Part 5

Early in the campaign Colonel Gallwey, the P.M.O., organised a volunteer ambulance corps. Two thousand bearers were wanted, and in a few days two thousand were enrolled. Their duties were to carry the wounded off the field, to transport serious cases from the advanced hospitals or dressing stations to the stationary field hospital, and thence, if need be, to the railway. There were to be twelve on a stretcher.

This corps contained examples of all sorts and conditions of men--labourers, mechanics, "gentlemen," dock loafers, seamen, dentists, a chemist or two, a lawyer or two, tram drivers, clerks, miners, and shop assistants. Many were refugees from the Transvaal, and the majority had been thrown out of work of some kind or another by the war. A chance of getting employment had, no doubt, induced many to enlist, while probably the greater number were attracted by a spirit of adventure, by a desire to get to the front and to see something of the pomp and circumstance of war.

They formed a strange company when they mustered at Pietermaritzburg--a section of a street crowd in their everyday clothes, or in such clothes as were selected for roughing it. There was immense variety in the matter of hats. Belts were a feature. The flannel shirt, which was practically _de rigueur_, was replaced in an instance or two by a jersey. Collars were not worn; neckties were optional. There was no fixed fashion in the matter of boots; they varied from canvas shoes, worthy of a dandy at the seaside, to top boots fit for a buccaneer.

As to the men themselves, they were of all ages, heights, shapes, and sizes--the men of a crowd. Some were sunburned, and some were pale. Some were indifferent, but most were eager. Some were disposed to assume a serious military bearing, while others appeared to regard the venture as a silly joke of which they were beginning to be a little ashamed.

There is no doubt that the corps was in appearance not impressive. They were wild and shabby looking, disordered, unsymmetrical, and bizarre. They were scoffed at; and acquired the not unkindly meant title of the "body-snatchers." Later on the exuberant invention of the soldier dignified them by the titles of the "catch-'em-alive-oh's" or the "pick-me-ups."

It is needless to say that a good number of unsuitable and undesirable men had found their way into the ranks. These were gradually weeded out, and under the discreet command of Major Wright the corps improved day by day, until the time Spearman's was reached they formed a very efficient, reliable, and handy body of men. They did splendid service, and one which was keenly appreciated. They were the means of saving many lives and an infinite amount of pain. Their longest tramp, of which I had knowledge, was from Spearman's to Frere, a distance of twenty-five miles. They showed the usual British indifference under fire, and went without hesitancy wherever they were led. Unfortunately it happened that many of the worthy "body-snatchers" were wounded, and not a few of them were killed.

In the early days of their career the "catch-'em-alive-oh's" fell upon bad times. They knew little of camp life, and less of the art of getting the most out of it. They had no organisation among themselves, and many were incompetent to shift alone. They began as a mob, and they tried to live as a mob, and the result was that about the time of Colenso they had little comfort but that which is said by the moralist to be derived from labour. In their camp after the battle they had time to settle down. They entered the camp a thriftless crowd, and came out of it a company of handy men.

They were popular with the soldiers. They had the gift of tongues of a kind, and could compete with most in the matter of lurid language. Their incessant hunger and indiscriminate thirst were a matter for admiration. They were good-hearted, and, although they looked wild, they meant well. Many a wounded man has been rocked to sleep on their stretchers, and on more than one dying ear the last sound that fell was the tramp of their untidy feet.

XXIII

SEEING THEM OFF

On the afternoon of Thursday, February 8th, the news came to the hospital at Spearman's that the army was once more to retire, and signs were already abroad to show that the retreat had commenced. At the same time an order arrived to the effect that all the wounded were to be moved at sunrise on the following day to Frere. Our stay at Spearman's--extended now to three weeks--had therefore come to an end.

Among those left in the hospital were 150 patients whose condition was more or less serious. They had been kept under care as long as possible in order to avoid or postpone the danger of the long journey to the base. It was determined that these 150 men should be carried down to Frere on stretchers and by hand. And this was done, and well done, by the much-ridiculed corps of "body-snatchers."

It was no light undertaking, for the distance was twenty-five miles, and the road was dusty and not of the best. Every step had to be tramped under a glaring sun, and the heat of that day was great. Allowing twelve men to a stretcher, 1,800 men would be required. This number was forthcoming at sunrise, and they accomplished the march in the day, reaching Frere at sundown. This was a splendid piece of work.

It is not hard to surmise what would have happened to many of those who were the most ill if their journey to Frere had been by the ox-wagon, or by the still less easy ambulance. As it was, the whole convoy went down with comfort, and only one man died on the way, and he had indeed just reached his journey's end when his life ebbed away.

Long before sunrise on the morning of the departure from Spearman's the hospital was astir; and while it was yet dark lights could be seen in most of the tents, and lanterns carried by orderlies or coolies were moving here and there among the grey lines. The two white lights which hung from the flag-pole in front of the hospital were still shining. By the time the shadows had vanished and the light of the dawn fell upon "No. 4," it was in a state of untidy turmoil. Everyone was on the alert to "see them off."

In the marquees the last dressings were being carried out by candle-light. Clothes were being got together; helpless men were being dressed; blankets were being rolled up, and such comforts as the hospital could provide were being packed for the wounded to take with them on their journey. Cherished possessions were being dragged out from under pillows, to be safely disposed in a haversack or a boot. The grey light fell upon orderlies in their shirt sleeves bustling from tent to tent; upon piles of provision cases and of forage which were being turned out; upon heaps of stretchers; upon the rolled-up kit of the Army Medical Corps men; upon melancholy coolies who had been up all night, and were still crawling about, and were still in their night attire. This night outfit would consist, probably, of a turban, a mealie sack round the neck, and a decayed army mackintosh on the body; or of a turban, a frock-coat, which might at one time have graced Bond Street, and bare legs. Here and there in the indistinct light would be seen the white apron and trim dress of a nurse, who still carried the lantern she had had with her since the small hours of the morning. All were anxious to be up in time to "see them off."

In due course, and even yet before the sun could be seen, the Volunteer Ambulance Corps began to form up outside the camp. They were nearly two thousand strong, and they were a wild-looking company. There was, however, more uniformity in their clothing now, because they had been supplied with khaki tunics, and with occasional khaki trousers. Some wore putties, some gaiters, and some had tucked their trousers inside their socks. A few had cut their trousers off about the knee and were distinguished by bare legs. A gaiter on one leg and a puttie on the other was not considered to be in any way _demode_. Their hats were still very varied, but many had possessed themselves of helmets which had been picked up on the field. Uniformity and smartness could, however, not be expected if one man wore a helmet and the next a tam-o'-shanter, the third a bowler hat, and the fourth a "squasher" or a headpiece of his own designing. They had red-cross brassards on their left arms, but these had become merely fluttering bits of colouring.

This weird corps carried their possessions with them, and it was evident that in transporting their impedimenta they had appreciated the value of the division of labour. Many had military water-bottles, which they had probably picked up. Others carried their water in glass bottles, which dangled from their waists. Hanging about their bodies by strings or straps would be various useful domestic articles. Attached to one man would be a bundle of firewood, to another a saucepan, to a third a kettle and a lantern. Here a man would have in the place of a sabre-tache a biscuit tin suspended by a cord, or a hatchet and a tin-opener, or a spare pair of boots, which swung bravely as he marched. A popular _vade mecum_ was an empty jam tin (much blackened by the smoke of the camp fire) with a wire handle, and evidence that it represented a cooking-pot. Belts, knives, sticks, overcoats, rolled-up mackintoshes, and a general tint of sunburn and dirt completed the uniform of this strange company.

Before they entered the camp the wounded had been brought out on stretchers. The stretchers were placed on the grass, side by side, in long rows which extended across the breadth of the hospital. The men lying on them were not pleasant to look at. They formed a melancholy array of "bad cases." Each man was covered by a brown blanket, and within the hood of the stretcher were his special belongings, his boots and his haversack, and, with them, such delicacies for the journey as a pot of jam, a chunk of bread, some biscuits, a lump of tinned meat in a newspaper, and bottles (mostly with paper corks) containing water or milk or tea. Those on the stretchers presented bandaged legs and bandaged arms, splints of all kinds, covered-up eyes and bound-up heads, and the general paraphernalia of an accident ward. Some of the faces were very pinched and pale, for pain and loss of blood and exhaustion had caused the sunburn to fade away.

The light of the dawn fell upon this woe-begone line, and dazzled the eyes of many with the unaccustomed glare. Those who were not too ill were in excellent spirits, for this was the first step on the journey homewards. Such were excited, garrulous and jocular, and busy with pipes and tobacco. A few were already weary, and had on their lips the oft-repeated expression that "they were fed up with the war." Many a head was lifted out of the hood to see if any old chum could be recognised along the line, and from those would come such exclamations as: "Why are you here, Tom?" "Where have you been hit?" "Ain't this a real beanfeast?" "Thought you were stiff." "We're on the blooming move at last."

Many of the men on the stretchers were delirious, and some were almost unmanageable. One poor fellow was babbling about the harvest and the time they were having. He was evidently in his dream once more among the cornfields of England, and among plenteous beer. Another shook the canvas hood of his stretcher and declared with vehemence that he "would not go in any bally sailing boat, he was going in a steamer, and the colonel would never let his men go in a rotten sailing ship." Whereupon he affirmed that "he was going to chuck it," and proceeded to effect his purpose by rolling off his stretcher.

When the Volunteer Ambulance Corps marched along the line of stretchers they were the subject of much chaff, and many comments such as these burst forth: "You're being paraded before the General. So buck up!" "Pull up yer socks." "You with the kettle! Do you take yourself for a gipsy van?" "We ain't buying no hardware to-day--go home." "You know there's a Government handicap on this job, and half a crown to the man who gets in first, so you had better hurry my stretcher along." And so on; in the dialect of London, of Dublin, of Lancashire, and of Devon, with infinite variety and with apparent good spirits.

There were many anxious cases among this crowd on the stretchers. One, for example, was an Irishman named Kelly, a private in the Lancashire Fusiliers. He was as plucky a soldier as the plucky soil of Ireland has ever produced. His right arm had been smashed on Spion Kop. He had been on the hill two nights; and when the darkness fell had spent his time in crawling about on the ground, holding the sleeve of his shattered arm between his teeth, dragging his rifle with his left hand, and searching the bodies of the dead for any water that may have been left in their water-bottles. He had lost an incredible amount of blood, and when he reached the hospital it was necessary to amputate the whole upper limb, including the shoulder-blade and the collar-bone. He went through this ordeal with infinite courage and with irrepressible good humour. He had been the strong man of his regiment and a great boxer, and, as he casually said, "He should miss his arm."

Kelly's spirits were never damped, and he joked on all topics whenever he had the strength to joke. He was a little difficult to manage, but was as docile as a lamb in the hands of the Sister who looked after him, and for whom he had a deep veneration. Nothing in the ordinary way upset this gallant Irishman, but just before the convoy started he did for once break down. Two bottles of English beer had found their way into the camp as a precious gift. Kelly was promised these bottles to take with him on his journey. In due course they were deposited in the hood of his stretcher. When his eyes fell upon the delectable vision of English beer he could stand no more, and Kelly wept.

I little thought when I saw Kelly off at Spearman's that the next time I should say good-bye to him would be in a hansom cab in Pall Mall; but so it was.

When all was ready the stretchers were lifted off the ground in order, and the bearers filed out of the camp and on to the dusty track. The morning was like that of a summer's day in England, and we watched the long convoy creep along the road until it was nearly out of sight. The perfect quiet of their departure was only broken by the oft-repeated boom of the naval gun on the hill.

XXIV

A FUNERAL AT SPEARMAN'S

There were many deaths at Spearman's, and the burying ground was under the shadow of the clump of trees which stood at the back of Spearman's Farm, and of which burying place I have already spoken. Those who died were carried away to the mortuary-tent, and there each body was sewn up by the coolies in the brown army blanket or in a sheet. The sewing was after the manner of the sewing up of a package. The brown blanket, however, formed but a poor covering at the last, and it made little mystery of what it shrouded. Beneath its tightly drawn folds there was shadowed something that was still a man, for was there not the clear outline of head and chin and shoulders and feet? When the body was ready it was brought out of the tent, placed upon a stretcher, and carried to the grave. Over the bodies of the officers was thrown the Union Jack, but the bodies of the soldiers were covered only by the brown blanket or the sheet.

There was one funeral which I have in mind, on the occasion of which eight were buried--eight who had been struck down on Spion Kop--four non-commissioned officers and four men.

The funeral party drew up near to the mortuary-tent, and halted there in precise military formation. There was the firing party, who went first, with inverted rifles; then came the bearers, and then a small company from the regiments of the dead.

Some little way off stood a cluster of men who had come, in a shy, apologetic sort of way, to see the last of their pals. They seemed to think that their presence near by the formal procession was an intrusion, and they huddled together, some ten of them, at a distance. From their attitudes one inferred that they did not wish to be considered as taking part in the funeral. They were pretending to be merely onlookers. They were restless, and disposed to shuffle their feet, or they kicked the earth up absently with the toes of their boots.

Some of the ten kept their eyes fixed upon the mortuary-tent, to watch the bodies come out. As each of the blanket-covered objects was brought from the tent into the sunlight there were murmured comments from this small knot of untidy men--these men who did not want to look like mourners, but who were mourners indeed. "That's surely Ginger," says one of the number, pointing to the body last brought out. "No, that ain't Ginger," says his companion. "Ginger never had a chest on him like that. That's more like Jimmy Evans. Jimmy held hisself like that often."

So they talked, and they kept up fairly well this pretence at a casual conversation. But some could not trust themselves to speak, and these kept their backs to the tent and kicked at the earth absently. Those who took part in the apparent nonchalant talk had a struggle, I think, to keep their voices from breaking and their eyes from becoming dim. The "things" they were bringing out of the tent, done up in blankets, had once been men who had, perhaps, enlisted with them, who probably hailed from the same town in the Old Country, and who were the subjects of many memories.

When all the bodies were ready and the stretchers in line, the procession started, and marched slowly and silently round the kopje and along the glade that led to the trees by Spearman's Farm.

But for the tents of a far-off camp the veldt was a desert. There was scarcely a human being in sight. There was none of the pomp of a soldier's burial; no funeral march; no awed crowd; no tolling of bells; no group of weeping women in black clothes; no coffin borne on a gun-carriage and distinguished by the helmet and accoutrements of the dead. There were only the eight bundles in the brown blankets on the eight stretchers. And some little way in the rear were the slouching company of the ten, who did not want to be regarded as mourners, and who, with occasional "sniffing," and perhaps a surreptitious wiping of eyes with a shirt cuff, were shuffling along with a poor affectation of indifference.

In due course the last resting-place is reached, and here are eight separate graves in a line, and at the head of them stands the chaplain. He has on a college cap, a white surplice, riding breeches and putties. He reads the service with the utmost impressiveness. The men who form the firing party and the escort are ranged round the place of burial in precise military lines, and, in spite of the blazing sun, every head is bared. The words of the chaplain alone break the silence, although now and then there comes across the plain the boom of the naval gun. And here, under the dazzling sky of Africa, and at the foot of a kopje on the veldt, the eight dead are laid in the ground.

There are no onlookers except myself and the little group of ten. They stand in a cluster at a respectful distance. Their heads are bare, and more than one man has hidden his face in his helmet, while others have turned their heads away so that their mates shall not see their eyes. Their pretence at indifference and at having been drawn to the funeral by mere curiosity is now of the very slenderest.

As the graves are being filled up the funeral party marches back to the camp with a brisk step. The slovenly ten, who are not taking the part of mourners, scatter. They wander off in twos and threes, and they have become curiously silent. Some have dragged out pipes from their pockets, and are filling them absently. One is whistling an incoherent fragment of a tune. They look towards the horizon, and perhaps see nothing but the barren veldt, or perhaps they see a familiar village in England, and within a cottage in the small street the figure of a woman with her face buried in her hands.

XXV

ABSENT-MINDEDNESS

My small experience of the British soldier in the field leads me to think that he does not altogether deserve the title of the "absent-minded." The average soldier has, I think, the most anxious regard for his belongings, and although that anxiety may have been obscured or even dissipated by the boisterous incidents which attend an embarkation for the Cape, still when he reaches camp his mind is much occupied with recollections of the people at home, and with concern for their well-being.

Among the wounded were always those whose first anxiety was as to the effect the news of their injuries would have upon mothers, sweethearts, or wives. And many a message of consolation was confided to the sympathising ears of the Sisters, and many a letter of assurance was laboriously written by those who had the strength to write.

In the matter of letters the soldier takes profound interest. He writes whenever he has the chance, and makes a great deal of fuss about the performance. To most of those in camp the posting of a letter home is an event, and so precious is the pencilled epistle that the writer will hesitate before he commits it to the casual sack which is tied up to the fly of the post office tent, and which appears scarcely formal or official enough to receive the dirt-stained dispatch. For such dispatches, nothing less pretentious than a post office building or an iron letter-box seem fitting.

Many a time have I seen a letter dropped into the sack with such an expression of insecurity, and such evident feeling of hopelessness as to its safe conduct, that the writer of the same has appeared to regret that he had parted with it. A post office official in his shirt sleeves, with a pipe in his mouth and a helmet on the back of his head, seems hardly to be responsible enough for the occasion; and if the letter-writer would venture to express a hope that his elaborately directed letter "would be all right," the post office deity is apt to regard this concern with flippancy. "There's the sack! Chuck the blooming thing in. It won't break," was about all the comfort he would get.

The receipt of letters from home also was attended with an eagerness which was hardly fitting in an absent-minded man. The sergeant with the bundle of letters would read out the names on the envelopes in a military voice, ferociously and without feeling, and each man who got a missive grabbed it and marched off with it with the alacrity of a dog who has got a bone. If he could find the shelter of a wagon where the letter could be read unobserved it was well.

The letters dictated to the Sisters in the hospital were apt to be a little formal. It seemed to be thought proper that expression should be curbed, and that the sensibilities of the Sister should be in no way shocked by the revelation of a love passage. One dying man, who was dictating a letter to his mother, thought he would like to send with it a last message to "his girl," and in answer to the Sister's inquiry as to what she should write, modestly said, "Give her my kind regards."

There need have been no precise decorum in the wording of these last hopeless utterances, for if the sender of the letter "sniffed" a little as he dictated the message, the Sisters cried over them.