Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 23, 2025
As I thought the siege of Ladysmith, since they would not assault, had become dolorously monotonous, I suggested, so that things might be enlivened a bit, that a race meeting or a football match might be got up between teams from each army on the neutral ground at Intombi. The younger men received the idea of a football match with acclamation.
This sounded like an attack in force by fresh bodies of Boers who had made their way round from Bulwaan under cover of the hospital camp at Intombi Spruit. But they never came within a thousand yards of our position, and though their rifle fire at that range galled sorely, it was nothing more than a demonstration made in hope of enabling their comrades on the heights to extricate themselves.
I think I hit Jana in the eye, but so big a beast will soon get over so little a thing as that and look for us, and the bullet from Intombi is too small to kill him, Baas, especially as it is not likely that either of us could hit him in the other eye." Now I sat up and stared.
Still, let the Baas bring Intombi with him" a favourite old rifle of mine and a mere toy in size, that had however done me good service in the past, as those who have read what I have written in "Marie" and "The Holy Flower" may remember. "For, Baas, after all, the wife of one's youth often proves more to be trusted than the fine young ones a man buys in his age.
The hospital patients at Intombi Camp are not reduced to meagre fare yet, nor likely to be, but medical comforts are not all that a sick man craves for, and the simplest gifts sent from Ladysmith's store that day must have been like a ray of sunshine brightening the lot of some poor fellow with the assurance that, though far from home, he was still among friends who cared for him.
When I awoke, which happened suddenly and completely, the first thing that I saw was Hans seated at the entrance to my little shelter smoking his corn-cob pipe, and nursing the single-barrelled rifle, Intombi, on his knee. I asked him what the time was, to which he replied that it lacked two hours to dawn. Then I asked him why he had not been sleeping.
When at the finish successful and unsuccessful competitors assembled to cheer their hosts, the three correspondents had the gratification of feeling that for a few of the many besieged soldiers in Ladysmith they had helped to make Christmas merry. You may be sure that sick and wounded at Intombi hospital were not forgotten in the midst of our wild festivities.
At Intombi, I believe it is even worse than here. The letters I have lately seen from officers recovering from wounds or dysentery or enteric are simply heart-rending in their appeals. February 25, 1900. Nearly all the patients who have passed through the field hospital during the fortnight have been poor fellows shot by snipers in arms or legs.
Their horses were much too good, and they looked strange. Behind them came another and another. They had crossed the drift that leads to the road along the foot of Cæsar's Camp past Intombi to Pieter's, and Colenso. There was no mistake about it. They were the advance of the relief column, and more were coming behind.
I have myself repeatedly endeavoured to telegraph home known facts about the corruption and mismanagement, but all I wrote has been scratched out by the Censorship. One such little fact I may mention now. The 18th Hussar officers at Christmas gave up a lot of little luxuries, such as cakes and things, which count high in a siege, and sent them down to their sick at Intombi.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking