BOER WAR / PAGE 2

War was declared on 11 October 1899 and the Boers struck first by invading Cape Colony and Natal Colony between October 1899 and January 1900. This was followed by some early Boer military successes against General Redvers Buller. The Boers were able to besiege the towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking (defended by troops headed by Colonel Robert Baden-Powell), and Kimberley.

Siege life took its toll on both the defending soldiers and the civilians in the cities of Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley as food began to grow scarce after a few weeks. In Mafeking, Sol Plaatje wrote, "I saw horseflesh for the first time being treated as a human foodstuff." The cities under siege also dealt with constant artillery bombardment, making the streets a dangerous place. Near the end of the siege of Kimberley, it was expected that the Boers would intensify their bombardment, so a notice was displayed encouraging people to go down into the mines for protection. The townspeople panicked, and people flowed into the mineshafts constantly for a 12-hour period. Although the bombardment never came, this did nothing to diminish the distress of the civilians. In Kimberley many of the towns people, now under siege, sheltered in the local convent, now the Mcgregor museum. Since the mining that occurred there, for diamonds, was open air, the people were not able to shelter in mine shafts. The mine is now known as the Big Hole, a popular tourist attraction in the area.

The middle of December proved difficult for the British army. In a period known as Black Week (10-15 December 1899), the British suffered a series of devastating losses at Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Colenso. At the Battle of Stormberg on 10 December, British General Sir William Gatacre, who was in command of 3,000 troops protecting against Boer raids in Cape Colony, tried to recapture a railway junction about 50 miles south of the Orange River. But Gatacre chose to assault the Orange Free State Boer positions surmounting a precipitous rock face in which he lost 135 killed and wounded, as well as two guns and over 600 troops captured. At the Battle of Magersfontein on 11 December, 14,000 British troops, under the command of Lieutenant-General Lord Methuen, attempted to fight their way to relieve Kimberley. The Boer commanders, Koos de la Rey and Piet Cronje, devised a plan to dig trenches in an unconventional place to fool the British and to give their riflemen a greater firing range. The plan worked. The British were decisively defeated, suffering the loss of 120 British soldiers killed and 690 wounded, which prevented them from relieving Kimberley and Mafeking. But the nadir of Black Week was the Battle of Colenso on 15 December where 21,000 British troops, under the command of Redvers Buller, attempted to cross the Tugela River to relieve Ladysmith where 8,000 Transvaal Boers, under the command of Louis Botha, were awaiting them. Through a combination of artillery and accurate rifle fire, the Boers repelled all British attempts to cross the river. The British had a further 1,126 casualties, and lost 10 artillery pieces to the Boers during the ensuing retreat. The Boer forces suffered 40 casualties.