TOPIC:

1900 - Mafeking siege day 198 (91%).

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

Nothing doing. Preparing for the tournament to-morrow. My Kaffir wishes to go and join Plumer. He doesn't approve of the food supply of Mafeking. I thought I should never get rid of him. Thank goodness the brute has gone now. He has been a sort of "old man of the sea" to me. I only kept him because he appeared generally in small health, but when he flung his rations into the middle of the square yesterday, I thought it was high time for him to be off. The last few days the enemy has been more busy on the northeastern front, and established themselves in a sniping trench seven hundred yards from our advanced trench, and made themselves rather a nuisance. We, however, made it so warm for them that they are concluded to have withdrawn, but everywhere else, since the 25th, they have been fairly quiet.

1900 - Wepener

From the diary of Lance Corporal Luke Gormley, 1st Royal Scots, at Wepener

Apr 28th

The troops are resting after our hard work. The list of casualties during the siege was 198. The smell of rotting carcases of horses and bullocks killed by Boer shells is awful and they are lying about in hundreds so that we will soon have to move or half of us will be down with fever in our present weak condition