A Brave Field Cornet Poem by Gert Strydom

From a hillock
two Boer commandoes
ride into an English camp
and a few of the British are shot,
a lot are caught
and most flee away.

In the direction of the Tuli river
the enemy are followed in haste
where they join comrades
driving a ox wagon
and the Boers are marksmen
and the English flee again
to find shelter in a farmhouse.

The house is shot to pieces
and for the third time on one day
the British flee again
and the next day,
the Boer commando captures nine wagons
with food and ammunition.

The day following Boer scouts
find an abandoned enemy camp
with burned out fires,
tents, horses and mules
and see a big cloud of dust
coming along in their direction.

There’s a Field Cornet
that does not ride away,
while two Boer commandos
escapes to safety.

At dusk Jacobus Potgieter
finds more men with a canon
set on a hillock
and with just more than twenty men,
he prepares
to give resistance to a huge enemy force.

The darker the night gets,
the nearer the cloud of dust comes
and Jacobus Potgieter and his men
are ready to shoot killing shots
and to let no Englishmen past them
and there’s a rambling sound,
but no enemy appear
and they are invaded
by a swarm of locusts.



[Reference: The “JJ Potgieter manuscript.” Second Anglo-Boer war. Boer commando= A group of Boer farmers in a citizen force militia under a Commandant (Lieutenant-Colonel) .]