"If duty calls from threaten'd strifeTo guard our native shore,And shot and shell are answering fastThe booming cannon's roar,Be Thou the main-guard of our host,Till war and danger cease;Defend the right, put up the sword,And through the world make peace."
"If duty calls from threaten'd strifeTo guard our native shore,And shot and shell are answering fastThe booming cannon's roar,Be Thou the main-guard of our host,Till war and danger cease;Defend the right, put up the sword,And through the world make peace."
"If duty calls from threaten'd strifeTo guard our native shore,And shot and shell are answering fastThe booming cannon's roar,
"If duty calls from threaten'd strife
To guard our native shore,
And shot and shell are answering fast
The booming cannon's roar,
Be Thou the main-guard of our host,Till war and danger cease;Defend the right, put up the sword,And through the world make peace."
Be Thou the main-guard of our host,
Till war and danger cease;
Defend the right, put up the sword,
And through the world make peace."
The last night on board we had a farewell dinner-party, not sitting at our usual places, but making little parties of our friends. Whenever I go for a voyage, I think there is something a little sad when it comes to an end, and we all part and go our different ways, but there was something especially sad in saying good-bye to all these bright young fellows, who had to go off to "face the shot and shell."
We landed at Cape Town on 20th March, and found that the troopship, with our medical officers on board, had arrived only that morning, though they sailed some days before we did; they had had a good deal of illness on board, and had to send nearly fifty men into hospital at Cape Town, and they had had two deaths during the voyage.
Soon after we got into dock I received orders to take our sisters and their baggage up to a boarding-house in Roeland Street. This we accomplished with the help of the agents, who rejoice in the name of Divine, Gates & Co.; but we had not been established there very long when I received further orders that we should rejoin our ship in a day or two, as our beds were more urgently required round in Natal than in Cape Colony.
Cape Town was in a great state of excitement; martial law was in force, and armed patrols were riding about, and there were constant rumours that the Boers were close to the Cape.
The docks were crowded with men, horses, and stores, all being disembarked, and sent up country as rapidly as possible.
I found my brother, who had been on circuit when the war began, and could not get back to his home atKimberley. He had been for some time at the Cape, and was shortly going to England.
I met a good many friends in Cape Town; some from Kimberley who had come down to recruit after the siege. All the civilians whom I met from there were loud in their appreciation of Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the way he had worked for them and cheered them through the siege—his especial thoughtfulness for the women and children.
I took the sisters to see his beautiful house, Groot Schuur, and to tea with some old friends of mine at Kenilworth.
I was anxious to see all I could of the military hospitals and how they were managed, as I had had no experience of work for the army; but my first visit to a large Military General Hospital was not encouraging, as I thought the wards looked dirty and untidy to a degree; the men had portions of food left on their lockers from previous meals, and this food was covered with flies. Knowing how much enteric there was in the camp, this, I thought, a great source of danger. The men were cheery, as usual, but complained that sleep was difficult to obtain owing to the live-stock in the beds; in some of the wards the legs of the beds were placed in condensed milk tins (containing some disinfectant), but even this was not always successful.
Another day I visited the Portland Hospital, and found everything very trim and the men very comfortable; the sisters had very nice quarters; they seemed rather horrified to hear that we had not brought any English maids with us, as they said they could never get on without theirs in this savage land (four miles from Cape Town!); but I have had to do withservants out here before, and prefer to manage with natives.
I subsequently visited another large general hospital, and found it much better kept than the first one, and the patients more comfortable; so I conclude it depends on the head a good deal, and not so much on the system.
A party of wounded men came in while I was there, most of them convalescents, but a few looked rather bad, and it seemed to be a very long time before they were put to bed.
I also visited the Red Cross Depot, and saw a good many ladies at work packing bags for the ambulance trains—a suit of pyjamas, a sponge, a handkerchief, a little writing-paper and a pencil, &c., in each bag, which must be a most welcome present for a soldier straight from the veldt.
We re-embarked on the same ship on 24th March, and had a very rough trip up the coast, calling at Port Elizabeth and East London. At the latter place the weather was very hot with a cloudy sky, and all the officers were in their white suits, when we were suddenlystruckby a tremendous rain-storm with thunder and lightning, and the wind howling in the rigging; they had no time to change out of their white clothes, and in a few minutes looked like drowned rats.
The steam was up and everything made fast in case we should have to put out to sea, but the storm soon passed over.
We reached Durban on 31st March, and now there is much speculation as to where we are to pitch our camp.
Pinetown, Natal,April 1900.
When we arrived at Durban the town was very full, and the sisters had to stay on board until rooms could be found for them in a boarding-house. Late in the afternoon a tug came out with a message that we were to disembark and go to a house called "Sea Breeze" in Smith Street. It was rather rough at the anchorage, and we had to get into a basket and were slung over the ship's side into the tug, then the tug had to go round and pick up a lot of lighters that had been supplying other ships with coal, &c., and by the time we got into harbour it was getting dusk, and the Customs House, supposing that all the passengers had landed earlier, was closed.
I had meant to leave our heavy baggage in the Customs House till we knew where we were going; but it was impossible to leave it loose on the jetty, and there were no cabs or trolleys about, but a mob of riksha boys, dressed up in feathers and horns and beads (and very little else), who were all clamouring to be allowed to transport us up town. Eventually we piled our baggage on these rikshas, and, distributing the sisters amongst it, we gave the boys the address, and, with much shouting, our cavalcade started off at a trot; we soon reached Smith Street, but then our troubles began, no one knowing Sea Breeze; we searched up and down the street, and oneold gentleman told me he had lived all his life in Smith Street, but had never seen a Sea Breeze there!
I tried all the places where I thought our officers might be—the R.A.M.C. Depot, hotels, &c.—but could not find them, the sisters all very tired and hungry, and some of them rather nervous; then, by good luck, we met our Major, who had come out to see if we were comfortable in our quarters, and discovered that we had been given the name of the wrong street!
About 9P.M.we found the house; but the landlady had given us up, and, thinking we should not land till the morning, had gone out; but some other lodgers (refugees from Johannesburg) raided the larder for our benefit, and we thoroughly enjoyed our supper.
The next day we found the idea had been to send us up to Mooi River, but it was thought that, with the winter coming on, that would be a cold place for sick troops, so we had better be nearer the coast; and then a Durban gentleman came forward, and most kindly offered the use of his estate of 150 acres at Pinetown; it is only about seventeen miles from Durban, but much higher up and more healthy; so the offer was gratefully accepted, and the building was at once begun.
Then followed a time when we all had to forget that we had come out to "nurse the sick and wounded," and turn to work at other jobs.
Before they were ready for us to go up to Pinetown we were all inoculated against typhoid. It was not a pleasant experience: my temperature went up to 102°, and I had intense abdominal pain and headache; it seemed like a very concentrated touch of typhoid, but it kept us in bed only two or three days, and thefollowing five or six days we felt as weak as though we had been ill for a month.
As soon as possible I went up to see where our hospital was to be built, and found them busy levelling the ground for the tin pavilions.
There were three permanent buildings already up on the land; one, we thought, would make a good ward for officers (eight beds); another had a large room we thought would do for our staff mess-room, and some small rooms suitable for medical officers' bedrooms; and the third was a row of rooms that was apportioned for sisters' rooms, and various offices, stores, &c.
The orderlies were established in tents a little way off; they were all St. John's Ambulance men, and camping out was a new experience for them, so of course they did not know how to make themselves as comfortable as regular soldiers would have done in a new camp. They had joined expecting to have the excitement of stretcher work at the front, and when they were told off to level the ground for the buildings, or to carry up the planks and the heavy boxes from the railway trucks, and to help the builders put up the pavilions, there was a good deal of grumbling.
At first the Major in command would not hear of our going up to stay until they had got some more of the stores up—beds, sheets, &c.; but when he found how slowly they got on, and how discontented the men were at having to rough it, he gave leave for me to go up with one other sister, as we thought we might help a bit, and, at any rate, could show the men we were willing to take our share.
The hospital we had brought out was for onehundred beds, but there was urgent need for more beds, so the P.M.O. had given orders that more huts were to be sent to us, and that we were to open as a two hundred bed hospital.
The railway was so hard worked that we had the greatest difficulty to get trucks to bring the building materials up from Durban, and the docks at Durban were so crowded with stores that it was most difficult to get the things through.
Some of our medical officers worked nobly at the docks, getting the things packed on to trucks, while the others superintended the unloading at Pinetown.
Every engine seemed to be needed for taking men, horses, stores, water, &c., up to the front, and the only wonder was that so few accidents occurred on the much over-worked single line of rails.
We had landed on the last day of March, and on the evening of 12th April Sister —— and I went up to Pinetown by rail, taking all the sisters' heavy baggage; and the other sisters went to give some temporary help on one of the hospital ships at Durban, until we could fix up some rooms for them. Some of the officers met us at the station, and a fatigue party had brought a truck for our baggage. A tramp of about ten minutes through thick sand brought us to our new abode.
Our first meal, a kind of supper, was somewhat quaint; a bare deal table in a room dimly lighted by two candles stuck into bottles; plates, knives, and forks had to be used with great economy, as there were not enough to go round; some good salt beef and biscuits and some fruit—and we were waited upon by an orderly in his shirt sleeves, who was anengine-driver when at home in England, and knew more about greasing engines than about cleaning the grease off plates!
The weather was very hot, and the officers all looked dead tired, so we soon decided to turn in, and were escorted to our room (in the other building) by the light of a guttering candle, as there were said to be many snakes about.
They had found us two beds, and actually some sheets, but absolutely nothing else in our room. However, I hunted up the cook, and he lent me a bucket with some water in, so that we might start fair with a wash in the morning.
The next morning we were up before six, and started work in earnest, unpacking cases, sorting stores, and putting them away in different store-rooms, and trying to find the things we were most in need of for household use.
Some of the hospital fittings had been put ashore at Cape Town and not yet sent on, and more of the necessaries were still down at Durban, so that it was very difficult to push on the building work; and all the time we knew the Field Hospitals were crowded up, and needing to send men down to us to give them a chance of recovery; and we heard that the generals said they could not fight any more till they could clear the Field Hospitals.
All the cases of stores were numbered, so that when we wanted any particular thing, we had to look up in the list the number of its case, and then hunt about till we found that number; all day long it was "Have you seen 4507?"—"No, I want 5470." Sometimes we found a lot of jugs, and then could not find the basins; sometimes a lot of saucers, and no cups; andit seemed as though we never should get order out of the chaos.
At first we had no house-boys, and the orderlies were all busy carrying the building materials up, so Sister and I kept the bedrooms tidy, and the medical officers (in return) carried the water for the baths! As soon as I could, I annexed a fine old Kaffir as a house-boy, and "John" is a great stand-by now.
We tried first of all to fit up rooms with the bare necessary furniture for the rest of the officers and sisters, so that they could all come up and help us.
If you saw the jetty at Durban you would wonder that any stores ever got sent up to their right destination; literally hundreds of tons of boxes stacked up in hopeless confusion. Durban is a bit overdone by military requirements, and quite run out of some stores.
On April 3rd we were made very anxious by a strong rumour that Mafeking had fallen. They say thatallthe little children have died there. Yesterday we heard of the loss of a British convoy and five guns, and also that the Boers were going into laager again quite near to where Cronje was taken.
Durban is full of refugees, and of Ladysmith people recruiting after the siege. I went over one of the hospital ships, theLismore Castle, before I came up here, and it was melancholy to see theskeletonsfrom Ladysmith; one quite young fellow told me he had come here from India, got typhoid soon after the siege began, then, as soon as he began to convalesce, the only food they could give him was mealy meal and a little horse-flesh, so he got dysentery. He is now mending, but it is slow work with them all.
Before we came, our rooms had been occupied byrefugees, and fleas abound; I catch about sixter dieand once in the night. Luckily we are fairly free from mosquitoes. It is awfully hot, and the medical officers go about in trousers and vests only: we wish we could wear as little!
This is a very scrappy letter; we work from 6A.M.to dusk, and then I have been scribbling a little before turning in, but I am weary to a degree, and must fill up the gaps in my next.
Pinetown, Natal,April 1900.
You must not expect me to tell you anything about the progress of the war; the papers here give us very little news; of course we are constantly hearing many startling rumours, but they are frequently contradicted the next day, and probably you have more reliable news of the doings of our troops in your papers at home than we have.
So I will just jot down things about our daily work here.
We are getting into order by degrees, but at present life is rather a struggle against difficulties.
You see we are not quite a Civil Hospital, nor are we quite a Military Hospital; for the 100 beds we brought out we were well equipped, and had many more comforts than a Military Hospital would have been provided with, but now we are to have 200 beds, and our resources are somewhat strained.
I found that the mess waiter was in his shirt sleeves because the poor man had been nursing a case of scarlet fever on board ship, and all his kit had to be burnt, so I fitted him up in some pyjama coats to wait at table, until I could get time to go in to Durban and buy him some white drill jackets.
After a few days' work at unpacking, we got quite civilised in our room fittings, and sent for the other sisters to come up and help.
If there had not been such need for hurry in getting the place ready, it would really have been very amusing; much of the furniture had been a good deal damaged on the way, and we all tried our hands at mending—to see our senior surgeon (who is on the staff of a large hospital in England) sitting on the ground trying to fit a leg on to a washstand, or to make a drawer run into a chest of drawers, is a fine sight; I have taken a few snaps with my kodak of the staff in unprofessional garb, and doing unprofessional jobs. I hope they will come out all right, but I don't see much prospect of having time to develop them.
The theatre is fitted up, but has not been used yet, and Mr. —— is working hard getting the X-Ray room into order, and his apparatus fixed up.
Our food supplies (always called "skoff" here—the Kaffirs' name for food) were very erratic at first. Sometimes no meat would turn up, and then we made shift with bully-beef, which is really quite good, or sardines; sometimes no bread, then we used the barrel of biscuits that lived in the mess-room—you have no idea how difficult it is to eat enough of those biscuits to satisfy you (they are nearly as hard as dog biscuits!), and in about half-an-hour you feel starving again; sometimes there is no butter—then marmalade. Now things are coming up more regularly, and I hope they will continue to do so, as it is easy for us to joke about short commons for ourselves, but it is no joke when you have sick men needing careful feeding up.
One thing is very nice, and that is that the fruit is nearly ripe, and we shall soon have plenty of pineapples and oranges.
Our cook seems to try to make the best of things;he is only quite a lad, but he is managing to cook for us all (including the men), with only wood under a sort of gridiron, in the open air.
There was much joy the other day when we came across a case of "Mother's Crushed Oats"! and nearly all seem to enjoy porridge for breakfast. As it is still very hot, the food supplies are difficult to manage, the meat hardly keeping from one meal to another, even when cooked; and with very limited store-rooms I find it very difficult to see that everything is kept covered up and fly-proof.
So far we have had no fresh milk, but now two cows have arrived, and I am having to watch the boys milk them, as we pay for the milk by the number of bottles supplied!
We have just heard that the poor oldMexicanhas gone down on her voyage out: no lives lost, but we fear our letters have gone to the bottom with her.
One thing I am worried about is that a big tank I had especially asked to have, in which we might boil all the typhoid linen, has been broken on the way, and I don't think I shall be able to get another. We are establishing a place for the washerwomen behind the hospital, on a slope where their water will run away from our direction; I should like to have had a separate place for the staff's washing, but cannot manage it, so must be contented with keeping special women and special tubs, &c., for it.
The men are really working very well now, and it is hard work they have to do; they required a good deal of persuasion to work on Saturday afternoon; but we hear the Field Hospitals are crowded up with 2000 sick, on this side alone, so we must push on the building.
We are getting everything into order in the big store-room, so that as soon as any of the big pavilions are finished we shall have all the fittings quite ready to issue.
I have been down to see the P.M.O. in Durban. He seems very nice, and willing to give us all the help he can; he seems glad that we are going to have the extra beds, and promises to send us more doctors, sisters, and orderlies; we rather hope that some of the orderlies will be R.A.M.C. men, and that they will put a little backbone into our crew, who, I daresay, will be better when we get into order, but many of them are now rather inclined to say "We didn't pass our exams, and come out here, to do navvies' work."
Of course I shall be glad to have the larger place, as I know it is so badly needed, but the prospect of seeing 100 sick men properly looked after by these untrained men was alarming, and now the prospect of 200 sick men with more (possibly) untrained orderlies, plus some unknown sisters, is more alarming still; but I suppose we shall shake along somehow.
I shall be so glad when the men can get time to cut the long grass round the camp, as there are a good many snakes about (two have been killed quite near my room). We all wear canvas gaiters, as a sort of protection; but there are other weird creatures about, and one night a wire came from the next station to say that a leopard, or some such creature, had carried off a Kaffir baby, and we were to look out for the beast; so the men were much excited, but they have not seen anything of him.
Last Sunday was Easter Sunday, and the men had a much needed day of rest, but the sisters and officers went on most of the day unpacking and sorting thethings most urgently needed. We knocked off in the evening, and went to service at the Pinetown church.
The next day (April 16th) we had started work as usual, when the Sergeant-major's whistle summoned all hands: a wire had come to say that a troop train had been thrown off the line about three miles from here.
The Major went off with the medical officers and orderlies, with stretchers. I provided them with brandy, water, a mug, a corkscrew, &c., and then hunted up some lint and bandages, and a few splints, and sent them after them.
Two or three orderlies who were sick in camp came down to see what the alarm meant, and wanted to go to help, but they did not look fit for a three miles' run in the burning sun, so I told them to collect all the natives who were left behind, and we made a hasty clearance of the building that was to be an officers' ward (temporarily used as a store-room). We set several boys to work to scrub the floor and clean the windows, while the orderlies fitted some beds together, and the sisters collected the bedding and made them up, and I got the most necessary ward fittings out of the store, so that when the stretcher party arrived we had quite a workable little surgical ward ready for them.
Two poor fellows had been killed, and fifteen mules were either dead or had to be shot; three men of the Army Service Corps were injured, one with a badly broken leg, and the others with concussion, &c., and two black mule-drivers had each a dreadfully smashed up arm. The Major had a tent pitched for these natives, not far from the ward. It is a wonder theywere not killed, as they were in the same truck with the poor mules.
One sister and some orderlies were told off to look after these, our first, patients; and then we returned to our building occupations.
I did not put a night sister on for these few cases, but I take a prowl round some time during the night (the fleas always wake me up at least once, otherwise I am so tired I don't think I could wake myself), just to see that the orderlies are awake, and managing all right, and the medical officers go round the last thing before turning in, and we are all about by 6A.M.
One of the injured A.S.C. men had been ill before he arrived here, and it looks as though he is in for typhoid.
Last night, after a more than usually scorching day, we had torrents of rain. The poor orderlies were washed out of their tents, and all their things were soaked. They are not used to roughing it, and don't enjoy it.
It seems ever so long since I came up here, but I had been here only four days before these cases came in, and we hope in about another week to be able to send word that we are ready to receive patients from the front.
Pinetown, Natal,May 1900.
Now we are really at work at last, and though I can't say everything is working very smoothly, I think the patients are being well looked after, and I suppose we must expect to have to worry through difficulties for some time to come.
On April 26th the Princess Christian Hospital train brought us fourteen officers and sixteen men, all stretcher cases, and all very ill.
They had come from Field Hospitals, and if one did not know how impossible it is to nurse them or even feed them up there, one would say it was almost murder to have sent them a journey of many hours (over 200 miles) in a jolting train.
There were no wounded in this first batch, and I think only about four or five who were not suffering from typhoid in one stage or another, from a few days, up to three weeks or more.
It was day and night work for us for the first two or three days, as each man seemed to need individual nursing if he was to have a chance of pulling round; the orderlies (though very willing) had everything to learn of ward duties; they could not even undress these men when they had been lifted on to their beds, much less had they any idea of washing them; a delirious man was a new experience to them, and if he got out of bed and lay on the floor, theorderly would go and ask Sister what he had better do!
The doctors told us that four of these patients could not live through the first night (several of them had severe hæmorrhage), but they all struggled through that night, and it was a week later when one poor fellow of the Royal Artillery slipped through our fingers from sheer exhaustion, without ever having become conscious. His mates told us that he had been in a hospital previously with a sunstroke, and had been down with typhoid for some time before he arrived here.
I can't describe the condition of these men; they have not had their clothes off for weeks, creeping things are numerous, but we are getting them clean by degrees. Those who have been ill some time have sore backs—I can't say "bed-sores," as they have had no beds.
Many of them have come from Elandslaagte, and I believe they are very short of both milk and water up there—none of the latter for washing purposes.
Several of the men had been with us over a week before they became conscious of their surroundings at all; but in the case of those whowereconscious, the comforts of a good bed, and a good wash, brought tears of gratitude to their eyes. With many of them it was months since they had slept in a bed: few have done so since they landed in this country, and some of them seem such boys to have gone through so much.
I spent a good deal of my time at first helping the sister in the officers' ward, getting her patients washed and made comfortable, and it was most piteous to see these young fellows—most of them, probably, broughtup in luxury—so wasted and thin, andsograteful for the little that we could spare time to do for their comfort.
Lieutenant —— had been laid up for two months with a bullet in the groin, and is now very ill again with typhoid.
Captain ——, of the R.A.M.C., had been all through the siege of Ladysmith, and had typhoid up there; now he has liver trouble and looks wretchedly ill; I fancy he will have to go home for operation.
Captain ——, of the Royal Artillery, was the worst case of typhoid amongst the officers, for some time his temperature persisting in keeping up to 105 and 106, and he was very delirious; he was always thinking he could see parties of Boers, and he told me I was the worst scout he had ever come across, as I did not see them. He is doing well now.
Lieutenant ——, of the Army Service Corps, had been ill for four weeks with typhoid before he was landed here (still with a very high temperature). He told me that no less than five times had he been moved on a stretcher, from one place to another, as his regiment shifted about, and he said that the order to move always seemed to come in the evening, when his temperature was at its highest, and he was feeling so bad, that at last he begged them to leave him behind to die; they had never been able to give him suitable food, and often not enough of unsuitable, and when at last he got to the line he had 280 miles of jolting over a single-line rail, before he reached us—such treatment for a case that, at home, we should be almost afraid to lift from one bed to another! But he is really mending now, and I hope we shall soon be able to send him home to recruit.
I have never had to give so much stimulant to any patients as we have had to give to these men; all the first night I was going round giving milk and brandy, or bovril, to the worst cases, while the night sister sponged those whose temperatures were the highest; several of the men were on ten ounces of brandy for the first few days. They have been so overworked, and underfed, for some months past that they did not seem to have an ounce of strength left to battle with the fever.
An Army Lady Superintendent is supposed to take charge of a ward herself—generally the officers' ward; but I have not taken a ward yet, as, until we fill up, there are enough sisters, and it seems more profitable for me to go round supplying the sisters' needs from the stores, looking after the cooking, and the house-boys, and the washerwomen (I fear that my hair will turn grey in my efforts to keep the typhoid linen separate), to say nothing of the cows, which are not a success; and we have had to resort to frozen milk from Australia—generally good, but sometimes there is a difficulty about unfreezing it.
We have no Quartermaster here, and the man in charge of the stores is quite unused to his job, so I have to see to a great many things with which an Army Lady Superintendent has, as a rule, nothing to do.
I am very much afraid some of our orderlies will be getting typhoid; of course they find it difficult to realise a danger they can't see, and though we all lecture them about taking precautions, we are so busy ourselves, that it is difficult to enforce them; and just at first there were so many patients quite unconscious and with severe diarrhœa and hæmorrhage,so that it meant constant changing of sheets, &c., by the orderlies.
I think I told you some of the orderlies were ill when our first patients (from the train accident) arrived; it proved to be a form of dengue fever they had, and now the medical officers also are indulging in it; it is rather like influenza—high fever for two or three days, and then they are very weak and pulled down for a few more days. I only hope the sisters will refrain from having it until the orderlies have had a little more education: at present they are about as useful as an average ward-maid at home, and the sisters have to act as sister, staff nurse, and probationer too; but I don't want to grumble at them as they are working well, anxious to learn, and very patient with the men (some of them half delirious) who call "Orderly, orderly" all day long.
If they had had a few R.A.M.C. men amongst them, or even one or two R.A.M.C. ward-masters, it would have been easier; as it is, there is not a single man amongst them who knows anything of the usual routine in a hospital, though they are well up in "First Aid" (for which we have no use here).
The buildings are getting on, and we are ready for more patients as soon as they can get a train to bring them down. We hear nothing of more medical officers, sisters, or orderlies as yet.
One of the men said to me that he did not think any of us could understand what a luxury it was to have a wash, a comfortable bed, and clean clothes; that for months he had been marching and sleeping (in the open) in one suit of clothes, frequently wet through, and remaining wet until the sun came out to dry them; he said that on the high veldt the nightswere very cold, and they frequently had nothing but their greatcoats to sleep in; if they were lucky, and the baggage waggons had kept up with them, they would also have a blanket and perhaps a mackintosh sheet; but that the baggage waggons had a habit of getting stuck at the last drift, and then they had only what they carried.
If we had only come out to South Africa to nurse this one batch of thirty officers and men back to health, I think it would have been worth while, for they were just about as bad as they well could be, and one can't help thinking of the anxiety of their poor friends at home, who will have seen them reported on the "danger lists" from their Field Hospitals; and we go plodding on night and day trying to make them pull round. Only one man has died, and I think the rest will get on, though some of them are still pretty bad.
Captain —— had Cheyne Stokes breathing for two nights, and made us very anxious, but now he is distinctly better.
The Bishop of Pretoria came to lunch with us the other day, and was very nice in visiting the men.
We are expecting more men any day now, and on the 25th of this month we are to be officially "opened" (on Princess Christian's birthday, I believe); a crowd of people are expected from Durban and from Pietermaritzburg.
I could not help thinking the other day, when all these thirty men were dumped in upon us in a couple of hours, of the old days in London when we thought we had had a very heavy day if six or eight patients were admitted to our ward in a day; and there we had everything ready to hand, and several well-drillednurses to help. Here I can see it will take a little time before the sisters will realise that it is useless to try to have things done just the same as we can at home, and for them to distinguish between theessentialsof good nursing, which we must have, and the superfluous finish, which we must do without.
Pinetown, Natal,June 1900.
We have had a stiff time of work since I wrote last. I think I told you that several orderlies were ill, when our first cases came in, with dengue fever, and soon the medical officers began knocking up with it—first one and then another; next, the sisters took it; no one has been very ill, but the fever was high for several days, and, of course, they were weak and seedy after it went down; so we have not had a full staff at work for some time, and with lots of bad cases in the wards it has made things very difficult.
Several odd cases have been straying in, and on the 17th we took in five officers, and then on the 19th of last month we admitted eight officers and thirty men from Modder Spruit, most of them very ill, and one poor fellow so bad with hæmorrhage (enteric) that he died the same night.
We had to open a second officers' ward, and the sister put in charge was very hopeless (at having so many bad cases, and such inefficient help); so I had to spend a good deal of time helping her look after the worst cases, and then the next morning after they arrived I found she had dengue fever and could not come on duty; so I had to take charge of her ward for a few days, and do the best I could in looking after the patients with the help of the orderlies, amidstconstant interruptions and appeals for help or advice from different parts of the camp.
With every one so new to the work—the cook quite unused to military ways or the serving of hospital diets, the storekeeper hardly knowing where anything is, or whether he ought to issue it when he did know, ten Kaffir women washing who could not read the marks on the linen, and so were quite incapable of returning it to the right place without my assistance, and, to do the house work, several new Kaffir boys who really are quite "raw" and want constant looking after (they rejoice in the names of John, Monday, Charlie, and Cup-of-tea; they can speak about six words of English between them, and it is awfully funny hearing the orderlies trying to make them understand), with much other work needing to be done in connection with fitting up new wards and preparing for our opening day ceremony—you can imagine it was difficult to be tied up in one ward with a lot of sick officers who required one's best attention, and more; but it had to be done, and I had to leave the rest to do the best they could, only going round to attend to the most necessary things when I could spare half-an-hour in the day, and after the night sister came on at night.
My worst case was poor Captain ——, of the —— Dragoons, who was desperately bad from the day he came in, and was delirious most of the time; Lieutenant ——, of the same regiment (a friend of his), was very good in sitting with him for part of the day, and when he was at his worst one of the other sisters and I took turns of acting night special (as the night sister could not possibly stay with him much); but he had been thoroughly worn out with the hardships of thecampaign before he got the fever, and though he lingered on so that we kept hoping he would pull through, he died on the 30th of May—our first death amongst the officers, and we all felt very sad. It was terrible for Lieutenant —— (ill with rheumatism), as he knows the captain's relations, and has been cabling to them daily. The funeral was the next day, and the station-master kindly stopped a goods train here, so that the few officer patients who were well enough might go to Pinetown to attend, and all the medical officers who could leave also went. I was too busy to go, but I helped Lieutenant —— to make a cross of white flowers to put on the coffin.
A thing that always makes me feel creepy when I am working in the store is the sight, in one corner, of a little pile of coffins that have been sent up from Durban; of course it is really necessary to keep them ready as, in this climate, the funeral must be the day following the death, but we have had them covered up now, as I did not like the men to see them when they went up to the store for things.
All that last batch of men were frightfully poisoned with enteric, and nothing seemed to stop it; six of them have died, and most of them had symptoms of blood poisoning too.
I don't think I told you that the two sisters who went to help on one of the hospital ships till we could get rooms ready for them, came up at the beginning of May. They brought a poor account of the nursing on that particular ship, and said that, when they went away, there was no fully-trained nurse left on board; that a large proportion of the men who had been ill any length of time, had sore backs (some before they reached the ship). It seems sad that whenthere are so many fully-trained nurses in England longing to come out, these poor fellows should not be getting the best nursing they might have, even right down at the base.
On the 21st of May we heard that Mafeking was really relieved, and on the 25th of May we were officially "opened." General Wolfe Murray was to have performed the ceremony, but he could not come, as General Buller had sent for him, so the Bishop of Natal and Colonel Morris did it between them.
There were special trains from Maritzburg and Durban; a good many people to lunch, and such a crowd in the afternoon—no one seems to know how many, but I think we gave tea to about five hundred. Fortunately, Sister —— was on duty again, so I was not fixed up in her ward, but she was still needing help with her bad cases. I made the teabags in the middle of the night while I took my turn at sitting by poor Captain ——, and several people who live near here were very kind in helping me arrange flowers on the day, and they cut up cake for me. We had a lot of coolie waiters up from Durban, and our house-boys and some whom Mrs. T. (a most kindly neighbour) sent to help, were washing up all the afternoon.
I can't say I enjoyed the day, as we had several patients very ill, and two poor fellows died that day, but we managed to keep their ward (and one of the officers' wards) closed to visitors, so they were not disturbed, and everything went smoothly and well.
When the visitors were leaving, I asked the Major if the orderlies might come and finish up the cakes, &c., as there was some good tea in the urns still, and they had all been working very well, so he told the sergeant-major they might. I was rather amusedat one thing: I took a big tin and gave it to the sergeant-major, asking him to save a few cakes for the night orderlies, but he pointed out to me they were all present; the news of a tea and some good "skoff" had brought them all down from their tents, and they soon made short work of the remains.
I went into Durban one day to do some necessary shopping, and on the train met Colonel Galway, the P.M.O., going down to inspect the hospital ships. He was very nice to me, and told me that if I liked to engage any more sisters out here I might do so, and he would take them on; so I am engaging a lady as a kind of probationer and housekeeper. Her husband is at the front, and she wants to help, and I think she will be able to relieve me a good deal by looking after the house-boys, putting out linen, &c.
Our sisters are working awfully well, but some of them don't get on well with the orderlies—a great mistake: they don't seem able to hide the fact that they think the orderlies very useless and incapable, and consequently the orderlies don't do their best in working with them; it is a great pity, as the men are quite willing and anxious to learn, and are very patient in having to do many jobs that must be very trying to them.
At last I have got a nice white woman to look after the Kaffir washing ladies, and she will do the starching, &c., for the staff. Two of the Kaffirs were washing all day with babies tied on their backs—such jolly fat and shiny little black-a-moors. I gave them an empty packing-case with some sawdust in it and a mat, and both the babies and mothers were delighted.
I actually had a ride the other day; Mrs. D. kindly lent me a horse, and I rode with the Major over to a most interesting Trappist monastery. The TrappistFathers cultivate a lot of land, and teach the native boys various trades. They are going to supply us with eggs, vegetables, &c., and the Major arranged with them that they should visit our Roman Catholic patients, and, if any of them die, they will bury them in their churchyard.
We shall have to have a horse for funeral purposes, and we have been offered a rather nice-looking black animal, so I hope that, to my varied duties, will be added that of keeping the funeral horse exercised!
I don't care much for walking about here, there is so much long grass, and you get covered with ticks (to say nothing of one's natural fear of snakes), so an occasional hour or two on horseback will be refreshing, though up to now I have hardly left the camp except to go to church at Pinetown once on Sundays.
I had a letter the other day from the Secretary of the Durban Ladies' Club to say they had made us all honorary members—a very kind and friendly attention on their part. It is a nice club, but whether we shall ever have time to make use of it remains to be proved.
There are many strange animals about here: a huge owl is getting quite tame, and comes to be fed by the night sister.
The men are trying to shoot a wild cat, but can't get up near to it. After hearing them talking about it, I was rather frightened the other night (sleeping with my door and window open), when something jumped from the window on to my bed; I felt it creeping towards me, and was just going to dive under the bedclothes when it began to purr, and I found it was the camp kitten!
Pinetown, Natal,June 1900.
It is rather difficult to know what to write about that will interest you. There is always plenty of work, but it is not of an exciting nature—just steady plodding on, with difficulties always cropping up and having to be waded through.
If one had time to sit and talk to the patients one could hear many exciting tales, but most of my time is spent with those who are too ill for much conversation. I think I told you of the arrival of the officers and men from Modder Spruit. Opening the large ward for these officers caused some difficulty, as it is such a long way from the kitchen, but we soon got up from Durban some hot tins, covers, &c., and the feeding is going better now.
Major —— had been very ill with ptomaine poisoning before he arrived here. He has been a difficult case to feed in this climate, and has been very slow in getting up any strength; but he is well on the mend now. Then there was a bright-facedboywith acute rheumatism, who said he had not been in bed for six months, and it was "just heavenly." Lieutenant —— (a bishop's son) is 6 ft. 6 in., and we have to wrap up his feet on a chair beyond the end of his bed. He has enteric, but not so very badly; he called me to him the other day, and told me that he had had the most bitter disappointment of his life—the doctorhad ordered him an egg, and he waited patiently till tea-time, expecting a nice boiled egg, but he never knew the orderly would bring him a beaten-up egg, and he had nearly drunk it before he recognised it!
Then there is Second-Lieutenant ——, who looks about sixteen, and who only joined his regiment nine months ago, but he has seen a lot of fighting, and was at Spion Kop, Pieter's Hill, and other battles. Some of his men are here, and they think a great deal of him; they say at Spion Kop all his seniors were either killed or wounded, but he led the men on as calmly and well as possible; I believe he got a "mention" for it. His captain wrote to me so nicely asking after him, and said, "He is a good boy, and A1 when the bullets are flying." He had been wounded badly, and now has enteric, but only slightly. The other officers all call him "the boy." I hope we shall be able to send him home to his people soon, as I think he has done his share.
Some of these officers are beginning to get about now, and theywillgo to visit the officers in the small ward and persuade them to give them tea there, and then return and get their own tea as well. They say they are "making up for past hardships"! Amongst that same batch of men there were two or three rather smart R.A.M.C. men, and we don't think they are going to be fit for duty at the front again this campaign: they will be quite contented to stay here, and work as soon as they are well enough.
We have just got the electric light into working order; and, though it is rather erratic, and often goes out, on the whole it is a great comfort.
There has been a case of bubonic plague in Durban, but they don't seem to think it is likely to spread.
Twenty more orderlies have arrived, St. John's Ambulance men, and the buildings were all complete by the end of May.
I have had a few rides on the funeral horse, and, as it is very tame in harness, I was astonished to find it was quite gay and hard to hold; but we have found out that it was once a racehorse, and of course it has never had a side-saddle on before.
Our nice compounder has been awfully ill with appendicitis and dysentery. We have had to write each mail to his people, but now I am glad to say he is doing well. Several of the orderlies are down with enteric, including our mess-room waiter; so "Cup-of-tea" has to wait on our mess of eighteen, and needs a good deal of looking after.
I expect they will give me another orderly soon, but so many are ill, and the wards are heavy, and need a good many men for night duty. Every few nights the orderlies have to do a spell on night (as well as their ordinary day) duty, so they are rather inclined to grumble, and it is difficult for them to keep awake; but I don't think any of them do longer hours than I do, as I prowl about a good deal in the night when the cases first come down and are bad; so they don't grumble too loud.
The sisters seemed to be getting rather fagged out, so I have begun to give them in turn a monthly day off, and I look after their wards. I find it is rather useful, as I get a good opportunity of seeing how they have managed, and also of learning how much the orderlies are good for; it is quite touching how good they are to me: they want to show me they can be trusted, and they do everything they possibly can to save me trouble on these "days off." Fromthe sergeant-major downwards they have always been very nice to me, and I am sure I do very little for them (except when they are ill and need fussing over) beyond scolding them for misdeeds for which the sisters report them.
I wonder whether they guess that, all the time, I feel that the sisters are expecting too much of them!
I was amused when a new sergeant arrived with twenty men the other day; of course, at first they did not know any of us, and when I met them and said "Good morning," they simply gaped. The next day I had a fatigue party sent up to tidy the china and linen store; of course our old batch of men saluted when I went to show them what I wanted done; and I expect the new men received a few words from them on their slack manners afterwards, for since then there has been a very stiff draw up and salute whenever they come for orders or with a message. I hear the army sisters are not saluted as a rule.
I think I told you how much we suffered from fleas at first; now they are quite banished. We have twenty coolies, and a good orderly in charge of them, and they do all the sanitary work, and sweep and scrub and generally keep the place tidy (they also have to dig the graves), and since we have got rid of all the packing-cases, and everything is trim and tidy, the fleas have disappeared.
So far we have had very few wounded in—nearly all enteric or dysentery, with some cases of camp fever, rheumatism, &c.; the medical officers are disappointed at so little surgical work, but I don't think I mind, as we can feel we are actually saving the lives of some of these men by sheer hard nursing, and that is good enough for me; sometimes a mansees that I am worrying about a patient who does not seem to be improving, or who is going downhill, and he will come up and say "Never mind, Sister, he would have been dead long ago if he had been left in that Field Hospital any longer; you have given the chap a chance." It is grand to see the first batch of men, who came to us so desperately ill, so haggard, starved, dirty, and miserable, getting about now in their blue suits, looking so clean and bright, though still very thin.
Some of them are beginning to need to be amused, and the knitting wool and materials for worsted work that I brought out are coming in very useful; in fact, they will soon be finished, but the Durban ladies have kindly promised to send me more.
Several of the men were making worsted belts in one ward the other day, and a big Scotchman looked in and asked them to go for a walk, but they refused, saying they were busy, and the Scotchman was heard to mutter "They've all turned blooming milliners!"
Lieutenant —— (the giant) is getting on very well, and he was always saying I must stay and amuse him, or else give him some toys, so I have started him with some worsted work, and he is more contented, and as fussy about my providing him with the right shades of wool as any old lady. The Lieutenant in the next bed has learnt to knit, and Major ——, the ptomaine poisoning case, looks surprised at their babyishness.
The other day Sister B. was going to have a day off, and these boys, overhearing her instructions about themselves, made up some poetry on the subject (which I enclose), and Sister won't hear the last of it for some time.
We have a service in the wards every other Sunday, and the hymn-books I brought out are most useful.
June 13.—The last few days have been very busy and very sad.
On the 7th we had a trainload of patients—two officers and seventy-three men—several of the men very bad. I was up most of the first night helping with the bad cases, but one poor fellow died the next day (he was never conscious after he got here); that day also, Sister —— knocked up with slight fever, so I had to take over her ward, and there were several bad cases in it.
The orderlies are knocking up with enteric—six of them warded; and I have hardly liked to leave them at night, as several of them are inclined to be delirious and try to get out of bed.
L. was the worst, but he did not seem in any special danger till last Wednesday: on that day I was Orderly Sister for the afternoon, and on my first round I talked to them all, and he seemed much as usual, but on my second round I found him distinctly worse, and with a failing pulse. I called his doctor, and we tried everything possible, but he soon became unconscious, and died at 7.30P.M.All the orderlies are dreadfully cut up; several of them come from the same place in Yorks. He was such a fine, strong young fellow, and it seems only the other day that he was acting as groom, and put me up on the black pony, and was so pleased I could manage him. He was a butcher by trade, rough in his ways, but so good-natured; I must write to his poor mother.
He had a military funeral, and we let every orderly go who could be spared. The clergyman asked me if the men would like to have a hymn in church, sowe sang "Brief life is here our portion." Several people sent wreaths, and the men are going to make a wooden cross. This was the first death amongst our staff. Having so many orderlies ill, and the place pretty full, we have been very busy, and many of the men have had to do eighteen-hour shifts every two or three days: that is to say, their usual twelve-hour day and half the night. So they are having a heavy time of it. Enclosure:—
SISTER'S "DAY OFF"