Part 11

The orderlies were established in tents a little way off; they were all St. John's Ambulance men, and camping out was a new experience for them, so of course they did not know how to make themselves as comfortable as regular soldiers would have done in a new camp. They had joined expecting to have the excitement of stretcher work at the front, and when they were told off to level the ground for the buildings, or to carry up the planks and the heavy boxes from the railway trucks, and to help the builders put up the pavilions, there was a good deal of grumbling.

At first the Major in command would not hear of our going up to stay until they had got some more of the stores up--beds, sheets, &c.; but when he found how slowly they got on, and how discontented the men were at having to rough it, he gave leave for me to go up with one other sister, as we thought we might help a bit, and, at any rate, could show the men we were willing to take our share.

The hospital we had brought out was for one hundred beds, but there was urgent need for more beds, so the P.M.O. had given orders that more huts were to be sent to us, and that we were to open as a two hundred bed hospital.

The railway was so hard worked that we had the greatest difficulty to get trucks to bring the building materials up from Durban, and the docks at Durban were so crowded with stores that it was most difficult to get the things through.

Some of our medical officers worked nobly at the docks, getting the things packed on to trucks, while the others superintended the unloading at Pinetown.

Every engine seemed to be needed for taking men, horses, stores, water, &c., up to the front, and the only wonder was that so few accidents occurred on the much over-worked single line of rails.

We had landed on the last day of March, and on the evening of 12th April Sister ---- and I went up to Pinetown by rail, taking all the sisters' heavy baggage; and the other sisters went to give some temporary help on one of the hospital ships at Durban, until we could fix up some rooms for them. Some of the officers met us at the station, and a fatigue party had brought a truck for our baggage. A tramp of about ten minutes through thick sand brought us to our new abode.

Our first meal, a kind of supper, was somewhat quaint; a bare deal table in a room dimly lighted by two candles stuck into bottles; plates, knives, and forks had to be used with great economy, as there were not enough to go round; some good salt beef and biscuits and some fruit--and we were waited upon by an orderly in his shirt sleeves, who was an engine-driver when at home in England, and knew more about greasing engines than about cleaning the grease off plates!

The weather was very hot, and the officers all looked dead tired, so we soon decided to turn in, and were escorted to our room (in the other building) by the light of a guttering candle, as there were said to be many snakes about.

They had found us two beds, and actually some sheets, but absolutely nothing else in our room. However, I hunted up the cook, and he lent me a bucket with some water in, so that we might start fair with a wash in the morning.

The next morning we were up before six, and started work in earnest, unpacking cases, sorting stores, and putting them away in different store-rooms, and trying to find the things we were most in need of for household use.

Some of the hospital fittings had been put ashore at Cape Town and not yet sent on, and more of the necessaries were still down at Durban, so that it was very difficult to push on the building work; and all the time we knew the Field Hospitals were crowded up, and needing to send men down to us to give them a chance of recovery; and we heard that the generals said they could not fight any more till they could clear the Field Hospitals.

All the cases of stores were numbered, so that when we wanted any particular thing, we had to look up in the list the number of its case, and then hunt about till we found that number; all day long it was "Have you seen 4507?"--"No, I want 5470." Sometimes we found a lot of jugs, and then could not find the basins; sometimes a lot of saucers, and no cups; and it seemed as though we never should get order out of the chaos.

At first we had no house-boys, and the orderlies were all busy carrying the building materials up, so Sister and I kept the bedrooms tidy, and the medical officers (in return) carried the water for the baths! As soon as I could, I annexed a fine old Kaffir as a house-boy, and "John" is a great stand-by now.

We tried first of all to fit up rooms with the bare necessary furniture for the rest of the officers and sisters, so that they could all come up and help us.

If you saw the jetty at Durban you would wonder that any stores ever got sent up to their right destination; literally hundreds of tons of boxes stacked up in hopeless confusion. Durban is a bit overdone by military requirements, and quite run out of some stores.

On April 3rd we were made very anxious by a strong rumour that Mafeking had fallen. They say that _all_ the little children have died there. Yesterday we heard of the loss of a British convoy and five guns, and also that the Boers were going into laager again quite near to where Cronje was taken.

Durban is full of refugees, and of Ladysmith people recruiting after the siege. I went over one of the hospital ships, the _Lismore Castle_, before I came up here, and it was melancholy to see the _skeletons_ from Ladysmith; one quite young fellow told me he had come here from India, got typhoid soon after the siege began, then, as soon as he began to convalesce, the only food they could give him was mealy meal and a little horse-flesh, so he got dysentery. He is now mending, but it is slow work with them all.

Before we came, our rooms had been occupied by refugees, and fleas abound; I catch about six _ter die_ and once in the night. Luckily we are fairly free from mosquitoes. It is awfully hot, and the medical officers go about in trousers and vests only: we wish we could wear as little!

This is a very scrappy letter; we work from 6 A.M. to dusk, and then I have been scribbling a little before turning in, but I am weary to a degree, and must fill up the gaps in my next.

XXVIII

PINETOWN, NATAL, _April 1900_.

You must not expect me to tell you anything about the progress of the war; the papers here give us very little news; of course we are constantly hearing many startling rumours, but they are frequently contradicted the next day, and probably you have more reliable news of the doings of our troops in your papers at home than we have.

So I will just jot down things about our daily work here.

We are getting into order by degrees, but at present life is rather a struggle against difficulties.

You see we are not quite a Civil Hospital, nor are we quite a Military Hospital; for the 100 beds we brought out we were well equipped, and had many more comforts than a Military Hospital would have been provided with, but now we are to have 200 beds, and our resources are somewhat strained.

I found that the mess waiter was in his shirt sleeves because the poor man had been nursing a case of scarlet fever on board ship, and all his kit had to be burnt, so I fitted him up in some pyjama coats to wait at table, until I could get time to go in to Durban and buy him some white drill jackets.

After a few days' work at unpacking, we got quite civilised in our room fittings, and sent for the other sisters to come up and help.

If there had not been such need for hurry in getting the place ready, it would really have been very amusing; much of the furniture had been a good deal damaged on the way, and we all tried our hands at mending--to see our senior surgeon (who is on the staff of a large hospital in England) sitting on the ground trying to fit a leg on to a washstand, or to make a drawer run into a chest of drawers, is a fine sight; I have taken a few snaps with my kodak of the staff in unprofessional garb, and doing unprofessional jobs. I hope they will come out all right, but I don't see much prospect of having time to develop them.

The theatre is fitted up, but has not been used yet, and Mr. ---- is working hard getting the X-Ray room into order, and his apparatus fixed up.

Our food supplies (always called "skoff" here--the Kaffirs' name for food) were very erratic at first. Sometimes no meat would turn up, and then we made shift with bully-beef, which is really quite good, or sardines; sometimes no bread, then we used the barrel of biscuits that lived in the mess-room--you have no idea how difficult it is to eat enough of those biscuits to satisfy you (they are nearly as hard as dog biscuits!), and in about half-an-hour you feel starving again; sometimes there is no butter--then marmalade. Now things are coming up more regularly, and I hope they will continue to do so, as it is easy for us to joke about short commons for ourselves, but it is no joke when you have sick men needing careful feeding up.

One thing is very nice, and that is that the fruit is nearly ripe, and we shall soon have plenty of pineapples and oranges.

Our cook seems to try to make the best of things; he is only quite a lad, but he is managing to cook for us all (including the men), with only wood under a sort of gridiron, in the open air.

There was much joy the other day when we came across a case of "Mother's Crushed Oats"! and nearly all seem to enjoy porridge for breakfast. As it is still very hot, the food supplies are difficult to manage, the meat hardly keeping from one meal to another, even when cooked; and with very limited store-rooms I find it very difficult to see that everything is kept covered up and fly-proof.

So far we have had no fresh milk, but now two cows have arrived, and I am having to watch the boys milk them, as we pay for the milk by the number of bottles supplied!

We have just heard that the poor old _Mexican_ has gone down on her voyage out: no lives lost, but we fear our letters have gone to the bottom with her.

One thing I am worried about is that a big tank I had especially asked to have, in which we might boil all the typhoid linen, has been broken on the way, and I don't think I shall be able to get another. We are establishing a place for the washerwomen behind the hospital, on a slope where their water will run away from our direction; I should like to have had a separate place for the staff's washing, but cannot manage it, so must be contented with keeping special women and special tubs, &c., for it.

The men are really working very well now, and it is hard work they have to do; they required a good deal of persuasion to work on Saturday afternoon; but we hear the Field Hospitals are crowded up with 2000 sick, on this side alone, so we must push on the building.

We are getting everything into order in the big store-room, so that as soon as any of the big pavilions are finished we shall have all the fittings quite ready to issue.

I have been down to see the P.M.O. in Durban. He seems very nice, and willing to give us all the help he can; he seems glad that we are going to have the extra beds, and promises to send us more doctors, sisters, and orderlies; we rather hope that some of the orderlies will be R.A.M.C. men, and that they will put a little backbone into our crew, who, I daresay, will be better when we get into order, but many of them are now rather inclined to say "We didn't pass our exams, and come out here, to do navvies' work."

Of course I shall be glad to have the larger place, as I know it is so badly needed, but the prospect of seeing 100 sick men properly looked after by these untrained men was alarming, and now the prospect of 200 sick men with more (possibly) untrained orderlies, plus some unknown sisters, is more alarming still; but I suppose we shall shake along somehow.

I shall be so glad when the men can get time to cut the long grass round the camp, as there are a good many snakes about (two have been killed quite near my room). We all wear canvas gaiters, as a sort of protection; but there are other weird creatures about, and one night a wire came from the next station to say that a leopard, or some such creature, had carried off a Kaffir baby, and we were to look out for the beast; so the men were much excited, but they have not seen anything of him.

Last Sunday was Easter Sunday, and the men had a much needed day of rest, but the sisters and officers went on most of the day unpacking and sorting the things most urgently needed. We knocked off in the evening, and went to service at the Pinetown church.

The next day (April 16th) we had started work as usual, when the Sergeant-major's whistle summoned all hands: a wire had come to say that a troop train had been thrown off the line about three miles from here.

The Major went off with the medical officers and orderlies, with stretchers. I provided them with brandy, water, a mug, a corkscrew, &c., and then hunted up some lint and bandages, and a few splints, and sent them after them.

Two or three orderlies who were sick in camp came down to see what the 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.