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Van der Schijff, Petrus Martinus

Died from the effects of sunstroke after the march to Trichinopoly P.O.W. Camp, 4 June 1901.

Buried in Trichinopoly Wesleyan Cemetery on 5 June 1901. He was buried with full military honours, his coffin being carried from the camp to the cemetery (four miles) on a gun carriage. Extraordinarily his coffin was draped with a Union Jack when it was lowered into the grave.

Original wooden grave-marker inscribed:



Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore), 12th June 1901

On the 5th the correspondent writes: – I hear two of the Boer prisoners, who only arrived yesterday, have died. It is said that there were two or three cases of heat-apoplexy after the men arrived at the Camp which is three miles from the station. One proved fatal in the evening, and I am informed that another man died this morning. The Boer who succumbed yesterday is stated to have been a Transvaaler, about middle age. He was imprudent enough to wear his cap on the march instead of the solar topee given to him. He was buried this morning at the Wesleyan Cemetery. His son, other relations and about a dozen big burly Boers were at the funeral. Some of them seemed much affected. They looked a very decent set of men, above the average in physique and cleanliness of the 500 prisoners. They were much more suitably dressed for the climate than when they arrived. They now wear, in addition to the solar topee, cotton clothes and shirt, the jacket being of loose make, of bright blue colour, resembling the typical blouse of the French peasant and workman. The body was conveyed from the Camp to the Cemetery (about four miles distant) on a gun carriage drawn by bullocks, and the funeral party of Lincolns fired three volleys over the grave. As the Lincolns and Boers combined lowered the coffin into the grave, I thought how good it would be if the hatchet could be buried at the same time. But the Union Jack was on the coffin, and the Boer mourners may have felt some bitterness at their comrade going to his last rest covered by the flag which the Boers had hauled down from buildings now and again with such exultation. An English officer was present, but no Boer officer.



Methodist Times, 25th July 1901

THE BOER PRISONERS AT TRICHINOPOLY.

BY REV. ALFRED SMITH.

....... That same evening when I returned to the mission house after eight o’clock I found an English officer waiting for me. He had come to ask me to bury one of the prisoners. It seems that many of them would not believe that the sun is more dangerous here than it is in South Africa, and so, on the way to the camp, had discarded their topees for caps and other light headdresses. As a result two or three of them had got sunstroke, and one had paid for his folly with his life. He was brought to our little cemetery early the following morning, and I buried him with military honours. Prisoners or no prisoners, I could not help feeling sorry for that little company of mourning Boers who stood around the grave of their comrade who had so suddenly and so strangely been taken from them. Strong men though they were, they could not restrain their tears, and the dead man's son, who was but a youth, was very deeply affected. I expressed my sympathy with him as well as I could, and two days later I received a letter from him written in very good English, asking me to put up a wooden slab at the head of his father's grave with the following inscription upon it: –


I need hardly say his request will be attended to. I am not able to say, as an old Irish pensioner said to me the other day when speaking about the death of this Boer, “I can sympathise with him, for I know what it is to die in a foreign country”; but it did not need that knowledge to make one feel very sorry for the man's son.

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