It was intended that a messenger should be sent to Europe through German West Africa with the letters, and that he should himself, when abroad, further explain matters.
At the same time Judge Hertzog busied himself in collecting affidavits from women and others, who had suffered under the barbarity of the British soldier, and the Kaffirs in their service. I was allowed to read these declarations, and must admit that I have never perused anything more heartrending. Let me here note a few facts.
One woman declared that an English Colonel had pulled down her house over her head at Haco, in Ladybrand district, on 21st January 1902. On the 27th of the same month a patrol of the same officer came and took her prisoner. They made her and her children walk in front of the patrol for a distance of three miles, and that when she was so far advanced in pregnancy that she gave birth to a daughter ten days later.
The wife of Commandant J. J. Koen, of the Ladybrand Commando, was taken from her house at Blanco, in the district of Ladybrand, against her will, by a patrol of Major General Knox, on 27th January 1902. The order was first given that she should go to the camp on foot with her children, of whom one was a baby of a month old. Fortunately, however, there was a cart which the English had looted that morning, and she was allowed to go in that. The night was cold and stormy, but, notwithstanding that, she had to pass it, with her children and two other women who had likewise been captured, under some trees in the open air, with very little bedding. On the following day she was brought up and cross-examined like a criminal, and this was repeated shortly after before a Colonel. This officer told her that her husband had captured eighteen of his Kaffirs the day before, and said that if her husband had those Kaffirs shot, he, the Colonel, would give the 1000 Kaffirs under his command liberty to do with her as they chose. The number of women and children had in the meanwhile increased to eighteen, and all were in the open air, without protection against wind and weather. In vain Mrs. Koen begged for a tent.
A Colonial, however, took pity on her, and spread a buck sail over the waggon under which the women and children had sought shelter from the rain. This kindly deed of the Colonial displeased the Colonel, and he severely took him to task about it. From Monday morning to Wednesday evening the women got nothing to eat, and again it was a Colonial who intervened. This man gave them some raw meat, biscuits, and a little coffee and sugar. But they had themselves to provide for fuel, and that on a bare hill where there was none to be found.