". . . The gun was about three and a half miles from us, so there was an appreciable interval between the puff of smoke and the arrival of the shell. If the bugler got his little tune off smart, there was about fifteen seconds, and this gave you plenty of time to dodge under a wall ...."
At the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, the Boer states of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic, made a pre-emptive strike at the heart of Cecil Rhodes' empire--the diamond mining town of Kimberley. This was partly in retaliation for the Rhode's part in the failed "Jameson Raid."
Dr. Evelyn Oliver Ashe (1864 - 1925) was a medical doctor present in Kimberley during the siege of the town and provides a vivid account of this harrowing siege and of the heroic galvanized civilian population which combined with the efforts of the military garrison to deny the town to the Boers.
Dr. Ashe's account was considered by critics as one of the best of the numerous books on the South African War that flooded the market. The special merit of this particular book is the fact that it is a daily record of events, kept by the Hospital Surgeon during the siege of Kimberley, without any idea of publication, and thus deals freely and frankly with men and events under strange and exciting conditions. Dr. Ashe was also in a position to give a true account of the daily feeding—or starving—of the besieged town, and of the management of affairs during this trying period.
One heroic American civilian played a key role in protecting Kimberly--George Labram, the chief engineer to the De Beers Company. As Ashe relates, "He, of all the people in Kimberley, had probably done more to frustrate the plans of the Boers than anybody else. He fixed up the new water supply when our proper supply was cut off; he made the shells for our guns to use; and it was he who manufactured 'Long Cecil,'" a home-made artillery piece which kept the Boers at bay.
Ashe volunteered his medical expertise to both residents of Kimberly as well as to enemy captured wounded, but did not have a favorable view of his enemy:
"The man whose head I bandaged up on the field was badly damaged — in fact, Shields said that when he took off my bandage, about a third of the man's brains fell out, and this is very nearly the absolute truth. Anyhow, he lived three days, and would probably have lived altogether, but they washed him, and, being a Boer, the shock to his system was so great that he succumbed."
Dr. Ashe wrote for his mother’s eye this diary of what the town underwent the siege and his vivid narrative extending November 18, 1899 to February 15 brings the scene very vividly before the reader and glorifies Colonel Kekewich and Mr. Rhodes.
Dr. Ashe's book is a picturesque account of events in that monopolistic town for several months, mottled with paragraphs that reflect the deadly dullness of the long isolation. Dr. Ashe's vivid pages tell a story worth telling, and tell it well. The public will get, as it got from Pepys' diary, the full charm of a free and easy, human, wholly frank and artless story of an active and manly man's experience at a great crisis. It will stand alone and will last as long as men care to read of life under untoward and extraordinary conditions. It is frank, human, gossipy, fair, fearless, and true. It will be sure to have a good sale, for it is free and fearless as the air on the veldt.
At the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, the Boer states of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic, made a pre-emptive strike at the heart of Cecil Rhodes' empire--the diamond mining town of Kimberley. This was partly in retaliation for the Rhode's part in the failed "Jameson Raid."
Dr. Evelyn Oliver Ashe (1864 - 1925) was a medical doctor present in Kimberley during the siege of the town and provides a vivid account of this harrowing siege and of the heroic galvanized civilian population which combined with the efforts of the military garrison to deny the town to the Boers.
Dr. Ashe's account was considered by critics as one of the best of the numerous books on the South African War that flooded the market. The special merit of this particular book is the fact that it is a daily record of events, kept by the Hospital Surgeon during the siege of Kimberley, without any idea of publication, and thus deals freely and frankly with men and events under strange and exciting conditions. Dr. Ashe was also in a position to give a true account of the daily feeding—or starving—of the besieged town, and of the management of affairs during this trying period.
One heroic American civilian played a key role in protecting Kimberly--George Labram, the chief engineer to the De Beers Company. As Ashe relates, "He, of all the people in Kimberley, had probably done more to frustrate the plans of the Boers than anybody else. He fixed up the new water supply when our proper supply was cut off; he made the shells for our guns to use; and it was he who manufactured 'Long Cecil,'" a home-made artillery piece which kept the Boers at bay.
Ashe volunteered his medical expertise to both residents of Kimberly as well as to enemy captured wounded, but did not have a favorable view of his enemy:
"The man whose head I bandaged up on the field was badly damaged — in fact, Shields said that when he took off my bandage, about a third of the man's brains fell out, and this is very nearly the absolute truth. Anyhow, he lived three days, and would probably have lived altogether, but they washed him, and, being a Boer, the shock to his system was so great that he succumbed."
Dr. Ashe wrote for his mother’s eye this diary of what the town underwent the siege and his vivid narrative extending November 18, 1899 to February 15 brings the scene very vividly before the reader and glorifies Colonel Kekewich and Mr. Rhodes.
Dr. Ashe's book is a picturesque account of events in that monopolistic town for several months, mottled with paragraphs that reflect the deadly dullness of the long isolation. Dr. Ashe's vivid pages tell a story worth telling, and tell it well. The public will get, as it got from Pepys' diary, the full charm of a free and easy, human, wholly frank and artless story of an active and manly man's experience at a great crisis. It will stand alone and will last as long as men care to read of life under untoward and extraordinary conditions. It is frank, human, gossipy, fair, fearless, and true. It will be sure to have a good sale, for it is free and fearless as the air on the veldt.
