That The Latter Were Not Far More
Numerous Was Due To The Fact That Many Had Already Shredded Off To
Their Farms.
Besides Cronje, Wolverans of the Transvaal, and the
German artillerist Albrecht, with forty-four other field-cornets
and commandants, fell into our hands.
Six small guns were also
secured. The same afternoon saw the long column of the prisoners on
its way to Modder River, there to be entrained for Cape Town, the
most singular lot of people to be seen at that moment upon
earth - ragged, patched, grotesque, some with goloshes, some with
umbrellas, coffee-pots, and Bibles, their favourite baggage. So
they passed out of their ten days of glorious history.
A visit to the laager showed that the horrible smells which had
been carried across to the British lines, and the swollen carcasses
which had swirled down the muddy river were true portents of its
condition. Strong-nerved men came back white and sick from a
contemplation of the place in which women and children had for ten
days been living. From end to end it was a festering mass of
corruption, overshadowed by incredible swarms of flies. Yet the
engineer who could face evil sights and nauseous smells was repaid
by an inspection of the deep narrow trenches in which a rifleman
could crouch with the minimum danger from shells, and the caves in
which the non-combatants remained in absolute safety. Of their dead
we have no accurate knowledge, but two hundred wounded in a donga
represented their losses, not only during a bombardment of ten
days, but also in that Paardeberg engagement which had cost us
eleven hundred casualties.
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