was sent out early in November, and was promptly sent back by the Boers; but latterly they have been sent out in smaller numbers, and either the Boers are afraid to molest them or they manage to dodge the Boers.
Report says that the Boers are taking them over and either using them to make their entrenchments or to work the mines in Johannesburg. It is rather a sell, if the natives we send out are used to build forts for guns to bombard us; but a native chief I know of here says that the Boers dare not touch his people, as his great chief (Lerothodi, the Basuto head chief) has forty thousand men, well armed, at his command, and would tackle the Free State at once if his subjects were molested.
Perhaps you will wonder why the British don't turn the Basutos on to the Free State. I suppose if the Basutos got the better of the Dutch, they would then tackle the English, for though they like the English much better than the Dutch, if they once got fighting I do not expect they would discriminate between one white and another, especially as they have never been really beaten.
I think there is no doubt the Boers have put up more forts around us, and we are daily expecting more bombarding; this time probably on a larger scale. It has been rumoured all the last week that the new bombardment was to begin next day, but so far it has not commenced. The longer it is put off, the better we shall be pleased, for many reasons. De Beers' are making a big gun, and seem to think that it will be satisfactory; it will carry about a thirty-pound shell, and if anything like successful, should have a range nearly twice that of any gun we have at present. Our gunners seem to be much better shots than the Boers', so we hope they will be able to amuse themselves and instruct the Boers with the new gun, which is expected to be ready in about a week.
One of our men—in fact, he is the builder who built this house—is reported to have done a splendid shot one day last week. The cattle go out a little way to graze, with a strong body of mounted men as a guard, but this guard seems to be placed on the Kimberley side of the cattle. On the other side of the cattle a number of crack rifle shots are scattered behind stones or whatever cover they can get, and they just pot away gently at any Boer within range. The Boers have a similar lot of "snipers" out. Our man is said to have bowled a Boer sniper over at over two thousand yards' range. I hope it is so, for the Boers don't like any other people to do good shooting.
By the way, I think I have forgotten to tell you of our last military order. This came out some time ago, and is that all lights have to be put out at 9.30 p.m. This is to make people careful of their paraffin and candles, whether they like it or not. Of course some permits are allowed, and, equally of course, I have one, as I often read after going to bed. The rule is not rigidly enforced in case of illness, but people have to show evidence that there is illness in the house if so required.
January 21st.—The great event of the week has been the completion and trial of the new gun. Here I was interrupted, and have had no further chance to write until now (January 26th), and in the meantime we have had so much to think about that we have not worried about the big gun. On the morning of Wednesday (the 24th) the Boers began to shell us again quite early in the morning, and we soon found that it was quite different from the shelling we had had before. The shells came from all sides, and, as we found out later, at least eight guns were at work. None of them were bigger than they used before, but they were either better guns or better worked and had better ammunition, for they reached every part of the town, except one small area near the De Beers mine.
January 28th.—Busy again till now. Most of the shells are of the kind we are used to, just like those we had in the first bombardment; but a good many were also the shrapnel, which I told you about before, and which are very much more dangerous. The bombardment went on all the 24th, all that night, and all the 25th until about 9.30 p.m., and then pretty well stopped, though a few shells came in on the 26th, but nothing to hurt. I suppose this even has been child's play to the bombardment of Mafeking, but it has been quite bad enough. During the two days, about eight hundred shells were fired in The hottest time was, as usual, from about 3 a.m. to 8 a.m., and again late in the afternoon, especially down in Beaconsfield at the latter time. Previously no shells had quite reached us, but they have been all round us this time. We did not bother much about them on Wednesday morning, though we could hear the whiz pretty distinctly and then the report, which showed they were not far away. Just as we were sitting down to breakfast, one whizzed past, apparently very near to the house end, and burst close by, only about a hundred and fifty yards away. Our house is almost directly between the place it dropped and the Dutch gun, so it must have gone very close to us. It was a shrapnel, and it is just as well it missed us.
After this, things quieted down a little, and I don't think any more came quite as close to us. Oh yes, one dropped about a hundred yards from the same end of the house, and wrecked a house just at the back of the military office where all the work is done, but no one was hurt. When I got to the office, at 8.30 a.m., Mackenzie told me he had been fetched out to see a girl who had been killed by one. She had been in one of the shellproof pits, and came out and was dressing in her room, thinking that the danger was over, but a shell came along and burst, and a big piece of it struck her in the back, breaking her spine and almost cutting her in half. Fortunately it killed her instantly. This was the only casualty that day. There were heaps of hairbreadth escapes, but no one else was touched, so far as I know.
One shell went through Rudd's house. He is the son of C. D. Rudd, who has been associated with Rhodes very much in some of his big schemes. He took his family away when war seemed likely, and stored a good deal of his furniture in one room. This was the room into which the shell went, and it made, hay of the furniture. Another went through a patient's house into a bedroom and fell under a baby's cot, but it did not explode. Another exploded under the bed in which was an Indian woman who had been confined only four days. It burst and set the bedding on fire, but did not hurt mother or child; and another came into the same house later in the day without hurting any one. Another came through the chimney of a patient's house and burst upon the open hearth, and the woman herself in another room did not know about it till a neighbour came and told her. There had been lots of shells about there, and the noise did not seem greater than that of some of those just close by.
The De Beers big gun kept pounding away in answer to all this, but was only one against eight or nine, and, being quite new, the men were not used to her, and could not do much. We heard a day or two after this that one of her shells killed three Boers. More power to her! I wish it had been three thousand.
In the afternoon I usually take Agnes out with me most of the time, so I told her I had to go round into several of the places where the shells were coming pretty thick, and suggested that she had better stay at home. She, however, is very plucky, and does not worry about the shells a bit, so she said she would come the same as usual, for if a shell hit me, it might as well hit her too. We went along all round and did the work, but several shells came within a hundred yards of us. Wherever we went they seemed to follow us round.
In Beaconsfield, the gun with which they are trying to hit Rhodes and the Sanatorium dropped a shell fairly near us, and we picked a big chunk of it up in the main road a few minutes after, still hot. This gun gives Beaconsfield, and the main road leading from Kimberley past the Sanatorium to Beaconsfield, a very warm time. Several shells have dropped into the main road—one just in front of a tram full of people, one into the Sanatorium grounds, one right over it and through the canteen used by the Volunteers guarding it— without hurting any one. One went through an outhouse on Ruffel's grounds. (Mrs. R. and Katie are in Cape Town.) Several fell just outside the hospital, and one dropped in the Catholic Orphanage grounds.
This gun kept at it at intervals all Wednesday night, and some of the others chimed in now and then. We went to bed as usual, for our special guns seemed quiet, and we slept till about 4 a.m. Then something woke me, and I heard two shells go over the house, or very close by, and burst somewhere quite near. Our house faces the gun that fires these shells, so we concluded that downstairs was better than upstairs. I took our mattresses down into the hall and put them on the floor by the hatstand, where the wall is thickest, and was just going to turn in when the Mayor came to fetch me to see his wife. I went along to his house, and found the shells dropping very close there, but fortunately the patient did not know they were so near, and so was not nervous. The Mayor sent me home in his own cart.
At my door I found a policeman who wanted me to go and see a family who had been smashed up by a shell. I drove straight off to the house he mentioned, and found two poor little children badly hurt. They were not in their own house, but just across the street where they had been carried. One, aged six, had his shoulder shattered and the whole side of his head and face torn open, besides other wounds; the other, a year or two younger, had an arm and a leg both broken badly, and several wounds in the chest. I put them both into the cart and sent them straight oft to the hospital, and was then told that the mother was in her own house, also badly hurt. I went across and found her lying on the floor with her leg wrapped up in a towel. An ambulance man was there, who said he had just fastened it up and that it was a beastly wound. I sent the mounted policeman for the ambulance and told the man to bring her along to the hospital when the ambulance arrived. Another child was just grazed with a splinter of the shell.
They were all (mother and six children) just ready to begin breakfast when the shell came and burst right in the middle of them. The father is a Volunteer, and was away at one of the camps. It is queer that he is said to be a prominent member of the Bond and has all along said the Boers were in the right. Whether he thinks so now, I don't know.
I went straight off to the hospital and tackled the worst-hurt child. The arm was hopelessly injured, and I had to take it off at the shoulder joint. The head injury was a jagged wound from above and behind the ear to the corner of the mouth, turning the ear down on to the neck, breaking the jaw in two places, and just ploughing up all the side of the face. There was also a big wound on the other arm, and a fair-sized one on the hip. The wonder and the pity was that the poor little chap was not killed outright. I fixed him up as well as I could, expecting him to die under my hands all the time, but he lived about three hours.
Watkins turned up while I was busy; he took on the other child, and I turned to, as soon as I was free, and fixed up the mother. She had all the fleshy part of the calf ripped up right to the bone, and the wound went down to the heel. I was very doubtful whether I ought not to take the leg off there and then, but there seemed a possible chance of saving it, so I fixed it up as well as I could and awaited developments. She was a rather flabby individual who had only been confined three weeks, so the developments soon turned up. Forty-eight hours after, the leg was beginning to go gangrenous, and I took it off above the knee. To-day, seventy-two hours after, she is better than she has been yet, but is not by any means out of the wood yet. And this is what the Boers call fair play!
Of the previous bombardment their commandant wrote to his chiefs that he directed his guns to the middle of the town to do as much damage as possible, and this is their aim again now. They must know that almost all the men are in the forts, and that very few people except women and children are left in the town, and yet they fire, not at the forts, but into the town. I have no doubt they will say they fired at the forts and their shells went too far, but we shall not believe that.
All that day the shelling went on until about 9.30 p.m., and since then we have had practically none. Twice that afternoon I very narrowly escaped a shell. At one house I called at, I was talking on the verandah for some time, and within twenty minutes of that a shell fell into the garden between the verandah and the road, not ten feet from where I had been; and again, I had just gone across to the Market Square at Beaconsfield and got to the corner, when a shell fell just where I had crossed not one minute before.
No one can imagine the relief it was when the shelling ceased. It is not altogether a question of fear, but the knowledge that wherever you are, a shell may drop on you at any moment, and that you have to do your work all the same, does not much exhilarate you. I suppose if a doctor gets killed on duty, his patients will promptly say what a fool he was to come out, but if he stays at home, they say he is a cowardly cur for doing so. Any stick is good enough to whack a doctor with.
To-day (Sunday) I don't think a shot has been fired on either side, but there are heaps of rumours as to what is in store for us tomorrow. More guns, bigger guns, and closer to us, is what most of the rumours amount to, but no one will know whether there is any truth in them till to-morrow. Nearly all the town has been busy building shellproof shelters, but we have decided not to do so. Our house is pretty solid, and unless they bring very big guns to bear upon us, we are only liable to be reached by the shells that come from the long side of the house, in the direction in which most of the windows face. If we keep in the bottom story and in the hall, I do not think we can be damaged. All the shells that have burst, did it in the first room they came to, and the pieces only went through into the second if the wall was very flimsy. Our walls are good and solid, so I think we should be pretty well all right in the hall, either where the bookcase is or at the other end by the hatstand.
The shellproof places are ghastly little dog-holes—like the Black Hole of Calcutta in most cases. Some of the rich people have put up good ones, double layers of sand-bags built up on their verandahs to a decent height, and roofed either with sheet steel or old railway iron or thick deals with plenty of sandbags on the top of them; and in these there has been some attempt at ventilation; but the poorer people have dug holes in their yards or gardens and roofed them with anything that came handy, and then either just sandbags or the loose earth out of the hole was put on top. In these you can't stand up, and there is no ventilation at all, so I guess they would be about as deadly as the Boer shells; but lots of people seem to find comfort in being in them. One woman I know fled into hers early on the Wednesday morning, and never came out till late Friday-afternoon; but she is the one who had a shell through her house in the first bombardment (and who gave us a piece of it), so she was likely to be timid.
