Both Sides Of A War

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32275, 18 April 1970, Page 4

Both Sides Of A War

Music Of The Guns. By Henry John May. Jerrolds. 196 pp. (Illustrated).

This interesting footnote to the Boer war is based on the personal papers of two people, a fourteen-year-old Transvaal schoolgirl. Freda Schlosberg (aunt of Mr May) and a middle-aged English doctor, J. A. Kay, who served in besieged Ladysmith and then acted as war correspondent. The title is inappropriate, as the book provides graphic detail of how the war affected the lives of individuals rather than descriptions of action.

The Schlosbergs, German in blood but Russian in nationality, did their utmost to remain neutral and kept on good terms both with their Boer neighbours and with the English. But at the end of the book their two farms have been stripped of all stock and produce, all moveable property removed, the houses shells without windows or doors, and themselves refugees in Britishoccupied Pretoria. In exchange they held requisition notes from both sides of problematical value: much of their property had simply been looted.

Your reviewer had resfiected the foreign artillerymen in Boer service as the best-trained and disciplined part of their army; but apparently the other foreign mercenaries with the Boers were often the worst sort of rascal and looted from friends and enemies Indifferently. Against this may be set Dr Kay’s horrifying story of the British locally-recruited Bushveld Carbineers who set out to “rustle” all the Boer cattle they could lay hands on, whose leaders were courtmartiaHed and deservedly executed for murdw.

In spite of earlier residence in the Transvaal Dr Kay shows most current British prejudices. But he always shows gentlemanly feeling; he even tries to excuse the concentration camps whose mismanagement disgraced the British administration. We like him best at work in a hospital camp set up outside Ladysmith (by the indulgence of the enemy he despises). By an odd quirk he comes in contact with Freda Schlosberg before the book ends.