Debbie De Louise from Ruff Drafts hosted a post for my Great Escapes virtual book tour about the Siege of Ladysmith which took place at the beginning of the Second Anglo Boer War. Thank you Debbie.
Guest Post: The Siege of Ladysmith by Roberta Eaton Cheadle
Background
The siege of Ladysmith, a town in British controlled Natal, was a lengthily engagement between the British and the Boers during the Great South African War (Second Anglo Boer War).
When the negotiations between the two Boer republics and Britain broke down and war was declared on the 11th of October 1899, 21,000 Boers advanced into Natal from all sides. By way of a countermeasure, Lieutenant Sir George White deployed his British troops around the garrison town of Ladysmith. As the Boers surrounded Ladysmith, White engaged in the Battle of Ladysmith with ended in disaster for the British with 1,200 men killed, wounded or captured.
The town was then besieged for 118 days from 2 November 1899 to 28 February 1900. On the 15th of December 1899 the first British relief force under General Redvers Henry Buller was defeated at the Battle of Colenso.
On Christmas Day 1899, the Boers fired into Ladysmith a carrier shell without a fuse. It contained a Christmas pudding, two Union Flags and the message ‘compliments of the season’.
Following repeated attempts by Buller to fight his way across the Tugela River, he finally broke through the Boer positions on the 27th of February 1900. On the evening of the 28th of February, the first party of the relief column, under Major Hubert Gough and including Winston Churchill, rode into Ladysmith.
Welcome toThursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).
This is what Wikipedia says about the Voortrekker Monument
The Voortrekker Monument is located just south of Pretoria in South Africa. This massive granite structure is prominently located on a hilltop, and was raised to commemorate the Voortrekkers (Dutch-speaking pioneers) who left the Cape Colony between 1835 and 1854.
This marble frieze in the Hall of Heroes is the biggest in the world. The frieze consists of 27 bas-relief panels depicting the history of the Great Trek.
Tapestries depicting the Great Trek – I think they are amazingDoorways at the top of the monument – climbing the stairs was a killer, if you visit, take the lift.
A Ghost and His Gold has been on tour again and I am extremely grateful to all the lovely hosts who have supported my tour. I was in two minds about whether I should share any of the posts to my blog as I don’t want to swamp my readers with details and information about this book, but I have decided to share some of the posts as they do reveal some interesting insights into the characters in this book and the circumstances of the war.
This post, hosted by talented author James J. Cudney who blogs at https://thisismytruthnow.com/, includes a character interview with Mosiko, one of the secondary characters. Mosiko is a native African and, even though this war was largely viewed as being between Britain and the South African Boers, it had a huge impact on the native African population living in the two Boer republics at the time. Their stories are, sadly, not documented and it was difficult to find reliable sources of information about the role played by native Africans in this war and their plight in the concentration camps. I did, however, manage to glean some reliable details which I wove into my story.
I was also fortunate enough to receive a lovely review of this book by James and this is included in his post.
Character Interview
What is your character’s name?
Mosiko – Mosiko is never referred to with a last name in the book.
Can you share some personality traits about Mosiko?
Mosiko is one of Pieter van Zyl’s trusted farm managers on his farm in Irene.
When it becomes obvious that war is inevitable, Pieter travels to join up with his brother and their commando in the region where they both grew up, and Pieter leaves Mosiko in charge of the farm and the security of this wife and three daughters. Pieter trusts Mosiko explicitly after his many years of service to the van Zyl family.
Mosiko had joined the van Zyl family when he was 10-years old and Pieter’s father, Hendrik, had found him hungry and abused, hiding in the veld from his abusive carers. Hendrik had offered the boy a home and he had become particularly attached to Pieter and accompanied him when he left to establish his own farm.
Pieter’s oldest daughter, Estelle, is also attached to Mosiko and regards him as her trusted caregiver. Pieter’s wife, Marta, also relies on Mosiko as is demonstrated by this paragraph from the book:
During the months when her father was away, Mosiko proved himself to be exceptionally devoted and Estelle was relieved that her mother had someone competent who she could rely on to help her. Mosiko had worked for her father his whole life and knew exactly what needed to be done. Stepping into the role of overseer, he supervised the work of his fellow labourers and ensured it was done properly.
Where does Mosiko live?
When we first meet Mosiko, he is living with Pieter’s family on the van Zyl farm in Irene. When the family flees the approaching Khakis [British] soldiers, Mosiko and his family accompany them to Pieter’s brother, Willem’s, farm. Mosiko knows his role is to look after Pieter’s family in his absence.
Discuss: It never fails to amaze me that ALL the books ever written are made up of just twenty six letters.
When I saw this prompt, my first thought was how amazing the word usage is in some books and how some authors are so extraordinarily talented at weaving the 26 letters available to all of us into the most vivid and memorable descriptions, concepts, and thoughts.
We all have the same tools for writing, 26 letters, its how we string those letters together that makes all the difference. We add other writing tools to these basic building blocks and focus on showing and not telling, dialogue, avoiding filter words, and other learned techniques, but at the end of the day, the quality of our stories boils down to the words on the page.
Some examples of great writing that have remained with me long after I finished reading a particular book are as follows:
A short extract from The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
“But this morning was different. Disturbingly because mysteriously different. No wheels rumbled, no buses roared, no sound of a car of any kind, in fact was to be heard. No brakes, no horns, not even the clopping of the few rare horses that still occasionally passed. Nor, as there should be at such an hour, the composite tramp of work-bound feet.
The more I listened, the queerer it seemed – and the less I cared for it. In what I reckoned to be ten minutes of careful listening I heard five sets of shuffling, hesitating footsteps, three voices bawling unintelligibly in the distance, and the hysterical sobs of a woman. There was not the cooing of a pigeon, not the chirp of a sparrow. Nothing but the humming of wires in the wind …”
Opening paragraph of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.”
Passage from The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
“She was very dead, must have died within minutes of retiring, a good fifteen hours earlier. The windows were closed fast, and the room humid from the great flat pans of water she insisted be put in every inconspicuous corner to keep her skin youthful. There was a peculiar noise in the air; after a stupid moment of wondering he realized what he heard were flies, hordes of flies buzzing, insanely clamouring as they feasted on her, mated on her, laid there eggs on her.”
Extract from A Ghost and His Gold
I have tried hard to mimic some of the great writing I have read during the course of my life to date.
The following is an extract from one of the battle scenes in my book, A Ghost and His Gold, that I was pleased with:
“I ran, legs pumping and bayonet held at the ready, to the discordant notes of the supporting artillery guns and the Maxim which intensified the din and swirled around me like an insane orchestra. I was conscious of the men of my squadron around me, as well as those of C Squadron about three hundred yards ahead of me.
A great surge of comradery surged through me as these men, my brotherhood, charged forward through the smoke, directly into a hail of bullets from the Boer musketry. Death seemed certain, but, at this precise moment, this did not matter to me; a cloud of red anger and lust for blood having descended over my mind.
The anger prevented fear and grew in its intensity as the occasional figure, including that of Captain Fitzclarence, dropped around me in small explosions of red.
C Squadron reached the fort, which was hidden by bushes, and the guns roared; the sound of the discordant orchestra growing and swelling. My men and I slowed our forward momentum as we watched more ghostly forms falling, to lie in ghastly bleeding piles on the ground.
The few men still standing started to fall back, shouting at my squadron to follow suit.
“The walls are too high … Impossible to mount without scaling ladders.”
Their shouts filled the air, mingling with the gunfire and moans, groans and cries of the wounded.
One of my men, William, and I picked up Captain Fitzclarence as we slowly and deliberately retraced our steps. The blood lust had faded from the men’s eyes and their moods had turned sullen. Expressions of dejection had settled on some faces.”
You can see what other writers think about this topic here:
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Author, Charles French, asks “which 2 or 3 fictional characters I would like to sit down with over coffee, tea, or beer and with whom I would like to have a conversation.”
Upon reflection, I would not choose a mythical character from a fantasy novel to invite around for tea and a chat. My choices would be characters who have gone through personal trauma and experience growth and personal development as a result. I think my choices would reflect the elements of fictional novels that interest me the most: What makes the character tick? Why did the character make the choices or decisions he/she made? Were their choices and attitudes influenced by their background?
The first character I would like to chat to would be Van Helsing from Dracula. I would want to know more about his background and his Catholic faith and how his respect for the ancient customs and belief in superstitions and folk remedies fitted with his enthusiasm for modern medicine and understanding of the importance of science for the future of mankind. I would also want to know what he knew about vampires and how he came by this information.
Picture from Wikipedia – Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing in Dracula (1931)Picture from Wikipedia – Peter Cushing as Van Helsing in The Brides of Dracula
My second choice of character would be Oom Schalk Lourens from Herman Charles Bosman’s The Complete Voorkamer Stories. Given the difficulties I experienced with researching certain aspects of the lives of the Boers before, during, and after the Second Anglo Boer War in South Africa, I would love to chat to Oom Schalk and learn more about his life, especially during this war.
One of the most moving concepts for me in this book related to Oom Schalk’s comments about his wife going into a concentration camp with their two children and coming out alone. I would like to learn more about both of their experiences, living conditions, and emotions. I would be interested in the small details relating to their lives that are so difficult to discover through research.
My thoughts about chatting to characters are that if the author has done a good job of showing the emotions of the characters and explaining the circumstances of the story and how the entire story lines comes together, there isn’t that much I would need to chat to the characters about.
Having tea with an author now, well that is something entirely different. There are dozens of authors I would love to talk to about their ideas and delve into the greater meanings of their storylines and underlying messages and meanings.
Do you have any characters you would like to chat to? Why? Let me know in the comments.
Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).
During our visit to Ghost Mountain we went on a tour of the local community. The guide was a conservationist and explained the issues the community is facing due to the dry conditions resulting in water shortages, lack of maintenance of chemical toilets in the schools, and issues with alien plants that are spreading like wildfire and which poison the cattle if consumed.
Picture of various houses and their doors in the community. Many of the residents are involved with the communal cattle raising projects or work in the leisure and tourism industry. Over this Covid-19 period, the community has been hard hit with job losses.View from the road going up the mountain. You can see Ghost Mountain in the distance.Giant caterpillar – the hairs are poisonousSunset over the Pongolapoort DamSunset – a bit more advanced – over the Pongolapoort DamBurning the sugarcane plantation to get rid of foliage, snakes and cane rats.
Do pets (or other animals) play an important part in your books? Tell us about them.
Of course they do, pets and animals are a part of our world and they come into my books quite naturally.
How animals and pets are included in my books differs, depending on the book.
Pets and animals can be used to demonstrate certain qualities and personality traits in characters. For example, in my book for older children, While the Bombs Fell, the reader knows that little Elsie loves animals from the way she behaves, as illustrated by this short paragraph:
“The morning after the birth, Elsie would rush to go and see the newborn calf and any other calves in the calf shed. She thought the tiny calves were pretty with their dark brown eyes and soft noses. She used to visit the calves and, if she put her hand out towards one, that calf would suck on her fingers. The strong sucking sometimes gave her a bit of a fright as she struggled to pull her hand free, but it didn’t stop her from repeating this fun over and over again.”
Animals can also be a way of showing the occupation of the characters. The father in While the Bombs Fell is a farmer and the importance of the well being of his livestock is illustrated by this paragraph from the same chapter:
“Quickly, the weaning of the calf off its mother’s milk and onto a mixture of special calves feed, mixed with water, began. Calves ate this diet until they were old enough to be sold. Father cared for the calves well because they were valuable and, when sold, helped feed the family.“
Animals can also be used for scene setting. Certain animals, like black cats, have a reputation for being associated with witches and evil. In my young adult book, Through the Nethergate, I have used a cat to increase the tension of certain settings and scenes.
“Margaret didn’t see the cat lying on the sixth riser from the top. She tripped, grabbing hold of the banister to save herself.
On reaching the top of the stairs, Margaret stood for a moment, breathing heavily. The strange vision in the cellar, combined with the cat on the stairs, had scared her. Adrenalin pumped through her body. It made everything seem sharply focused and almost over bright.
The cat stood up and stretched. It sauntered past Margaret, brushing against her ankles. The feel of the cat made Margaret break out in gooseflesh.“
Animals can also be used to illustrate the harshness of life in a historical time period. This scene from A Ghost and His Gold does that:
“He reminds me of Hansie, he has the same trusting eyes. I miss that dog,” Pieter sighs deeply. “Shooting that dog was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but what other option did I have? He’d gone blind from the snake venom and a blind dog cannot survive in the veld.”
Estelle visibly shudders. Since Hansie was hit in the eyes by the venom of a Mozambique spitting cobra, she has developed a horror of snakes and won’t go anywhere near them.
Pieter had desperately tried to save the dog’s eyesight by washing his eyes out using water and milk, but he had gone blind anyway. Marta has mentioned several times that she missed knowing Hansie was there to protect them while Pieter was away. His loud and frantic barking acted as an excellent warning system if any humans or wild animals approached the farm.“
Do you incorporate pets and animals into your writing and stories?
You can see what other writers do here:
Rules: 1. Link your blog to this hop. 2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop. 3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs. 4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting. 5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.
Thank you to Professor Charles French for sharing my thoughts about the classic novel, A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway. This is a love story set during the Italian campaign of World War 1.
Charles has some wonderful books to help aspiring and established writers improve their prose and also has some terrific novels of his own so do take a look while you are there.
Thank you so much to Roberta Eaton Cheadle for creating another entry into the U. L. S., the Underground Library Society! The U. L. S. is an unofficial group of people who are dedicated to the preservation of books and in complete opposition to censorship. The idea is based on the Book People from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway, is a love story set during the Italian campaign of World War 1.
The story is narrated by the main character, Fredric Henry, an American medic, who joined the Italian Army at the commencement of war in the capacity of a lieutenant in the ambulance corp. The book details the romance between Fredric and an English nurse, Catherine Barkley, but it is equally a story of Fredric’s personal growth from a young man with foolish notions about the purpose and…
Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).
The Pongolapoort Dam, also called Lake Jozini is located on the Pongola River in northern Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.
Prior to the construction of the dam, the land was Africa’s first formally recognised conservation area. The Pongola Game Reserve was created in 1894 by the president of the Transvaal Republic at the time, Paul Kruger.
This move ultimately lead to the proclamation of the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, Mkuze and Ndumo Game Reserves as well as one of Africa’s greatest wildlife conservation parks, the Kruger National Park.
Here are a few pictures from our tour of this dam which contains a lot of hippos. Hippos are hard to capture in photographs as they only pop up for air every five minutes and their time above the surface of the water is very short. They spend up to 16 hours a day submerged under water to keep their bodies cool.
View of the pier with the cruise boats. The on the left has an enclosed area with access doorsA picture of the holiday flats on the shore with glass doors leading onto the balconiesPicture of Tiger Lodge, Jozini, where we met the guide for the cruise
On the Pongolapoort dam
The wake from the boat
This area was dry land until this year. We have had a lot of rain and the trees are underwater.
Two hippos popping up for air
Another hippo popping up
I am busy finishing off a new collection of poetry called Behind Closed Doors. This amazing cover was designed by Teagan Riordain Geneviene.
This month, my Dark Origins post focuses on the famous American tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which features the well known character, Ichabod Crane. The background to this story is rather interesting. Thank you to Kaye Lynne Booth for hosting this post on Writing to be Read.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a gothic story by American author, Washington Irving, and is included in a collection of 34 essays and short stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
Cover of The Sketch-Book by Washington Irving from Amazon US
The plot
The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane (1858) by John Quidor
The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York. Sleepy Hollow is a secluded glen which is famous for its ghosts and haunting atmosphere.
Ichabod Crane moves to Sleepy Hollow to be the schoolmaster of the village. As was customary at the time, Ichabod earns practically no money, but is provided with lodgings and food on a rotational basis by the local farmers who are also the fathers of the boys he teachers. This arrangement, and the singing lessons he gives on the side, keeps him employed and also gives him numerous opportunities to listen to the many tales about ghosts, haunted spots and twilight superstitions shared by the farmers wives.
