The work of the corps was not undisturbed by the depredations of the enemy, and not infrequently the members of the corps had to defend the mails in their charge along with the guards provided by the military. On June 7, 1900, General De Wet, who has lately extinguished the admiration in which Britons held him for his brilliant and elusive tactics, by his treachery in the present war, swooped down with 1200 men and 5 guns on Roodewal Station where Lieutenant Preece had 2000 bags, a several weeks' accumulation of mails for Lord Roberts' main army. There were 17 men of the Army Postal Corps, and these, with about 160 men in charge of supplies, etc., had to defend the station. Two of the seventeen were killed, and Lieutenant Preece and the remainder of his gallant little corps were taken prisoners. The 2000 mail bags were used as a barricade. It is recorded that when the gallant little band surrendered, and De Wet, riding an English cavalry horse, came up, the Boer general was most polite and even kind in many ways, and expressed himself as "very sorry to do it," when asked not to destroy the letters and registered parcels. He said if he did not do so, his young Boers would open and read them and turn the letters of the soldiers into ridicule. The bags were opened, the contents strewed about, and the Boers possessed themselves of the valuables, while tobacco, cigarettes, cakes, chocolates were so plentifully strewed about that the young Boers even invited their prisoners to help themselves, as the General was going to burn everything. And he did burn the entire station. In his forty-seventh report (1901) the Postmaster-General states: The Army Post Office is still in operation in South Africa. The staff now consists of 7 officers and about 540 men. The weekly mail for the Army Post Office contains on an average 204,000 letters and 115,300 packets of printed matter; and it is estimated that during the year ended 31st March, 1901, 11,551,300 letters were sent to the troops and 9,250,000 were received from them. During the same period the parcels sent out to the forces in South Africa by post amounted to 534,245, the largest number despatched on any one occasion, namely, on the 1st of December, 1900, being 19,672. About 8745 such parcels are now sent each week. As to the magnitude and difficulties of the work of the Army Post Office, I cannot do better than quote the following paragraph from Earl Roberts' despatch of the 16th August last:--