Feature Letter of September 18th, 2025
Rooke, (Robert, Charles, and George)
Dear Mother,
I must drop you a few lines to let you know we are still alive & kicking. You will know by the papers long before this reaches you that we have done some pretty steady fighting, but we have been very successful. We have taken on positions in a couple of days which the Boers consider impregnable. They gave us a lively time of it sometimes, however. One day, in the Crocodile Valley, they got our brigade into a rocky donga and shelled us all day with 4 big guns. As one of our Irishmen said, "They threw coalstones filled with brimstone & scrapiron at us all day", but did not do a great deal of damage. I tell you it is quite an experience lying behind the rocks with 200 lb shells bursting all round you & throwing chunks of rock and scrap iron all round. They threw one unlucky shell into our camp at Sydenburn; it killed 3 & wounded 17 of the Gordons.
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As we move away in time from past conflicts and as our veteran population declines, it becomes increasingly difficult for Canadians to understand the sacrifices that men and women made, both on the battlefield and on the home front, during wartime. The Canadian Letters and Images Project has been sharing their stories, and Canada’s story, for the past quarter century.
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