E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesBoers were advancing, the dead were piling up on the battlefield, and thewounded were receiving inadequate care.After much procrastination from prejudice, Natal sanctioned the formation ofan Indian Ambulance Corps. Three hundred free Indians volunteered togetherwith eight hundred indentured labourers furloughed by their masters. Englandand South Africa were impressed.Gandhi led the corps. A photograph taken at the time shows him in khakiuniform and broad-brimmed, jaunty, felt cowboy hat seated in the centre oftwenty-one men similarly dressed. Gandhi has a drooping moustache and, likethe others, wears a Red Cross armband. He looks stern and small. Next to is Dr.Booth, a bulky English doctor with goatee who trained the volunteers. The manstanding above Gandhi has both hands on Gandhi's shoulders.The corps members were African-born and Indian-born Hindus, Moslems andChristians who lived together in natural amity. Their relations with theTommies were very friend. The public and the army admired the endurance andcourage of Gandhi's corps. In one sanguinary engagement at Spion kop inJanuary 1900, the British were being forced to retire General Buller, thecommanding officer, sent through message saying that although, by the termsof enlistment, Indians were not to enter the firing line he would be thai1 ifthey came up to remove the wounded. Gandhi led his on to the battlefield. Fordays they worked under the fire of enemy guns and carried soldiers back tobase hospital. The Indians sometimes walked as much as twenty-five miles aday.Mr. Vere Stent, British editor of the Pretoria News, wrote an article in the July1911 issue of the Johannesburg Illustrated Star about a visit to the front duringthe Spion Kop battle. 'After a night's work, which had shattered men with muchbigger frames,' he reported, T came across Gandhi in the early morning sittingby the roadside eating a regulation army biscuit. Every man in Buller's forcewas dull and depressed, and damnation was invoked on everything. But Gandhiwas stoical in his bearing, cheerful and confident in his conversations, and hada kindly eye. He did one good. It was an informal introduction and it led to awww.mkgandhi.org Page 63