Page 197 - The Diary of A. H. W. Behrens

93
1901
My God, my Father, whyle I stray
Far from my home, in life’s rough way,
Oh, teach me from my heart to say:
Thy will be done!
We were given 1. class tickets to Umtlalumi on this side of Port Shepstone. Sister Christine was allowed to go with us. Near Greylingstad we had to stop for a couple of hours and were told, “Boers on the line!” We then also reached the place where the boers had managed to derail a goods train and robbed it after they had broken the rails. Then new rails had been laid across the field on the side of the rails and this is where our train had to go very slowly so that it hardly moved, but eventually we managed.
That evening we arrived in Standerton where we should
stand for the night. I stood in the door, thinking about
where and how we would get dinner. Then a gentleman in a major’s uniform walked along the train and greeted, “Hello Mr Behrens, what are you doing here?” It was a Wesleyan missionary who had become military pastor. When he had heard everything, he took us all with him to a hotel and paid for a lovely dinner for us.
The next day our journey continued across mountains and through valleys and over emergency bridges alongside bridges that had been blown up. At all stations many people came
to look at the train that had been shot at by the boers on its upward journey. The wagons