A Record Of The Siege Onwards Until The Break Of The New Year
Centres Upon The Sordid Details Of The Sick Returns And Of The
Price Of Food.
Fifty on one day, seventy on the next, passed under
the hands of the overworked and devoted doctors.
Fifteen hundred,
and later two thousand, of the garrison were down. The air was
poisoned by foul sewage and dark with obscene flies. They speckled
the scanty food. Eggs were already a shilling each, cigarettes
sixpence, whisky five pounds a bottle: a city more free from
gluttony and drunkenness has never been seen.
Shell-fire has shown itself in this war to be an excellent ordeal
for those who desire martial excitement with a minimum of danger.
But now and again some black chance guides a bomb - one in five
thousand perhaps - to a most tragic issue. Such a deadly missile
falling among Boers near Kimberley is said to have slain nine and
wounded seventeen. In Ladysmith too there are days to be marked in
red when the gunner shot better than he knew. One shell on December
17th killed six men (Natal Carabineers), wounded three, and
destroyed fourteen horses. The grisly fact has been recorded that
five separate human legs lay upon the ground. On December 22nd
another tragic shot killed five and wounded twelve of the Devons.
On the same day four officers of the 5th Lancers (including the
Colonel) and one sergeant were wounded - a most disastrous day. A
little later it was again the turn of the Devons, who lost one
officer killed and ten wounded.
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