"After his train was derailed by Boer artillery shelling, he was captured as a prisoner of war (POW) and interned in a Boer POW camp in Pretoria."
Winston Churchill - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I could see him being a "prisoner of war", but that would not qualify as a "concentration camp" which the Brits are known to have invented for THE CIVILIANS in the Boer war in the interests of their triumph of the "Aryans".
As to the causes of Boer deaths which made the Brits notable in the second Boer war::
Lord Kitchener initiated plans to flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organized like a sporting shoot, with success defined by a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children ... It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.[2]
Second Boer War concentration camps - Wikipedia
Ummm....killing civilians as a military tactic - especially women and children, is considered to be extremely low. Then there is the historical "narrative" that supports it.
Something modern historians tend to omit...
From The Graphic, 11th August 1900:
The treatment of the Waterval (British) prisoners
was shocking, says the Chronicle's correspondent at Pretoria. They were gaunt, haggard, starved, unsheltered, living skeletons. A hundred broke out of prison and killed cattle for food. Sixteen officers, at the request of the Boers, were transferred to Waterval to prevent the men from doing something desperate. They were released none too soon.
Again, there is the testimony of Dr. Willis, of the 1st Mounted Infantry, who was wounded at Zoffery Spruit, south-east of Pretoria, and taken prisoner on July 16, and taken to Nooitgedacht, where he found 1,775 of our men and thirty officers. He was kept a close prisoner in a railway carriage for fourteen days, and was not allowed to take any exercise. But his repeated letters to Mr. Kruger and General Botha, complaining of inhuman treatment, brought about his release.
Dr. Willis, according to the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, declares solemnly that the Boers are treating their prisoners infamously. The men are only allowed three pounds of mealie meal, with one and a half pounds of flour weekly. Those who have money may purchase food, but otherwise they go without it. Many of them are in an emaciated condition.
It would seem that the treatment meted out by the Boers to their prisoners has become worse and worse as the tide of fortune has turned against them. The stories told by some of the released prisoners are pitiful. Several hundred Yeomanry and others captured in the Free State and subsequently liberated made their way into Natal. They arrived at Ladysmith after suffering great hardships en route from intense cold and want of food. All the released men were tattered and torn, and presented a most woe-begone appearance. They stated that they were in a condition of semi-starvation, having subsisted mainly upon mealy cobs since they were captured, over a month before. They were made to take forced marches in all directions to prevent them from being recaptured by the British columns, who kept De Wet’s force constantly on the move.
Perhaps one of the most vivid descriptions of the condition of prisoners in the hands of the Boers yet received is that sent to the Daily Mail by the Earl of Rosslyn, who, writing of his visit on parole to the Pretoria prisoners, said that the appearance of the men betokened the great suffering they had endured. Threadbare clothing and pinched, gaunt, dirty faces were soon explained by the condition of the camp, which was filthy in the extreme. There were four long streets of lean-to sheds, open at the front. Though the majority of the men had stretcher beds, there were many compelled to sleep on the bare veldt with only one rug as a protection against the intense cold of the winter nights. Some had been driven to burn their wooden bedsteads to cook the meagre fare they had been allowed. They had sometimes made their tea, or rather toast-and-water, from burnt bread-crumbs.
Nooitgedacht prisoner camp
Text and image from The Graphic, 11 August 1900 Since the beginning of the campaign in South Africa 259 officers and 6,840 non-commissioned officers and men...
