General Christiaan De Wet Poem by Gert Strydom

(After A.G. Visser)

From out of the naught
a Boer commando comes riding,
hitting the British enemy quickly and bravely

before galloping away
and before the British can recover
they attack again at another place

being master marksmen, great horsemen
riding through the valleys of hillocks
using guerrilla tactics

with a brilliant strategic leader
general Christiaan de Wet
riding at the head of them

teaching the British soldiers, their officers and generals
lesson after lesson
and a ransom is put on general de Wet's head,

soldiers are sent to capture or kill him
and with his faithful horse
no one is able to touch him and free he stays instead

and one freezing night, one of the Boer sentries
brings him a citizen who wants to join the fighting
and the hero of a hundred battles

turns bleak and his bright eyes goes dim and before him
is a child that has escaped from a concentration camp
who want to join for the sake of freedom

and the war drags on and on with the British
decimating the farms, killing livestock,
burning houses even towns down

driving more women and children
into concentration camps
and to their deaths

and at the end of the war
Christiaan de Wet, the Commandant General
is the President of the Orange Free State

for only one day and has to sign
the treaty of the Peace of Vereeniging
and the war is shattering and it's a bitter, bitter thing.

[Reference: Die jongste burger (the youngest citizen)by A.G. Visser.Poet's note:This poem is
written in remembrance of the twenty thousand (some figures are as high as thirty five thousand)
innocent white Afrikaner women and children that died in British concentration camps, after
their farms were scorched by the British in the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa, which includes a
great grandmother of mine. For a clear picture of these atrocities read my epic poem "Through
the eyes of a field coronet" which is based on the eyewitness account of field coronet JJ
Potgieter.]