packed. One of the four is a sister who has been in India, and done some
camping out, so she thinks she knows all about tents and how to live in
them; we rather trade on this, and when it rains we assure her she ought
to go round and slack the guy-ropes in case they should shrink with the
wet and pull the pegs up, as she knows so much more about how to do it
than we do; or if it comes on to blow in the night we wake her up, and
offer her the hammer to go round and knock in the tent-pegs!
The wind gets up so suddenly here that we have to be careful not to
leave anything about that is not tethered, or it may be miles away over
the veldt before we wake up.
I now have charge of a medical line of tents, and find the work very
interesting, though there are many difficulties to contend with.
The Boers seem very thick in the country round; they have captured a
train with 250 horses between here and H., and the other day they took
600 head of cattle from a loyal farmer only about six miles from here,
and he had to fly for protection.
Some Dragoons, who have been scouring the country for some weeks, were
through here the other day, and one of their poor horses fell,
exhausted, near to my tent; after a rest they got him up and went on,
but soon a sergeant returned to say that he had fallen again, and they
were going to shoot him, could he borrow some mules and tackle to pull
his body off the path? I said, "Oh, don't shoot him--I badly want a
horse, and I'll get him some gruel and brandy from the store." He said I
might have him if I would look after him, or else get him shot; but when
we went out we found the men had already shot the poor beast.
There are so many dead horses, mules, and oxen about that it is rather
horrid walking anywhere beyond the camp, and sometimes we hear that the
Boers have put a dead mule (and once we heard some dead Kaffirs) into
our water supply, and it makes us rather squeamish, as we can't even get
our drinking water boiled here. Some of the officer patients tell us
that they have drunk nothing but boiled water all through the campaign
until they came here, and now they can't get it boiled for them.
I am beginning to get papers from home, and they are much appreciated by
the men, especially the six numbers of the _Daily Mail_ that come each
week; I take one to each of my tents, and then they exchange them about.
Of course they are a month old, but, for all that, they are the latest
news, and heaps of men from other lines congregate to hear them read.
After much trouble I have retrieved that box of cushions sent by the
Queen, and they are treasures indeed; nice big feather cushions covered
in red twill, and labelled "A present from the Princess of Wales." It
was a little difficult to know to whom to give them, as, of course, all
the men wanted one. I am trying to give them to invalids who will go
home when well enough, as they will be very useful on the voyage, and
the men could hardly carry them with them on trek.
We had much excitement here early this month: one morning we were
awakened at 5 A.M. by the sound of big guns, and in the course of time
we heard that the Boers had blown up some culverts in the night, and
captured a provision train; then there was a heliograph message to say,
"Heavy fighting since daybreak," and they wanted some medical officers;
so two men went off with ambulances, but it seems none of our men were
wounded; five or six Boers were killed, and two of their wounded were
brought here: one poor chap with a shell wound of the head is not likely
to live; he looked just a rough country boy in corduroys, but he has "F.
J. Joubert" marked on a handkerchief, so he may be some relation of the
General.
The guard of the train had a rough time, as they took away his boots,
and then made him carry sacks of provisions for them up a steep kopje.
For the present, they have stopped the trains from running at night. I
do think the railway men have been awfully plucky in sticking to their
work, when they could never feel confident that the line was not mined.
We had orders not to go outside the camp for some days, and the C.O.
went round and took notes of all the men who were fit to take a rifle if
there was an attack; and of course all the men ride about armed.
We had a quiet Easter Day here. The sisters were expecting some officers
of the 5th Dragoons over to tea, but they did not turn up, as they had
been out all night chasing Boers.
A few days later the Boers burnt a hotel and stores at Ingogo, and some
troops were hurried through here to go after them, but of course they
got away.
Still a great many deaths here; the other day we had four in twenty four
hours; one of those who died was a doctor whom I knew slightly (he
travelled up the coast with us when we first came out). He had been
practising out here, so his wife was able to come and be with him, and
she stayed in our camp. The poor man had heart disease. Of course he
wasn't in my line, but the sister of the officers' ward had a case in
the theatre, and as he had been asking for me the Lady Superintendent
asked me if I would go to sit with him if I could leave my line for a
bit. I managed to be with him most of the day, and he died in the
evening, and I went with his wife to the funeral the next day.
The enteric line is now full, so one of my tents has been allowed to
have night orderlies, and we collect the bad cases into that.
You would be amused at a "kit inspection" here: when one is proclaimed,
the excitement is great, and the orderlies, almost tearing their hair,
are so distracted that if the sister has any bad cases, she must nurse
them herself, or understand that they will get no attention till the
inspection is over! All the ward equipment, mugs, plates, buckets,
brooms, &c., has to be laid out at the tent door for the officers to
count. In a hospital at home, when "stock-taking" comes, you know that
anything that is worn out, or damaged, or really lost, will be replaced,
and you are glad of the chance of getting things made correct; but here
they assure me that things must _be_ correct, or the orderly gets fined
or punished; so, to avoid this, he resorts to strategy.
As soon as the officer (with the wardmaster and orderly in attendance)
has passed one tent as correct, the things may be put away again, and
then comes in the help of the patients (who fully enter into the game),
the most nimble trotting off with a medicine glass to one orderly who is
short of that, or a bucket to another; I have known a good broom do duty
for three different lines by careful dodging about.
I find one of the senior sisters here is one who applied to me when I
was choosing sisters to bring out at first; but I had many to choose
from, and I made no mistake in thinking others more suited for the work!
Another sister who _did_ come out with me has recently come up here, but
she has not been very well since she came, and thinks the life here is
very rough, so she is trying to get an exchange.
Sisters can get away from here only by inducing others to exchange with
them; and it is not easy to make any one believe that this is a
desirable station. I have not tried yet, as I want to stick to it if I
can (of course I can't do much, but I can make a few men more
comfortable), but most of the others are trying to exchange.
Our meat chiefly consists of trek ox, and it is so tough that it is
difficult to tackle; about once a week we get skinny mutton.
The bread is all right, but several times lately the butter has not
arrived, and we have to do without. We buy chocolates and biscuits at
the coolie store to fill up the cracks.
The other day we had in a sick convoy that had been seven days on the
road, and one poor fellow was so bad with dysentery that he died an hour
after they lifted him out of the ambulance; really these long days of
knocking about in the ambulances seem about the worst of the hardships
that the poor chaps have to put up with, especially for the very sick or
the wounded. You see, most of the waggons are drawn by about sixteen
mules, and sometimes they trot and sometimes they walk, but sometimes
they turn really mulish and won't budge; and then, after much hauling
and thrashing and shouting, they start with a great bound and go off at
a gallop. They are seldom on anything that you could call a road, and
are much more frequently on the rough veldt.
A man who has been badly wounded can tell you all about the day when he
got knocked over--he does not care to say much about the long day in the
blazing sun, when he lay thirsty where he fell before the Bearer Company
came along; and then, perhaps, the dark night with frost on the ground,
or rain falling; he shudders when he tells you of the groaning men who
lay around him, and who gradually ceased to groan, and how he began to
think the ambulance would be too late to pick him up too--but what he
simply can't bear to speak about is the agony of being pitched about
with a fractured bone for days in one of those waggons.
It is not so bad when the fighting is anywhere near the rail, as then
the wounded are soon placed in the hospital trains, and are fairly
comfortable; but the long days of travelling by waggon are terrible.
General Dartnell's column was through here the other day, and they have
gone into camp about two miles from us for ten days' rest. He has about
3000 men with him, and they have about filled us up with sick, while a
good many went straight on board a hospital train.
Major ----, of the Commander-in-Chief's Bodyguard, was with this column,
and came over to see me; his wife was in Cape Town when I was last
there, and went home on the _Canada_. You know how particular he is
about his horses, &c., at home? He drove over to see me in a very
ramshackle old Cape cart with a big horse running as a pair with a rough
little Boer pony. His uniform was in rags, and we did a little stitching
up for him before he returned; they are having a very rough time of it.
XLV
GENERAL HOSPITAL, NATAL,
_May 1901_.
There have been some big ructions here lately, but I think, perhaps,
they may have done good in some ways.
I don't think that I told you of a difficulty with which I had to
wrestle when I was on night duty, and which bothered me a good deal.
I believe it is a general rule in the Army Nursing Service that the
sisters give all the medicines and stimulants; and, of course, I
expected to do the same here, but when I got to the enteric line on
night duty, I found that the day sister left them all to the orderlies
to give in the daytime, and the night orderlies gave them in the night.
Generally there were good orderlies there, who were quite to be trusted,
but every now and then there were odd men on, and of course I could not
be sure that the stimulants, &c., were correctly given. The day sister
gave me no report of what the men were on, but it was given to the
orderly.
I did not quite know what to do, but I went to the Lady Superintendent
(after seeing the sister of the enteric line) and told her that if I was
to be responsible that they were given, would she arrange that I was
given the report, as otherwise I could not tell that everything was
given as directed; but if it was right to leave it in the hands of the
orderlies I would _try_ to see that it was all right, but would not be
responsible if anything went wrong. She seemed to think the day sister
would not have time to give all herself (she had charge of only the one
line, whereas the night sisters each had five or six lines). Anyhow, she
did not do anything at all in the matter, so I just muddled on as best I
could, and used always to try to be around when important medicines were
due, so that I don't _think_ much was neglected. Then, last month,
another night sister was on, who did not get on well with the orderlies,
and she reported one of them for being asleep, and he promptly replied
by reporting her for not doing her duty and giving the medicines, &c.,
so that he had to do it all.
Then came the ructions, and now the sisters have to give everything, and
I believe they are going to put on a third night sister, so I think
things will go more smoothly in time.
The Lady Superintendent has only once been round my line since I have
had charge of it.
I had a curious case the other day that gave us a good deal of
anxiety--that of a young lance-corporal, who had been bad with malaria,
but was better and able to sit up in bed. I left him one night very
cheery and bright, and the next morning I happened to meet the night
sister as she went off duty, and she said, "Oh, Sister, I forgot to
report that that lance-corporal of yours in tent 3 did not seem so well,
and he was sick this morning." I thought that I would go and look at him
first instead of beginning my round in tent 1, and I was shocked to find
the poor boy quite unconscious, and almost pulseless. Of course I sent
for the doctor and got brandy, hot bottles, &c.; the doctor thought it
was all up, but he injected strychnine; he said he thought it must have
been typhoid and not malaria, and that this meant perforation. Anyhow,
the boy began to revive; I hardly left him all day, but now I think I
may say he is out of danger; I really think it was heart trouble,
perhaps embolism, but I have seldom seen a man pull round after being as
nearly gone as he was.
Of course you will have heard that the poor old _Tantallon Castle_, the
ship on which we first came out, has gone down on Robben Island. The
passengers and the mails were saved, and I was rejoiced when a nice,
soft little blanket arrived that my people had sent out by her; I roll
myself in it inside my sheets, and am much more comfortable.
It is a curious thing that so many ships in which I have travelled have
gone to the bottom: I made one trip years ago up the coast on the
_Drummond Castle_, and went down the coast on the _Courland Castle_; I
also went home from Tenerife on the _Fez_--they have all gone down, and
now the _Tantallon Castle_ has shared their fate.
There was a big dance one night about three miles from here, to which
twelve of the sisters went, and another night there were some
theatricals. I daresay I am wrong, but somehow these festivities seem a
little out of place while the war is still going on. Some of the sisters
appear to think that they have come out here to have as much fun as they
can get, and they talk about very little except the men they have been
dancing with, and so on.
The wind has been tremendous lately, and four of the patients' tents
have been blown to ribbons; we seem to spend most of our time on duty
trying to keep the men's tents up (with not more of the gale than is
absolutely necessary blowing round the bad cases), and most of our time
off duty in attending to our own tent-pegs, &c. Of course wind here
always means dust, and sometimes it seems as though the stones fly up
and hit you in the face, and unless one takes great care the patients'
milk is soon full of sand.
Really, if it was not that the men suffered for them, some of our
difficulties would be amusing. When this hospital was a "Field
Stationary" all the men had warm, grey flannel shirts; when it became a
"General" they were given instead white cotton shirts and white flannel
vests. That was all right at first, but recently the hospital has been
enlarged, and, though there are plenty of the cotton shirts, they have
run out of the flannel vests. Now the winter has begun, and we have many
men in with rheumatism and chest complaints, and the tents are very
cold, but the poor chaps are only given cotton shirts. I know there are
plenty of the old "greybacks" in the store, but because this is now
called a General Hospital they are not correct, and so cannot be issued,
and the men must wait till more vests arrive! We have all fussed about
it as much as we could, and we bought flannel shirts at the store for
our worst cases (a man is always most grateful for an extra shirt to
take with him when he goes away, so they won't be wasted), and now, at
last, the old greybacks have been dealt out. At last they have got some
boilers on wheels, so that we can get hot water in the tents; but _why_
should we have to wrestle so long to get things that make so much
difference to the health and the comfort of the men? The Lady
Superintendent is always saying that she does not know how we should
have done in Ladysmith; but we all reply that we should have tried to
make shift, but we can't see why we should have to "make shift" here
quite so much, with an open line to the base.
I do wonder when the war will be over: the poor Tommies are so heartily
sick of it, and are beginning to try every means to get sent home; you
see most of the excitement of war has pretty well worn off, and now they
just have to keep on trekking about the country, destroying farms, and
bringing in Boer women and children to the refugee camps. They generally
collect more destitute people on the way than they reckoned for, and, as
they have to feed them, the rations for the troops run short, and the
men are cut down to half rations (and sometimes quarter rations); and
some columns out this way have had nothing but "mealie meal" (Indian
corn), and not too much of that, for some days before they got into
camp. Sometimes they have been on such short rations that men have had
to be punished for stealing their horses' rations of mealie meal. When
they pass through a village, the first place they make for is the
baker's shop, and it is very soon cleared, and you see the men going on
with loaves slung around them, and rather in the way of their rifles.
When you consider that they are generally marching all day in a hot sun,
and that in summer the nights are often wet, and in winter they are
generally frosty, and the men just have to lie down hungry on their
mackintosh sheet (no tents), with their greatcoat and sometimes one
blanket; that they hardly ever have a chance of shooting at a Boer, but
are constantly being sniped at during the nights--is it any wonder that
they are utterly weary of it all?
We have not heard so much about Boers being close around here since
General Dartnell's column went through, and now the sisters are
generally allowed to ride again.
Our tent is the last one at this end of the camp, and when we were told
that we were not to go more than a mile from the camp in any direction
(except along the line) it used to be strange to walk out, after we came
off duty, for a few hundred yards beyond my tent, and then sit down on a
grassy ridge as it got dark and watch the heliographs flashing around,
and wonder whether the little lights we saw meant our men or Boers
camping out. Sometimes we used to imagine they were quite close and
watching us, and used to go back to our tents feeling quite creepy, and
borrowing an extra piece of string to tie up our tent door!
And then, when we heard the guns in the distance, it was always a
debatable point whether it was worth getting up and dressing in case any
wounded were brought in soon, but we generally decided to finish our
usual allowance of hours in bed.
People are kindly sending me English papers now, both from England and
passed on from Durban, and they are very much enjoyed; the men were
especially delighted last week when they got hold of an old weekly
edition of _The Times_ in which General Buller and General Roberts
mentioned some of the regiments to which they belonged.
It is getting frightfully cold at nights; there are big icicles hanging
round the water tanks, and when one of them overflowed there was quite a
little sea of ice round it; the water in our tents often freezes, and it
is quite difficult to break it to wash in the morning.
The night sisters are very miserable with the cold; I shall have to
take my turn on night again next month, and I shall be quite sorry to
give up my line, as the patients are so awfully grateful for what one
can do for them, and I have nice orderlies just now.
We go to bed directly we finish dinner at night, so as to try to get
warm.
XLVI
GENERAL HOSPITAL, NATAL,
_June 1901_.
Thank goodness the winter will soon be over. I have never felt anything
like the keenness of the cold up here.
On the whole, things have been fairly quiet in the country round just
lately, though once the line was threatened and some of the trains
delayed; and on another day there was a rumour of fighting not far off,
and it was said that we had lost some guns, but I don't think there was
much truth in the report.
Things are also going a little better in the hospital. We have a new
Lady Superintendent, the other having gone home on a hospital ship.
There has been another big dance, to which most of the sisters went, and
some other entertainments.
One night we (my tent full) had all gone to bed to try to get warm, when
some one came banging on the canvas, and Sister ---- of the Hospital
Train put her head in; you know she was an old London friend of mine.
Her train was tied up here for the night, and, as she had heard our men
were suffering from the cold, she had brought up a noble present of
flannel jackets for them. They really were treasures: of course, I
wanted them all for my own line, but had to be generous and give up a
few to sisters who really had some bad chest and rheumatism patients.
Talking about rheumatism--I had one man in with rheumatism who was
rather bad at first; he would not improve, but remained so helpless
that the orderly had to lift him about. I did not quite know what to do
with him, and began to think that if an R.A.M.C. surgeon had been on my
line the improvement would have been rather more rapid than with the
civil surgeon who had charge! Then, one day, I had a man bad in the next
tent to this man, so I asked leave to go down to do something for him
one evening after we had gone off duty, as I knew the night sister would
be too busy to go to him when she first went on--and here there is
always an hour's interval after the day sisters leave the camp and
before the night sisters go down. What was my surprise when I got to the
tent to find my rheumatic patient in there playing cards! He had
pretended he could not sit up in bed.
I only said to him that I thought it was time he turned in for the
night; and the next day I handed his board to the medical officer when
he came round, and said that if he did not mind marking him "up," I
thought it would do him good to sit out in the sun in the middle of the
day, if the orderly put him to bed after tea. You can imagine the poor
man felt pretty small, and in a few days he told the civil surgeon that
he thought he felt fit to go back to duty, so we shook hands and parted
good friends. I hope that he will not get shot, or I shall wish I had
let him slack a bit longer!
We have had a good many Boer patients in lately; one poor young captain
has lost his leg. One old fellow used to crawl about on crutches, but he
was caught one night slipping about without them, and a Boer woman was
found outside the fence with his clothes; so now all the Boers have been
collected together and a guard posted.
I am now on night duty again, and find the orderlies more attentive,
and the patients (generally) better nursed.
The first night I was on duty I was just reading the reports and trying
to find out where the worst cases were, so as to visit them first (I now
have 285 beds on my side, instead of the 250 I had when I was on
before), when a wardmaster came to tell me that a sick convoy had turned
up unexpectedly from General Bullock's column, and one man had been
wounded on the way and had some hæmorrhage from a shattered hand. I
helped the surgical sister get the theatre ready in a hurry, and then
she stayed for the operation, while I went to see the others. There were
only fifteen men, and they were black as sweeps and very cold; but they
did not seem very bad, and they were delighted to be in shelter, with
the prospect of a bed.
The orderly officer asked me to give them anything I liked, and he would
order it afterwards, while he went to the theatre with the case; the
wardmaster got them all some Bovril, and we soon settled which of them
might have bread with it; and then I had not the heart to insist on the
usual wash, as it was so bitterly cold, but I let them all tumble into
beds, and then took round a bottle of whisky and a kettle and gave them
all a hot drink; there was nothing more heard of that lot of men (but
snores) for a good many hours! Poor chaps, they were absolutely tired
out, and the medical officer quite approved, only saying he thought they
might have had two bottles of whisky amongst them instead of one, but
you know I am a strict teetotaller!