The circumstances under which men enlist in the Army are, no doubt,
varied enough. But not a few find their place under the colours in
obedience to that fighting spirit which has for centuries been strong in
the hearts of the islanders from Great Britain and Ireland. That spirit
has anyhow carried the colours over the world.
Among the wounded there are many who, to use an expression common on the
soldiers' lips, "were fed up with the war": they had had enough of it.
There were others who were eager to be at it again, who felt that they
had a score to wipe off; and even among the desperately hurt there would
be here and there a man keen for revenge, and full of a passionate
desire "to have another go at 'em." These men, ill as they often were,
would describe with a savage delight, and in savage language, the part
they had played in the battle out of which they had been finally dragged
on a stretcher. A little success, a victory however small, did much to
lessen the torment of a wound and to gild the contemplation of a life
henceforth to be spent as a cripple. One gallant lad had been paralysed
by a Mauser at short range, and had little prospect of other than
permanent lameness. He had been in the assault on Vaal Krantz, had
escaped without hurt until just towards the end, and was shot as his
victorious company were rushing the last trench. After he had been
examined, and while he was still lying on his stretcher, I could not
avoid the remark, "This is a bad business." To which he replied, "Yes,
but we took the bally trench."
To many and many of the dying the last sound of which they were
conscious must have belonged to the clamour of war, and it was well for
those who heard, or fancied they heard, above the roar of guns the shout
of victory. One officer, dying in the hospital at Spearman's, had his
last moments made happy by the sound of battle. He had sunk into a
state of drowsiness, and was becoming gradually unconscious. Every now
and then the boom of the 4.7 gun, firing from the hill above us, would
rattle through the tents, and with each shot a smile would come over his
face, and he would mutter with great satisfaction, "They are getting it
now." He repeated these words many times, and they were, indeed, the
last he uttered. Things were evidently going better with the army in
his dream than they were at that moment with the real regiments by the
river.
Some most vivid suggestions of what may pass through the soldier's mind
during the actual circumstances of war were afforded by the utterances
of more or less unconscious men when passing under the influence of
chloroform in the operation-tent. Before they fell into the state of
sleep, it was evident that the drug, with its subtle intoxicating power,
brought back to the fading sense some flash of a scene which may have
been real, but which was rendered lurid, spectral, and terrifying by the
action of the poison. Under this condition incoherent words of command
would be uttered in rapid tones, full of an agony of eagerness and
haste; and cries for help would be yelled forth in what seemed to be a
maniacal frenzy. Many of the actual utterances that escaped these
unconscious lips, and gave glimpses of a phantom war as seen through the
vapor of chloroform, were too fragmentary to be remembered, but two at
least were muttered with such an emphasis of horror that I took note of
them.
One of the wounded from Spion Kop had evidently engraved upon his mind
the hideous scene of slaughter which the trenches on that hill
presented. As he was being anaesthetised it was apparent that in his
dream he was back again in the trenches, and was once more among his
dead and mangled comrades. The vision of one wounded man especially
haunted him and fascinated him, and at last he screamed out: "There goes
that bloke again whose leg was shot away; blimy, if he ain't crawling
now!"
Another poor fellow had before his eye the spectre of an awful kopje.
His fragmentary utterances made vivid the unearthly land he was
traversing. All who stood by could picture the ghostly kopje, and could
almost share in his anguish when he yelled: "There they are on the hill!
For God's sake, shoot! Why don't we shoot?"