1900 - Diary of the siege of Mafeking by Edward Ross
15 May
The whole of the garrison, women and children as well, have been on the look-out all day for that relief column, on tops of houses, chimneys, up ladders, etc., and any point of vantage from which they could see a good distance, but as yet no sign. There is no humbug this time; we certainly know that they are not far away, but we are all so anxiously waiting that the minutes seem like hours - days. The Colonel says they cannot possibly be in before tomorrow, but as he is continually on top of his look-out watching every move, it makes us all the more anxious. Suddenly you will hear a man shout, "There’s a cloud of dust away down there the other side the river,” and immediately there is a rush to the topmost brick and all glasses are levelled at the object which always turns out to be a party of the enemy moving about. Another man will shout out, "Here they come,” another break-neck rush, and the little dust probably forms itself into a small tailing dust whirlwind and gradually disperses in the sky. But still they are coming. Oh yes, we know that! Heaven and earth, let alone Boers, would not stop them now they are so close.
Talking about reliefs, how many are we supposed to have had? First Lord Methuen from the south many months ago, then Plumer from the north, then again somebody from the south, next Carrington from the north and so on alternating every week I should think at least 20 times, the hope always illusory but still we keep up. Then kind hopes and gracious messages from the Queen, then likewise from Lord Roberts, all these I suppose helped to keep our pecker up, and in the meantime we have economised our ammunition as much as possible, shortened our rations, endured the hardships of bombardments, sniping, storm, wet and intense heat of an African sun and finally fought to a finish. For what? I think for what the nation expected us to do, "Keep the flag flying.” These were our orders and I think we have obeyed them.
I have now managed to get a total list of the Boer casualties on the day of Eloff’s capture. They lost 109 prisoners including 7 officers and 19 wounded. They also had 17 dead which we have since returned to the enemy. Snyman wrote saying that, including this information, he is still about 70 men missing. Well I can give him news about some of them. As a matter of fact our natives got amongst a small crowd of them in the native village, and using their small wood-chopping axes soon made mincemeat of them and the pieces of them may now be found in the river. All this is of course kept private, but it is said it was impossible to withstrain [sic] the natives once they got amongst them, as they said they were only doing to the Boer what the Boers had done to them and their women. We have also had a good haul of rifles and ammunition, the former numbering about 120.
Molema (the native chief) and his boys went out last night on a little raiding trip. They surprised one of the smaller Boer forts, drove the enemy out and returned home, bringing 2 bags of Boer meal, a quantity of dried meat and a lot [of] pots, pans, kettles, etc.
I’ll bet 50 to 1 everybody is out and about tomorrow morning long before daylight, in fact, most people will I think sit up all night thinking and talking about things.
