Red Cross Blogs

This day in history: the start of the second Boer war

By Katrina Crew
October 11, 2009 at 10:31 pm

ON 11 October 1899, the second Boer war began. This bloody war between the British Empire and two independant Boer republics lasted until May 1902.

The British Red Cross wasn’t very old at the time. We were a mere 29 years old, but we’d already had quite a bit of experience under our belts when it came to war. In fact, we were formed in 1870, following the outbreak of war between France and Prussia, with the purpose of “aiding sick and wounded soldiers in time of war.”

So it should come as no surprise that the Red Cross’ expertise was called upon to help the wounded in South Africa.

Not only did we have nurses who worked alongside the army medical services, but we also supplied one of the technological innovations of the time – the first ever purpose-built hospital train.

The train, called the Princess Christian, carried medical supplies from Cape Town to field hospitals and then was loaded with sick and wounded soldiers for the return journey. That’s a picture of the Princess Christian on the right. In her years of operation, she carried more than 7,500 injured soldiers.

When the Princess Christian arrived at the front lines, volunteers and staff would unload hundreds of hospital kits, or ‘lucky bags’ as the soldiers called them. They contained things like clothes and toiletries, and by 21 November 1900 we’d given out 14,000 of them.

We also sent a hospital ship to help care for the wounded on their return to Britain.

Our archives contain a letter from one soldier, Major Fred Heuston, who wrote on 17 October 1900: “I consider it marvellous, under difficulties of transport, you managed to supply us so liberally with aid for our sick when in the front line. I feel that any thanks from us must, however, be feeble compared to that of the sick and wounded to the number of some 3,500 who have passed through this hospital whose sufferings you have done so much to mitigate.”

Find out more about how we helped wounded soldiers during the second Boer war.

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Tags: archives, conflict, history, museum

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Emergencies, Fundraising and events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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