Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 9

the battlefield were quite unaware of those incidents. So few accounts exist of the battle that it's likely we will never know of many major events that took place there. At any rate, I inserted that episode into my story because I wanted to focus attention on a group of men who receive very little screen time in the British officers' reports on the battle: the wounded.
    In one of those Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction moments, three of the men who took part in the Battle of Spion Kop were the future South African prime minister Louis Botha, the future British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Mahatma Gandhi. Botha was there as a Boer general, Winston Churchill was serving as a British war correspondent and soldier, and Gandhi was head of the British forces' Natal Indian Ambulance Corps, which was charged with bringing the wounded down from Spion Kop. (The removal of the wounded from the battlefield itself was undertaken by the all-white Natal Volunteer Ambulance Corps, but it's clear from one of the eyewitness accounts that the Indians underwent casualties as well, so for the sake of simplification, I have centered my own tale on the actions of the Indian corps.) Gandhi actually sympathized with the Boer cause, a fact I've lightly alluded to in my story.
    Boys served in both armies during the Boer War, but as far as I know, the British army did not usually employ them as messengers.
    The characters' beliefs on politics, religion, society, and sexuality are not meant to correspond in any exact manner to the situation in our world at the end of the nineteenth century. Those beliefs grow instead out of my premise – from the Turn-of-the-Century Toughs cycle as a whole – that the continent we know as North America was settled by the inhabitants of other continents in ancient times, and therefore certain ancient and medieval customs became important on this continent.
    On the other hand, the quotations at the beginning of each section of my story, as well as a few lines of dialogue, are taken from words that were actually spoken or written during or after the Battle of Spion Kop. Occasionally, I have altered punctuation or spelling or have abridged the texts, and of course I replaced any references to our own world, but otherwise I made no alterations to these striking words.
    The original speakers or writers were as follows:
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    ". . . we won't all be coming back." —Commandant Hendrik Prinsloo of the Boers' Carolina Commando, to his soldiers. Prinsloo captured Aloe Knoll and Conical Hill, two key assault points next to Spion Kop. Over half his men died during the battle.
    "The unquestioning subordination of the private judgment . . ." —Bron Herbert, as edited by L. S. Amery, in Volume 3 of The Times History of the War in South Africa (published in 1905), referring to the decision to retreat from Spion Kop.
    "It has got to stay there." —General Sir Redvers Buller to Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington, upon being asked what he wished the British attack party to do, once it had taken Spion Kop. Repington then suggested that it would be helpful if guns were sent up the hill. (Repington later wrote, "There was no plan except that we were to take the hill and stay there. Some 1700 men were to assault a hill 1740 feet high in the centre of the Boer position, and the rest of Buller's 20,000 men were to look on and do nothing.")
    "The operation will be conducted . . ." —Attack orders issued on 23 January 1900 by General J. Talbot Coke, after he had received orders from General Charles Warren to occupy Spion Kop. General Warren, who was subordinate to General Buller, was in charge of the overall operations at Spion Kop.
    "They went up recruits . . ." —General Buller to the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa.
    "Let us struggle and die together." —General Louis Botha to General Schalk Burger. The two generals led the Boer attack on Spion Kop.
    "We got up about four o'clock . . ." —General Edward Woodgate, initially in charge of the British occupation of Spion Kop.
    "Am exposed to terrible cross-fire . . ." —General Woodgate, shortly before he was mortally wounded at Spion Kop.
    "Reinforce at once or all is lost. . . ." —Colonel Malby Crofton, who took over command of the British forces at Spion Kop when Woodgate and three more senior officers all fell in battle within a short time of one another. Colonel Crofton later claimed that a signalman rephrased his calmer request for