When we found we were to be attacked at Mafeking, we ordered our garrison to the points they were to protect—some 700 trained men, police, and volunteers. Then we armed the townsmen, of whom there were some 300. Some of them were old frontiersmen, and quite equal to the occasion. But many of them were young shopmen, clerks, and others, who had never handled a rifle before.

Altogether, then, we only had about a thousand men to defend the place, which was about five miles round and contained 600 white women and children and about 7,000 natives.

Every man was of value, and as the weeks passed by and many were killed and wounded, the duties of fighting and keeping watch at night became harder for the rest.

The Mafeking Cadet Corps

It was then that Lord Edward Cecil, the chief staff officer, gathered together the boys of Mafeking and made them into a cadet corps. He put them in uniform and drilled them. And a jolly smart and useful lot they were. Previously, we had used a large number of men for carrying orders and messages, keeping lookout and acting as orderlies, and so on. These duties were now handed over to the boy cadets, and the men were released to strengthen the firing-line.

The boys of Mafeking did excellent service. They were gathered together into a cadet corps, put into uniform and drilled.

The cadets, under their sergeant- major, a boy named Goodyear, did good work, and well deserved the medals they got at the end of the war.

Many of them rode bicycles, and we were thus able to establish a post by which people could send letters to their friends in the different forts, or about the town, without going out under fire themselves. For these letters we made postage stamps which had on them a picture of a cadet bicycle orderly.



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