Commandant Gideon Scheepers Poem by Gert Strydom

They tried to send him to hell,
as if he was one of them,
a traitor, a rebel.

The British killed a captured ill man,
that they came across in the veldt
without decency, or any military law being honoured.

They shot a Boer commandant through the heart
and without a funeral note,
they hurried, to get him buried.

A brave man devoted
to his country, to his God,
whose burial place was not noted.

Turning sod after sod
with spades, they dumped him
in a unmarked grave

in the dead of night
without using light
they threw ground upon his chest,

laid him to rest without any honour
and left him alone
without a marking stone.


[References: The rank of Commandant is equivalent to that of Lieutenant Colonel. The heroic story of Gideon Scheepers during the second Anglo-Boer war, who was captured while being ill in the veldt as a normal combatant, but treated like a rebel and shot by the British, who buried him in a unmarked hole in the ground.]