WITH RUNDLE'S EIGHTH DIVISION IN SOUTH AFRICA (Presentation copy)

First edition: 580 pages, frontispiece group portrait including the author, 5 plates, original beige cloth with photograph laid down on upper cover, light foxing throughout, a very good copy.

Inscription on front free endpaper reads: G. Rapson, ‘With best wishes from the Author Thos. C. Wetton, Christmas 1918.’

Mendelssohn (Sidney) South African Bibliography vol. 2 page 604: 'Parts of the contents of this volume appeared from time to time in the Hove Gazette, The Shoreham and Southwick District Gazette, and The Worthing Times, and these accounts were rewritten and augmented from details obtained from English, Colonial, and Dutch sources in order to complete the work. Rundle's 8th Division was mainly engaged in the Orange Free State, being occupied with the movements which led up to the surrender of Prinsloo in the Caledon Valley; the writer, however, states that he has found it impossible to confine his work strictly to an account of the division with which he served. The main aim of Mr. Wetton has been to give an interesting account of experiences of the hospital work, the hardships, privations, and life in camp and on trek, and he observes, It has long been my earnest wish to see destroyed those old fallacies which, I fear, are even now too readily believed, that our army is full of objectionable characters. If the perusal of these pages tends to remove this unjust stigma I shall feel that my labour has not been in vain.'

Rundle’s 8th Division became notoriously known throughout the British Army as "The Starving Eighth." Tasked with cordoning off the mountainous north eastern Orange Free State (particularly the Brandwater Basin) to prevent Boer commandos under Christiaan de Wet from breaking out, the division was plagued by catastrophic supply failures. The account provides first-hand operational detail regarding the operations leading up to the surrender of Boer General Marthinus Prinsloo and over 4,000 commandos in July 1900 which was a strategic success for the British that was subsequently overshadowed by De Wet’s success in evading the British forces.