River. The letter On 4 October 1901, a letter signed by 15 members of the Bushveldt Carbineers (BVC) garrison at Fort Edward was secretly dispatched to Colonel F.H. Hall, the British Army Officer Commanding at Pietersburg. Written by BVC Trooper Robert Mitchell Cochrane, a former Justice of the Peace from Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, the letter accused members of the Fort Edward garrison of six "disgraceful incidents": The shooting of six surrendered Afrikaner men and boys and the theft of their money and livestock at Valdezia on 2 July 1901. The orders had been given by Captains Alfred Taylor and James Huntley Robertson, and relayed by Sergeant Major K.C.B. Morrison to Sergeant D.C. Oldham. The actual killing was alleged to have been carried out by Sgt. Oldham and BVC Troopers Eden, Arnold, Brown, Heath, and Dale. The shooting of BVC Trooper B.J. van Buuren by BVC Lieutenant Peter Handcock on 4 July 1901. Trooper van Buuren, an Afrikaner, had "disapproved" of the killings at Valdezia, and had informed the victims' wives and children, who were imprisoned at Fort Edward while awaiting shipment to concentration camps, of what had happened to their relatives. The revenge killing of Floris Visser, a wounded prisoner of war, near the Koedoes River on 11 August 1901. Visser had been captured two days before his death by a BVC patrol led by Lieut. Harry Morant. After Visser had been exhaustively interrogated and conveyed for 15 miles by the patrol, Lieutenant Morant had ordered his men to form a firing squad and shoot him. The squad consisted of BVC Troopers A.J. Petrie, J.J. Gill, Wild, and T.J. Botha. A coup de grace was delivered by BVC Lieutenant Harry Picton. The killing of Floris Visser was in retaliation for the combat death of Morant's close friend, BVC Captain Percy Frederick Hunt, at Duivelskloof on 6 August 1901. The shooting, ordered by Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Morant, of four surrendered Afrikaners and four Dutch schoolteachers, who had been captured at the Elim Hospital in Valdezia, on the morning of 23 August 1901. The firing squad consisted of BVC Lieutenant George Witton, Sgt. D.C. Oldham, and Troopers J.T. Arnold, Edward Brown, T. Dale, and A. Heath. Although Trooper Cochrane's letter made no mention of the fact, three Native South African witnesses were also shot dead.The ambush and fatal shooting of the Reverend Carl August Daniel Heese of the Berlin Missionary Society