Part 18

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!

Having settled them, I started my rounds, and soon found that the worst case was a poor chap with pneumonia; fortunately he was in a building (instead of a tent), so it was possible to keep him fairly warm. The night orderly was not a very intelligent youth, but he was fairly watchful and obedient, and for four nights I spent every spare minute with this man, and really thought we should pull him through; then the fifth night the day sister met me in a very bad temper, and said, "What _do_ you think? they have moved our poor O. down to a very draughty enteric tent; after all the trouble we have taken to pull him round! I am sure he will die there." I asked why he had been moved, as there had been no sign of enteric, and she replied that she could not get any reason, but an orderly had told her that "the doctor said that he was going to die, and he did not want any death up there."

Poor chap, he did die the next day, and of course he _might_ have done so in any case, but to shift him then just took away his only chance.

It has been very cold all the time that I have been on night duty, but two of the nights were so horrible that I don't think I shall ever forget them. Sister ---- is on with me now, so we grumble together; for those two nights it was blowing _hard_, and then a sleety rain came on that positively cut like knives, and was almost paralysing; on the second of those two nights I struggled back to the duty room and flopped down by the fire, which was very low, but I had not even the energy to poke it up; after a bit Sister came in dripping wet and looking blue with cold; she set down her lantern, and then came to the fire and gazed at me, and, after a bit, said, "Sister, you do look ill." I tried to laugh, but I think we were both much nearer crying with cold; so I struggled up to attend to the fire and brewed some tea, and after a bit Sister said, "Do you know, Sister, when I came in I thought you looked as though you were going to die, and if you had been, I positively had not the power to set to work to get you a hot drink or anything."