Boer War Page 92

Lest We Forget Part 1

You are listening to an original recording from 1902 featuring one of Canada's very first recording artists, Harry Macdonough singing "All Through the Night." This recording was probably played on Gramophones during lonely evenings across Canada as family and friends gathered to ponder the fate of their boys at war in distant South Africa.

The Canadian National Boer War Memorial Page 1 of 2 

"We are the Dead...
Short days ago we lived, saw sunset glow, 
         And now we lie in ... Africa..."

John McCrae, who was to write "In Flander's Fields" many years later, served in Africa as a young artillery officer during the Boer War. As he witnessed the burials of comrades, few by today's standards of war, he was shocked - like most Canadians at the time - and considered that the deaths were more than anyone could possibly bear.

Fifteen years later, now as a doctor, McCrae must have looked back with disbelief to the casualty figures of the Boer War. Now during World War I, his comrades were being consumed by a war machine that had grown so devastating it killed in only minutes, the number of war dead Canada lost in almost three years during the Boer War. McCrae was one of hundreds of Boer War veterans who were to die in World War 1.