Woman's Endurance — Key Ideas to Explore

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Authors: Luckhoff, A. D. (August D.) Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2005 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: South African War, 1899-1902 -- Concentration camps -- South Africa -- Bethulie; South African War, 1899-1902 -- Concentration camps -- South Africa -- Personal narrativies Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 27,716

Reading time 121 min

Text sections 4

The source record for Woman's Endurance — Key Ideas to Explore measures this digital text at 27,716 words, 2 hr 1 min estimated reading time, and 4 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 14.3 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “South African War, 1899-1902 -- Concentration camps -- South Africa -- Bethulie,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #16859

A chaplain's diary from the Bethulie concentration camp during the South African War, recording daily encounters with illness, death, and religious services, marked by a plain, hurried style and code-switching between English and Dutch.

Editorial Edition Score 4.5/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg16859

Read the Text

The thought suggested itself the very first day that I might desire, in after years, to recall my experiences in Camp, and so I decided to keep a diary. This thought, and this alone, prompted me in the matter. Of an evening, therefore, just before retiring, I noted down the doings of the day, consulting at such times always my pocket note-book.

What was written was done hurriedly, on the impulse of the moment--in fact, simply scribbled down without, of course, any regard to style, language, or form. Stress of circumstances must be held responsible for the many undignified expressions in which the Diary abounds. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that I was usually tired out after the day's work, when these entries were made.

For almost a year the Diary lay in my desk before I could summon courage to re-read it. After it had been hidden again for another year, I rashly promised a sick friend to send it for her to read. Fearing, however, that she would not be able to follow all the contractions, I decided to copy it over, and it was while thus engaged that it became clear to me that it should be published. Cui bono? is of course, the question which must be faced. The only answer I wish to plead is that this work is a tribute to Woman's Endurance, and that it presents in the story of that endurance, and the fortitude of the Dutch women and children, one of the nobler aspects of the late war. And is not this plea enough? Cannot we sometimes forget the inevitable political aspect of things and see beyond into the human?

In conclusion, this: A diary is simply a confidential talk to one's self of one's self--such is its prerogative. While, then, sending forth into publicity this Journal in its entirety, so as not to mar its integrity, need it be suggested how hard it is occasionally to lay bare the naked soul within?

Durbanville, Cape Colony, September, 1903.

As reproduced here, the Diary is substantially the same as the original, except for:--

1. Contractions, which are written out.

2. Slang, for which, where it could be done, inoffensive words are substituted.

In form it is given absolutely unchanged.

I have found it necessary to add a number of notes, and to translate all the Dutch.

Bethulie Concentration Camp, August, 1901.

Wednesday, August 21.--Arrived station 8.30 a.m. (from Bloemfontein); tedious delay; no pass to village obtainable, official in village for breakfast; number of refugees in same train, among them a sick girl, with fever: "Pappie, Pappie, ach mij ou Pappie!" ("Daddy, daddy! O my dear daddy!" Thus she cried whenever she was touched, as they carried her out of the train, and lifted her on to the wagon. She was fever-stricken and terribly emaciated. (Reference is made later to this same girl.) Alas! Arrival village; visit parsonage (Becker's); dinner; things forwarded per wagon; arrival camp (mile out); meet superintendent; given a tent; dust; misery; the Van As's offer me a home; kind; bitter cold night; leakage; bad draught; bad cold; feel lonesome; orphanish; pipe to rescue; great consolation.

Thursday, August 22.--My tent untenable position; in the thoroughfare; speak Superintendent; obtain new site; private; buy 150 bricks 1s. 6d., hire three boys, barrow 1s. 3d.; with miershoop (antheap, excellent for making floor) make brick kraal; hard work; Mr. Van As[1] and Fourie grand; fine floor.

First visits: Young girl, orphan, bad; Weinanda, little girl, "Ja Oom, ik is nou bij mij Mamie" ("Yes, Uncle, now I am with my mother"); mind wanders. Third tent: Two babies wrestling with death; mothers raadeloos (in despair); 486[2], wife, babe at breast, measles; daughter, 14, convalescent; behind screen three children sick, measles; condition pitiable; husband prisoner Ladismith; great dirt; unbearable; the pity of it!

Pitch tent; wet floor; inside dire confusion.

Meeting Church-square thirty-nine elders[3]; each a block; prayer; introduction Rev. Becker; kind words and cheer.

Early bed; restless night; hospital close by; commotion; groans; fifteen buried to-day; service for Mr. Van As.

Friday, August 23.--Early bird; wash spruit[4]; first shave (tears); Van As coffee; pathetic sight; old man leading old wife back to tent from hospital; Hugo; son just died.

Visit Hugo's; dinner Van As; outspan (rest); cigar grand.

Unpack; three Red Cross boxes (gift of the chemist); order out of chaos; spirits revive; visits 2.5 p.m.

Dying child; mother broken-hearted.

Dying mother; clear doorway; deathbed grim attraction for our people; prayer; understands.

Widow; husband found dead outside in night; heart disease.

Sick child (since dead); sick child; sweet face; Louw.

Visit sick child of yesterday, also Weinanda.

Stray; hear cough; enter; father invalid (wife dead); three sick children; youngest very bad.

Comfort mother of dead child.

Funerals (seven), Mr. Becker: "I was dumb and opened not my mouth."

Continue Reading →

The diary form of Woman's Endurance is its most telling feature. A. D. Luckhoff, writing as camp chaplain, notes events in brief, dated entries, often closing with a phrase like “Now the day is over!” The prose is deliberately unpolished—he admits to scribbling “without any regard to style, language, or form.” This roughness gives the record an immediacy that a retrospective account would lack.

Luckhoff’s voice shifts between English and Dutch, sometimes mid-sentence, as when he records a mother’s words: “Gister aand, minheer, is zij gestorven.” The code-switching is not decorative; it reflects the bilingual reality of the camp and the chaplain’s own position as a mediator between colonial administration and the Boer community.

A Chaplain’s Unvarnished Voice

The diary’s language is conspicuously unadorned. Luckhoff writes of “the utter insignificance of my best efforts” and admits to feeling “quite at loss where to begin.” He does not polish his frustrations: the doctor’s interference at a deathbed is described as “violent conduct and harshness,” and a dispute over donated goods prompts the sarcastic remark, “Really, doctor takes the cake—with baker and all!” Such bluntness is rare in published wartime accounts. The diary also records practical details—borrowing lamps, distributing “briefies” for rice, obtaining zinc sheets for roofing—that ground the spiritual work in material scarcity.

Death as a Daily Presence

Death appears in nearly every entry, but Luckhoff does not dwell on it sentimentally. He notes a child “passed away quite suddenly” in the same tent as another, and a girl who “did not know me to-day” before dying. The chaplain’s response is often hurried: “Hurried to funerals; four; large crowd.” One mother’s remark is recorded verbatim: “zij kon tog die minuut nie afwag nie, zoo haastig was zij om wegtegaan.” The dying are described as eager to depart, not as victims. Luckhoff’s own relief is palpable when he writes “Thank God!” after a child’s death. The diary does not explain these reactions; it simply presents them.

The Role of Song and Congregation

Music is a recurring thread. Luckhoff describes a service of song where “some 500 young people and several old” gathered, and he recalls “how they sang Psalm 146. It was glorious!” He notes that the singing “sounds lovely at distance, and can be heard all through the camp and in hospital.” The choice of hymns—Psalms, gezangen, and kinder harp liederen—is specified, as is the use of an autoharp in the convalescent tent. These details suggest that communal singing was not merely devotional but a sonic marker of resilience, one that the chaplain deliberately harnessed to reach beyond his immediate congregation.

Tensions with Authority

Luckhoff’s diary records friction with the camp doctor, whom he accuses of forcing “hot coffee down her throat” of a dying woman and of “harshness in the presence of Death.” The doctor also claims credit for granting Luckhoff the “right to grant briefies,” which the chaplain undercuts by noting the existence of a separate Donation Store. These conflicts are not elaborated; they are jotted down as part of the day’s “cream” or “bitterness.” The diary does not take sides explicitly, but the accumulation of such entries paints a picture of a chaplain navigating institutional power while trying to maintain pastoral integrity.

Because the excerpts cover only the preface and early diary entries, the full arc of the work—including later chapters and a conclusion—remains unknown. Readers should approach the diary as a fragmentary, firsthand document rather than a polished narrative. The author’s own admission of haste and his decision to hide the manuscript for a year before rereading it suggest a text that is raw, provisional, and deeply personal. It rewards attention to what is left unsaid as much as to what is recorded.

Sometimes I think of that chaplain scribbling in the Bethulie camp, how grief gets recorded in plain, hurried strokes. Reading The Old Glade (Forbes's) Road (Pennsylvania State Road) — Key Ideas to Explore left a similar quiet ache—a sense of paths worn down by ordinary footsteps carrying more weight than they’ll ever say. It lingers softly, like remembering a place you’ve never actually been.