The Explosion Of A Mine Wrecked The Train, And A Hundred
Boers Who Lined The Banks Of The Cutting Opened Fire Upon The
Derailed Carriages.
Colonel Vandeleur, an officer of great promise,
was killed and twenty men, chiefly of the West Riding regiment,
were shot.
Nurse Page was also among the wounded. It was after this
fatal affair that the regulation of carrying Boer hostages upon the
trains was at last carried out.
It has been already stated that part of Lord Kitchener's policy of
concentration lay in his scheme for gathering the civil population
into camps along the lines of communication. The reasons for this,
both military and humanitarian, were overwhelming. Experience had
proved that the men if left at liberty were liable to be persuaded
or coerced by the fighting Boers into breaking their parole and
rejoining the commandos. As to the women and children, they could
not be left upon the farms in a denuded country. That the Boers in
the field had no doubts as to the good treatment of these people
was shown by the fact that they repeatedly left their families in
the way of the columns so that they might be conveyed to the camps.
Some consternation was caused in England by a report of Miss
Hobhouse, which called public attention to the very high rate of
mortality in some of these camps, but examination showed that this
was not due to anything insanitary in their situation or
arrangement, but to a severe epidemic of measles which had swept
away a large number of the children.
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