The Siege of Kimberley: Its Humorous and Social Side; Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902); Eighteen Weeks in Eighteen ChaptersPhelan, T.
History
The Siege of Kimberley: Its Humorous and Social Side; Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902); Eighteen Weeks in Eighteen Chapters
Phelan, T.
Kimberley (South Africa) -- History -- Siege, 1899-1900; South African War, 1899-1902 -- Personal narratives
What a day Friday was! Beginning at six in the morning the firing was
kept up unceasingly until night-fall. All day long the death-dealing
projectiles swept like a hurricane through the city, terrorising,
killing, lacerating, surpassing previous visitations by odds that were
long indeed. We had had sufficient evidence to judge of what the great
gun at Kamfers Dam _alone_ could do. But on Friday we were pelted from
all directions with a fury unknown hitherto. The first bulletin to send
a thrill of horror through the people--huddled away in holes--contained
intelligence of the deaths of a well-known lady and her infant child;
they had been struck down as they emerged from their shelter for a
breath of fresh air. In Woodly Street a huge missile went clean through
the roof of a house, shot past the heads of a lady and gentleman seated
on the stoep, fell on a soft patch in front of the door, and burst with
a deafening thud five feet under ground. With the aid of a pick and
shovel the fragments were exhumed and pieced together in the presence of
the pallid spectators; and had the next shell fallen on or near the same
spot (as sometimes happened) the results would have been more
calamitous. Many persons had an idea that they were safer in the streets
than in houses where the additional danger of flying furniture was ever
present. Several exciting escapes were witnessed in the Market Square,
and shells fell thickly in the vicinity of the fire station. A telephone
pole had a semi-lunar lump neatly cut out by a passing missile. With
undiminished fury the bombardment proceeded, battering down walls and
gables, and filling hearts with a desire, a longing for vengeance, to be
duly indulged when the fates were propitious.
It was growing late on this tragic Friday when a profound sensation was
caused by a rumour which excited universal awe. George Labram had been
killed by a shell at the Grand Hotel. It sounded incredible, so
improbable and astounding, that he of all others, he who had achieved
greatness in adverse circumstances by constructing a large gun, the
famous Long Cecil--that he should be a victim. Labram dead! Was it a
fabrication? Alas! no; it was true; a sad, a lurid incident, hardly
needed to mark the day memorable. There was a pathetic strangeness in
the fatality that gave rise to philosophic reflections.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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