Boere Krygsgevangenes in Ceylon - Boekmakierie.co.za

he set out to prove. He also remarked on the excellent way Dr. Van Houten had
expressed himself in a (to him) foreign language.
Many a Boer prisoner-of-war in Ceylon bulked rather large in his home papers, and one
of the most striking extracts to indicate how the Boers themselves viewed their treatment
was told by the Natal Mercury in a reference to Ted Slater, a well-known journalist of the
Rand and a humorous writer. “It is pleasant”, said this paper, “to hear that he was
enjoying life as a prisoner-of-war in the lonely isle, and that he had joined the ranks of
the irreconcilables in order to delay his departure from fair Ceylon.”
A more entrancing story concerns a prisoner-of-war named VanderSluis. In the last
desperate bayonet charge made by the Dublin Hunt Company of the Yeomanry, at
Lindley, the son of a Lord Justice was shot through the leg and lay for hours on the
battlefield. He was discovered and tended to by the Boer, VanderSluis, who, when night
fell, walked for miles in search of a wagon, and brought the young wounded British
officer to a station behind the Boer lines. On the following day the British forces
captured the town. British doctors and nurses took over the care of the wounded. While
the British officer lay for many weeks in hospital with his leg amputated, VanderSluis
continued his commando with the Boer General Prinsloo, surrendered with him, and was
deported to Ceylon.
Not knowing that the officer he had succoured was still in South Africa, VanderSluis
addressed a letter to his home in Dublin. The letter fell into the hands of the Lord Justice
and was forwarded to him by Lord Roberts. In appreciation of the Boer’s kindness, to a
fallen foe, immediate directions were given that VanderSluis should be brought back
from Ceylon to South Africa and reinstated on his farm.
“Souvenirs de Captivite”, in a serial form, by a French mercenary, M. Montazel, who was
sent after capture to Ceylon, provides many interesting glimpses of Boer personalities –
great and little. The author was an eye-witness of a visit which the Governor of Ceylon
paid to a son of Mr. Kruger in the prisoner’s enclosure at Diyatalawa. “His Excellency,
Sir West Ridgeway”, he says “galloped round, shook hands with Generals Roux and
Olivier, and then, dismounting, approached President Kruger’s son. The latter went on
smoking his pipe without replying to His Excellency’s observations. As the Governor
persisted in speaking, Kruger junior turned to a fellow Boer and said in Dutch with much
feeling: “Tell him that since his country is at war with mine I speak no English”. How
truly was the sincerity of life’s purpose of the father reflected in the son. Veldt-Cornet
Piet Kruger was the fourth son of “Oom Paul.”
Apparently the most amusing personality in the camp was an Irish soldier of fortune, a
Captain O’Reilly, who had fought all over the world wherever there was fighting to be
got, and was Captain of a gun which from the summit of Umbulwana fired something
like 3000 rounds of shell into Ladysmith when the British lay besieged. He is said to
have had an inexhaustible fund of stories, and of cheroots with which he often stuffed the
pockets of friends whenever they called on him. O’Reilly, with a Major Menton who
once was chief detective in Johannesburg, had founded a band of mercenaries which later