A West Pointer with the Boers: $b personal narrative of Colonel J. Y. F. Blake, commander of the Irish brigade — John Shaqi
A West Pointer with the Boers: $b personal narrative of Colonel J. Y. F. Blake, commander of the Irish brigadeBlake, John Y. Fillmore
History
A West Pointer with the Boers: $b personal narrative of Colonel J. Y. F. Blake, commander of the Irish brigade
Blake, John Y. Fillmore
South African War, 1899-1902
The whole day, however, was to the Boer something like a day of sports,
for they had enjoyed themselves chasing the Lancers about the valley
as so many springboks. When night came, it was terribly dark, and now
it was that Colonel Yule and his 6,000 men, armed with cold British
steel, took advantage of the only outlet to the south and made their
escape to Ladysmith, some thirty miles away. During the battle with
Lucas Meyer, General Penn-Symons was killed, and Colonel Yule succeeded
him. For this masterly escape of Colonel Yule and 6,000 men from about
1,000 Boers at Dundee, the English proclaimed to the world their great
victory, and promoted Yule to the rank of Major-General. In any other
army he would have been put aside in disgrace. I am not sure whether
he received a Victoria Cross or not, but if he didn't he certainly
deserved one. On the following day Dundee surrendered, with about 250
officers and wounded men, and almost an equal number of prisoners.
Enough food and ammunition fell into our hands to provide our command
for many months. The English, as usual, after one of their great
victories, had forgotten to bury the dead who had fallen at Talana Hill
two days before, in the fight with Lucas Meyer; they had dug a shallow
pit and thrown in some of them.
But when we arrived, their hands and feet and stomachs were protruding
above its surface and presented a most revolting scene. Thirty-nine
dead bodies were left unburied, and the savage Boer gave them decent
interment. It was near this very spot that, two days beforehand, the
English, on getting possession of Dr. Van Der Merwe and his ambulance,
tied ropes about his neck, and the necks of his Red Cross assistants,
and then, having fastened the ropes to their wagons, dragged them off
as prisoners of war.
Mr. Englishman can't deny this, but he may lie about it. Something else
fell into our hands here, something that has caused Mr. Chamberlain to
tell many a falsehood to the world. We captured thousands of dum-dum
bullets and split bullets, and gave plenty of them to the different
foreign consuls. I had the pleasure of supplying the whole Irish
Brigade with these dum-dum bullets and split bullets, and the English
Lee-Metford rifles captured at Dundee. The Boers thought it a pity
to waste them also, so they too supplied themselves. We gave the
English back their own medicine in big doses at Ladysmith, and many and
numerous graves in and about that town mark the results.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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