On Sunday, February 11th, No. 4 Field Hospital once more reached
Chieveley, after the tedious march from Spearman's of which mention has
been made. The hospital was pitched near the station, and not far from
the spot it had occupied on the day of the battle of Colenso. Chieveley
is represented only by a railway station and a station-master's house.
There are, however, many eucalyptus trees about these buildings, and the
spot is shady. The ground stands high, and miles of undulating country
are open to view. There are a Kaffir kraal or two in sight, and many
mimosa groves, and beyond them all the line of the river. Chieveley,
therefore, as a camp was well esteemed.
The sojourn at Chieveley began with that terrible fourteen days of
incessant fighting which ended in the taking of Pieters and the relief
of Ladysmith. Every day at sunrise the guns began, and it was not until
sunset that they ceased. Any who looked up from their work in the camp,
and turned their eyes towards Umbulwana, would seldom fail to see the
flash of a lyddite shell on the far-off ridges, or, clear against the
blue sky, the white puff of cloud from a shrapnel. Every day the
wounded came in, mostly towards evening. Fortunately their numbers were
few.
The days had again become very hot and very trying. It was weather
which the soldier is apt to describe, in the vivid language of his kind,
as weather "when a man should have his body in a pool and his head in a
public-house!"
Standing in the station at Chieveley was commonly to be seen the
armoured train. Whatever iron plates could do to make a structure
indestructible had been done; but to such beauty as a railway train may
possess nothing had thereby been added. The sailors had, however, been
busy with the engine of the train. The engineers had given it the
outline of a square gasometer, but the "handy man" had covered the
disfigured machine with ropes as with a garment. From the top of the
funnel a veil of closely placed ropes trailed to the ground. A like
panoply of ropes covered the body of the engine, and its wheels, and its
cylinders, and its every detail. The officers called this production
the "Russian poodle," but the soldiers gave it the name of "Hairy Mary";
and this name clung to it.
During the movement to Spearman's, Chieveley had been carefully
fortified. A space round the station had been marked off by a very deep
wire entanglement. Trenches had been dug, and some sort of a fort
thrown up. There were entrenchments about the stationmaster's mild
little house, and before the windows were erected iron plates with
loopholes such as were used on the trucks of the armoured train.
Similar iron plates formed a barricade along the modest veranda, and the
result of it all was that the small unobtrusive house was made to look
fierce and truculent. The few bare rooms were used by the Headquarters
Staff, and the rough tables and stools were littered with all sorts of
war-like paraphernalia. Among these insignia of battle, murder, and
sudden death were two strange objects which had been left behind by the
looting Boers, and which seemed out of place. One was a stuffed jay,
and the other a dressmaker's lay-figure or "bust." The bird was stuck
upon the wreck of the mantelpiece, and stared amiably and foolishly from
its perch. The "bust" was life-size, and suggested the torso of a black
woman, with a little polished knob for a head. It may have at one time
graced the salon of a Parisian dressmaker. It was, however, now no
longer used to show off dresses, trimmings and flounces, for a helmet
surmounted the graceful chest, and belts, carrying pistols and swords,
hung from the fine shoulders or clung to the delicate waist.