Colonel Ferreira was at the head of a commando at Mafeking.

Paul Dietzch, the military secretary of General Meyer, fought under the British flag in the Gaika and several other native wars.
It was not only the extremely old and the extremely young who went to war; it was a transfer of the entire population of the two Republics to the frontiers, and no condition or position was sufficient excuse to remain behind.

The professional man of Pretoria and Johannesburg was in a laager which was adjacent to a laager of farthest-back veld-farmers.

Lawyers and physicians, photographers and grocers, speculators and sextons, judges and schoolmasters, schoolboys and barkeepers--all who were burghers locked their desks and offices and journeyed to the front.

Even clergymen closed their houses of worship in the towns and remained among the commandos to pray and preach for those who did the fighting.