VIITHE SURGEONS OF THE FIELD HOSPITALSAmong the many officers of the R.A.M.C. I must confess that my strongest sympathies are with those who are in charge of the little field hospitals. These handy hospitals have their own transport, and move with the various brigades or divisions. The officers who command them have little comfort, little rest, the least luxurious mess, and the hardest of work. They bear the brunt of the campaign so far as the medical and surgical needs of the Army are concerned. They must be always ready, always at hand, prepared to be full of patients one day and empty the next; and those whose lives are spent with them can certainly claim that they have "no abiding city."The officers in charge of these hospitals are picked men, but as sound experience is necessary they are often men who are no longer young, and who may claim that they have already had their share of roughing it. They are, perhaps, more than any others, the most exposed to criticism. If anything goes wrong at the front a large proportion of the blame falls upon them, and if all goes well their names appear in no roll of honour.No surgeon who saw these men could be other than proud that he belonged to the same profession as they did. Of their work at Colenso, at Spearman's Farm, and before Pieters I can only say that it was, to my thinking, a credit to the medical department of any army.VIIIA PROFESSIONAL VISIT BY RAILAfter a busy afternoon among the field hospitals under the naval ridge, I returned in the evening to Chieveley, in the hope, now that the bulk of the work was over, of getting something to eat. I had not been at Chieveley long when an orderly arrived with a letter to tell me that Lieutenant Roberts had been brought in wounded, and to ask me to go back to the naval hill at once. It was now dark, and I had at that time no horse. However, the hospital train was standing in the station, and to the fertile brain of Major Brazier-Creagh, who was in charge of the train, it occurred that we might detach the engine and go down on it to the ridge, since the field hospitals were close to the railway.There was the difficulty, however, that the line was a single line, and a water train had already steamed down to the ridge, and was expected back at any moment. It was the simple problem of an engine on the one hand, and of a train on the other, proceeding in different directions at night on a single line of rail.The case being urgent, the engine was detached and we started. Major Brazier-Creagh and Captain Symonds came with me. It so happened that we went tender first. The railway line appeared to us to go up and down with many undulations, and at the top of each rise we expected to meet the water train. Fortunately the moon was coming up, and the blackness which oppressed us was fading a little. We proceeded slowly, with much whistling and considerable waving of a red lamp. At last there was made out the dim outline of the water train coming towards us at a fair speed. We stopped, and there were redoubled efforts in the direction of whistling, lamp waving, and shouting. These exhibitions had an immediate effect upon the water train, which, after some hysterical whistling, stopped and backed promptly out of sight. The driver told us afterwards that he thought a whole train was coming down upon him at full speed, and that he might well have backed down into Colenso.We got out some way above the ridge and walked on to the field hospital I had so lately left. The gallant officer I came to see was comfortably bestowed in a tent, was quite free from pain and anxiety, and was disposed to sleep. From a surgical point of view the case was hopeless, and had been hopeless from the first, and no idea of an operation could be entertained. Our examination and our discussion of the case with Major Hamilton, R.A.M.C., under whose care the patient was, occupied some time, and the engine had long since gone back to Chieveley. There was nothing to be done but to sleep on the ground in the open, and this we proceeded to do, lying down on the grass outside the tent we had just visited. There was no hardship in this, as it was a splendid night, and the full moon had risen and had flooded the whole country with a spectral light.As if by magic the restless, hurrying, motley crowd of the earlier day had vanished. A cool breeze and pleasant shadows had replaced the heat and the glare of the sun; a gentle silence had blotted out the noise and the turmoil; and of the scene of the afternoon there was nothing left but the white tents gleaming in the moon, the open veldt, and the shadow of the ridge.IXTHE HOSPITAL TRAIN AT COLENSOThe battle of Colenso was fought on Friday, December 15th, and on Saturday, the 16th, an armistice was declared for the burying of the dead. Very early on Saturday morning, while it was yet moonlight, the hospital train backed down from Chieveley and came to a stand as near the field hospitals as possible. As soon as it was daylight (and at this time of the summer the sun rose before five) the loading of the train commenced.The filling up of a hospital train is no easy business, and affords a somewhat depressing sight.The worst cases are dealt with first, and a long line of stretchers soon began to pour from the hospital tents to the railway. The stretchers are put down on the railroad close to the wheels of the train. On this particular morning it so happened that the carriages threw a shadow on the side of the line towards the hospital, so that the stretchers, if near the metals, were in the shade.Many of the wounded had had no sleep, and many were developing some degree of fever. A few had become delirious, and were difficult to control. With the stretcher parties would come a certain number of such of the wounded as could walk, and very soon a not inconsiderable crowd was gathered in the shade of the train.But what a crowd! The same sunburnt men with blistered faces, but now even a more motley gathering than filled the field hospitals the day before--a gathering made piteously picturesque by khaki rags, blue bandages, casual splints, arm slings, eye bandages, slit-up trousers, and dressings of all kinds. Here they came crowding to the train, some limping, some hopping, some helped along between two stronger comrades, some staggering on alone. A man with a damaged arm assisting a man with a bullet through his leg. A man stopping on the way to be sick, cheered up by another with a bandaged eye.An untidy, sorrowful crowd, with unbuttoned tunics and slovenly legs, with unlaced boots, with blood on their khaki jackets and on their blue shirts and on their stiffening dressings. The gentle hand of the nurse had not as yet busied itself with this unkempt and unwashed throng. There had been no time for washing nor for changing of garments, and if the surgeon has had to cut the coat and the shirt into rags, the wearer must wear the rags or nothing; and as for washing, it is a sin to wash when water is priceless.The greater number of those who come to the railway line are carried there on stretchers, but all who are well enough to take any interest in the journey are eager not to miss a place in the train.The business of getting the "lying down" cases into the carriages is considerable, and everybody lends a hand, the surgeons being the most active of any. The berths in the train are placed one above the other, and the room for manipulating stretchers is small. The equipment of the train was very complete, and every luxury was at hand, from hot soup to iced "lemon-squash," and even to champagne. Many generous ladies in the Colony had seen that the train should want for nothing, and Major Brazier-Creagh took as much pride in his travelling hospital as if he had built it himself.Innumerable instances came under my notice of the unselfishness of the soldier, and of his solicitude for his friends in distress. It was by the side of this hospital train that occurred an episode I have recorded elsewhere, and which may well be described again. An orderly was bringing some water to a wounded man lying on the ground near me. He was shot through the abdomen, and he could hardly speak owing to the dryness of his mouth, but he said: "Take it to my pal first, he is worse hit than me." This generous lad died next morning, but his pal got through and is doing well.Another poor fellow, who was much troubled with vomiting, and who was indeed dying, said, as he was being hoisted into the train, "Put me in the lower berth, because I keep throwing up." How many people troubled merely with sea-sickness would be as thoughtful as he was? He died not long before we reached Chieveley.Lieutenant Roberts, whom I had visited at intervals, went up by this train, and was placed in No. 4 Field Hospital at Chieveley. Here a bedstead, with a comfortable mattress and white sheets, was waiting ready for him.As the train moved off it was sad to note that a few who had been brought down to the rail in the hope of a place being found for them, had to be left behind, and had to be carried back to the tents to await some other means of transport.XTHE NURSES AT CHIEVELEYThe train which brought up No. 4 Field Hospital from Frere was stopped, as I have already said, at Chieveley. The tents and baggage were thrown out, and with as much haste as possible the hospital was pitched on the open ground, close to the station. Before, however, more than a few tents could be put up the wounded began to arrive. They came in all Friday evening, and all Saturday, and all Saturday evening. The field hospitals by the naval hill had soon been filled, and all cases that could be sent on to Chieveley were sent there, while as many as could go at once to the base were taken down by the hospital train.Saturday was a day of truce, but at sundown on Saturday not only had all the wounded to be cleared out from the field hospitals, but those hospitals themselves had to move, as, with the renewal of hostilities, they would be in a place of danger. Chieveley was therefore soon filled to overflowing.There were three army surgeons with "No. 4" whose names I have already mentioned. They were reinforced by a small field hospital under the charge of Major Baird and Captain Begbie.Some of the wounded came up by train, and some by ambulances or by wagons, but a very large proportion, a proportion which included nearly all the serious cases, were carried up on stretchers by hand. No mode of transport is more comfortable than this, or is less fatiguing to the patient, and the splendid organisation of volunteer bearers and of coolie carriers enabled this means of bringing up the wounded to be very largely made use of. Certainly the stretcher-bearers were the means of saving lives, and of sparing those they carried an infinite amount of pain.As seen at night, the procession up to Chieveley was doleful and mysterious. The long line of silent men moving in clusters, each cluster with a stretcher and a body in its midst. Stealing slowly and cautiously over the veldt in the moonlight, they all made for the two white lights which swung over the hospital by the station.The coolies carried their stretchers shoulder high, so that the body of the man they bore was lit fitfully by the moon as they passed along with absolutely noiseless feet. The coolies themselves added no little to the uncanny spectacle, for in the shadow beneath the stretcher stalked a double row of thin bare legs, and by the poles of the stretcher were the white or coloured turbans that these men affect; while here and there a sleek black head glistened in the light.There was but one house at Chieveley--the stationmaster's house. It had been effectually looted after the Boer fashion, but it would have done well as a resting-place for the four nurses who came up with the hospital. The house, however, had been taken possession of, and the nurses had to contemplate either a night in the open or in the waiting-room at the station. As this latter room had been used as a stable by the Boers, it was not in much request. It served, however, as a place for the depositing of personal baggage and for the preparing of such food as it was possible to prepare--chiefly, indeed, for the making of tea.The question of where to sleep was soon solved by the necessities of the position. These ill-housed women, as a matter of fact, were hard at work all Friday, all Saturday, and all Saturday night. They seemed oblivious to fatigue, to hunger, or to any need for sleep. Considering that the heat was intense, that the thirst which attended it was distressing and incessant, that water was scarce, and that the work in hand was heavy and trying, it was wonderful that they came out of it all so little the worse in the end.Their ministrations to the wounded were invaluable and beyond all praise. They did a service during those distressful days which none but nurses could have rendered, and they set to all at Chieveley an example of unselfishness, self-sacrifice, and indefatigable devotion to duty. They brought to many of the wounded and the dying that comfort which men are little able to evolve, or are uncouth in bestowing, and which belongs especially to the tender, undefined and undefinable ministrations of women.The English soldier is as sensible of attention and as appreciative of sympathy and kindness as any other man who is at the mercy of circumstances, and I can well believe that there are many soldiers--some of them now in England, crippled for life--who will long keep green the memory of the sisters at Chieveley.Some weeks after Colenso I was at Pietermaritzburg, and was looking up in the hospital wards certain cases which had been attended to in "No. 4." Among them was a paralysed man to whom one of the nurses had been very kind at Chieveley. I found him comfortably bestowed, but he was possessed of a handkerchief the extreme dirtiness of which led me to suggest that, as he was now in a centre of luxury, he should ask for a clean one. To which he replied, "I am not going to give this one up; I am afraid of losing it. The sister who looked after me at Chieveley gave it to me, and here is her name in the corner."As the truce was over on Saturday, and as the Boers might assume the aggressive and shell Chieveley and its helpless colony, the order was given to break up the hospital and get all the wounded away by train, and to retire with the tents and equipment to Frere. This was done on Sunday morning.As soon as the wounded had left--and it was no light matter getting them away--it was thought desirable that the women should be at once got out of danger, and so they were bundled down to Frere with little ceremony in a mule wagon. As they had no hospital to go to (for "No. 4" did not arrive until the small hours of the following morning) they took refuge in the hotel at Frere. They had some food with them, albeit it was not of a kind to attract the fastidious, and the four of them slept on the floor of a looted and empty room, which even the kindly heart of Mrs. Wilson could not render other than a dreary resting place. This was their only "night in" in three days.I had, I am bound to confess, the advantage of them in the matter of ventilation, for I slept in a wagon.XISOME TRAITS IN THE MENAs I have already said, the wounded took their turn of "hard luck" like men. A few were sullen, a few relieved their feelings by fluent but meaningless profanity, in which the Boers were cursed with as much thoroughness as was the Jackdaw of Rheims. The majority were silent or said little. The tendency of most of the men was to make the least of their wounds, and some of those who were the worst hit were the most cheery. They were, with scarcely an exception, unselfish, and were singularly patient, considering that the exercise of patience is not a marked quality in men.They ministered to one another's wants with a tender solicitude which was not marred by the occasional uncouthness of its method. There was a wide-spread belief that tobacco was a panacea for all ills, and any man who had the wherewithal to smoke shared the small luxury with his mates. If there was only one pipe in a tent it was kept circulating. One would see a man on one stretcher trying to arrange a pillow for a comrade on the next: the pillow in question being commonly made out of a squashed helmet with a boot inside it. The man in any tent who was the least disabled was never so well pleased as when he was given something to do for those who were under the same canvas with him. With a pannikin and a spoon he would feed those who could not feed themselves, until they were glad to be rid of the attention; or he would readjust a dressing, or cut off a boot, or get the dried blood from an exposed surface with a never-wearying anxiety.With few exceptions the men were honestly anxious "not to give trouble." It was an article of faith with them to "take their turn," and no man would try to make out that his case gave him a claim for attention over his fellows. Indeed, on the occasion of a visit, the occupants of a tent were eager with one voice to point out what they considered to be the worst case, and to claim for it the earliest notice. The men of a tent were, in the kindliest way, a little proud of having a "real bad" case in their midst. When the curtain of a tent is up the occupants whose heads are nearest to the tent ropes can easily converse with those who are similarly placed in the adjoining tent. Thus I heard one man on the ground, whose head was nearly in the open, call out to another head just in view on the floor of the next tent: "We've a real hot 'un in along with us; he's got 'it through the lungs and the liver both, and the doctor has been in to him three times." To which the other head replied: "That's nothing to a bloke in here. He's been off his chump all night; his language has been a fair treat, and he's had four fits. We've had a night, I don't think!"Another article of faith with the soldier takes the form of a grim stoicism under pain. Some of the wounded endured the examination of their wounds with Spartan pluck. They seemed to consider it above all things essential that they should not cry out "until they were obliged." One enormous Irishman with a shattered thigh yelled out in agony as he was being lifted upon the operating table to be examined. The pain was evidently terrible and excuse enough for any degree of exclamation. But he apologised quaintly and profusely for the noise he made, urging as an excuse that "he had never been in a hospital before." He expressed his regret much as a man would do who had wandered into a church with his hat on and who excused himself on the ground that he had never been in a church before.Every patient took a lively interest in his own case, and especially in the removal of any bullet which may have lodged in any part of him. One ruddy youngster, a Devonshire lad, had had a shrapnel bullet through his leg, and the bullet could be felt, on the side opposite to the point of entry, under the unbroken skin. He begged that it should be taken out without chloroform, as he wanted to see it come out and to keep it and take it home. He sat up with his back against the tent pole during the operation, and watched the cutting out of the lead without a murmur. No doubt this Boer missile will find a place in a corner cupboard in some cottage among the delectable villages of Devon, and will be for long the wonder and admiration of devoted women folk.Among other traits, one notices that the soldier clings with great pertinacity to his few possessions, and especially to his boots. When the haversack has been lost, and when the tunic has been cut up to make its removal more easy, or left behind because it is too blood-stained, there is little remaining in which the owner may bestow his goods unless it be in his boots. There was one poor man I remember at Spearman's, who was in great distress because, just as he was being sent down to the base, he had lost his solitary boot. He said it contained a puttie, a tin of jam, two shillings in money, and a bullet that had been taken out of him. These are no mean possessions.The puttie also is not lightly discarded. If not used as a gaiter it is useful for many other purposes, and especially is it considered well to wind it round the abdomen as a cholera belt, for the soldier has great faith in anything in the way of a belt.When the men were bathing together in hundreds at Springfield, there was an opportunity of seeing such variety in the matter of abdominal belts as could never have been dreamed of. Some of these favoured garments were mere shreds and rags, and were worn probably in order to keep faith with some good soul at home who had made her boy promise he would never leave off his belt. Other binders were undoubtedly home-made, and the work of anxious mothers and wives who believed in red flannel and plenty of it. Some of the belts were knitted, and were made to be pulled on, but they had shrunk so much from repeated wettings, and had become so infantile in their proportions that the owner of the garment had to get at least one comrade to help him pull it over his hips. When it was at last in place it quite constricted the body, and justified the comment of one bather, who exclaimed to his belted but otherwise naked friend: "Well, ye've got a waist on ya, if nothink else!"XIITHE SIGN OF THE WOODEN CROSSAfter Colenso, No. 4 Stationary Field Hospital returned to the same quarters at Frere, and at Frere we remained until January 13th, 1900, nearly a month. The wounded who fell on the unhappy 15th of December had been satisfactorily disposed of, thanks to the admirable arrangements made by the Principal Medical Officer, Colonel Gallwey, C.B. Not a single wounded man was left out on the field on the night of the battle. On that particular Friday every man had been attended to before midnight, and on the following Sunday all the wounded who had fallen on the 15th were comfortably housed in one or other of the hospitals at the base.Our tents, although emptied of the wounded, soon began to be filled up with cases of sickness, and especially with cases of dysentery. Those who presented the slightest form of the disease could be sent down to the base, but when the type was severe the patient did better with as little movement as possible. Those, therefore, who remained in our lines presented a large proportion of examples of serious illness.Provisions were ample, medical necessities abundant, and the ladies of the Colony were infinitely kind in forwarding to Frere comforts of all sorts. Our tents were by no means filled, and yet, in spite of what may be considered favourable circumstances, there were a good many deaths.Deaths mean the need for burial, and a little burying ground was marked off in the rear of the hospital, close to the railway line. As weeks went by the little enclosure needed enlargement, and so the engineers came and fenced it round afresh with a wire paling, and gave it a fit aspect of formality. The names of the dead were indicated on tablets of wood, and now and then the comrades of a man, or the survivors of the tent he died in, would erect over the mound a wooden cross.These crosses were made usually out of provision boxes, or perhaps from a whisky case, and many were very admirably finished and very cleverly carved, and many were curious of design. They represented long hours spent in tedious hacking at a tough slab of wood with a pocket-knife, and, after that, infinite patience in the cutting out of the letters of the dead chum's name. Finish would be given to the lettering by means of a tin-opener.These crosses will be found all over the land of the war. Few of them will long survive the wind and the rain and the blistering sun, and the hand of the Kaffir who is lacking of fuel. So long, however, as they dot the solitary veldt they will be symbols of the tenderest spirit of good comradeship, of the kindly heart of men who are supposed to be little imbued with sentiment, and of that loyal affection for his friend which is not among the least of the qualities of the British soldier.Here and there some elaborate monuments with some promise of permanency have been erected. There is one, for example, in which the inscription is fashioned out of empty cartridge cases stuck into cement. There is another carved with some art out of stone.I think, however, that those sleep best who lie beneath the wooden cross fashioned with labour and some occasional dimness of eye by the pocket-knife of an old "pal."XIIITHE MEN WITH THE SPADESThe graves at Frere were dug by our own men, or rather by a small fatigue party from a regiment near by. Nearly every morning they came, the men with the spades. There were six of them, with a corporal, and they came up jauntily, with their spades on their shoulders and with pipes in their mouths. They were in their shirt-sleeves, and there was much display of belt and of unbuttoned neck. Their helmets were apt to be stuck on their heads in informal attitudes. They were inexpressibly untidy, and they made in their march a loose, shambling suggestion of a procession.They came past my tent about breakfast time, and every morning I wondered whether the men with the spades would come, since, when they came, I knew that a death had taken place in the night, and wondered who it was.As in some way symbols of death, as elements in the last services to be rendered to the dead, the men with the spades filled me with great curiosity. They came up cheerily, and when they reached the outskirts of the hospital the corporal would call out to any orderly he saw: "Well, nipper, how many have we got to dig to-day?"When they had finished they went by my tent on their way back to camp: still the same untidy, shambling lot; still, as a rule, smoking, and still with the appearance of being infectiously cheerful.I know well enough, however, that there was little cheeriness among these men with the spades. They were dull enough in their inmost hearts. The soldier is much impressed by a burying and by the formalities which surround the dead. And as he knows he must not "give way" he is prone to cover his easily stirred feelings by an attempt at a "devil-may-care" attitude, and by an assumption of rollicking indifference. It is, however, a poorly executed pretence, and it needed no exceptional acumen to see that in reality no small shadow of unhappiness followed the little shuffling procession, in spite of their pipes and their jauntily posed helmets and their laboured jokes.If a soldier's grave is to be dug by sympathising hands, let it be dug by the hands of these very men with the spades.XIVTHE MARCHINGOn Friday, January 12th, Sir Redvers Buller left Frere, and on the following day we took our second departure from that place. The movement was to be to Springfield, some eighteen miles across the veldt. No. 4 Field Hospital was now to leave the railway and trust to transport by oxen and mules. The hospital was equipped to accommodate a minimum of three hundred beds, and was made up of sixty tents and ten marquees. The rank and file of the R.A.M.C. numbered eighty-eight non-commissioned officers and men; the staff was represented by three army surgeons, nine civil surgeons, the two army sisters who had worked at Colenso, and my remaining nurse, Miss McCaul. The other nurse, Miss Tarr, who came out with me, was at Maritzburg, desperately ill with dysentery. She nearly lost her life, and was scarcely convalescent when the time came for us to return to England. Her unexpected recovery was largely due to the skill of the doctor who looked after her (Dr. Rochfort Brown, of the Assembly Hospital), and to the extraordinary kindness of a lady who was waiting at Pietermaritzburg to join her husband, then locked up with his regiment in Ladysmith.The three nurses kept with the hospital, and did as good work at Spearman's Farm, after Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, and at Chieveley, after Pieters, as they did on the occasion of Colenso. They had no easy time, for from the day we began at Frere until the lull after Ladysmith we pitched the hospital no less than six times; viz., twice at Frere, twice at Chieveley, once at Spearman's, and once at Springfield.Our train was composed of sixteen ox wagons, each with sixteen oxen, so that the number of oxen employed was over 260. There were besides five ambulances, each drawn by ten mules. The transport provided me consisted of a small covered wagon, a Scotch cart, sixteen mules, a conductor on horseback, four Kaffir "boys," a groom, and my own horse and manservant.On the occasion of our leaving Frere on January 13, we were roused at 3 A.M., while it was yet quite dark, and while the Southern Cross was still ablaze in the sky. All the tents were struck by the ungenial hour of 4 A.M. Packing up and the circumstances of removal were conducted with difficulty and no little confusion. The ox teams were lying about, and only a precarious light was furnished by the lanterns we carried. It required no exceptional carelessness to allow a wanderer in the camp to fall, in the course of a few minutes, over a prostrate ox, a rolled-up tent, a pannier, a pile of cooking-pots, or a derelict saddle. When the dawn came an agreeable sense of order was restored, and we started on the march at 5 A.M.There was a splendid sunrise, and the day proved a glorious one, although it was painfully hot. The road was a mere track across the veldt, which had been worn smooth in some places and cut into ruts in others by the hundreds of wagons and the great array of guns which had already passed over it."No. 4" formed a long convoy by the time the last wagon had rumbled out of Frere. The pace was very slow, for the ox moves with ponderous lethargy. The surgeons rode by the side of the train, the sergeants and the orderlies walked as they listed, and the nurses rode in ambulances, to the great shaking of their bodies. With us were a hundred coolies, who were attached to the hospital for camp work. They were a dismal crowd as they stalked along, with their thin, bare legs and their picturesque tatters of clothing, with all their earthly possessions in bundles on their heads, and with apparently a vow of funereal silence in their hearts.The heat soon became intense, and the march blank and monotonous. There was ever the same shadeless veldt, the same unending brown road, relieved by nothing but an occasional dead horse or mule; the same creeping, creaking, wallowing wagons, the never-absent perspiring Kaffirs, the everlasting cloud of dust, and over all the blazing sun that neither hat nor helmet could provide shelter from.At 7.30 A.M. we reached a spot on the veldt known as Pretorius' Farm. It was marked by what was called, with reckless imagery, a stream, but which was represented by a wide and squalid gutter filled with stagnant water which would have done no discredit to that of the lower Thames. Here we outspanned, and here we breakfasted.These breakfasts under the dome of heaven are not to be looked back upon with rapture. Picnicking is an excellent relaxation in England, but a picnic without shade, without cooling drinks, without pasties and salads and jellies and pies, without white tablecloths and bright knives, without even shelter from incessant dust, lacks much. Tinned provisions are, no doubt, excellent and nourishing, but oh, the weariness of them! And oh, the squalor of the single tin mug, which never loses the taste of what it last had in it! And oh, the meanness of the one tin plate which does duty for every meal, and every phase of it! Perhaps of all unappetising adjuncts to a breakfast the tin of preserved milk, which has been opened two days and is already becoming disgustingly familiar, is the most aggressive. The hot climate and the indefatigable ant and the fly do little to make the items of a meal attractive.What does not rapidly decompose promptly dries up. On one occasion a roasted fowl was brought up reverently to Frere in a tin box, but when it came to be eaten it had dried into a sort ofpapier mâchêroast fowl, and was like the viands which are thrown at the police at pantomimes. We brought many varieties of preserved food with us, and of much of it the question could not fail to arise as to whether it had ever been worth preserving.Many had experience, too, of the inventive art of the shopkeeper, as shown in the evolution of canteens and pocket table knives. The canteen, when unstrapped, tends to fall into a hundred parts, and can never be put together again. It is a prominent or generic feature of most canteens that the kettle should look as little like a kettle as possible, and that everything should pack into a frying-pan. The pocket picnicking knife contains a knife, a fork, a spoon, and a corkscrew. The fork runs into everything and prevents the knife from being carried in the pocket. The spoon and fork are jointed for more convenient stowing, and at crises in a meal they are apt to bend weakly in the middle and then to incontinently shut up.The outspanning and the inspanning at Pretorius' Farm occupied over two hours, and then the march was resumed. A better country was reached as we neared the river, and it was a pleasant sight to see the tumbling stream of the Lesser Tugela, and to find in one valley the pretence of a garden and a house among trees. This was at Springfield, which place we reached at 2.30 P.M. The march of some eighteen miles had therefore been effected in two treks.At Springfield the camping ground was the least dreary of any the hospital had experience of, and the proximity of the Lesser Tugela made bathing possible.After a few days at Springfield we moved on to Spearman's Farm, where we camped by the hill called Mount Alice.The return from Spearman's after Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz was even more monotonous than the going forth. The first journey was to Springfield, which was reached at sundown, and where we bivouacked for the night. Springfield was left at dawn, and the next night was spent in a bivouac at Frere. On the following day, before the sun was well up, we took the last stage of the march and reached Chieveley. Here all enjoyed once more the luxury of having tents overhead, for during the crawling journey over the veldt we slept in wagons, on wagons, or under wagons.XVSPEARMAN'S FARMIn a lonely valley under the mimosa-covered heights which dominate the Great Tugela is the lonely homestead of Spearman's Farm. Those who built it and made a home in it could have had little thought that it would one day figure in the annals of history. The farmhouse and the farm buildings and the garden were enclosed by a rough stone wall, and upon this solitary homestead the hand of the Boer had fallen heavily. The house had been looted, and what was breakable in it had been broken. The garden had been trampled out of recognition, the gates were gone, the agricultural implements had been wantonly destroyed, and the unpretending road which led to the farm was marked by the wheels of heavy guns. The house was small and of one story, and was possessed of the unblushing ugliness which corrugated iron alone can provide. The door swung open, and any could enter who would, and through the broken windows there was nothing to be seen but indiscriminate wreckage. There was about the little house and its cluster of outbuildings a suggestion of the Old Country, and it wanted but a rick or so, and a pond with white ducks to complete a picture of a small English farm. The garden had evidently been the subject of solicitous care, and was on that account all the more desolate, and what delight it ever had had been trampled out of it by countless hoofs or obliterated by the rattling passage over it of a battery or so of artillery.At the back of the farm, and at the foot of a green kopje, was a quaint little burial ground--little because it held but two graves, and quaint because these were surmounted by unexpected stone memorials of a type to be associated with a suburban English cemetery. These monuments were fitly carved, and were distinctly the product of no mean town, and they were to the memory respectively of George Spearman and of Susan Spearman. For some undefinable reason these finished memorials, so formal and so hackneyed in their design, appeared inappropriate and even unworthy of the dignity of the lonely graves at the foot of the kopje. Some more rugged emblem, free from artificiality and from any suggestion of the crowded haunts of men, would have covered more fittingly the last resting-place of these two pioneers. A few trees, almost the only trees within sight, shaded the little graveyard, and the trees and the monuments were enclosed by a very solid iron railing. It was in the shadow of this oasis that the dead from our hospital were buried.XVITHE HOSPITAL AT SPEARMAN'SThe hospital reached Spearman's on January 16th, and was pitched at the foot of the hill, upon the summit of which the naval gun was firing. We were, therefore, close to those scenes of fighting which were to occupy the next few weeks, and too close for comfort to the great 4.7 gun, the repeated booming of which often became a trouble to those who were lying ill in the hospital.The heights that dominated the southern bank of the Tugela were very steep on the side that faced the river, but on the side that looked towards Spearman's the ground sloped gradually down into a wide plain which, like other stretches of veldt, was dotted with kopjes and slashed with dongas. Anyone who mounted the hill at the back of the hospital would come by easy steps to an abrupt ridge, beyond which opened a boundless panorama.In the valley below this crest was the winding Tugela, and just across the dip rose the solemn ridge of Spion Kop. Far away in the distance were the purple hills which overshadowed Ladysmith. If the crest were followed to the right the ground rose until at last the summit of the naval hill was reached, and here were the "handy men" and their big gun. From this high eminence a splendid view was obtained of the country we desired once more to possess. The Tugela glistened in the sun like a band of silver, and over the plain and in and out among the kopjes and round the dongas the brown road wound to Ladysmith. The road was deserted, and the few homesteads which came into view showed no signs of life. At the foot of the hill was Potgieter's Drift, while above the ford was a splashing rapid, and below was the pont which our men had seized with such daring.The face of the hill towards the river was covered with mimosa trees and with cactus bushes and aloes, and this unexpected wealth of green almost hid the red and grey boulders which clung to the hill-side. Among the rocks were many strange flowers, many unfamiliar plants, and creeping things innumerable. This was a favourite haunt of the chameleon, and I believe it was here that the hospital chameleon was captured.The quiet of the place, when the guns had ceased, was absolute, and was only broken by the murmur of the numerous doves which occupied the mimosa woods. The whole place seemed a paradise of peace, and there was nothing to suggest that there were some thousands of grimy men beyond the river who were busy with the implements of death. On looking closely one could see brown lines along many of the hillsides, and these said lines were trenches, and before the hubbub began men in their shirt-sleeves could be seen working about them with pickaxes and shovels.I should imagine that few modern battles have been viewed by the casual onlooker at such near proximity and with such completeness in detail as were the engagements of Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, when viewed from the high ground above our hospital.The hospital, though now more than twenty-five miles from the railway, was very well supplied with almost every necessity and with the amplest stores of food. Bread was not to be obtained, or only on occasion, when it would be brought up by an ambulance on its return from Frere. We had with us, however, our flocks and herds, and were thus able to supply the sick and wounded with fresh milk, and the whole hospital with occasional fresh meat. We were a little short of water, and fuel was not over abundant. As a result the washing of clothes, towels and sheets presented the same type of problem as is furnished by the making of bricks without straw. The aspect of a flannel shirt that has been washed by a Kaffir on the remote veldt leaves on the mind the impression that the labour of the man has been in vain.Our stay at Spearman's was extended to three weeks, and we dealt with over a thousand wounded during that period, and I am sure that all those who came within our lines would acknowledge that at "No. 4" they found an unexpected degree of comfort and were in every way well "done for."On the Sunday after our arrival the wounded began to come in. Thirteen only came from the division posted at Potgieter's Drift, the rest came from Sir Charles Warren's column. Increasing numbers of wounded came in every day in batches of from fifty to one hundred and fifty. They were all attended to, and were sent on to Frere as soon as possible. All the serious cases, however, were kept in the hospital.
VII
THE SURGEONS OF THE FIELD HOSPITALS
Among the many officers of the R.A.M.C. I must confess that my strongest sympathies are with those who are in charge of the little field hospitals. These handy hospitals have their own transport, and move with the various brigades or divisions. The officers who command them have little comfort, little rest, the least luxurious mess, and the hardest of work. They bear the brunt of the campaign so far as the medical and surgical needs of the Army are concerned. They must be always ready, always at hand, prepared to be full of patients one day and empty the next; and those whose lives are spent with them can certainly claim that they have "no abiding city."
The officers in charge of these hospitals are picked men, but as sound experience is necessary they are often men who are no longer young, and who may claim that they have already had their share of roughing it. They are, perhaps, more than any others, the most exposed to criticism. If anything goes wrong at the front a large proportion of the blame falls upon them, and if all goes well their names appear in no roll of honour.
No surgeon who saw these men could be other than proud that he belonged to the same profession as they did. Of their work at Colenso, at Spearman's Farm, and before Pieters I can only say that it was, to my thinking, a credit to the medical department of any army.
VIII
A PROFESSIONAL VISIT BY RAIL
After a busy afternoon among the field hospitals under the naval ridge, I returned in the evening to Chieveley, in the hope, now that the bulk of the work was over, of getting something to eat. I had not been at Chieveley long when an orderly arrived with a letter to tell me that Lieutenant Roberts had been brought in wounded, and to ask me to go back to the naval hill at once. It was now dark, and I had at that time no horse. However, the hospital train was standing in the station, and to the fertile brain of Major Brazier-Creagh, who was in charge of the train, it occurred that we might detach the engine and go down on it to the ridge, since the field hospitals were close to the railway.
There was the difficulty, however, that the line was a single line, and a water train had already steamed down to the ridge, and was expected back at any moment. It was the simple problem of an engine on the one hand, and of a train on the other, proceeding in different directions at night on a single line of rail.
The case being urgent, the engine was detached and we started. Major Brazier-Creagh and Captain Symonds came with me. It so happened that we went tender first. The railway line appeared to us to go up and down with many undulations, and at the top of each rise we expected to meet the water train. Fortunately the moon was coming up, and the blackness which oppressed us was fading a little. We proceeded slowly, with much whistling and considerable waving of a red lamp. At last there was made out the dim outline of the water train coming towards us at a fair speed. We stopped, and there were redoubled efforts in the direction of whistling, lamp waving, and shouting. These exhibitions had an immediate effect upon the water train, which, after some hysterical whistling, stopped and backed promptly out of sight. The driver told us afterwards that he thought a whole train was coming down upon him at full speed, and that he might well have backed down into Colenso.
We got out some way above the ridge and walked on to the field hospital I had so lately left. The gallant officer I came to see was comfortably bestowed in a tent, was quite free from pain and anxiety, and was disposed to sleep. From a surgical point of view the case was hopeless, and had been hopeless from the first, and no idea of an operation could be entertained. Our examination and our discussion of the case with Major Hamilton, R.A.M.C., under whose care the patient was, occupied some time, and the engine had long since gone back to Chieveley. There was nothing to be done but to sleep on the ground in the open, and this we proceeded to do, lying down on the grass outside the tent we had just visited. There was no hardship in this, as it was a splendid night, and the full moon had risen and had flooded the whole country with a spectral light.
As if by magic the restless, hurrying, motley crowd of the earlier day had vanished. A cool breeze and pleasant shadows had replaced the heat and the glare of the sun; a gentle silence had blotted out the noise and the turmoil; and of the scene of the afternoon there was nothing left but the white tents gleaming in the moon, the open veldt, and the shadow of the ridge.
IX
THE HOSPITAL TRAIN AT COLENSO
The battle of Colenso was fought on Friday, December 15th, and on Saturday, the 16th, an armistice was declared for the burying of the dead. Very early on Saturday morning, while it was yet moonlight, the hospital train backed down from Chieveley and came to a stand as near the field hospitals as possible. As soon as it was daylight (and at this time of the summer the sun rose before five) the loading of the train commenced.
The filling up of a hospital train is no easy business, and affords a somewhat depressing sight.
The worst cases are dealt with first, and a long line of stretchers soon began to pour from the hospital tents to the railway. The stretchers are put down on the railroad close to the wheels of the train. On this particular morning it so happened that the carriages threw a shadow on the side of the line towards the hospital, so that the stretchers, if near the metals, were in the shade.
Many of the wounded had had no sleep, and many were developing some degree of fever. A few had become delirious, and were difficult to control. With the stretcher parties would come a certain number of such of the wounded as could walk, and very soon a not inconsiderable crowd was gathered in the shade of the train.
But what a crowd! The same sunburnt men with blistered faces, but now even a more motley gathering than filled the field hospitals the day before--a gathering made piteously picturesque by khaki rags, blue bandages, casual splints, arm slings, eye bandages, slit-up trousers, and dressings of all kinds. Here they came crowding to the train, some limping, some hopping, some helped along between two stronger comrades, some staggering on alone. A man with a damaged arm assisting a man with a bullet through his leg. A man stopping on the way to be sick, cheered up by another with a bandaged eye.
An untidy, sorrowful crowd, with unbuttoned tunics and slovenly legs, with unlaced boots, with blood on their khaki jackets and on their blue shirts and on their stiffening dressings. The gentle hand of the nurse had not as yet busied itself with this unkempt and unwashed throng. There had been no time for washing nor for changing of garments, and if the surgeon has had to cut the coat and the shirt into rags, the wearer must wear the rags or nothing; and as for washing, it is a sin to wash when water is priceless.
The greater number of those who come to the railway line are carried there on stretchers, but all who are well enough to take any interest in the journey are eager not to miss a place in the train.
The business of getting the "lying down" cases into the carriages is considerable, and everybody lends a hand, the surgeons being the most active of any. The berths in the train are placed one above the other, and the room for manipulating stretchers is small. The equipment of the train was very complete, and every luxury was at hand, from hot soup to iced "lemon-squash," and even to champagne. Many generous ladies in the Colony had seen that the train should want for nothing, and Major Brazier-Creagh took as much pride in his travelling hospital as if he had built it himself.
Innumerable instances came under my notice of the unselfishness of the soldier, and of his solicitude for his friends in distress. It was by the side of this hospital train that occurred an episode I have recorded elsewhere, and which may well be described again. An orderly was bringing some water to a wounded man lying on the ground near me. He was shot through the abdomen, and he could hardly speak owing to the dryness of his mouth, but he said: "Take it to my pal first, he is worse hit than me." This generous lad died next morning, but his pal got through and is doing well.
Another poor fellow, who was much troubled with vomiting, and who was indeed dying, said, as he was being hoisted into the train, "Put me in the lower berth, because I keep throwing up." How many people troubled merely with sea-sickness would be as thoughtful as he was? He died not long before we reached Chieveley.
Lieutenant Roberts, whom I had visited at intervals, went up by this train, and was placed in No. 4 Field Hospital at Chieveley. Here a bedstead, with a comfortable mattress and white sheets, was waiting ready for him.
As the train moved off it was sad to note that a few who had been brought down to the rail in the hope of a place being found for them, had to be left behind, and had to be carried back to the tents to await some other means of transport.
X
THE NURSES AT CHIEVELEY
The train which brought up No. 4 Field Hospital from Frere was stopped, as I have already said, at Chieveley. The tents and baggage were thrown out, and with as much haste as possible the hospital was pitched on the open ground, close to the station. Before, however, more than a few tents could be put up the wounded began to arrive. They came in all Friday evening, and all Saturday, and all Saturday evening. The field hospitals by the naval hill had soon been filled, and all cases that could be sent on to Chieveley were sent there, while as many as could go at once to the base were taken down by the hospital train.
Saturday was a day of truce, but at sundown on Saturday not only had all the wounded to be cleared out from the field hospitals, but those hospitals themselves had to move, as, with the renewal of hostilities, they would be in a place of danger. Chieveley was therefore soon filled to overflowing.
There were three army surgeons with "No. 4" whose names I have already mentioned. They were reinforced by a small field hospital under the charge of Major Baird and Captain Begbie.
Some of the wounded came up by train, and some by ambulances or by wagons, but a very large proportion, a proportion which included nearly all the serious cases, were carried up on stretchers by hand. No mode of transport is more comfortable than this, or is less fatiguing to the patient, and the splendid organisation of volunteer bearers and of coolie carriers enabled this means of bringing up the wounded to be very largely made use of. Certainly the stretcher-bearers were the means of saving lives, and of sparing those they carried an infinite amount of pain.
As seen at night, the procession up to Chieveley was doleful and mysterious. The long line of silent men moving in clusters, each cluster with a stretcher and a body in its midst. Stealing slowly and cautiously over the veldt in the moonlight, they all made for the two white lights which swung over the hospital by the station.
The coolies carried their stretchers shoulder high, so that the body of the man they bore was lit fitfully by the moon as they passed along with absolutely noiseless feet. The coolies themselves added no little to the uncanny spectacle, for in the shadow beneath the stretcher stalked a double row of thin bare legs, and by the poles of the stretcher were the white or coloured turbans that these men affect; while here and there a sleek black head glistened in the light.
There was but one house at Chieveley--the stationmaster's house. It had been effectually looted after the Boer fashion, but it would have done well as a resting-place for the four nurses who came up with the hospital. The house, however, had been taken possession of, and the nurses had to contemplate either a night in the open or in the waiting-room at the station. As this latter room had been used as a stable by the Boers, it was not in much request. It served, however, as a place for the depositing of personal baggage and for the preparing of such food as it was possible to prepare--chiefly, indeed, for the making of tea.
The question of where to sleep was soon solved by the necessities of the position. These ill-housed women, as a matter of fact, were hard at work all Friday, all Saturday, and all Saturday night. They seemed oblivious to fatigue, to hunger, or to any need for sleep. Considering that the heat was intense, that the thirst which attended it was distressing and incessant, that water was scarce, and that the work in hand was heavy and trying, it was wonderful that they came out of it all so little the worse in the end.
Their ministrations to the wounded were invaluable and beyond all praise. They did a service during those distressful days which none but nurses could have rendered, and they set to all at Chieveley an example of unselfishness, self-sacrifice, and indefatigable devotion to duty. They brought to many of the wounded and the dying that comfort which men are little able to evolve, or are uncouth in bestowing, and which belongs especially to the tender, undefined and undefinable ministrations of women.
The English soldier is as sensible of attention and as appreciative of sympathy and kindness as any other man who is at the mercy of circumstances, and I can well believe that there are many soldiers--some of them now in England, crippled for life--who will long keep green the memory of the sisters at Chieveley.
Some weeks after Colenso I was at Pietermaritzburg, and was looking up in the hospital wards certain cases which had been attended to in "No. 4." Among them was a paralysed man to whom one of the nurses had been very kind at Chieveley. I found him comfortably bestowed, but he was possessed of a handkerchief the extreme dirtiness of which led me to suggest that, as he was now in a centre of luxury, he should ask for a clean one. To which he replied, "I am not going to give this one up; I am afraid of losing it. The sister who looked after me at Chieveley gave it to me, and here is her name in the corner."
As the truce was over on Saturday, and as the Boers might assume the aggressive and shell Chieveley and its helpless colony, the order was given to break up the hospital and get all the wounded away by train, and to retire with the tents and equipment to Frere. This was done on Sunday morning.
As soon as the wounded had left--and it was no light matter getting them away--it was thought desirable that the women should be at once got out of danger, and so they were bundled down to Frere with little ceremony in a mule wagon. As they had no hospital to go to (for "No. 4" did not arrive until the small hours of the following morning) they took refuge in the hotel at Frere. They had some food with them, albeit it was not of a kind to attract the fastidious, and the four of them slept on the floor of a looted and empty room, which even the kindly heart of Mrs. Wilson could not render other than a dreary resting place. This was their only "night in" in three days.
I had, I am bound to confess, the advantage of them in the matter of ventilation, for I slept in a wagon.
XI
SOME TRAITS IN THE MEN
As I have already said, the wounded took their turn of "hard luck" like men. A few were sullen, a few relieved their feelings by fluent but meaningless profanity, in which the Boers were cursed with as much thoroughness as was the Jackdaw of Rheims. The majority were silent or said little. The tendency of most of the men was to make the least of their wounds, and some of those who were the worst hit were the most cheery. They were, with scarcely an exception, unselfish, and were singularly patient, considering that the exercise of patience is not a marked quality in men.
They ministered to one another's wants with a tender solicitude which was not marred by the occasional uncouthness of its method. There was a wide-spread belief that tobacco was a panacea for all ills, and any man who had the wherewithal to smoke shared the small luxury with his mates. If there was only one pipe in a tent it was kept circulating. One would see a man on one stretcher trying to arrange a pillow for a comrade on the next: the pillow in question being commonly made out of a squashed helmet with a boot inside it. The man in any tent who was the least disabled was never so well pleased as when he was given something to do for those who were under the same canvas with him. With a pannikin and a spoon he would feed those who could not feed themselves, until they were glad to be rid of the attention; or he would readjust a dressing, or cut off a boot, or get the dried blood from an exposed surface with a never-wearying anxiety.
With few exceptions the men were honestly anxious "not to give trouble." It was an article of faith with them to "take their turn," and no man would try to make out that his case gave him a claim for attention over his fellows. Indeed, on the occasion of a visit, the occupants of a tent were eager with one voice to point out what they considered to be the worst case, and to claim for it the earliest notice. The men of a tent were, in the kindliest way, a little proud of having a "real bad" case in their midst. When the curtain of a tent is up the occupants whose heads are nearest to the tent ropes can easily converse with those who are similarly placed in the adjoining tent. Thus I heard one man on the ground, whose head was nearly in the open, call out to another head just in view on the floor of the next tent: "We've a real hot 'un in along with us; he's got 'it through the lungs and the liver both, and the doctor has been in to him three times." To which the other head replied: "That's nothing to a bloke in here. He's been off his chump all night; his language has been a fair treat, and he's had four fits. We've had a night, I don't think!"
Another article of faith with the soldier takes the form of a grim stoicism under pain. Some of the wounded endured the examination of their wounds with Spartan pluck. They seemed to consider it above all things essential that they should not cry out "until they were obliged." One enormous Irishman with a shattered thigh yelled out in agony as he was being lifted upon the operating table to be examined. The pain was evidently terrible and excuse enough for any degree of exclamation. But he apologised quaintly and profusely for the noise he made, urging as an excuse that "he had never been in a hospital before." He expressed his regret much as a man would do who had wandered into a church with his hat on and who excused himself on the ground that he had never been in a church before.
Every patient took a lively interest in his own case, and especially in the removal of any bullet which may have lodged in any part of him. One ruddy youngster, a Devonshire lad, had had a shrapnel bullet through his leg, and the bullet could be felt, on the side opposite to the point of entry, under the unbroken skin. He begged that it should be taken out without chloroform, as he wanted to see it come out and to keep it and take it home. He sat up with his back against the tent pole during the operation, and watched the cutting out of the lead without a murmur. No doubt this Boer missile will find a place in a corner cupboard in some cottage among the delectable villages of Devon, and will be for long the wonder and admiration of devoted women folk.
Among other traits, one notices that the soldier clings with great pertinacity to his few possessions, and especially to his boots. When the haversack has been lost, and when the tunic has been cut up to make its removal more easy, or left behind because it is too blood-stained, there is little remaining in which the owner may bestow his goods unless it be in his boots. There was one poor man I remember at Spearman's, who was in great distress because, just as he was being sent down to the base, he had lost his solitary boot. He said it contained a puttie, a tin of jam, two shillings in money, and a bullet that had been taken out of him. These are no mean possessions.
The puttie also is not lightly discarded. If not used as a gaiter it is useful for many other purposes, and especially is it considered well to wind it round the abdomen as a cholera belt, for the soldier has great faith in anything in the way of a belt.
When the men were bathing together in hundreds at Springfield, there was an opportunity of seeing such variety in the matter of abdominal belts as could never have been dreamed of. Some of these favoured garments were mere shreds and rags, and were worn probably in order to keep faith with some good soul at home who had made her boy promise he would never leave off his belt. Other binders were undoubtedly home-made, and the work of anxious mothers and wives who believed in red flannel and plenty of it. Some of the belts were knitted, and were made to be pulled on, but they had shrunk so much from repeated wettings, and had become so infantile in their proportions that the owner of the garment had to get at least one comrade to help him pull it over his hips. When it was at last in place it quite constricted the body, and justified the comment of one bather, who exclaimed to his belted but otherwise naked friend: "Well, ye've got a waist on ya, if nothink else!"
XII
THE SIGN OF THE WOODEN CROSS
After Colenso, No. 4 Stationary Field Hospital returned to the same quarters at Frere, and at Frere we remained until January 13th, 1900, nearly a month. The wounded who fell on the unhappy 15th of December had been satisfactorily disposed of, thanks to the admirable arrangements made by the Principal Medical Officer, Colonel Gallwey, C.B. Not a single wounded man was left out on the field on the night of the battle. On that particular Friday every man had been attended to before midnight, and on the following Sunday all the wounded who had fallen on the 15th were comfortably housed in one or other of the hospitals at the base.
Our tents, although emptied of the wounded, soon began to be filled up with cases of sickness, and especially with cases of dysentery. Those who presented the slightest form of the disease could be sent down to the base, but when the type was severe the patient did better with as little movement as possible. Those, therefore, who remained in our lines presented a large proportion of examples of serious illness.
Provisions were ample, medical necessities abundant, and the ladies of the Colony were infinitely kind in forwarding to Frere comforts of all sorts. Our tents were by no means filled, and yet, in spite of what may be considered favourable circumstances, there were a good many deaths.
Deaths mean the need for burial, and a little burying ground was marked off in the rear of the hospital, close to the railway line. As weeks went by the little enclosure needed enlargement, and so the engineers came and fenced it round afresh with a wire paling, and gave it a fit aspect of formality. The names of the dead were indicated on tablets of wood, and now and then the comrades of a man, or the survivors of the tent he died in, would erect over the mound a wooden cross.
These crosses were made usually out of provision boxes, or perhaps from a whisky case, and many were very admirably finished and very cleverly carved, and many were curious of design. They represented long hours spent in tedious hacking at a tough slab of wood with a pocket-knife, and, after that, infinite patience in the cutting out of the letters of the dead chum's name. Finish would be given to the lettering by means of a tin-opener.
These crosses will be found all over the land of the war. Few of them will long survive the wind and the rain and the blistering sun, and the hand of the Kaffir who is lacking of fuel. So long, however, as they dot the solitary veldt they will be symbols of the tenderest spirit of good comradeship, of the kindly heart of men who are supposed to be little imbued with sentiment, and of that loyal affection for his friend which is not among the least of the qualities of the British soldier.
Here and there some elaborate monuments with some promise of permanency have been erected. There is one, for example, in which the inscription is fashioned out of empty cartridge cases stuck into cement. There is another carved with some art out of stone.
I think, however, that those sleep best who lie beneath the wooden cross fashioned with labour and some occasional dimness of eye by the pocket-knife of an old "pal."
XIII
THE MEN WITH THE SPADES
The graves at Frere were dug by our own men, or rather by a small fatigue party from a regiment near by. Nearly every morning they came, the men with the spades. There were six of them, with a corporal, and they came up jauntily, with their spades on their shoulders and with pipes in their mouths. They were in their shirt-sleeves, and there was much display of belt and of unbuttoned neck. Their helmets were apt to be stuck on their heads in informal attitudes. They were inexpressibly untidy, and they made in their march a loose, shambling suggestion of a procession.
They came past my tent about breakfast time, and every morning I wondered whether the men with the spades would come, since, when they came, I knew that a death had taken place in the night, and wondered who it was.
As in some way symbols of death, as elements in the last services to be rendered to the dead, the men with the spades filled me with great curiosity. They came up cheerily, and when they reached the outskirts of the hospital the corporal would call out to any orderly he saw: "Well, nipper, how many have we got to dig to-day?"
When they had finished they went by my tent on their way back to camp: still the same untidy, shambling lot; still, as a rule, smoking, and still with the appearance of being infectiously cheerful.
I know well enough, however, that there was little cheeriness among these men with the spades. They were dull enough in their inmost hearts. The soldier is much impressed by a burying and by the formalities which surround the dead. And as he knows he must not "give way" he is prone to cover his easily stirred feelings by an attempt at a "devil-may-care" attitude, and by an assumption of rollicking indifference. It is, however, a poorly executed pretence, and it needed no exceptional acumen to see that in reality no small shadow of unhappiness followed the little shuffling procession, in spite of their pipes and their jauntily posed helmets and their laboured jokes.
If a soldier's grave is to be dug by sympathising hands, let it be dug by the hands of these very men with the spades.
XIV
THE MARCHING
On Friday, January 12th, Sir Redvers Buller left Frere, and on the following day we took our second departure from that place. The movement was to be to Springfield, some eighteen miles across the veldt. No. 4 Field Hospital was now to leave the railway and trust to transport by oxen and mules. The hospital was equipped to accommodate a minimum of three hundred beds, and was made up of sixty tents and ten marquees. The rank and file of the R.A.M.C. numbered eighty-eight non-commissioned officers and men; the staff was represented by three army surgeons, nine civil surgeons, the two army sisters who had worked at Colenso, and my remaining nurse, Miss McCaul. The other nurse, Miss Tarr, who came out with me, was at Maritzburg, desperately ill with dysentery. She nearly lost her life, and was scarcely convalescent when the time came for us to return to England. Her unexpected recovery was largely due to the skill of the doctor who looked after her (Dr. Rochfort Brown, of the Assembly Hospital), and to the extraordinary kindness of a lady who was waiting at Pietermaritzburg to join her husband, then locked up with his regiment in Ladysmith.
The three nurses kept with the hospital, and did as good work at Spearman's Farm, after Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, and at Chieveley, after Pieters, as they did on the occasion of Colenso. They had no easy time, for from the day we began at Frere until the lull after Ladysmith we pitched the hospital no less than six times; viz., twice at Frere, twice at Chieveley, once at Spearman's, and once at Springfield.
Our train was composed of sixteen ox wagons, each with sixteen oxen, so that the number of oxen employed was over 260. There were besides five ambulances, each drawn by ten mules. The transport provided me consisted of a small covered wagon, a Scotch cart, sixteen mules, a conductor on horseback, four Kaffir "boys," a groom, and my own horse and manservant.
On the occasion of our leaving Frere on January 13, we were roused at 3 A.M., while it was yet quite dark, and while the Southern Cross was still ablaze in the sky. All the tents were struck by the ungenial hour of 4 A.M. Packing up and the circumstances of removal were conducted with difficulty and no little confusion. The ox teams were lying about, and only a precarious light was furnished by the lanterns we carried. It required no exceptional carelessness to allow a wanderer in the camp to fall, in the course of a few minutes, over a prostrate ox, a rolled-up tent, a pannier, a pile of cooking-pots, or a derelict saddle. When the dawn came an agreeable sense of order was restored, and we started on the march at 5 A.M.
There was a splendid sunrise, and the day proved a glorious one, although it was painfully hot. The road was a mere track across the veldt, which had been worn smooth in some places and cut into ruts in others by the hundreds of wagons and the great array of guns which had already passed over it.
"No. 4" formed a long convoy by the time the last wagon had rumbled out of Frere. The pace was very slow, for the ox moves with ponderous lethargy. The surgeons rode by the side of the train, the sergeants and the orderlies walked as they listed, and the nurses rode in ambulances, to the great shaking of their bodies. With us were a hundred coolies, who were attached to the hospital for camp work. They were a dismal crowd as they stalked along, with their thin, bare legs and their picturesque tatters of clothing, with all their earthly possessions in bundles on their heads, and with apparently a vow of funereal silence in their hearts.
The heat soon became intense, and the march blank and monotonous. There was ever the same shadeless veldt, the same unending brown road, relieved by nothing but an occasional dead horse or mule; the same creeping, creaking, wallowing wagons, the never-absent perspiring Kaffirs, the everlasting cloud of dust, and over all the blazing sun that neither hat nor helmet could provide shelter from.
At 7.30 A.M. we reached a spot on the veldt known as Pretorius' Farm. It was marked by what was called, with reckless imagery, a stream, but which was represented by a wide and squalid gutter filled with stagnant water which would have done no discredit to that of the lower Thames. Here we outspanned, and here we breakfasted.
These breakfasts under the dome of heaven are not to be looked back upon with rapture. Picnicking is an excellent relaxation in England, but a picnic without shade, without cooling drinks, without pasties and salads and jellies and pies, without white tablecloths and bright knives, without even shelter from incessant dust, lacks much. Tinned provisions are, no doubt, excellent and nourishing, but oh, the weariness of them! And oh, the squalor of the single tin mug, which never loses the taste of what it last had in it! And oh, the meanness of the one tin plate which does duty for every meal, and every phase of it! Perhaps of all unappetising adjuncts to a breakfast the tin of preserved milk, which has been opened two days and is already becoming disgustingly familiar, is the most aggressive. The hot climate and the indefatigable ant and the fly do little to make the items of a meal attractive.
What does not rapidly decompose promptly dries up. On one occasion a roasted fowl was brought up reverently to Frere in a tin box, but when it came to be eaten it had dried into a sort ofpapier mâchêroast fowl, and was like the viands which are thrown at the police at pantomimes. We brought many varieties of preserved food with us, and of much of it the question could not fail to arise as to whether it had ever been worth preserving.
Many had experience, too, of the inventive art of the shopkeeper, as shown in the evolution of canteens and pocket table knives. The canteen, when unstrapped, tends to fall into a hundred parts, and can never be put together again. It is a prominent or generic feature of most canteens that the kettle should look as little like a kettle as possible, and that everything should pack into a frying-pan. The pocket picnicking knife contains a knife, a fork, a spoon, and a corkscrew. The fork runs into everything and prevents the knife from being carried in the pocket. The spoon and fork are jointed for more convenient stowing, and at crises in a meal they are apt to bend weakly in the middle and then to incontinently shut up.
The outspanning and the inspanning at Pretorius' Farm occupied over two hours, and then the march was resumed. A better country was reached as we neared the river, and it was a pleasant sight to see the tumbling stream of the Lesser Tugela, and to find in one valley the pretence of a garden and a house among trees. This was at Springfield, which place we reached at 2.30 P.M. The march of some eighteen miles had therefore been effected in two treks.
At Springfield the camping ground was the least dreary of any the hospital had experience of, and the proximity of the Lesser Tugela made bathing possible.
After a few days at Springfield we moved on to Spearman's Farm, where we camped by the hill called Mount Alice.
The return from Spearman's after Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz was even more monotonous than the going forth. The first journey was to Springfield, which was reached at sundown, and where we bivouacked for the night. Springfield was left at dawn, and the next night was spent in a bivouac at Frere. On the following day, before the sun was well up, we took the last stage of the march and reached Chieveley. Here all enjoyed once more the luxury of having tents overhead, for during the crawling journey over the veldt we slept in wagons, on wagons, or under wagons.
XV
SPEARMAN'S FARM
In a lonely valley under the mimosa-covered heights which dominate the Great Tugela is the lonely homestead of Spearman's Farm. Those who built it and made a home in it could have had little thought that it would one day figure in the annals of history. The farmhouse and the farm buildings and the garden were enclosed by a rough stone wall, and upon this solitary homestead the hand of the Boer had fallen heavily. The house had been looted, and what was breakable in it had been broken. The garden had been trampled out of recognition, the gates were gone, the agricultural implements had been wantonly destroyed, and the unpretending road which led to the farm was marked by the wheels of heavy guns. The house was small and of one story, and was possessed of the unblushing ugliness which corrugated iron alone can provide. The door swung open, and any could enter who would, and through the broken windows there was nothing to be seen but indiscriminate wreckage. There was about the little house and its cluster of outbuildings a suggestion of the Old Country, and it wanted but a rick or so, and a pond with white ducks to complete a picture of a small English farm. The garden had evidently been the subject of solicitous care, and was on that account all the more desolate, and what delight it ever had had been trampled out of it by countless hoofs or obliterated by the rattling passage over it of a battery or so of artillery.
At the back of the farm, and at the foot of a green kopje, was a quaint little burial ground--little because it held but two graves, and quaint because these were surmounted by unexpected stone memorials of a type to be associated with a suburban English cemetery. These monuments were fitly carved, and were distinctly the product of no mean town, and they were to the memory respectively of George Spearman and of Susan Spearman. For some undefinable reason these finished memorials, so formal and so hackneyed in their design, appeared inappropriate and even unworthy of the dignity of the lonely graves at the foot of the kopje. Some more rugged emblem, free from artificiality and from any suggestion of the crowded haunts of men, would have covered more fittingly the last resting-place of these two pioneers. A few trees, almost the only trees within sight, shaded the little graveyard, and the trees and the monuments were enclosed by a very solid iron railing. It was in the shadow of this oasis that the dead from our hospital were buried.
XVI
THE HOSPITAL AT SPEARMAN'S
The hospital reached Spearman's on January 16th, and was pitched at the foot of the hill, upon the summit of which the naval gun was firing. We were, therefore, close to those scenes of fighting which were to occupy the next few weeks, and too close for comfort to the great 4.7 gun, the repeated booming of which often became a trouble to those who were lying ill in the hospital.
The heights that dominated the southern bank of the Tugela were very steep on the side that faced the river, but on the side that looked towards Spearman's the ground sloped gradually down into a wide plain which, like other stretches of veldt, was dotted with kopjes and slashed with dongas. Anyone who mounted the hill at the back of the hospital would come by easy steps to an abrupt ridge, beyond which opened a boundless panorama.
In the valley below this crest was the winding Tugela, and just across the dip rose the solemn ridge of Spion Kop. Far away in the distance were the purple hills which overshadowed Ladysmith. If the crest were followed to the right the ground rose until at last the summit of the naval hill was reached, and here were the "handy men" and their big gun. From this high eminence a splendid view was obtained of the country we desired once more to possess. The Tugela glistened in the sun like a band of silver, and over the plain and in and out among the kopjes and round the dongas the brown road wound to Ladysmith. The road was deserted, and the few homesteads which came into view showed no signs of life. At the foot of the hill was Potgieter's Drift, while above the ford was a splashing rapid, and below was the pont which our men had seized with such daring.
The face of the hill towards the river was covered with mimosa trees and with cactus bushes and aloes, and this unexpected wealth of green almost hid the red and grey boulders which clung to the hill-side. Among the rocks were many strange flowers, many unfamiliar plants, and creeping things innumerable. This was a favourite haunt of the chameleon, and I believe it was here that the hospital chameleon was captured.
The quiet of the place, when the guns had ceased, was absolute, and was only broken by the murmur of the numerous doves which occupied the mimosa woods. The whole place seemed a paradise of peace, and there was nothing to suggest that there were some thousands of grimy men beyond the river who were busy with the implements of death. On looking closely one could see brown lines along many of the hillsides, and these said lines were trenches, and before the hubbub began men in their shirt-sleeves could be seen working about them with pickaxes and shovels.
I should imagine that few modern battles have been viewed by the casual onlooker at such near proximity and with such completeness in detail as were the engagements of Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, when viewed from the high ground above our hospital.
The hospital, though now more than twenty-five miles from the railway, was very well supplied with almost every necessity and with the amplest stores of food. Bread was not to be obtained, or only on occasion, when it would be brought up by an ambulance on its return from Frere. We had with us, however, our flocks and herds, and were thus able to supply the sick and wounded with fresh milk, and the whole hospital with occasional fresh meat. We were a little short of water, and fuel was not over abundant. As a result the washing of clothes, towels and sheets presented the same type of problem as is furnished by the making of bricks without straw. The aspect of a flannel shirt that has been washed by a Kaffir on the remote veldt leaves on the mind the impression that the labour of the man has been in vain.
Our stay at Spearman's was extended to three weeks, and we dealt with over a thousand wounded during that period, and I am sure that all those who came within our lines would acknowledge that at "No. 4" they found an unexpected degree of comfort and were in every way well "done for."
On the Sunday after our arrival the wounded began to come in. Thirteen only came from the division posted at Potgieter's Drift, the rest came from Sir Charles Warren's column. Increasing numbers of wounded came in every day in batches of from fifty to one hundred and fifty. They were all attended to, and were sent on to Frere as soon as possible. All the serious cases, however, were kept in the hospital.