From the diary of William Watson, Ladysmith, February 1900:
Filthy, rotten, mealie meal bread again. We can not, and we will not eat it. — Buller was shelling Bulwan all yesterday afternoon. He is at it again this morning. I don’t think he will do much execution. I have no faith in the big guns. We expect to be released today, or tomorrow. It’s high time we were, for we are getting like skeletons, and as weak as children. We are being poisoned by having to eat rotten bread, utterly unfit for human food. It seems to me, it was the first duty both of White arid Buller, to see to the victualling of the town, since it was by the inefficiency of the army, our railways, bridges, and waterworks have been destroyed. This was not the fault of the soldiers, but of the Imperial government, which left us with a force of 6,000 men to fight 50,000 of the best marksmen in the world, aided by the best cannon and gunners of the continental armies.—The mayor has just sent a printed circular, ordering all eggs to be sent to the town office, for the sick in the hospital. If this is not done, every person’s fowls will be seized, by order of the general. We have about ten fowls, but only two of them lay. This is tyranny with a vengeance. The soldiers have stolen nearly all the fowls in the town, and now we are farther robbed by the general. All through the war, we have been worse treated by our own soldiers, than the rebels would have treated us. I have learned more about soldiers within the last six months, than I ever knew before, and my conviction is they are thieves, from the general to the drummer boy, and looked upon what they call civilians as infinitely beneath them, and only to be plundered and made use offer the benefit of the army. — Dunton’s fine new store, smashed by a shell yesterday. — No more tobacco, so I have to take to dried leaves from the peach trees, as a substitute.
