SHOOTING BRITISH WOUNDED.

Motueka Star, Volume I, Issue 8, 6 September 1901, Page 4

SHOOTING BRITISH WOUNDED.

Considerable sensation was caused in England by the publication In the press of letters written by war correspondents in South Africa containing details of the shooting by the Boers of the British wounded at Vlakfontein. Mr E. Wallace, the Daily Mail’s correspondent, fully described the tragedy, and his statement finds support in letters received from several of the Tommies, but what really occurred is more probably described by a Yeomanry trooper, wlio s:-yvs "tint the gunners,

after shooting their horses, broke the range-finders, and then stood to their guns with their carbines. “ They were all heroes. Out of twenty-four men, ten were killed outright, including their lieutenant, and ten wounded.” The lieutenant was shot in cold blood after being wounded, as he stood by the gun trying to load it himself. But in this he merely shared the fate that was then being dealt out to our wounded, for this is what Mr Wallace’s informant declares took place:

Two Boers, armed with Martinis, walked round the forms of the dead and dying men who were stretched in every conceivable attitude |upon the ground, Some they turned over to see if they were dead. If they weren’t one or the other of the two Beers shot them, just slipping a, cartridge into the breach of the Martini, and shooting them as you’d shoot an n x I saw four men killed this way. The Boers went up t > Lieutenant of the thinking he was dead, they took off his spurs. One officer was lying wounded, and a sergeant who was slightly wounded went across to him with some water. A third Beer shot them dead, deliberately. One youngster, I think he was a Yeoman, pleaded for hie life. I heard him say, “ O Christ, don’t.” and then bang went the rifle. Tliere can be no possible doubt that this actually occurred. Dozens of men who shared in the fight assert that they were eye-witnesses of these atrocious deeds.