alarm meant, and wanted to go to help, but they did not look fit for a
three miles' run in the burning sun, so I told them to collect all the
natives who were left behind, and we made a hasty clearance of the
building that was to be an officers' ward (temporarily used as a
store-room). We set several boys to work to scrub the floor and clean
the windows, while the orderlies fitted some beds together, and the
sisters collected the bedding and made them up, and I got the most
necessary ward fittings out of the store, so that when the stretcher
party arrived we had quite a workable little surgical ward ready for
them.
Two poor fellows had been killed, and fifteen mules were either dead or
had to be shot; three men of the Army Service Corps were injured, one
with a badly broken leg, and the others with concussion, &c., and two
black mule-drivers had each a dreadfully smashed up arm. The Major had a
tent pitched for these natives, not far from the ward. It is a wonder
they were not killed, as they were in the same truck with the poor
mules.
One sister and some orderlies were told off to look after these, our
first, patients; and then we returned to our building occupations.
I did not put a night sister on for these few cases, but I take a prowl
round some time during the night (the fleas always wake me up at least
once, otherwise I am so tired I don't think I could wake myself), just
to see that the orderlies are awake, and managing all right, and the
medical officers go round the last thing before turning in, and we are
all about by 6 A.M.
One of the injured A.S.C. men had been ill before he arrived here, and
it looks as though he is in for typhoid.
Last night, after a more than usually scorching day, we had torrents of
rain. The poor orderlies were washed out of their tents, and all their
things were soaked. They are not used to roughing it, and don't enjoy
it.
It seems ever so long since I came up here, but I had been here only
four days before these cases came in, and we hope in about another week
to be able to send word that we are ready to receive patients from the
front.
XXIX
PINETOWN, NATAL,
_May 1900_.
Now we are really at work at last, and though I can't say everything is
working very smoothly, I think the patients are being well looked after,
and I suppose we must expect to have to worry through difficulties for
some time to come.
On April 26th the Princess Christian Hospital train brought us fourteen
officers and sixteen men, all stretcher cases, and all very ill.
They had come from Field Hospitals, and if one did not know how
impossible it is to nurse them or even feed them up there, one would say
it was almost murder to have sent them a journey of many hours (over 200
miles) in a jolting train.
There were no wounded in this first batch, and I think only about four
or five who were not suffering from typhoid in one stage or another,
from a few days, up to three weeks or more.
It was day and night work for us for the first two or three days, as
each man seemed to need individual nursing if he was to have a chance of
pulling round; the orderlies (though very willing) had everything to
learn of ward duties; they could not even undress these men when they
had been lifted on to their beds, much less had they any idea of washing
them; a delirious man was a new experience to them, and if he got out of
bed and lay on the floor, the orderly would go and ask Sister what he
had better do!
The doctors told us that four of these patients could not live through
the first night (several of them had severe hæmorrhage), but they all
struggled through that night, and it was a week later when one poor
fellow of the Royal Artillery slipped through our fingers from sheer
exhaustion, without ever having become conscious. His mates told us that
he had been in a hospital previously with a sunstroke, and had been down
with typhoid for some time before he arrived here.
I can't describe the condition of these men; they have not had their
clothes off for weeks, creeping things are numerous, but we are getting
them clean by degrees. Those who have been ill some time have sore
backs--I can't say "_bed_-sores," as they have had no beds.
Many of them have come from Elandslaagte, and I believe they are very
short of both milk and water up there--none of the latter for washing
purposes.
Several of the men had been with us over a week before they became
conscious of their surroundings at all; but in the case of those who
_were_ conscious, the comforts of a good bed, and a good wash, brought
tears of gratitude to their eyes. With many of them it was months since
they had slept in a bed: few have done so since they landed in this
country, and some of them seem such boys to have gone through so much.
I spent a good deal of my time at first helping the sister in the
officers' ward, getting her patients washed and made comfortable, and it
was most piteous to see these young fellows--most of them, probably,
brought up in luxury--so wasted and thin, and _so_ grateful for the
little that we could spare time to do for their comfort.
Lieutenant ---- had been laid up for two months with a bullet in the
groin, and is now very ill again with typhoid.
Captain ----, of the R.A.M.C., had been all through the siege of
Ladysmith, and had typhoid up there; now he has liver trouble and looks
wretchedly ill; I fancy he will have to go home for operation.
Captain ----, of the Royal Artillery, was the worst case of typhoid
amongst the officers, for some time his temperature persisting in
keeping up to 105 and 106, and he was very delirious; he was always
thinking he could see parties of Boers, and he told me I was the worst
scout he had ever come across, as I did not see them. He is doing well
now.
Lieutenant ----, of the Army Service Corps, had been ill for four weeks
with typhoid before he was landed here (still with a very high
temperature). He told me that no less than five times had he been moved
on a stretcher, from one place to another, as his regiment shifted
about, and he said that the order to move always seemed to come in the
evening, when his temperature was at its highest, and he was feeling so
bad, that at last he begged them to leave him behind to die; they had
never been able to give him suitable food, and often not enough of
unsuitable, and when at last he got to the line he had 280 miles of
jolting over a single-line rail, before he reached us--such treatment
for a case that, at home, we should be almost afraid to lift from one
bed to another! But he is really mending now, and I hope we shall soon
be able to send him home to recruit.
I have never had to give so much stimulant to any patients as we have
had to give to these men; all the first night I was going round giving
milk and brandy, or bovril, to the worst cases, while the night sister
sponged those whose temperatures were the highest; several of the men
were on ten ounces of brandy for the first few days. They have been so
overworked, and underfed, for some months past that they did not seem to
have an ounce of strength left to battle with the fever.
An Army Lady Superintendent is supposed to take charge of a ward
herself--generally the officers' ward; but I have not taken a ward yet,
as, until we fill up, there are enough sisters, and it seems more
profitable for me to go round supplying the sisters' needs from the
stores, looking after the cooking, and the house-boys, and the
washerwomen (I fear that my hair will turn grey in my efforts to keep
the typhoid linen separate), to say nothing of the cows, which are not a
success; and we have had to resort to frozen milk from
Australia--generally good, but sometimes there is a difficulty about
unfreezing it.
We have no Quartermaster here, and the man in charge of the stores is
quite unused to his job, so I have to see to a great many things with
which an Army Lady Superintendent has, as a rule, nothing to do.
I am very much afraid some of our orderlies will be getting typhoid; of
course they find it difficult to realise a danger they can't see, and
though we all lecture them about taking precautions, we are so busy
ourselves, that it is difficult to enforce them; and just at first there
were so many patients quite unconscious and with severe diarrhoea and
hæmorrhage, so that it meant constant changing of sheets, &c., by the
orderlies.
I think I told you some of the orderlies were ill when our first
patients (from the train accident) arrived; it proved to be a form of
dengue fever they had, and now the medical officers also are indulging
in it; it is rather like influenza--high fever for two or three days,
and then they are very weak and pulled down for a few more days. I only
hope the sisters will refrain from having it until the orderlies have
had a little more education: at present they are about as useful as an
average ward-maid at home, and the sisters have to act as sister, staff
nurse, and probationer too; but I don't want to grumble at them as they
are working well, anxious to learn, and very patient with the men (some
of them half delirious) who call "Orderly, orderly" all day long.
If they had had a few R.A.M.C. men amongst them, or even one or two
R.A.M.C. ward-masters, it would have been easier; as it is, there is not
a single man amongst them who knows anything of the usual routine in a
hospital, though they are well up in "First Aid" (for which we have no
use here).
The buildings are getting on, and we are ready for more patients as soon
as they can get a train to bring them down. We hear nothing of more
medical officers, sisters, or orderlies as yet.
One of the men said to me that he did not think any of us could
understand what a luxury it was to have a wash, a comfortable bed, and
clean clothes; that for months he had been marching and sleeping (in the
open) in one suit of clothes, frequently wet through, and remaining wet
until the sun came out to dry them; he said that on the high veldt the
nights were very cold, and they frequently had nothing but their
greatcoats to sleep in; if they were lucky, and the baggage waggons had
kept up with them, they would also have a blanket and perhaps a
mackintosh sheet; but that the baggage waggons had a habit of getting
stuck at the last drift, and then they had only what they carried.
If we had only come out to South Africa to nurse this one batch of
thirty officers and men back to health, I think it would have been worth
while, for they were just about as bad as they well could be, and one
can't help thinking of the anxiety of their poor friends at home, who
will have seen them reported on the "danger lists" from their Field
Hospitals; and we go plodding on night and day trying to make them pull
round. Only one man has died, and I think the rest will get on, though
some of them are still pretty bad.
Captain ---- had Cheyne Stokes breathing for two nights, and made us
very anxious, but now he is distinctly better.
The Bishop of Pretoria came to lunch with us the other day, and was very
nice in visiting the men.
We are expecting more men any day now, and on the 25th of this month we
are to be officially "opened" (on Princess Christian's birthday, I
believe); a crowd of people are expected from Durban and from
Pietermaritzburg.
I could not help thinking the other day, when all these thirty men were
dumped in upon us in a couple of hours, of the old days in London when
we thought we had had a very heavy day if six or eight patients were
admitted to our ward in a day; and there we had everything ready to
hand, and several well-drilled nurses to help. Here I can see it will
take a little time before the sisters will realise that it is useless to
try to have things done just the same as we can at home, and for them to
distinguish between the _essentials_ of good nursing, which we must
have, and the superfluous finish, which we must do without.
XXX
PINETOWN, NATAL,
_June 1900_.
We have had a stiff time of work since I wrote last. I think I told you
that several orderlies were ill, when our first cases came in, with
dengue fever, and soon the medical officers began knocking up with
it--first one and then another; next, the sisters took it; no one has
been very ill, but the fever was high for several days, and, of course,
they were weak and seedy after it went down; so we have not had a full
staff at work for some time, and with lots of bad cases in the wards it
has made things very difficult.
Several odd cases have been straying in, and on the 17th we took in five
officers, and then on the 19th of last month we admitted eight officers
and thirty men from Modder Spruit, most of them very ill, and one poor
fellow so bad with hæmorrhage (enteric) that he died the same night.
We had to open a second officers' ward, and the sister put in charge was
very hopeless (at having so many bad cases, and such inefficient help);
so I had to spend a good deal of time helping her look after the worst
cases, and then the next morning after they arrived I found she had
dengue fever and could not come on duty; so I had to take charge of her
ward for a few days, and do the best I could in looking after the
patients with the help of the orderlies, amidst constant interruptions
and appeals for help or advice from different parts of the camp.
With every one so new to the work--the cook quite unused to military
ways or the serving of hospital diets, the storekeeper hardly knowing
where anything is, or whether he ought to issue it when he did know, ten
Kaffir women washing who could not read the marks on the linen, and so
were quite incapable of returning it to the right place without my
assistance, and, to do the house work, several new Kaffir boys who
really are quite "raw" and want constant looking after (they rejoice in
the names of John, Monday, Charlie, and Cup-of-tea; they can speak about
six words of English between them, and it is awfully funny hearing the
orderlies trying to make them understand), with much other work needing
to be done in connection with fitting up new wards and preparing for our
opening day ceremony--you can imagine it was difficult to be tied up in
one ward with a lot of sick officers who required one's best attention,
and more; but it had to be done, and I had to leave the rest to do the
best they could, only going round to attend to the most necessary things
when I could spare half-an-hour in the day, and after the night sister
came on at night.
My worst case was poor Captain ----, of the ---- Dragoons, who was
desperately bad from the day he came in, and was delirious most of the
time; Lieutenant ----, of the same regiment (a friend of his), was very
good in sitting with him for part of the day, and when he was at his
worst one of the other sisters and I took turns of acting night special
(as the night sister could not possibly stay with him much); but he had
been thoroughly worn out with the hardships of the campaign before he
got the fever, and though he lingered on so that we kept hoping he would
pull through, he died on the 30th of May--our first death amongst the
officers, and we all felt very sad. It was terrible for Lieutenant ----
(ill with rheumatism), as he knows the captain's relations, and has been
cabling to them daily. The funeral was the next day, and the
station-master kindly stopped a goods train here, so that the few
officer patients who were well enough might go to Pinetown to attend,
and all the medical officers who could leave also went. I was too busy
to go, but I helped Lieutenant ---- to make a cross of white flowers to
put on the coffin.
A thing that always makes me feel creepy when I am working in the store
is the sight, in one corner, of a little pile of coffins that have been
sent up from Durban; of course it is really necessary to keep them ready
as, in this climate, the funeral must be the day following the death,
but we have had them covered up now, as I did not like the men to see
them when they went up to the store for things.
All that last batch of men were frightfully poisoned with enteric, and
nothing seemed to stop it; six of them have died, and most of them had
symptoms of blood poisoning too.
I don't think I told you that the two sisters who went to help on one of
the hospital ships till we could get rooms ready for them, came up at
the beginning of May. They brought a poor account of the nursing on that
particular ship, and said that, when they went away, there was no
fully-trained nurse left on board; that a large proportion of the men
who had been ill any length of time, had sore backs (some before they
reached the ship). It seems sad that when there are so many
fully-trained nurses in England longing to come out, these poor fellows
should not be getting the best nursing they might have, even right down
at the base.
On the 21st of May we heard that Mafeking was really relieved, and on
the 25th of May we were officially "opened." General Wolfe Murray was to
have performed the ceremony, but he could not come, as General Buller
had sent for him, so the Bishop of Natal and Colonel Morris did it
between them.
There were special trains from Maritzburg and Durban; a good many people
to lunch, and such a crowd in the afternoon--no one seems to know how
many, but I think we gave tea to about five hundred. Fortunately, Sister
---- was on duty again, so I was not fixed up in her ward, but she was
still needing help with her bad cases. I made the teabags in the middle
of the night while I took my turn at sitting by poor Captain ----, and
several people who live near here were very kind in helping me arrange
flowers on the day, and they cut up cake for me. We had a lot of coolie
waiters up from Durban, and our house-boys and some whom Mrs. T. (a most
kindly neighbour) sent to help, were washing up all the afternoon.
I can't say I enjoyed the day, as we had several patients very ill, and
two poor fellows died that day, but we managed to keep their ward (and
one of the officers' wards) closed to visitors, so they were not
disturbed, and everything went smoothly and well.
When the visitors were leaving, I asked the Major if the orderlies might
come and finish up the cakes, &c., as there was some good tea in the
urns still, and they had all been working very well, so he told the
sergeant-major they might. I was rather amused at one thing: I took a
big tin and gave it to the sergeant-major, asking him to save a few
cakes for the night orderlies, but he pointed out to me they were all
present; the news of a tea and some good "skoff" had brought them all
down from their tents, and they soon made short work of the remains.
I went into Durban one day to do some necessary shopping, and on the
train met Colonel Galway, the P.M.O., going down to inspect the hospital
ships. He was very nice to me, and told me that if I liked to engage any
more sisters out here I might do so, and he would take them on; so I am
engaging a lady as a kind of probationer and housekeeper. Her husband is
at the front, and she wants to help, and I think she will be able to
relieve me a good deal by looking after the house-boys, putting out
linen, &c.
Our sisters are working awfully well, but some of them don't get on well
with the orderlies--a great mistake: they don't seem able to hide the
fact that they think the orderlies very useless and incapable, and
consequently the orderlies don't do their best in working with them; it
is a great pity, as the men are quite willing and anxious to learn, and
are very patient in having to do many jobs that must be very trying to
them.
At last I have got a nice white woman to look after the Kaffir washing
ladies, and she will do the starching, &c., for the staff. Two of the
Kaffirs were washing all day with babies tied on their backs--such jolly
fat and shiny little black-a-moors. I gave them an empty packing-case
with some sawdust in it and a mat, and both the babies and mothers were
delighted.
I actually had a ride the other day; Mrs. D. kindly lent me a horse, and
I rode with the Major over to a most interesting Trappist monastery. The
Trappist Fathers cultivate a lot of land, and teach the native boys
various trades. They are going to supply us with eggs, vegetables, &c.,
and the Major arranged with them that they should visit our Roman
Catholic patients, and, if any of them die, they will bury them in their
churchyard.
We shall have to have a horse for funeral purposes, and we have been
offered a rather nice-looking black animal, so I hope that, to my varied
duties, will be added that of keeping the funeral horse exercised!
I don't care much for walking about here, there is so much long grass,
and you get covered with ticks (to say nothing of one's natural fear of
snakes), so an occasional hour or two on horseback will be refreshing,
though up to now I have hardly left the camp except to go to church at
Pinetown once on Sundays.
I had a letter the other day from the Secretary of the Durban Ladies'
Club to say they had made us all honorary members--a very kind and
friendly attention on their part. It is a nice club, but whether we
shall ever have time to make use of it remains to be proved.
There are many strange animals about here: a huge owl is getting quite
tame, and comes to be fed by the night sister.
The men are trying to shoot a wild cat, but can't get up near to it.
After hearing them talking about it, I was rather frightened the other
night (sleeping with my door and window open), when something jumped
from the window on to my bed; I felt it creeping towards me, and was
just going to dive under the bedclothes when it began to purr, and I
found it was the camp kitten!
XXXI
PINETOWN, NATAL,
_June 1900_.
It is rather difficult to know what to write about that will interest
you. There is always plenty of work, but it is not of an exciting
nature--just steady plodding on, with difficulties always cropping up
and having to be waded through.
If one had time to sit and talk to the patients one could hear many
exciting tales, but most of my time is spent with those who are too ill
for much conversation. I think I told you of the arrival of the officers
and men from Modder Spruit. Opening the large ward for these officers
caused some difficulty, as it is such a long way from the kitchen, but
we soon got up from Durban some hot tins, covers, &c., and the feeding
is going better now.
Major ---- had been very ill with ptomaine poisoning before he arrived
here. He has been a difficult case to feed in this climate, and has been
very slow in getting up any strength; but he is well on the mend now.
Then there was a bright-faced _boy_ with acute rheumatism, who said he
had not been in bed for six months, and it was "just heavenly."
Lieutenant ---- (a bishop's son) is 6 ft. 6 in., and we have to wrap up
his feet on a chair beyond the end of his bed. He has enteric, but not
so very badly; he called me to him the other day, and told me that he
had had the most bitter disappointment of his life--the doctor had
ordered him an egg, and he waited patiently till tea-time, expecting a
nice boiled egg, but he never knew the orderly would bring him a
beaten-up egg, and he had nearly drunk it before he recognised it!
Then there is Second-Lieutenant ----, who looks about sixteen, and who
only joined his regiment nine months ago, but he has seen a lot of
fighting, and was at Spion Kop, Pieter's Hill, and other battles. Some
of his men are here, and they think a great deal of him; they say at
Spion Kop all his seniors were either killed or wounded, but he led the
men on as calmly and well as possible; I believe he got a "mention" for
it. His captain wrote to me so nicely asking after him, and said, "He is
a good boy, and A1 when the bullets are flying." He had been wounded
badly, and now has enteric, but only slightly. The other officers all
call him "the boy." I hope we shall be able to send him home to his
people soon, as I think he has done his share.
Some of these officers are beginning to get about now, and they _will_
go to visit the officers in the small ward and persuade them to give
them tea there, and then return and get their own tea as well. They say
they are "making up for past hardships"! Amongst that same batch of men
there were two or three rather smart R.A.M.C. men, and we don't think
they are going to be fit for duty at the front again this campaign: they
will be quite contented to stay here, and work as soon as they are well
enough.
We have just got the electric light into working order; and, though it
is rather erratic, and often goes out, on the whole it is a great
comfort.
There has been a case of bubonic plague in Durban, but they don't seem
to think it is likely to spread.
Twenty more orderlies have arrived, St. John's Ambulance men, and the
buildings were all complete by the end of May.
I have had a few rides on the funeral horse, and, as it is very tame in
harness, I was astonished to find it was quite gay and hard to hold; but
we have found out that it was once a racehorse, and of course it has
never had a side-saddle on before.