Doyle was knighted for his service during the Boer War (1899-1902), in which he served as a medical doctor. Much of Doyle’s The Great Boer War was written in hospital tents where he treated the wounded and diseased. The memories are a nationalistic view of a war unpopular in Britain, making the case that war is cruel.
Describing an English militia’s defeat at Vaalkranz, Doyle clarifies that war is no picnic: “In the middle of the night, he was upon them with a hissing sleet of bullets. At the first dawn, the guns opened, and the shells began to burst among them. It was a horrible ordeal for raw troops. The men were miners and agricultural labourers, who had never seen more bloodshed than a cut finger in their lives. They had been four months in the country, but their life had been a picnic, as the luxury of their baggage shows. Now in an instant the picnic was ended, and in the grey cold dawn war was upon them — grim war with the whine of bullets, the screams of pain, the crash of shell, the horrible rending and riving of body and limb.”
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Oscar Eckhartd’s The Battle of al Kranz” at British battles.com
See Arthur Conan Doyle. The Great Boer War. London: Smith and Elder, 1900;