de Jager, of the Bethlehem commando, was seriously
injured by a shell while he was conveying his injured father from the
field. With the army of General Cronje captured at Paardeberg were no less
than a hundred burghers who had not reached the sixteenth year, and among
those who escaped from the laager in the river-bed were two Bloemfontein
boys named Roux, aged twelve and fourteen years. At Colenso a Wakkerstroom
youth of twelve years captured three English scouts and compelled them to
march ahead of him to the commandant's tent. During one of the lulls in
the fighting at Magersfontein a burgher of fifteen years crept up to
within twenty yards of three British soldiers and shouted "Hands up!"
Thinking that there were other Boers in the vicinity the men dropped their
guns and became prisoners of the boy, who took them to General De la Rey's
tent. When the General asked the boy how he secured the prisoners the lad
replied, nonchalantly, "Oh, I surrounded them." These youths who
accompanied the commando were known as the "Penkop Regiment"--a regiment
composed of school children--and in their connection an amusing story has
been current in the Boer country ever since the war of 1881, when large
numbers of children less than fifteen years old went with their fathers to
battle. The story is that after the fight at Majuba Hill, while the peace
negotiations were in progress, Sir Evelyn Wood, the Commander of the
British forces, asked General Joubert to see the famous Penkop
Regiment. The Boer General gave an order that the regiment should be drawn
up in a line before his tent, and when this had been done General Joubert
led General Wood into the open and introduced him to the corps. Sir Evelyn
was sceptical for some time, and imagined that General Joubert was joking,
but when it was explained to him that the youths really were the
much-vaunted Penkop Regiment he advised them to return to their
school-books.

When a man has reached the age of sixty it may be assumed that he has
outlived his usefulness as a soldier; but not so with the Boer. There was
not one man, but hundreds, who had passed the Biblical threescore years
and ten but were fighting valiantly in defence of their country.
Grey-haired men who, in another country, might be expected to be found at
their homes reading the accounts of their grandsons' deeds in the war,
went out on scouting duty and scaled hills with almost as much alacrity as
the burghers only half thei