THE BOER WAR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 46, 15 November 1900, Page 4

THE BOER WAR.

NOTES AND POINTS OF INTEREST TO CATHOLIC READERS.

A TRIBUTE TO THE IEIBH BOLDIKBB. 1 Banjo ' Patterson, in the course of one of his lecturei in Adelaide, referred to the bravery exhibited by the Irish troops in the Transvaal. The Irish regiments did everything they were asked to do, and did it well. He had seen a good deal of them. They were generally a happy-go-lucky lot, and in oamp they would frequently fire off their rifles for fan. They were great foragers, and were always ready with an explanation for the possession of sh^ep. etc. Sheep and poultry apparently followed these reeiment* in a most remarkable manner. When it came to fighting they were great men at a dash, but chafed at inactivity and waiting. He saw them take a hill at Bethlehem and another at Colesberg. At ths latter place the bullets were flying down the hill, which was strongly fortified. The Irishmen went up the hill at a run instead of creeping and taking advantage of cover as it was usual to do. One Tommy called out as he rushed p*st, ' Will they sneer at the Irish now ? ' Later on the lecturer hai a good word to say fur the Boers. He related how a wounded Tommy was discovered by a Boer and a 'foreign mercenary.' The latter wanted to kill the BoLiier straight away, but this the Boer would not allow, and, kneeling down, roughly bandaged the fallen man's arm. All the time 'our friend the enemy' was exposed to a heavy fire from the British frtroes, who were under the impression that he was in the act of robbing the dead. Notwithstanding, he stuck to his work, and when finished walked away after expressing the wish that the Tommy would soon recover. Mr. Patterson had a few words to »ay about firing on the ambuUnce. He had no doubt in many cases it was done intentionally, but the ambulance corps had themselves to blame in many instances. In marching, the place for theambulnnoe was at the rear of the transport wagons, but frequently th^y got up towards the front, and there receiveu some of the sheila directed against the transport column. The Boers were, therefore, sometimes charged with wilfully firing on the ambulance when it wm done quite unintentionally. THE WOUNDED AT OfTOSHOOP. Captain Fulton's wound at Ottoshoop was muoh more serioui than the aooounts which have hitherto been received led us to suppose. The correspondent of the Xew Zealand Times with the fourth and fifth contingents gives the following particulars of the injuries of those wounded : — ' Captain Fulton was shot in the aide, the bullet passing straight through his body from right to left, between the first rib and the hip, without touching either the kidneys or the backbone. So slight, indeed, was the injury inflicted that he was walking about within 10 days, and declared to me that he was again ready for the field ; but it is questionable whether he will be allowed to go to the front again as a wound in suoh a dangerous region — even though apparently healed— cannot be lightly regarded. Lieutenant Collins was shot in the left wrist, the bullet striking his watch and driving fragments of the oase, etc., into the flesh, making a nasty wound — a wound that will not heal too readily. If the missile had not been impeded it would hare done little or no damage, for even when a Mauser strikes a bone it does very little damage ; it almost invariably pastes through without fracturing, merely making a small round hole. Sergeant Hiokey received an unimportant flesh wound in the hip, and waa able to get about in a few dayo, though he was quite helpless at first. Trooper Bottom was very seriously wounded. The bullet passed through from the right thigh — just missing the groin — into the body, and lodged somewhere in the region of the kidneys. It has not yet been located and the patient is in great pain. If not soon extracted it may cause considerable irritation, and imperil hi* life, though several of the medical officers are inclined to the belief that he has parsed it. Vinsen was shot in the knee, the bullet passing right under the kneecap, apparently without doing any serious damage to the bone, but it is probable that the leg ma/ always be more or less stiff. Macauley and Alexander were not seriously injured ; the former being shot in the hip and the latter in the foot. M'Artney was wounded in the right leg, the bullet in his case taking a most remarkable course, suggesting an affinity between Boer ballets and Kruger coins. He was shot while lying down under cover, evidently from behind. The ballet entered the calf, passed right along the leg, and emerged on the opposite side,

just below the groin, lodging in his purse, which was full of silver, including three Kruger coins, a half-crown, shilling, and sixpenny piece. These were considerably damaged, eaoh coin being; bfnt in at the e'ge, exaotly in proportion to its relative siz«, just as though the work had been done by a skilful mechanic.' JOHANNEPBUBG AFTER THE WAR, Letters received in Wellington from Johannesburg from Mr. G. Hutchison, M.H.R. for Pa tea, describe the 'Golden City' as he found it when he arrived there towards the end of September. It is, he writes, ' more like a ci^y of rh« Head, with hnildinjr* fit for 100,000 inhabitants, and not a third of that number here, while thousands npcn thousands are impntt>ntly waiting for *dmi**inn, Mott of the places of business are boarded up or sheeted in iron. No outward sign of damage appears beyond a few broken panes which had not been protected. Displays in shop windows that were toft in a hurry remain with twelve months' dust upon them — a restaurant, for instance, with a plate of mouldy toast and an egg that had not burst.' The mineß, he saye, with perhaps one or two exceptions, are intact so far as machinery goes, but some have been worked and the shareholders thus laid under contribution. The tales about scarcity of provisions are, Mr Hutchison adds, not to be believed. THE T/SB OF SULTBY LANGUAGE BY COLONIALS. In the Daily Telegraph Mr. Bennet Burleigh discusses the comparative effect on trek-oxen in South Africa of the swear words of Tommy Atkins and of the colonial. He writes :—: — Alas, these Boer tracks, how they encourage vain words, and the practice of profanity I Drivers or passengers, who think they have a gift of free vernacular, are hailed with joy when they voice fellow-sufferers' unspoken anathemas. It is welcome, as in the nature of relief to one's own pent-up feelings, to hear another who ■wears easily pour fiery contempt upon 'the whole boiling' of bumbledom and Boerdom. Admittedly, our Mr. Thomae Atkins has a jarring, curdling vocabulary of expletives, and Sailor Jack can even give him points, for though he knows not how the army ■wore in Flanders, I wot they've learned in • f urrin' parts.' But at a pinch, when we look for variety, vigor, and vilification, we call upon the colonials to give due lurid expression to exaoerbated feelings. There is no monotonous reiteration about their extensive diction, and Tommy and Jack keep silent, lost in admiration of their talent. Nay, the very dumb brutes acknowledge their giftedness, for oxen and mules, which would not Btrain a pound nor budge an inch for native British objurgations, the instant a colonial takes up his parable, hasten to break thews, muscles, and bones, rather than stand stuck in a drift and have such abuae showered upon them. I have seen teams shift an ox-wagon bogged in a sluit where the track sloped like an old-fashioned gable, in a twinkling, upon the first persuasive ' slanging ' of an Australian driver.