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1900 - Mafeking siege day 187 (86%). Wepener siege day 9 (53%). Formation of Mafeking relief column under Colonel Mahon ordered.

1900 - Mafeking - A diary of the siege by Major F D Baillie

The question of firewood and indeed all fuel has of late been a somewhat serious one to Mafeking, and as the cold season is coming on or rather is beginning, increases in importance daily, consequently Mafeking has had to sacrifice its scanty supply of trees. Probably the residents in their vicinity wish, if they had to be cut down, it had been done at the commencement of the siege, for it seems as if the Boer artillery when having no mark in particular but the town in general had mainly aimed at the trees, at any rate, when they were merely idly shelling the majority of shells fell in their neighbourhood. It will, I fear, put the general appearance of the town back for some years.

With the exception of perfunctory shelling in the brickfields, we have had a quiet day and the big gun is still absent. Indeed, now so far have our outlying trenches been pushed that except from the big gun and quick-firers,, we experience but little annoyance in the town itself. During the last week our runners have-been most successfully stopped, but before this we have been fortunate enough to get London papers three months old, and the Court House-has been turned into a reading-room, where the papers are daily eagerly devoured by all conditions of men and women too. Everybody at home seems very pleased with Mafeking,. and we here feel really proud of the way our fellows are fighting in the South and the way everybody is turning up to fight. It should be a fine object-lesson to the Continentals. In many ways they must have had a more amusing time than we have had and fighting on a much larger scale, for this sort of fighting after the first two months is about the dullest sort of entertainment you can well imagine: they so hopelessly overwhelm us in artillery that we cannot get out to have a go at them. Indeed, any sortie must resolve itself into storming one of their forts which we are not strong enough to do, and so the forts on either side face each other, fire at each other, but otherwise leave each other severely alone; and outside their zone of fire their artillery takes up whatever position it thinks fit and shells whatever portion of defences or town it feels inclined to. One advantage in a long dragging performance like this is that neither side seems in any particular hurry and a very wet day generally means a certain immunity from fire. Yesterday we had a heavy thunderstorm, and the first flash of lightening exploded one of our mines in front of the brickfields simultaneously with the thunderclap. I felt the ground shake and thought it was a particularly heavy clap of thunder. The mine which was charged with ten pounds of captured nitro-glycerine blew a tremendous hole in the ground, and was, generally speaking, a great success, so what would have happened had their carefully prepared two hundred and fifty pound mine gone off, or what would have been left of Mafeking, I do not like to think. The mine is now recharged and repaired, but I am afraid the Boers have a nasty suspicious disposition which will prevent them from sampling it.

The Cadet Corps have been lately doing their messages mounted on donkeys captured from the Boers. Like the other mounted corps, however, their ranks are gradually being depleted for the soup kitchen. This corps is formed of all the boys of Mafeking, ranging from nine years upwards. It does all the foot orderly work, thereby sparing several more men for the trenches, and is dressed in khaki with "smasher" hats and a yellow puggarree. It is commanded by a youth, Sergeant-Major Goodyear, the son of Captain Goodyear, who was wounded in the brickfields, and is directly supervised by Lord Edward Cecil. It drills regularly, and the boys are wonderfully smart.

Our acetylene search lights on the principle of the duplex heliograph repeat the signals from a central station to the stations all round the outposts, and answer very well. These and all the signalling arrangements are under the charge of Sergeant-Major Moffatt, late Carbineers, who has been very successful on several occasions in tapping the Boers' helio messages. He has also invented a new acetylene signalling lamp, which he has patented, and which he claims can be worked (instead of the helio) on a cloudy day as well as at night. From what I have seen of the lamp I think his claims are well founded.

1900 - From the diary of 2nd Lieutenant Nigel K Charteris, Royal Scots, at Wepener

17th April. Railed all last night. I lay in an inch of water all night and, as it is raining today, there is not much change of getting dry. Seel and I who are sharing the same trench are both wet through. We sit outside our trenches to eat our food at night but very often we have to jump into them again as the Boers often send us a volley or a shell after dark to let us know they are still there. Food is brought to use after dark every night.