Part 17

It was Saturday afternoon, and no orders came on board for us, and by the time the Boer prisoners were landed, and we were able to get our baggage ashore, the Durban P.M.O. had left his office; so we felt free to do as we pleased till the following day, when (though Sunday) we _might_ be able to report ourselves.

If we had been new sisters arriving it might have been awkward, but it suited us down to the ground.

Sister ---- just caught the evening train up to Pinetown to stay with some friends, and I promised to wire to her if we were needed on Sunday; otherwise she would return on Monday.

Then a kind sergeant-major helped me to get our baggage on to a trolley and take it up to the medical store, where it would be quite safe; and after that I went up to see some friends on the Berea, and they most kindly took me in.

From them I learnt many things; amongst others, that our old hospital had been turned into a Rest Camp of 300 beds, and that they thought we were to have the chance of going back there, but, for various reasons, they strongly advised us not to do so if we could avoid it; that our late medical officers had already been sent farther up-country (we had hoped to work for them again, but did not succeed in doing so).

On Sunday morning I went to report "ourselves" to Major ----, and he was very pleasant and kind, wanted to hear all about our voyage home, &c., and asked me where we wanted to go? So I told him "as near up to the front as we could get"; then he told me that the order from the Natal P.M.O. was for us to return to Pinetown, but if I liked he would wire to him to ask him to let us go up-country, and that we could stay with our friends till he got a reply.

I had a quiet Sunday in Durban, meeting many friends, and going to church in the evening.

The next morning I met Sister at the station, and the first thing she said to me (before I could tell her the orders) was, "Sister, I _won't_ go to Pinetown, I would rather resign, if they want to send us there." So then I told her that our fate was waiting on a wire from the P.M.O.; and as we walked along to the office she told me a good deal of what she had heard about Pinetown--of course we can scarcely judge how much of it is really true, but at any rate it appears that some of the sisters now there seem to think that they have come out to South Africa only to enjoy themselves, and that they are setting about it in a way which no lady would care to emulate.

It was rather strange that we should both have received the same advice from quite different sources: "Don't go there."

Together we went to the office, and stayed there some time, but no wire had come; they thought we should probably go _somewhere_ by the 6 P.M. mail train. We were advised to take some food if we went up, as meals on the way were uncertain. So I stocked my tea-basket, and bought some potted meat, &c., in case we went.

All day we had to hover near the office or within sound of the telephone, and at 5 P.M. a wire came for us to go up to No. -- General Hospital by the mail train.

One of the medical officers kindly helped us to get our baggage to the station, and secured a carriage for us.

It is always a shaky journey up from Durban, but we got some sleep, and the next morning, when we were having breakfast at Glencoe, we were delighted to meet Major ----, of the Royal Engineers, an old patient of ours, who has done splendid work up this side; he was going down to Ladysmith.

A little farther on we met two officers who had come out in the _Canada_ with us, so they came into our carriage, and shared our lunch, and we brewed some tea with my tea-basket. At Newcastle General Hilliard was on the platform, and also a sister whom we knew.

We had no sooner reached our destination than Sergeant C. came up to welcome us--he had been at Pinetown--and also went home with us; he does not seem at all pleased at being sent here, and is already trying to get a change.

This hospital has been a "Stationary Hospital" up to now, but is just being turned into a "General Hospital," so they say it is in rather a muddle at present.

Sister ---- and I were allotted a tent with just bed and blankets--nothing else; we were not required on duty that day, so we went down to the coolie store and invested in some cheap sheets, a bucket, basin, &c.; also table fittings, as they told us no plates, cups, knives, or anything were provided. Many people out here prefer to sleep in blankets, but as the army blankets are dark brown, rather of the texture of horsecloths, and as these were obviously not new (and the washing and disinfecting of army blankets in a satisfactory way is still an unsolved problem out here), we preferred to put some sheets in between!

The air is lovely and fresh up here, where we are 5000 feet above the sea-level--always hot sun in the day, but very cold nights.

A most unfortunate thing occurred the first night we were here: a sister, who came out in the _Canada_ with us, had two large cases of feather cushions given her by the Princess of Wales--whom we must now learn to call Queen Alexandra--with the request that they should go to men in hospital near up to the front. She had promised me that if I went up-country I should have one of the boxes to distribute.

When we arrived here I found a wire from her saying that she was passing our station about 8.30 P.M., and would I meet her? She was one of the sisters who had landed at Cape Town, but was now coming down to a hospital on this side. So, when we had got our tent straight, we went to the Lady Superintendent and said that if we were really not wanted on duty, might we go down to the station after dinner to meet this sister? She said certainly we might; she was sorry she had some letters to write, or she would have walked down with us.

When we got to the station we found we were rather too soon, and there were a lot of orderlies standing about, and a few officers (whom, of course, we did not know), so I said to Sister, "I vote we walk about outside till we hear the train coming"; and we were just beating a retreat from the platform when an officer stalked up and said, in a very rude way, "Who are you?" We just gave our names, and were walking away, when he again stopped us, and asked what we wanted at the station? By this time Sister ---- was bubbling over with wrath, but we had to explain that we had obtained leave to meet a sister. I believe if I had said that I was expecting a box of things from the Queen, he would have knuckled under, but I was not going to trade on that; and the long and short of it was that he did not believe that we had been given leave, and said we were not allowed in the station and were to return to camp.

Of course we went back furious at his rudeness, and then discovered he was the C.O. here! I expect the Lady Superintendent had forgotten to tell him we had leave (or something of that kind), but he might have believed our word, and not been so rude to us before a lot of orderlies, and she was very much annoyed with him.

The next morning, when we were formally introduced to him, he was, I think, penitent, and invited us to go out for a picnic on the following day, when some people whom we knew were coming here, partly to inspect the hospital and partly for this excursion. Sister ---- went with them, but I was going on night duty that night, so I begged off.

This is a "Ration Station" (as it would be difficult to buy food privately so far from the base), therefore we don't get quite so many "allowances," but the "skoff" seems very fairly good; they bake bread in the camp; and as long as you can get decent bread you can be content.

We are just on the border of the Transvaal, and there are plenty of Boers about; two or three of our columns are trekking about in the district, and they say that we often have sick and wounded sent in from them.

Most of the sisters here seem to ride, but I can't take to that again yet. The night sisters had a little excitement two nights ago, when two horses galloped into the camp, and they--with the help of a convalescent officer--caught and tethered them. They hoped they would be allowed to keep them, but, unfortunately, they were reclaimed by some Yeomanry men; but they say that very often droves of horses pass here, and sometimes a few escape, or are left behind too sick (or too tired) to go on; and then the orderlies catch them and sell them to the sisters for £1 or £2!

I think there are about 500 beds here, nearly all under canvas. There are a few buildings of wood, and amongst them is a small room that the sisters use as a duty room, and the night sisters (two of them) sit there, and they have a small stove for boiling water, &c. There is no arrangement for hot water near the tents for the patients--we used to have (and I have seen them in other hospitals too) boilers on wheels with a coolie to keep the fire going, and if the water was not always hot, the coolie soon heard about it from the orderlies.

One day the C.O. asked me whether I had everything I wanted, and I said, "No, I wanted a good many things for the men, one being hot water"; but he said he had never heard of these movable boilers, and seemed to think them an unnecessary luxury.

At the sisters' camp we have a comfortable room that they use as a sitting-room, with a mixed lot of furniture that has been "commandeered" from houses in the district. The other day an officer sent us a lot of china plates taken from a Boer hotel; they were very welcome, as we were most of us using enamel plates out of our tea-baskets, &c. We have our meals in a tent--just a long table, and benches without backs.

Our sleeping tents are chiefly the big square kind, called E. P. tents; they are supposed to hold four beds, so we may have to pack tight, but at present Sister and I are alone. Some of the sisters have made their tents very nice, and have rigged up curtains to divide them. At present we use our boxes as washstand, &c., and as a General Hospital is given a certain amount of furniture for the sisters, we intend not to buy anything that is not really necessary until we see what they are going to give us.

XLIII

GENERAL HOSPITAL, NATAL, _March 1901_.

Now I have waded (both literally and figuratively) through my first spell of a fortnight on night duty, and it has not been pleasant; but when one thinks how much worse it must be for the troops out trekking, one does not mind.

I have always thought that South Africa _without the sun_ was rather a poor sort of a place, and, living in a tent in the wet season, I am confirmed in that opinion.

It began to rain the first night I went on duty, and during the fortnight I had only four fine nights: the other nights it rained--generally in bucketfuls.

The first day when I went to bed it was very hot and stuffy in the tent, so I did not sleep for some time, but was sleeping in the afternoon when the rain began, and soon it woke me up by splashing on my face; then I found it was coming down in torrents, and our tent had been so badly pitched, with no trench round it, that there was a deep stream flowing through. I had to paddle about and rescue all our goods from the floor, pitching most of them on to Sister's bed; and she was rather amused when she came over to call me, to find me fast asleep under a mackintosh and umbrella, my bed a simple island, and no room for her to get into her own bed!

Most of the sisters were prepared for this, and had suitable garments, but it was several days before I could obtain them, so I very soon had not a dry garment to my name.

Before I leave the subject I may as well tell you what is the correct garb, and then you can imagine us sitting on a bench at our mess--and I am sure no one seeing us would think we were sisters; with our lanterns hung up behind us, we look more like miners, or something of that sort!

The first essential is a pair of knee "gum" boots, as the grass between the tents is long; then you must have knickerbockers, with a very short serge skirt (some omit the skirt altogether on night duty!), then a mackintosh. When it does not rain, you substitute for the mackintosh a "British Warmer" coat--that is the short khaki overcoat that both officers and privates wear, a very rough wool with a warm flannel lining. For headgear we have a sailor hat, or a wool cap, or a sou'wester, according to taste. White caps and aprons are quite impossible when you have to go from tent to tent.

Of course there is no chance of drying anything till the sun comes out again, and when we get out of bed it would never do to turn it down; instead of that you put anything you wish to _try_ to keep dry inside, and cover it all up with every rug and blanket and mackintosh that you can lay hands on.

Our tent was so hopelessly bad, that after some days they let us move into another, and that one having a wooden floor, we were better off.

I was so tired after moving our things into the new tent, and after a heavy night on duty in the pouring rain, that I slept like a top, and when I woke in the evening I found everything upset in the tent, and evident marks that a cow had been taking shelter with me!

The sisters gibed at me, and said I should probably not have waked up if it had been a Boer commando.

There are a lot of men very ill. I was supposed to have charge on night duty of the medical side (about 250 beds), and that included the enteric tents with about 100 beds. They seem to have a mania for shifting the men about, so it was often difficult to find the bad cases; there were generally only night orderlies in the enteric tents, so that men who needed much attention in the night were supposed to be sent to the enteric line, whether they had enteric or not. To escape this risk of infection for them, we sisters used to try to do all for them in their own tents as long as we possibly could, and the poor chaps were so grateful to us, and the day sisters (who were equally keen not to have them sent down) used to tell us that the men always assured the medical officers that they had everything they wanted in the night. You know how at home if a sick man wakes up, and is alone for a few minutes, he thinks he is being neglected, but these poor chaps must have many lonely hours in the dark tents, and yet they never complain; they know that so many are dying of enteric, and they seem to have a horror of being sent down to that line.

It really was pretty horrid paddling about in the dark and the long grass between the tents; and it was so slippery with mud and rain that twice I fell down, and it took some time before I could find my lantern and the kettle which I had just boiled up, and was carrying down to make a poultice for a poor chap with pneumonia: it was very annoying, as, of course, it took time to reboil the kettle. The day sister leaves everything ready, with the linseed in a bowl, so that I have only to pour the water on, and then I put everything all ready for the next one; in this way we can get fairly hot poultices, though the tents are a long way from the fire.

The men used to be so sorry for us being so constantly wet; and many a convalescent man used to beg me to let him stay awake with a man who was very ill and give him his drinks, &c., promising to come and fetch me if he wanted anything, so that I need not go round so often,--but, of course, I could not let him do that.

One man (a New Zealander) said to me, "Well, Sister, I have often grumbled at having to do sentry-go for two or three hours on a wet night, but I never knew that any woman had to do it for twelve hours at a stretch; I shan't grumble at my share again in a hurry."

The other day we had in a big convoy of eighty sick and wounded from General French's column. They had been eight days in ox waggons coming seventy-two miles; poor chaps, they were glad to get into beds.

Two days from here they had got stuck in a drift one night, and the Boers came down and fired on them, killing a corporal and a private of the guard and wounding two others. One man had been shot in the thigh, and Sister made him comfortable in bed, and the doctor said they should not do anything till next day; the man slept like a top for over twelve hours, and when he woke in the morning Sister said something to him about having been comfortable, and he said, "Yes, Sister, I was not going to miss five minutes' enjoyment of that bed, for I have not been on a bed for fifteen months."

This convoy also brought in a lot of Boer women and children, but they have gone into a camp about three miles from here.

If you, or any of your friends, care to post me any illustrated papers or magazines, they would be most gratefully received, or in fact anything wherewith to amuse the men. We should be very glad, too, of warm garments, as the winter is coming on, and the Red Cross people have stopped sending the splendid big bundles of papers that our men used to appreciate so much; in fact, most people seem to have tired of sending the things with which we were so well supplied at first. The poor Tommies feel a little hurt at no free supplies of tobacco or cigarettes, and I would give anything to have my old supply of warm shirts, sweaters, wool caps, &c., for the men who have to go back to roughing it on trek.

Now that the rain has stopped, we are having perfectly lovely days, but the nights are very cold; they say that a little later on it is bitterly cold up here.

There were six deaths during my first fortnight on night duty, and it was awfully sad, as one felt they had so little chance, and I cannot really see why they should not be better "done by"; but the sisters seem to think that it is the natural order of things, and that we must just "do our best and leave the rest."

The General was here the other day, and said that all the men were to have tumblers instead of mugs, but I suppose he does not know that they have not each got a mug yet!

There is one enteric tent (the last one opened) of fourteen beds, and their equipment includes only four mugs, and not a single feeding-cup at all. One night I found a man, who had not got enteric, sent there for the sake of having night orderlies, as he was very ill; so I had to borrow a mug for him from another line, and the next day I bought him the necessary fittings at the coolie store; but it won't do much good, as the orderlies probably won't take proper precautions to wash up for him separately.

There are some new R.A.M.C. officers here now, and one of them seems energetic; I don't know what had gone wrong that he was poking into, but one of the sisters heard him say to a sergeant, "Hospital scandals are not in it," so we can only hope things will improve here.

There was much excitement here one night. A major arrived, sick, in a mule buggy from a column near here; the C.O. saw him, and told him what tent to go to, but he never arrived. After much searching of the camp, neither the officer nor his mules could be found; then the heliograph was set to work, and eventually he was located at the next station, and when he was brought back he said the C.O. was so rude to him that he thought he would not stay, and had gone to a hotel!

Since I came off night duty I, and two other sisters, have been doing only "afternoon duty," which means looking after the camp while all the other sisters are off duty; this is because there are more sisters here than the proper number: if there were only the right number, two of the sisters who have lines would stay on every afternoon in turn; but the stupid thing about it is that if we were each turned on to a big tent of enterics (instead of one sister having all the line on her hands) we might be doing really useful nursing; as it is, there is not much to do in the afternoon, beyond prowling round and trying to talk to the men and cheer them up a bit.

The other day one of them presented me with these lines of his own composition; he was in a tent when I was on night duty where there was a very bad case:

(_By an Australian Trooper._)

You may talk of our Soldiers and Sailors, Of our brave Colonials too, But nothing is thought of our Nurses, With hearts so tender and true.

They have suffered great hardships, and endured The trials that fell to their share, And so caused their names to be cherished On every Barrack Room Square.

So give three cheers for our Sisters Who've shown us what they will do To help the cause of Old England By nursing our sick soldiers through.

XLIV

GENERAL HOSPITAL, NATAL, _April 1901_.

Our tent has filled up now--four of us in it--so we feel rather tightly 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.