Mafeking Road by Herman Charles Bosman

engaged to be married just before the affair at Paardekraal. There, on the hoogte, our leaders pointed out to us that, although the Transvaal had been annexed by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, it nevertheless meant that we would have to go on paying taxes just the same. Everybody knew then that it was war.
    Neels Potgieter and I were in the same commando.
    It was arranged that the burghers of the neighbourhood should assemble at the veldkornet’s house. Instructions had also been given that no women were to be present. There was much fighting to be done, and this final leave-taking was likely to be an embarrassing thing.
    Nevertheless, as always, the women came. And among them was Neels’s sweetheart, Martha Rossouw. And also there was my sister, Annie.
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    I shall never forget that scene in front of the veldkornet’s house, in the early morning, when there were still shadows on the rante, and a thin wind blew through the grass. We had no predikant
there; but an ouderling, with two bandoliers slung across his body, and a Martini in his hand, said a few words. He was a strong and simple man, with no great gifts of oratory. But when he spoke about the Transvaal we could feel what was in his heart, and we took off our hats in silence.
    And it was not long afterwards that I again took off my hat in much the same way. Then it was at Majuba Hill. It was after the battle, and the ouderling still had his two bandoliers around him when we buried him at the foot of the koppie.
    But what impressed me most was the prayer that followed the ouderling’s brief address. In front of the veldkornet’s house we knelt, each burgher with his rifle at his side. And the womenfolk knelt down with us. And the wind seemed very gentle as it stirred the tall grass-blades; very gentle as it swept over the bared heads of the men and fluttered the kappies and skirts of the women; very gentle as it carried the prayers of our nation over the veld.
    After that we stood up and sang a hymn. The ceremony was over. The agterryers brought us our horses. And, dry-eyed and tight-lipped, each woman sent her man forth to war. There was no weeping.
    Then, in accordance with Boer custom, we fired a volley into the air.
    â€œVoorwaarts, burghers,” came the veldkornet’s order, and we cantered down the road in twos. But before we left I had overheard Neels Potgieter say something to Martha Rossouw as he
leant out of the saddle and kissed her. My sister Annie, standing beside my horse, also heard.
    â€œWhen the moepels are ripe, Martha,” Neels said, “I will come to you again.”
    Annie and I looked at each other and smiled. It was a pretty thing that Neels had said. But then Martha was also pretty. More pretty than the veld-trees that bore those yellow moepels, I reflected – and more wild.
    I was still thinking of this when our commando had passed over the bult, in a long line, on our way to the south, where Natal was, and the other commandos, and Majuba.
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    This was the war of Bronkhorstspruit and General Colley and Laing’s Nek. You have no doubt heard many accounts of this war, some of them truthful, perhaps. For it is a singular thing that, as a man grows older, and looks back on fights that he has been in, he keeps on remembering, each year, more and more of the enemy that he has shot.
    Klaas Uys was a man like that. Each year, on his birthday, he remembered one or two more redcoats that he had shot, whereupon he got up straight away and put another few notches in the wood part of his rifle, along the barrel. And he said his memory was getting better every year.
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    All the time I was on commando, I received only one letter. That came from Annie, my sister. She said I was not to take any risks,
and that I must keep far away from the English, especially if they had guns. She also said I was to remember that I was a white man, and that if there was any dangerous work to be done, I had to send a kaffir out to do