My wagon and mules were already at Chieveley when the train reached that
place, and I was able to start for the scene of action without a
moment's delay.
From Chieveley the grass-covered veldt slopes evenly to the Tugela and
to Colenso village, which lies upon its southern bank. This slope, some
few miles from Chieveley, is broken by a long ridge, upon which the 4.7
naval guns were placed. From this ridge the whole battlefield could be
viewed.
Under the shelter of the ridge, and close to the great guns, four little
field hospitals were pitched, and here I made my first acquaintance with
the circumstances of war. Each field hospital would be represented by a
small central marquee, which formed an operating and dressing station,
and a number of bell tents around it, which would accommodate in all
about one hundred patients.
When I arrived the ambulances were already coming in--the dreary
ambulances, each one with a load of suffering, misery, and death! Each
wagon was drawn by ten mules and driven by a Kaffir, and over the dusty
hood of each the red cross flag waved in the shimmering heat. They came
along slowly, rocking and groaning over the uneven veldt like staggering
men, and each drew up at one or other of the little hospitals under the
ridge. Every ambulance carried a certain number of wounded men who were
well enough to sit up, and a smaller number who were lying on
stretchers--the "sitting up" and "lying down" cases, as they were
respectively called. Those who could move themselves were soon helped
down from the wagon by willing hands, while the stretchers were taken
out by relays of trained bearers.
What a spectacle it was! These were the very khaki-clad soldiers who
had, not so long ago, left Waterloo, spick and span, amid a hurricane of
cheers, and now they were coming back to camp silent and listless, and
scarcely recognisable as men. They were burnt a brown red by the sun,
their faces were covered with dust and sweat, and were in many cases
blistered by the heat; their hands were begrimed; some were without
tunics, and the blue army shirts they wore were stiff with blood. Some
had helmets and some were bare-headed. All seemed dazed, weary, and
depressed.
Their wounds were of all kinds, and many had been shot in more places
than one. Here was a man nursing a shattered arm in the blood-stained
rags of a torn-up sleeve. There was another with his head bandaged up
and his face painted with black streaks of dried blood, holding a
crushed helmet beneath his arm like a collapsible opera hat.
Some still gripped their rifles or dragged their bandoliers along as
they limped to the tents. Many were wandering about aimlessly. All
were parched with thirst, for the heat was extreme. Here a man with a
bandaged, bootless foot would be hopping along with the aid of his gun,
while another with his eyes covered up would be clinging to the tunic of
a comrade who could see his way to the tents. One or two of those who
were lying on the ground were vomiting, while near by a poor fellow, who
had been shot through the lung, was coughing up blood.
All around the operation-marquee men were sitting and lying on the
ground, waiting for their turn at the surgeon's hands; while here would
be a great heap of dusty rifles, and there a pile of discarded
accoutrements, tunics and boots, and elsewhere a medley of boxes,
panniers, canteen tins, cooking pots, and miscellaneous baggage. A few
helmets were lying about which had probably dropped off the stretchers,
or had been removed from the dead, for some of them were blood-stained
and crushed out of shape, or riddled with holes.
The saddest cases among the wounded were those on the stretchers, and
the stretchers were lying on the ground everywhere, and on each was a
soldier who had been "hard hit." Some of those on the stretchers were
already dead, and some kindly hand had drawn a jacket over the poor,
dust-stained face. One or two were delirious, and had rolled off their
stretchers on to the ground; others were strangely silent, and at most
were trying to shade their eyes from the blinding sun. One man, who was
paralysed below the waist from a shot in the spine, was repeatedly
raising up his head in order to look with persisting wonder and
curiosity at limbs which he could not move and in which he could not
feel. Here and there groups of dusty men, who had been but slightly
wounded, were sitting on the ground together, too tired and too
depressed even to talk, or at most muttering a word or two now and then
in a whisper.
Overworked orderlies were busy everywhere. Some were heating water or
soup over the camp fires; others were hurrying round to each wounded man
with water and bread. The majority were occupied in helping the injured
to the tents or were concerned in attempting to relieve those who seemed
in most distress.
The surgeons in their shirt-sleeves were working for their lives. Some
were busy in the operation-marquee, while others were going from man to
man among the crowd upon the ground, giving morphia, adjusting limbs,
and hurrying each of the wounded into the shelter of a tent with as much
speed as possible. Yet, although the whole ground seemed covered with
stricken men, the dismal ambulances were still crawling in, and far over
the veldt the red cross flag of other wagons could be seen moving slowly
up to the naval ridge.
Would this procession of wagons never end!
Besides the ambulances there was the Volunteer Bearer Company, organised
by Colonel Gallwey, C.B. The men of this Company were now tramping in
in a long, melancholy line made up of little groups of six slowly moving
figures carrying a stretcher between them, and on each stretcher was a
khaki mass that rocked as the stretcher rocked, and that represented a
British soldier badly wounded, possibly dying, possibly dead.
Above the hubbub of the swarming hospitals was still to be heard the
boom of the accursed guns.
In the rear the whistle and puff of a train at Chieveley sounded
curiously out of place, and about the outskirts of the hospital some
outspanned oxen were grazing as unconcernedly as if they were wandering
in a meadow in England. Over all was the blazing sun and the blinding
sky.
Late in the afternoon a thunderstorm passed overhead, and when the rain
came down the wounded, who were lying on the grass, were covered over
with the waterproof ground-sheets which were used in the tents. This
did little to mitigate the grimness of the occasion. There was, indeed,
something very uncanny in the covered-up figures, in the array of
tarpaulins glistening with rain, and beneath which some of the wounded
lay motionless, while others moved uneasily.
No pen, however, can fitly describe this scene at the foot of the ridge.
Here was a picture of the horrors of war, and however accustomed an
onlooker may have been to the scenes among which a surgeon moves, few
could have wished other than that the circumstances of this day would be
blotted out of all memory. I could not fail to be reminded over and
over again of the remark made by many who were leaving England when I
left to the effect that they hoped they would reach the Cape "in time
for the fun." Well, we _were_ in time, but if this was "fun" it was
humour of a kind too ghastly for contemplation.
If of this dismal scene there was much to be forgotten, there was at
least one feature which can never be forgot, and that was the heroism
with which the soldier met his "ill luck." The best and the worst of a
man, so far as courage and unselfishness are concerned, come out when he
is hard hit, and without doubt each one of the wounded at Colenso "took
his licking like a man." Bravery in the heat and tumult of battle is
grand enough, but here in the dip behind the gun hill, and within the
unromantic lines of a field hospital, was a display of grim pluck, which
showed itself only in tightened faces, clenched teeth, and firmly knit
fingers. Among the stricken crowd who had reached the shelter of the
hospital there was many a groan, but never a word of complaint, never a
sign of whining, nor a token of fear. Some were a little disposed to
curse, and a few to be jocular, but they all faced what had to be like
men.
They were not only uncomplaining and unselfish, but grateful and
reasonable. There was no grumbling (no "grousing," as Tommy calls it),
no carping criticism. As one man said, pointing to the over-worked
surgeons in the operation-tent, "They will do the best they can for the
blooming lot of us, and that's good enough for me."