Gandhi leads ambulance team for British during bloody suppression of South African Natives

      During the Boer War of 1899 and the Zulu Rebellion of 1906 Gandhiji donned the  Khaki Army Uniform and set on  his mission of mercy, brought help and succour to many a wounded soldier. 

      In 1899 he collected an ambulance corps of 1100 which included about 400 exindentured  Indians and 40 leaders.  The rank and file received the pay of stretcher bearers only but the leaders worked in a honorary capacity.  His party of gallant men on occasions marched 20 to 28 miles carrying the wounded on stretchers.  When incharge of one  of these parties Gandhiji himself carried General Woodgate from the field where he lay dying to a base hospital. 

     In 1905, during Zulu Rebellion, Gandhiji broke up his Johannesburg home and sent his wife and children to phoenix, to raise similar ambulance corps.   This Indian Corps was attached to a swift moving column.  On two or three occasions he and his ambulance personnel carrying wounded Zulus marched 40 miles a day.  But for him many Zulus would  have been uncared for.