Image from page 80 of “Besieged by the Boers : a diary of life and events in Kimberly during the siege” (1900)
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Identifier: besiegedbyboersd00ashe
Title: Besieged by the Boers : a diary of life and events in Kimberly during the siege
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors: Ashe, Evelyn Oliver
Subjects: South African War, 1899-1902 Kimberley (South Africa) — History Siege, 1899-1900
Publisher: London : Hutchinson & Co.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN
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veral Boers were slain. But our men wereat a disadvantage, as they always were in thesesorties, for all round the town the bush hadbeen cleared and the Boers could see themcoming, and take cover and wait till they gotwithin range, and then blaze away. If theycould have plucked up courage to attack thetown, our men would have been under coverand the Boers in the open, but that is not thesort of game they care for. As one old Dutch-woman said to me, The Dutch are verydetermined. Very determined not to gethurt, I suppose you mean, was my answer. None of us liked these sorties, as theyexposed our men too much, but the Boerswould not give us a chance to get at them,so we had to make a chance now and then toprevent them getting too cheeky. Nothing else happened until the 14th, whenthere were rumours of an ultimatum from theBoer commandant to Colonel Kekewich, givinghim twenty-four hours in which to surrenderthe town, or he would bombard it. At thetime we hardly beheved this, but later on it
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Ube Bombardment Begins 51 turned out to have been quite true, as ina Dutch paper which came off one of theprisoners whom our men took one day lateron, there was the full text of the commandantsletter and Kekewichs reply. The latter wasto the effect that if the commandant wantedKimberley, he had better come and take it, andfurther, that as the Boers had been using thewhite flag for improper purposes, if any onecame fooling around with a white flag in future,he would probably get hurt, as all the officershad orders to fire on all white flags now. This was because the Boers, with their usualdeceit, had been using the white flag to getinto better cover, and to take other unfairadvantage of us. In the first fight they senta white flag out, and when one of our menwent out to it to parley, the Dutchman askedhow many men there were out on our side, werethey police, or Volunteers, or Regulars, andmany such impertinent questions. Naturallyour man told him to go to the devil andfind out, but the
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