She read details of early battles as well as editorials. She showed me one English paper that contained rude cartoons portraying the Boers as simpletons led by a froggish President Kruger.
“Do you think they really know much about us?” she asked. “No, so they believe what they’re told. So then, ask yourself: How much do we really know about them?”
I had not thought of their view, nor of the British being anything but an army of mindless bullies marching for their frumpy queen. A local paper criticized the British greed for our gold and diamonds. I almost laughed when I heard of “our” gold and diamonds. No one I knew had gold or diamonds.
“The mines are mostly owned by international bankers already,” Tante Hannah said. “Many of them are British.”
I was confused. Then why the war?
“Because that’s what empires do.”
News reports explained that the British had “the greatest fighting force on earth” and would overpower us with sheer numbers. But we surprised them with tactics and determination.
We read that the British could sometimes see across great distances by sending men into the skies attached to balloons that rose because they were filled with hot air. One paper had a picture of two men in a wicker basket suspended from a balloon so high it had to feel as if they were flying. Tante Hannah then spent fifteen minutes teaching the “laws of physics” that caused warm air to rise and allowed such a miraculous thing to work. How could we win a war against an enemy that could fly?
Bold headlines read, BLACK WEEK FOR BRITISH: BOERS WIN SUCCESSIVE BATTLES, AND ENTRENCHED BOERS REPEL ADVANCEMENT.
One dispatch from a British reporter praised the commandos: “The individual Boer mounted, in a suitable country, is worth four or five regular soldiers. The only way of treating them is to get men equal in character and intelligence as riflemen, or failing the individual, huge masses of troops.”
When we read of our men being taken prisoner and sent to Ceylon or Saint Helena, Tante Hannah pulled out maps to locate those places. The mention of Saint Helena led to research on the island and a discussion of Emperor Napoleon and his exile there. He was undone by his power hunger and arrogance. Did that sound like the British now? she asked. “Shouldn’t they have learned from that, and shouldn’t we now learn from this so there are no more wars like this a hundred years from now when it’s almost the year 2000?”
Even the news accounts of our victories were disturbing. She showed me a clipping in which a British reporter described the Tommy lines after the battle: “Corpses lay here and there, many of the wounds were of a horrible nature. The splinters and fragments of the shells had torn and mutilated them. The shallow trenches were choked with dead and wounded.”
I could not believe they would put such things in newspapers. Still, the words came only one at a time, and the reader could absorb them in bits. But this story was illustrated with a photograph, and it rose up and struck me like a mule kick. Men lay like jackstraws in awkward positions in the bottom of a trench, many dozens of them. It showed their faces, their arms and legs twisted like broken dolls.
“I know it’s upsetting,” she said. “But this is what is happening. People need to know this. No war in history has had such news coverage. Think how much better informed the public is about what is actually going on in battle. We can see the horrors of it. . . . It’s not just numbers of dead anymore. . . . It’s the actual faces of the dead.”
8
January 1901, Concentration Camp
Janetta and I often held hands when we walked; the same size, the same clothes and kappies . . . we must have looked like the dolls cut from folded paper that I used to make for my little sister, Cecelia.
“Sisters taking a stroll?”
A Tommy guard leaned against a post in front of us, watching people pass, nodding and offering comments as they did, most drawing no response or chilled looks. It was the shorter guard from the skirmish between the ladies at the fence. The one who’d tried to talk to me.
“Friends,” Janetta said.
I had ignored guards for the several months we’d been in camp, turning at the sight of them or grunting at their existence, resentment my only weapon.
“Do you have names?”
“Janetta,” she said. “And this is Aletta.” I stepped back, ready to leave. I would not be seen talking to one of the guards. When she tried to pull me forward, I wrestled against her.
He was not much taller than either of us. He pushed back the brim of his helmet. He was freckled and pink, unequipped for our sun, and probably not much older than Schalk. He was literally a rooinek, as Moeder called them . . . their red necks burned by our relentless sun. The uniform and rifle seemed just a costume.
“Did you know each other before camp?”
“We met here. We’re the same age.” Janetta backed up a step to stand beside me, in the same posture, to emphasize our similarities.
“It must be nice to have a friend here.”
“I have a twin brother . . . but he’s a boy . . . of course.”
Dear God, our Heavenly Host, what is she doing?
“My brother was born just before midnight on a Friday night, and I was born only minutes later, but on Saturday. So we’re twins with different birthdays.”
I had not known that, and as I stored that unique fact, the guard turned to me.
“Well . . . how about you? When’s your birthday?”
I would not waste a single word on him, but then I thought of Bina’s telling me how words can be stones. I would practice; I would see whether I could wound him with words.
“None of your business.”
“No,” he laughed. “Fine, I’ll cancel the celebration. What family do you have here?”
“That’s not your business, either,” I said.
“I understand. . . . Your mother would not like you talking to a guard . . .”
“It has nothing to do with her not liking it. I don’t like it. . . . I don’t like you. . . . I don’t like this camp. . . . I don’t like the British. And you can stand me in front of a firing squad, but I won’t tell you my birthday.”
He stepped back and put his hands up, laughing as he pretended to surrender.
“And you don’t like being friendly, either?”
I pointed to the rifle slung over his shoulder. I raised arms to both sides and gestured to the enclosure. How dense can the British be?
“Dolt.” I projected the word as much like a stone as I could. “Noun, meaning a dull or stupid fellow.”
He looked at the rifle as if he had forgotten it was there. “Oh, they make me carry it . . . for appearances.”
“The last Tommy I talked to put a rifle in my face and threatened to kill me. . . . He killed our animals and burned our house . . . burned my things . . .”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I am sorry.”
His apology disrupted the series of comments I was readying.
“What’s your name?” Janetta asked. I could not believe her, but since she knew more about boys, I assumed she was positioning him for an insult or had devised a way to use him to our benefit.
“Thomas,” he said. “But they call me Tommy.”
Janetta laughed. I stared her down.