XXVIIA JOURNEY TO LADYSMITHGeneral Buller reached Ladysmith on March 1st, and on Friday, March 2nd, I had the good fortune to enter the town. The journey was not accomplished without difficulty. It was necessary to follow the road the army had taken, as the main road was not known to be free from the enemy, and, moreover, the bridge leading to it had been blown up. The distance from Chieveley to Ladysmith by the route taken was between twenty-three and twenty-four miles. I took my covered cart (called in the camp the "'bus"), with ten mules and two Kaffir "boys." A man rode in front to pick out the road. With me came my remaining nurse, Miss McCaul, and Mr. Day, an army chaplain. We took provisions, water, and forage for two days.We left Chieveley at 6.30 a.m., and the first part of the journey was across the battlefield of Colenso. The road then became very rough, ran over ridges and down into dongas, over boulders and deep into ruts, so that the mules would now be at a fair trot and now dragged to a standstill. At last we reached the hill commanding the pontoon bridge over the Tugela. At the top of this precipitous height was the mighty convoy of ox-wagons with food for Ladysmith. The wagons could be counted by hundreds and the cattle by thousands. The hubbub could not be surpassed. The lowing of the oxen, the shrieking of the Kaffir "boys," the bellowed orders of the convoy conductors, the groaning of colliding wagons, made a compound of sound worthy of the occasion. Among the rabble would be seen ambulance wagons, water carts, isolated gun carriages and ammunition wagons, bread carts, mounted officers hurrying through, weary pickets returning to camp, and a few "Tommies" tramping along with a cheery indifference to the restless, struggling crowd.The actual road above the pontoon was the very steepest declivity I have ever seen negotiated by structures on wheels. The 'bus (empty of all occupants) slid unsteadily down the incline, rocking like a ship in a troubled sea, and the mules had to put on their best pace to keep clear of the onrushing wheels.The river at the point of crossing is extremely picturesque. The steep rugged banks are rendered beautiful by mimosa and cactus, and below the pontoons the torrent breaks into foaming rapids, while up-stream is the celebrated waterfall of the Tugela. From the river the road wound on to the foot of Umbulwana. It ran across plains and down into valleys, and over spruits and across boulders, and through mimosa groves and over dusty wastes. A river at the foot of the great hill was forded, and as the mules were nearly carried off their feet, and the wagon was flooded with the stream, we were glad to land on the opposite bank.The Boer camps through which the road led showed every evidence of a hurried departure. The cooking pots were still on the camp fires; the rude shelters under which our hardy enemy had lived were still intact. The ground was strewed with refuse, with the remains of the last meal, with discarded articles of clothing, with empty bottles and barrels, with fragments of chairs and tables, with empty flour sacks, and, above all, with the straw, which is a feature of a Boer settlement. There were no tents. The shelters were made of boughs, of beams of wood from adjacent farms, of iron railings, of barbed wire, of plates of corrugated iron, of casual patches of canvas, and of old sacks. In some of the trenches the shelters were more elaborate, and varied from an almost shot-proof retreat to a simple tent, made out of two raw cow skins stretched over bamboos.These wild camps, amid a still wilder country, suggested the conventional "brigand's retreat." The only evidences of a gentler mood were provided by a discarded concertina and by a letter I picked up on the roadside. The letter was from a Boer wife at the home farm to her husband in the trenches. As we passed along the road we met with many evidences of a hurried flight. The dead horses were very numerous; and left by the roadside, with traces cut, were carts, light spider-carts, water carts, wagons, and such cumbrous impedimenta as wheelbarrows and a smith's forge. One wagon had fallen headlong into a donga in the dark, and was an utter wreck.At last, on mounting the summit of a little ridge, we saw before us a wide green plain of waving grass, and beyond the plain and under the shelter of purple hills lay the unhappy town of Ladysmith. Ladysmith looks very pretty at the distance--a cluster of white and red roofs dotted about among trees, and surmounted by the white tower of the Town Hall.The military camps were placed at various points about the town. The first of these camps was that of the gallant King's Royal Rifles. They had made some sort of home for themselves on the side of a barren and stony hill. They had, of course, no tents, but had fashioned fantastic shelters out of stone and wood and wire. They had even burrowed into the ground, and had returned to the type of habitation common to primeval man. Among the huts and burrows were many paths worn smooth by the restless tread of weary feet. The path the most worn of all was that which led to the water tanks.The men themselves were piteous to see. They were thin and hollow-eyed, and had about them an air of utter lassitude and weariness. Some were greatly emaciated, nearly all were pale, nearly all were silent. They had exhausted every topic of conversation, it would seem, and were too feeble to discuss even their relief.Ladysmith was reached at 2.30 P.M., and the food convoy did not arrive until late the same evening, so we had the sad opportunity of seeing Ladysmith still unrelieved--unrelieved so far as the misery of hunger was concerned. I had no food at my disposal, but I had, fortunately, a good quantity of tobacco, which was doled out in pipefuls so long as the supply lasted. It would have taken many pounds, however, to satisfy the eager, wasted, trembling hands which were thrust forward on the chance of getting a fragment of the weed.The town is composed almost entirely of single-storey houses built of corrugated iron, with occasional walls of brick or cement. In the suburbs of the town these houses are made as villa-like as possible by means of verandahs and flower gardens and creepers. The main street of the town, however, has no pretensions to beauty, and is merely a broad road with corrugated iron shops on either side.On walking into "Starvation City," one's first impression was that of the utter emptiness of the place. Most of the villas were unoccupied, were closed up, and, indeed, barricaded. The gardens were neglected, and everything had run wild. The impression of desolation was accentuated by an occasional house with a hole in its roof or its wall due to a Boer shell. All the people we met were pallid and hollow-eyed, and many were wasted. All were silent, listless, and depressed. There were no evidences of rejoicing, no signs of interest or animation, and, indeed, as I have just said, Ladysmith was still unrelieved. Nearly every shop was closed or even barricaded. Sign-boards showed that here was a coach builder, and there a grocer. The chemist's shop appeared to be empty of everything except the coloured water in the large bottles in the window. Such shops as were open were dark and desolate.There were many grim evidences of better days. Thus one restaurant presented, among other cheery signs, the announcement of "Meals at all hours." Another establishment was gay with placards of "Ice creams." Notices of groceries of all kinds for sale made radiant a shop which was empty of everything but a table and some rough chairs.Such was the aspect of the weary town. Streets empty of all but a few tired and listless men, stores without goods, shops without customers, a railway station without passengers, a post office without letters, stamps, or post cards. No words, indeed, can fully describe this city of desolation, this little colony of the almost hopeless, this poor, battered, worn-out, hungry town of Ladysmith, with a bright summer sun making mockery of its dismal streets.The wretchedness of the place was not mitigated by the horrible smells which greeted one at every corner, nor by the miserable, dirty river which crawled slimily through the place.We left the town about 5 P.M., and met on our way back the long convoy of wagons with food. It was dark when we reached the river by Umbulwana; and as it was dangerous, and, indeed, impossible to cross the drift except in daylight, we outspanned by the river bank and made a pretence of sleeping.When yet it was dark on the following morning the mules were put in, and with the earliest streak of dawn we crossed the river and made for Colenso. The wagons were still toiling onwards towards Ladysmith.The road, as I have said, was very rough, and the poor cart, which had served me well for three months, began to show signs of giving out. It broke down at last, one of the wheels coming to pieces. We were then some seven miles from Colenso, and the vehicle was beyond all repair. So it was left by the roadside among other wreckage, a forlorn relic of what was once a smart "'bus." Our very scanty luggage was packed upon the mules' backs, our remaining food was distributed among the passers-by, and we proceeded to walk to Colenso. From Colenso we travelled to Chieveley by a casual goods train, sitting on the floor of an open truck, as there was no guard's van. We reached Chieveley on Saturday at 1 P.M., tired and dirty.XXVIIIA STRAGGLERThe photograph which is appended to this paragraph was taken during the course of our journey to Ladysmith. The scene is on the north bank of the Great Tugela below the waterfall, and close to the pontoon bridge by which the troops had crossed on their victorious march. Sitting in the sun on a pile of timbers, which the engineers have left, is a typical straggler. His company has moved on to Pieters, and he has fallen out somehow and somewhere on the march, and is following the lost column as best he can.The day is hot, and his jacket is thrown across his shoulders. A small cloud of flies buzz over him. He is tired, dirty, thirsty, and hungry. Fever has taken hold of him, and he is--as he would say--feeling "a bit thick." He is sitting by the river bank to await the first wagon across the pontoon on which a conductor will give him a lift. In the meantime some good Samaritan is getting him a drink of water from the stream.XXIXHOW A SURGEON WON THE VICTORIA CROSSOn December 15th was fought the battle of Colenso, on the morning of a brilliant summer's day. At dawn the men had marched out eagerly and in keen spirits, and with a swing of the shoulders which told of a certain victory. Before sundown they were beaten back, more than a thousand dead and wounded were lying on the field, the hospital tents were crammed to overflowing, and the wagons, which were prepared to move forwards, were moving back.The small hamlet of Colenso, battered, empty, and woe-begone, stands on the south bank of the river, and clings about the railway as a homely, unpretending little settlement made up of a few corrugated iron cottages on either side of a single street.It looks almost like a toy village, and its prim formality is tempered by a friendly growth of cactus, aloes, and mimosa, by a few trees and by many gardens. Behind Colenso is the veldt, which here extends southwards as a vast undulating plain to Chieveley, Frere, and Estcourt. Between Chieveley and the river the veldt is smooth, and is broken only by ant-hills, by a few Kaffir kraals, and by the precise line of the railway. The plain is green, but it is not the luxuriant green of England, and in the early morning and about the time of the setting sun, tints of yellow and brown and pink spread over the wold and render the place strangely beautiful.During the glare of noonday the veldt gives simply a blinding sense of scorched and faded green and its monotony and its boundlessness, and the utter lack of shade and variation, make the expanse dreary as a desert.Beyond the village the brown torrent of the great Tugela tears seawards between high banks and under broken bridges, and among thedébrisof pitiless ruin. Across the river are the bare, stony, trench-lined kopjes and hills held for so many long weeks by the Boers. About the foot of these bastion-like ridges is the squalor of a neglected camp, and on all sides are rifle pits and trenches and stone shelters and hidden holes. Man seems on this river bank to have gone back to the savagery of the cave dweller, and to be once more crawling on the earth. Beyond these low hills are the grey heights of Umbulwana towering over Ladysmith.It was to the right of Colenso that the battle raged fiercest on December 15th, 1899. It was here that Colonel Long's batteries of field artillery were surprised by the enemy and were abandoned after a hideous sacrifice of horses and men. It was here that Lieutenant Roberts received his fatal wound, and it was here that Babtie won the Victoria Cross.The batteries were moving towards the river with the usual British unconcern, and in the quiet of a summer's morning. Suddenly there was poured upon them from the shelter of a mimosa wood such a torrent of lead that in a few moments there was scarcely a horse or a man standing. The men faced the wood as only the British soldier can face death. The gallant attempts made to save the guns led only to further loss of life. Colonel Long had been shot down, some fifty horses had been sacrificed, and the scanty ranks of the English were thinning rapidly. Still the cry went up, "Hold fast to the guns!" and when the last forlorn hope had been attempted and had failed, the green veldt was littered with the wounded, the dying, and the dead.Near by the guns was a donga, and into this many of the wounded had crawled. The galloper who took up the news of the disaster reported the need of help for the injured. To this call Major Babtie, R.A.M.C., at once responded as a volunteer. His duty did not take him to the battlefield. He rode down to this Inferno. He might as well have ridden before a row of targets during the smartest moment of rifle practice. Three times was his horse shot under him before he reached the donga. Here, in the face of a galling fire, he dragged the wounded into shelter, and a little later he ventured out under a rain of lead to bring in Lieutenant Roberts, who was lying in the open desperately wounded.For some seven hours Babtie kept by the wounded in the shallow donga, no one daring to lift a head above the edge of the dip. He alone had a water-bottle, and he doled out what water he had in a 60-minim measuring glass. He was also able to relieve pain by morphine, and when not otherwise occupied he sheltered poor Roberts's face from the scorching sun by holding above it a letter he chanced to have in his pocket. It was not until darkness was setting in that it was possible to venture from the scant shelter the donga provided.The scene of this heroic act was a level stretch of green veldt lying between the river and a brown road which led with many desultory turns to Hlangwani. To the left were the village and gardens of Colenso, and to the right the grove of mimosa trees in which the Boer force was hidden. Beyond the river rose the enemy's entrenchments and the grim ridge of Grobler's Kloof.The last time I passed over this spot was on the day after our cavalry had reached Ladysmith. It was on a day of peace. The sky was cloudless and no breath of air stirred along the grass. The bodies of the horses belonging to the lost guns were lying in a long line across the veldt. Their bones were as white as are the bones of museum skeletons, for the vultures and the ants had done their work thoroughly. The hides were still drawn over the bleaching bones, and round the necks of these ill-fated beasts were still the collars and the harness by which they had dragged the guns into action. There was an absolute stillness over the whole scene. To the left a train was being shunted at Colenso station with leisurely persistence, for the day was hot and the sun dazzling. To the right were the mimosa groves, glorious with yellow blossom, in the shadows of which the Boers had hidden. It was strange that it was from these dainty woods that the hellish fire had poured forth which laid low so many gallant English lads, for on this quiet day the trees were busy with complaining doves.By the banks of the donga, which had been for a whole summer's day a valley of the shadow of death, a Kaffir was crooning over a concertina, from which came a lazy, dirge-like music.The railway engine, the doves, and the rapt Kaffir were the sole moving objects in this garden of peace, and in the blue distance was the ridge of Grobler's Kloof, no longer belching fire and shell, but standing out delicately against the tender sky.No brave deed had ever a gentler setting.XXX"SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.""The Glory of the World," as the soldier sees it, can be understood by most of us. There is the glory of having served his Queen and his country, and of having done his duty like a man. There is, probably, the glorious memory of some great charge and of the storming of some stubborn trench. And there is the home-coming, made glorious by the ringing of bells and the waving of flags, by a march through familiar streets and through shouting and cheering crowds, with the rattle of drums and fifes, with hurrahs and yells of welcome for the regiment he loves so well. A home-coming like this is worth many days of hardship, many a Spion Kop, and many a dull week in a hospital tent. But it does not fall to the lot of all.I remember at Chieveley one morning before breakfast watching a solitary man approach the hospital lines. He was as melancholy an object as ever a war has produced. He was a soldier who had fought at Colenso, at Vaal Krantz, and before Pieters, and he was now staggering towards the hospital, a ragged, broken-down, khaki-coloured spectre of a man. He dragged his rifle along with him; his belt was gone; his helmet was poised at the back of his head; his frowsy tunic was thrown over his shoulders; he was literally black with flies. His clothes had not been off for many days, and he had missed the ambulance, he said, and had walked to the hospital.How far he had come he could not tell, nor could anyone gather how he had fared or where he had slept. All that was evident was that he was wet with dew and had spent the night in the open. He knew that for vague hours he had been making his way, with ever faltering steps and failing eyes, towards the red cross flag on the crest of the hill. And now he had reached it. As to why he had come: "Well! he had a touch of the dysentery," he said, "and was about played out."Poor lad! this was a sorry home-coming at the last. A squalid ending of a march; staggering in alone, a shuffling wreck, without a single comrade, with no fifes and drums, no cheering crowd, and no proud adoration of mother or wife. He was helped to a bell tent and put to bed on a stretcher, and on the stretcher he died; and this was the end of his soldiering.Sic transit gloria mundi!PRINTED BYCASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGELONDON, E.C.*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKTHE TALE OF A FIELD HOSPITAL***
XXVII
A JOURNEY TO LADYSMITH
General Buller reached Ladysmith on March 1st, and on Friday, March 2nd, I had the good fortune to enter the town. The journey was not accomplished without difficulty. It was necessary to follow the road the army had taken, as the main road was not known to be free from the enemy, and, moreover, the bridge leading to it had been blown up. The distance from Chieveley to Ladysmith by the route taken was between twenty-three and twenty-four miles. I took my covered cart (called in the camp the "'bus"), with ten mules and two Kaffir "boys." A man rode in front to pick out the road. With me came my remaining nurse, Miss McCaul, and Mr. Day, an army chaplain. We took provisions, water, and forage for two days.
We left Chieveley at 6.30 a.m., and the first part of the journey was across the battlefield of Colenso. The road then became very rough, ran over ridges and down into dongas, over boulders and deep into ruts, so that the mules would now be at a fair trot and now dragged to a standstill. At last we reached the hill commanding the pontoon bridge over the Tugela. At the top of this precipitous height was the mighty convoy of ox-wagons with food for Ladysmith. The wagons could be counted by hundreds and the cattle by thousands. The hubbub could not be surpassed. The lowing of the oxen, the shrieking of the Kaffir "boys," the bellowed orders of the convoy conductors, the groaning of colliding wagons, made a compound of sound worthy of the occasion. Among the rabble would be seen ambulance wagons, water carts, isolated gun carriages and ammunition wagons, bread carts, mounted officers hurrying through, weary pickets returning to camp, and a few "Tommies" tramping along with a cheery indifference to the restless, struggling crowd.
The actual road above the pontoon was the very steepest declivity I have ever seen negotiated by structures on wheels. The 'bus (empty of all occupants) slid unsteadily down the incline, rocking like a ship in a troubled sea, and the mules had to put on their best pace to keep clear of the onrushing wheels.
The river at the point of crossing is extremely picturesque. The steep rugged banks are rendered beautiful by mimosa and cactus, and below the pontoons the torrent breaks into foaming rapids, while up-stream is the celebrated waterfall of the Tugela. From the river the road wound on to the foot of Umbulwana. It ran across plains and down into valleys, and over spruits and across boulders, and through mimosa groves and over dusty wastes. A river at the foot of the great hill was forded, and as the mules were nearly carried off their feet, and the wagon was flooded with the stream, we were glad to land on the opposite bank.
The Boer camps through which the road led showed every evidence of a hurried departure. The cooking pots were still on the camp fires; the rude shelters under which our hardy enemy had lived were still intact. The ground was strewed with refuse, with the remains of the last meal, with discarded articles of clothing, with empty bottles and barrels, with fragments of chairs and tables, with empty flour sacks, and, above all, with the straw, which is a feature of a Boer settlement. There were no tents. The shelters were made of boughs, of beams of wood from adjacent farms, of iron railings, of barbed wire, of plates of corrugated iron, of casual patches of canvas, and of old sacks. In some of the trenches the shelters were more elaborate, and varied from an almost shot-proof retreat to a simple tent, made out of two raw cow skins stretched over bamboos.
These wild camps, amid a still wilder country, suggested the conventional "brigand's retreat." The only evidences of a gentler mood were provided by a discarded concertina and by a letter I picked up on the roadside. The letter was from a Boer wife at the home farm to her husband in the trenches. As we passed along the road we met with many evidences of a hurried flight. The dead horses were very numerous; and left by the roadside, with traces cut, were carts, light spider-carts, water carts, wagons, and such cumbrous impedimenta as wheelbarrows and a smith's forge. One wagon had fallen headlong into a donga in the dark, and was an utter wreck.
At last, on mounting the summit of a little ridge, we saw before us a wide green plain of waving grass, and beyond the plain and under the shelter of purple hills lay the unhappy town of Ladysmith. Ladysmith looks very pretty at the distance--a cluster of white and red roofs dotted about among trees, and surmounted by the white tower of the Town Hall.
The military camps were placed at various points about the town. The first of these camps was that of the gallant King's Royal Rifles. They had made some sort of home for themselves on the side of a barren and stony hill. They had, of course, no tents, but had fashioned fantastic shelters out of stone and wood and wire. They had even burrowed into the ground, and had returned to the type of habitation common to primeval man. Among the huts and burrows were many paths worn smooth by the restless tread of weary feet. The path the most worn of all was that which led to the water tanks.
The men themselves were piteous to see. They were thin and hollow-eyed, and had about them an air of utter lassitude and weariness. Some were greatly emaciated, nearly all were pale, nearly all were silent. They had exhausted every topic of conversation, it would seem, and were too feeble to discuss even their relief.
Ladysmith was reached at 2.30 P.M., and the food convoy did not arrive until late the same evening, so we had the sad opportunity of seeing Ladysmith still unrelieved--unrelieved so far as the misery of hunger was concerned. I had no food at my disposal, but I had, fortunately, a good quantity of tobacco, which was doled out in pipefuls so long as the supply lasted. It would have taken many pounds, however, to satisfy the eager, wasted, trembling hands which were thrust forward on the chance of getting a fragment of the weed.
The town is composed almost entirely of single-storey houses built of corrugated iron, with occasional walls of brick or cement. In the suburbs of the town these houses are made as villa-like as possible by means of verandahs and flower gardens and creepers. The main street of the town, however, has no pretensions to beauty, and is merely a broad road with corrugated iron shops on either side.
On walking into "Starvation City," one's first impression was that of the utter emptiness of the place. Most of the villas were unoccupied, were closed up, and, indeed, barricaded. The gardens were neglected, and everything had run wild. The impression of desolation was accentuated by an occasional house with a hole in its roof or its wall due to a Boer shell. All the people we met were pallid and hollow-eyed, and many were wasted. All were silent, listless, and depressed. There were no evidences of rejoicing, no signs of interest or animation, and, indeed, as I have just said, Ladysmith was still unrelieved. Nearly every shop was closed or even barricaded. Sign-boards showed that here was a coach builder, and there a grocer. The chemist's shop appeared to be empty of everything except the coloured water in the large bottles in the window. Such shops as were open were dark and desolate.
There were many grim evidences of better days. Thus one restaurant presented, among other cheery signs, the announcement of "Meals at all hours." Another establishment was gay with placards of "Ice creams." Notices of groceries of all kinds for sale made radiant a shop which was empty of everything but a table and some rough chairs.
Such was the aspect of the weary town. Streets empty of all but a few tired and listless men, stores without goods, shops without customers, a railway station without passengers, a post office without letters, stamps, or post cards. No words, indeed, can fully describe this city of desolation, this little colony of the almost hopeless, this poor, battered, worn-out, hungry town of Ladysmith, with a bright summer sun making mockery of its dismal streets.
The wretchedness of the place was not mitigated by the horrible smells which greeted one at every corner, nor by the miserable, dirty river which crawled slimily through the place.
We left the town about 5 P.M., and met on our way back the long convoy of wagons with food. It was dark when we reached the river by Umbulwana; and as it was dangerous, and, indeed, impossible to cross the drift except in daylight, we outspanned by the river bank and made a pretence of sleeping.
When yet it was dark on the following morning the mules were put in, and with the earliest streak of dawn we crossed the river and made for Colenso. The wagons were still toiling onwards towards Ladysmith.
The road, as I have said, was very rough, and the poor cart, which had served me well for three months, began to show signs of giving out. It broke down at last, one of the wheels coming to pieces. We were then some seven miles from Colenso, and the vehicle was beyond all repair. So it was left by the roadside among other wreckage, a forlorn relic of what was once a smart "'bus." Our very scanty luggage was packed upon the mules' backs, our remaining food was distributed among the passers-by, and we proceeded to walk to Colenso. From Colenso we travelled to Chieveley by a casual goods train, sitting on the floor of an open truck, as there was no guard's van. We reached Chieveley on Saturday at 1 P.M., tired and dirty.
XXVIII
A STRAGGLER
The photograph which is appended to this paragraph was taken during the course of our journey to Ladysmith. The scene is on the north bank of the Great Tugela below the waterfall, and close to the pontoon bridge by which the troops had crossed on their victorious march. Sitting in the sun on a pile of timbers, which the engineers have left, is a typical straggler. His company has moved on to Pieters, and he has fallen out somehow and somewhere on the march, and is following the lost column as best he can.
The day is hot, and his jacket is thrown across his shoulders. A small cloud of flies buzz over him. He is tired, dirty, thirsty, and hungry. Fever has taken hold of him, and he is--as he would say--feeling "a bit thick." He is sitting by the river bank to await the first wagon across the pontoon on which a conductor will give him a lift. In the meantime some good Samaritan is getting him a drink of water from the stream.
XXIX
HOW A SURGEON WON THE VICTORIA CROSS
On December 15th was fought the battle of Colenso, on the morning of a brilliant summer's day. At dawn the men had marched out eagerly and in keen spirits, and with a swing of the shoulders which told of a certain victory. Before sundown they were beaten back, more than a thousand dead and wounded were lying on the field, the hospital tents were crammed to overflowing, and the wagons, which were prepared to move forwards, were moving back.
The small hamlet of Colenso, battered, empty, and woe-begone, stands on the south bank of the river, and clings about the railway as a homely, unpretending little settlement made up of a few corrugated iron cottages on either side of a single street.
It looks almost like a toy village, and its prim formality is tempered by a friendly growth of cactus, aloes, and mimosa, by a few trees and by many gardens. Behind Colenso is the veldt, which here extends southwards as a vast undulating plain to Chieveley, Frere, and Estcourt. Between Chieveley and the river the veldt is smooth, and is broken only by ant-hills, by a few Kaffir kraals, and by the precise line of the railway. The plain is green, but it is not the luxuriant green of England, and in the early morning and about the time of the setting sun, tints of yellow and brown and pink spread over the wold and render the place strangely beautiful.
During the glare of noonday the veldt gives simply a blinding sense of scorched and faded green and its monotony and its boundlessness, and the utter lack of shade and variation, make the expanse dreary as a desert.
Beyond the village the brown torrent of the great Tugela tears seawards between high banks and under broken bridges, and among thedébrisof pitiless ruin. Across the river are the bare, stony, trench-lined kopjes and hills held for so many long weeks by the Boers. About the foot of these bastion-like ridges is the squalor of a neglected camp, and on all sides are rifle pits and trenches and stone shelters and hidden holes. Man seems on this river bank to have gone back to the savagery of the cave dweller, and to be once more crawling on the earth. Beyond these low hills are the grey heights of Umbulwana towering over Ladysmith.
It was to the right of Colenso that the battle raged fiercest on December 15th, 1899. It was here that Colonel Long's batteries of field artillery were surprised by the enemy and were abandoned after a hideous sacrifice of horses and men. It was here that Lieutenant Roberts received his fatal wound, and it was here that Babtie won the Victoria Cross.
The batteries were moving towards the river with the usual British unconcern, and in the quiet of a summer's morning. Suddenly there was poured upon them from the shelter of a mimosa wood such a torrent of lead that in a few moments there was scarcely a horse or a man standing. The men faced the wood as only the British soldier can face death. The gallant attempts made to save the guns led only to further loss of life. Colonel Long had been shot down, some fifty horses had been sacrificed, and the scanty ranks of the English were thinning rapidly. Still the cry went up, "Hold fast to the guns!" and when the last forlorn hope had been attempted and had failed, the green veldt was littered with the wounded, the dying, and the dead.
Near by the guns was a donga, and into this many of the wounded had crawled. The galloper who took up the news of the disaster reported the need of help for the injured. To this call Major Babtie, R.A.M.C., at once responded as a volunteer. His duty did not take him to the battlefield. He rode down to this Inferno. He might as well have ridden before a row of targets during the smartest moment of rifle practice. Three times was his horse shot under him before he reached the donga. Here, in the face of a galling fire, he dragged the wounded into shelter, and a little later he ventured out under a rain of lead to bring in Lieutenant Roberts, who was lying in the open desperately wounded.
For some seven hours Babtie kept by the wounded in the shallow donga, no one daring to lift a head above the edge of the dip. He alone had a water-bottle, and he doled out what water he had in a 60-minim measuring glass. He was also able to relieve pain by morphine, and when not otherwise occupied he sheltered poor Roberts's face from the scorching sun by holding above it a letter he chanced to have in his pocket. It was not until darkness was setting in that it was possible to venture from the scant shelter the donga provided.
The scene of this heroic act was a level stretch of green veldt lying between the river and a brown road which led with many desultory turns to Hlangwani. To the left were the village and gardens of Colenso, and to the right the grove of mimosa trees in which the Boer force was hidden. Beyond the river rose the enemy's entrenchments and the grim ridge of Grobler's Kloof.
The last time I passed over this spot was on the day after our cavalry had reached Ladysmith. It was on a day of peace. The sky was cloudless and no breath of air stirred along the grass. The bodies of the horses belonging to the lost guns were lying in a long line across the veldt. Their bones were as white as are the bones of museum skeletons, for the vultures and the ants had done their work thoroughly. The hides were still drawn over the bleaching bones, and round the necks of these ill-fated beasts were still the collars and the harness by which they had dragged the guns into action. There was an absolute stillness over the whole scene. To the left a train was being shunted at Colenso station with leisurely persistence, for the day was hot and the sun dazzling. To the right were the mimosa groves, glorious with yellow blossom, in the shadows of which the Boers had hidden. It was strange that it was from these dainty woods that the hellish fire had poured forth which laid low so many gallant English lads, for on this quiet day the trees were busy with complaining doves.
By the banks of the donga, which had been for a whole summer's day a valley of the shadow of death, a Kaffir was crooning over a concertina, from which came a lazy, dirge-like music.
The railway engine, the doves, and the rapt Kaffir were the sole moving objects in this garden of peace, and in the blue distance was the ridge of Grobler's Kloof, no longer belching fire and shell, but standing out delicately against the tender sky.
No brave deed had ever a gentler setting.
XXX
"SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI."
"The Glory of the World," as the soldier sees it, can be understood by most of us. There is the glory of having served his Queen and his country, and of having done his duty like a man. There is, probably, the glorious memory of some great charge and of the storming of some stubborn trench. And there is the home-coming, made glorious by the ringing of bells and the waving of flags, by a march through familiar streets and through shouting and cheering crowds, with the rattle of drums and fifes, with hurrahs and yells of welcome for the regiment he loves so well. A home-coming like this is worth many days of hardship, many a Spion Kop, and many a dull week in a hospital tent. But it does not fall to the lot of all.
I remember at Chieveley one morning before breakfast watching a solitary man approach the hospital lines. He was as melancholy an object as ever a war has produced. He was a soldier who had fought at Colenso, at Vaal Krantz, and before Pieters, and he was now staggering towards the hospital, a ragged, broken-down, khaki-coloured spectre of a man. He dragged his rifle along with him; his belt was gone; his helmet was poised at the back of his head; his frowsy tunic was thrown over his shoulders; he was literally black with flies. His clothes had not been off for many days, and he had missed the ambulance, he said, and had walked to the hospital.
How far he had come he could not tell, nor could anyone gather how he had fared or where he had slept. All that was evident was that he was wet with dew and had spent the night in the open. He knew that for vague hours he had been making his way, with ever faltering steps and failing eyes, towards the red cross flag on the crest of the hill. And now he had reached it. As to why he had come: "Well! he had a touch of the dysentery," he said, "and was about played out."
Poor lad! this was a sorry home-coming at the last. A squalid ending of a march; staggering in alone, a shuffling wreck, without a single comrade, with no fifes and drums, no cheering crowd, and no proud adoration of mother or wife. He was helped to a bell tent and put to bed on a stretcher, and on the stretcher he died; and this was the end of his soldiering.Sic transit gloria mundi!
PRINTED BYCASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGELONDON, E.C.
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKTHE TALE OF A FIELD HOSPITAL***