According to an interview with Elizabeth’s son Bruce MacKenzie, the bugle is the one that sounded the retreat at Paardeburg [February 1900]. Following the battle of Paardeburg, General Cronje surrendered and was imprisoned on St Helena.

“Elizabeth Rennie Hay: A New Zealand nurse in the Anglo Boer War, 1899-1902

Born Invercargill 1867, died Te Awamutu 1944, aged 77. Trained at Dunedin Hospital

One of a group of seven nurses from Otago-Southland who sailed for South Africa in March 1900.

These nurses were outfitted and financed by funds raised by the people of Otago and Southland, and were attached to military hospitals under the authority of the British Government in South Africa.

Bessie Hay served in military hospitals at Wynberg and Rondebosch, near Capetown, and in Johannesburg and Middelburgh in the Transvaal, and Kroonstad in what was then Orange River Colony.

For some months Sister Hay was attached to the Langman private hospital under Dr Arthur Conan Doyle, which operated under the authority of the British Army Medical Services during the enteric fever epidemic in Bloemfontein, and later in Pretoria. The Union Jack and Red Cross flag presented to Auckland War Memorial Museum by her daughter-in-law, Mrs Bruce Mackenzie, are the flags which flew over the Langman Hospital until it was handed over to the British Government as a gift, in November 1900.

Sister Hay also served on the Hospital Ship “Orcana”, accompanying her sick and wounded patients to the military hospitals in England, and in the later stages of the war made several journeys on a Hospital Ship transporting patients to the coast at Lorenco Marques (Portuguese East Africa), for transfer to the Hospital ships carrying the sick and wounded to the Base Hospitals in Capetown.

Sister Hay was awarded both the Queen’s and the King’s South Africa Medals.

Bessie Hay returned to South Africa to nurse after the war and married Mr Robert Mackenzie. Her home was in Pretoria until she returned to New Zealand in 1913”

Information prepared by Sheila Gray for Auckland War Memorial Museum

See also Ms 956