A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL
_December 12th, 1899._
The week has been a dull one, which in relation to the siege implies
that the passing days have not borne what we have now come to regard
as their full quota of shells and bullets. We here are somewhat
sceptical of the lapses of the bombardment since tactics which the
Boers have already adopted have led us to believe that intervals of
some hours' duration be planned deliberately so that when shelling
should be renewed, it may please Providence, ever on the side of the
Boers, to have the streets thronged with people. Upon one or two
occasions we have been lulled into a fancied security by the cessation
of shell fire; but with the lamentable occurrences of last week, we
are disinclined to be again caught napping. Accordingly, although
there has been a week of extraordinary desistence upon the part of the
enemy, those who were about were careful enough to take their airing
within a short distance of their bomb-proof shelters. In a fashion,
this gave to the environments of the town and the town itself, the
appearance of a rabbit warren, where at sunset the little animals may
be seen bunched about the entrance to their retreats. A few ladies
enjoyed the novelty of tea _al fresco_, with possibly, a keener
appreciation for their propinquity to some bomb-proof, than for the
light refreshment in which they were indulging.
Thus it came that I was visiting the hospital, chatting with the
physicians upon the stoep of the building. Beneath the shelter of the
verandah lay the forms of many who had been wounded, and who now were
sufficiently recovered to sit outside; here and there a man limped
painfully with the aid of crutches, to talk to a comrade who, with his
arm in a sling, was not altogether inappreciative of the fact that he
had been wounded in a recent sniping affray against the enemy's
position in the brickfields. As we sat upon the stoep with our legs
dangling to the ground, behind us in the building there was the
complement of battle: the wounded, the nurses, and the doctors; but in
front of us there was the expansion of the veldt, green and peaceful.
The heat haze lay upon it, simmering in an endless stretch of floating
vapour. There was every appearance of the provincial and rural
simplicity which goes to make up the daily life of those who live upon
the veldt. There were homesteads which, but a few months ago, had been
the centre of some small and flourishing agrestic community, but were
now charred and blackened, epitomising the destruction which the Boers
deal out to unoffending people; in the place of the herds which
formerly had grazed upon the scene, there were the white covers of the
Boer laagers; there were the lines of the Boer horses, there were the
mobs of cattle, of sheep, of goats, which, raided from the
countryside, had been collected in the rear of the enemy's
encampments. Upon the skyline, from the steps of the hospital, the
emplacement of "Big Ben" could be seen outlined quite distinctly in
the bright sunlight. The position of the gun was known by the glint of
the sun as it played upon the burnished metal.
Presently, as we talked, there came the boom of cannon, and the enemy
had turned upon the stadt their quick-firing Krupps. Instinctively,
since the habits which rule the enemy are well known to us, a wounded
man called out to us that was the five o'clock gun, and for the moment
we were uncertain as to whether the peace of the afternoon would be
further disturbed. But in a little a column of smoke, white and heavy,
hung over the position of "Big Ben," and we at once settled down for
further shelling during the remainder of the time that daylight
lasted. In the distance, out on the furthest limits of the Stadt,
there came echoes, echoing back the noise of the explosion when the
hundred-pound shell burst amid a collection of native huts. It is so
seldom that these greater projectiles miss their victims, that
preparations were at once made for any casualties that might have been
sent to the hospital. With these measures taken, we waited while the
firing grew heavier. It was just one of those moments which we had
been anticipating from the fashion which our friend the Boer had
already set, and in a little it was proved that whatever had been our
expectations they would be fully realised. When the firing began, the
scene upon the stoep of the hospital gradually changed; the wounded
were carried back to their wards, Surgeon-Major Anderson, the Imperial
officer who has been sent out here; Dr. Hayes, who in the virtue of
the rank of P.M.O. conferred by Colonel Baden-Powell, has charge of
the hospital, and his brother, both local practitioners, waited the
course of events upon the steps of the building. For the time firing
seemed confined to the artillery and rifles from the Boer trenches in
the brickfields, the south-eastern front of the town and the eastern
facing of the native location receiving the brunt. By degrees the
entire position of the enemy upon that side dropped into line, giving
cause and effect to the wisps of smoke which broke into the air about
the advanced trenches of the foe. In about half an hour from the time
the first shell exploded over the stadt, a stretcher-party appeared
coming from the town and began to descend into the trench which led to
the hospital. As they crossed the recreation ground, a large white
flag which was carried in advance of the party, heralding to the Boers
the passing of wounded, attracted the attention of the enemy and was
promptly fired upon. It is these wilful acts which make it difficult
to consider the Boer in any way removed from a savage combatant, and
although the flag-bearer waved repeatedly to the enemy's trenches, the
fire from that direction did not diminish. With no little heroism the
stretcher-party, which was under Sergeant-Major Dowling, a resident
physician in Cape Town, who volunteered his services for the campaign,
and who has charge of the subsidiary hospital in the native location,
made their way across the zone of fire to the doors of the hospital.
Then in a moment all that had been peaceful and serene before, became
impressed with the horrible effects and the fearful injuries which are
derived from war.
The stretcher was taken to the operating-room, where nurses had
already begun to arrange the table, to prepare the carbolic lotion, to
lay out the lint and bandages, the dressing dishes, sponges, and a
fine array of instruments; then when the stretcher had been placed
beside the table, willing and gentle hands lifted the inanimate form
by the corners of the brown and blood-stained mackintosh sheet in
which the body had been enshrouded. Dr. Hayes snicked the strings
which had caught the ends of the sheet about the injured, and as he
threw back the flaps Surgeon-Major Anderson gently separated the
clothing where, matted with blood, it had congealed into a sticky mass
about the injuries. The doctors and the surgeon, bending with callous
diffidence about the inert and prostrate form, then proceeded rapidly
with their examination. Through the western windows of the room there
came the ruddy rays of the sun as it sank to its rest. The light
caught the bottles on the shelves, flickered for a moment upon the
silvery brightness of the instruments, and played about the hair of
the nurses, who, passing to and fro across the window, were as much
interested in their work as in the nature of the patient's injuries.
In a corner of the room Sergeant-Major Dr. Dowling explained to
Surgeon-Major Anderson that the patient, who was a native woman of
some repute, had been washing clothes upon the banks of the Molopo,
when a flight of one-pound steel-pointed Maxim shells burst about her.
The pelvis and the femur had been shattered completely, besides
internal wounds of a most fatal character in the abdominal regions.
The left foot was also pulverised, the extraordinary part being that
any one, after suffering such severe injuries and sustaining so great
a shock to the system, should yet be living. The examination
completed, Dr. Hayes, turning to the head nurse, said that it was
impossible to do anything which would save the woman's life,
inquiring, as Surgeon-Major Anderson dissolved a grain of morphia in a
wine-glass, if any one knew the name of the native. As the nurse was
about to reply, the patient, moaning feebly, expressed in excellent
English, that her name was Martha. Then it appeared that she was
recognised as being the wife of a Fingo in the location, one who
before marriage had been a member of the oldest profession which the
world has ever known, but since lawful wedlock had consummated her
union, she had passed, after the manner of her tribe, a life of great
austerity. The air of the operating-room was becoming oppressive, the
moaning of the patient merging with the heavy scent of the iodoform
and the lighter evaporation of the carbolic liniment began gradually
to dominate the nerves. To the casual observer such as myself, the
scene was striking. The insensitiveness of those assembled in the
operating-room, in reality the outcome of great experience in a
particular profession, enforced a calmness of feature and of feeling
with which I was far from being actually animated. The mechanical
industry of the surgeons, the automatic regularity with which the
hospital orderly waved his fly whisk above the head of the dying
woman, imparted a coldness to the scene which one could not help
observing. In a fashion, all that human skill could do had been
accomplished, since had the foot been amputated at the ankle, or the
thigh removed at the hip, the labour would have been unnecessary, the
extra shock to the system serving only to accelerate the end. Very
gently they sponged the mouth and nose of the woman and cooled her
brow, very gently they administered morphia and sips of brandy, but
one by one the doctors, rinsing their hands and lowering their
shirt-sleeves, put on their jackets. At the door of the operating-room
Dr. Hayes and Surgeon-Major Anderson paused to impart a few brief
instructions to the nurses. They were not to forget, said the P.M.O.,
to remove the tourniquet from the pelvis when the end had come;
Surgeon-Major Anderson adding to this an order to continue waving the
fly whisk so long as there existed the necessity.
And the incident had closed.