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.