The Tale of a Field Hospital Part 3

There were three army surgeons with "No. 4" whose names I have already mentioned. They were reinforced by a small field hospital under the charge of Major Baird and Captain Begbie.

Some of the wounded came up by train, and some by ambulances or by wagons, but a very large proportion, a proportion which included nearly all the serious cases, were carried up on stretchers by hand. No mode of transport is more comfortable than this, or is less fatiguing to the patient, and the splendid organisation of volunteer bearers and of coolie carriers enabled this means of bringing up the wounded to be very largely made use of. Certainly the stretcher-bearers were the means of saving lives, and of sparing those they carried an infinite amount of pain.

As seen at night, the procession up to Chieveley was doleful and mysterious. The long line of silent men moving in cl.u.s.ters, each cl.u.s.ter with a stretcher and a body in its midst. Stealing slowly and cautiously over the veldt in the moonlight, they all made for the two white lights which swung over the hospital by the station.

The coolies carried their stretchers shoulder high, so that the body of the man they bore was lit fitfully by the moon as they pa.s.sed along with absolutely noiseless feet. The coolies themselves added no little to the uncanny spectacle, for in the shadow beneath the stretcher stalked a double row of thin bare legs, and by the poles of the stretcher were the white or coloured turbans that these men affect; while here and there a sleek black head glistened in the light.

There was but one house at Chieveley--the stationmaster's house. It had been effectually looted after the Boer fashion, but it would have done well as a resting-place for the four nurses who came up with the hospital. The house, however, had been taken possession of, and the nurses had to contemplate either a night in the open or in the waiting-room at the station. As this latter room had been used as a stable by the Boers, it was not in much request. It served, however, as a place for the depositing of personal baggage and for the preparing of such food as it was possible to prepare--chiefly, indeed, for the making of tea.

The question of where to sleep was soon solved by the necessities of the position. These ill-housed women, as a matter of fact, were hard at work all Friday, all Sat.u.r.day, and all Sat.u.r.day night. They seemed oblivious to fatigue, to hunger, or to any need for sleep. Considering that the heat was intense, that the thirst which attended it was distressing and incessant, that water was scarce, and that the work in hand was heavy and trying, it was wonderful that they came out of it all so little the worse in the end.

Their ministrations to the wounded were invaluable and beyond all praise. They did a service during those distressful days which none but nurses could have rendered, and they set to all at Chieveley an example of unselfishness, self-sacrifice, and indefatigable devotion to duty.

They brought to many of the wounded and the dying that comfort which men are little able to evolve, or are uncouth in bestowing, and which belongs especially to the tender, undefined and undefinable ministrations of women.

The English soldier is as sensible of attention and as appreciative of sympathy and kindness as any other man who is at the mercy of circ.u.mstances, and I can well believe that there are many soldiers--some of them now in England, crippled for life--who will long keep green the memory of the sisters at Chieveley.

Some weeks after Colenso I was at Pietermaritzburg, and was looking up in the hospital wards certain cases which had been attended to in "No.

4." Among them was a paralysed man to whom one of the nurses had been very kind at Chieveley. I found him comfortably bestowed, but he was possessed of a handkerchief the extreme dirtiness of which led me to suggest that, as he was now in a centre of luxury, he should ask for a clean one. To which he replied, "I am not going to give this one up; I am afraid of losing it. The sister who looked after me at Chieveley gave it to me, and here is her name in the corner."

As the truce was over on Sat.u.r.day, and as the Boers might a.s.sume the aggressive and sh.e.l.l Chieveley and its helpless colony, the order was given to break up the hospital and get all the wounded away by train, and to retire with the tents and equipment to Frere. This was done on Sunday morning.

As soon as the wounded had left--and it was no light matter getting them away--it was thought desirable that the women should be at once got out of danger, and so they were bundled down to Frere with little ceremony in a mule wagon. As they had no hospital to go to (for "No. 4" did not arrive until the small hours of the following morning) they took refuge in the hotel at Frere. They had some food with them, albeit it was not of a kind to attract the fastidious, and the four of them slept on the floor of a looted and empty room, which even the kindly heart of Mrs.

Wilson could not render other than a dreary resting place. This was their only "night in" in three days.

I had, I am bound to confess, the advantage of them in the matter of ventilation, for I slept in a wagon.

XI

SOME TRAITS IN THE MEN

As I have already said, the wounded took their turn of "hard luck" like men. A few were sullen, a few relieved their feelings by fluent but meaningless profanity, in which the Boers were cursed with as much thoroughness as was the Jackdaw of Rheims. The majority were silent or said little. The tendency of most of the men was to make the least of their wounds, and some of those who were the worst hit were the most cheery. They were, with scarcely an exception, unselfish, and were singularly patient, considering that the exercise of patience is not a marked quality in men.

They ministered to one another's wants with a tender solicitude which was not marred by the occasional uncouthness of its method. There was a wide-spread belief that tobacco was a panacea for all ills, and any man who had the wherewithal to smoke shared the small luxury with his mates.

If there was only one pipe in a tent it was kept circulating. One would see a man on one stretcher trying to arrange a pillow for a comrade on the next: the pillow in question being commonly made out of a squashed helmet with a boot inside it. The man in any tent who was the least disabled was never so well pleased as when he was given something to do for those who were under the same canvas with him. With a pannikin and a spoon he would feed those who could not feed themselves, until they were glad to be rid of the attention; or he would readjust a dressing, or cut off a boot, or get the dried blood from an exposed surface with a never-wearying anxiety.

With few exceptions the men were honestly anxious "not to give trouble."

It was an article of faith with them to "take their turn," and no man would try to make out that his case gave him a claim for attention over his fellows. Indeed, on the occasion of a visit, the occupants of a tent were eager with one voice to point out what they considered to be the worst case, and to claim for it the earliest notice. The men of a tent were, in the kindliest way, a little proud of having a "real bad"

case in their midst. When the curtain of a tent is up the occupants whose heads are nearest to the tent ropes can easily converse with those who are similarly placed in the adjoining tent. Thus I heard one man on the ground, whose head was nearly in the open, call out to another head just in view on the floor of the next tent: "We've a real hot 'un in along with us; he's got 'it through the lungs and the liver both, and the doctor has been in to him three times." To which the other head replied: "That's nothing to a bloke in here. He's been off his chump all night; his language has been a fair treat, and he's had four fits.

We've had a night, I don't think!"

Another article of faith with the soldier takes the form of a grim stoicism under pain. Some of the wounded endured the examination of their wounds with Spartan pluck. They seemed to consider it above all things essential that they should not cry out "until they were obliged."

One enormous Irishman with a shattered thigh yelled out in agony as he was being lifted upon the operating table to be examined. The pain was evidently terrible and excuse enough for any degree of exclamation. But he apologised quaintly and profusely for the noise he made, urging as an excuse that "he had never been in a hospital before." He expressed his regret much as a man would do who had wandered into a church with his hat on and who excused himself on the ground that he had never been in a church before.

Every patient took a lively interest in his own case, and especially in the removal of any bullet which may have lodged in any part of him. One ruddy youngster, a Devonshire lad, had had a shrapnel bullet through his leg, and the bullet could be felt, on the side opposite to the point of entry, under the unbroken skin. He begged that it should be taken out without chloroform, as he wanted to see it come out and to keep it and take it home. He sat up with his back against the tent pole during the operation, and watched the cutting out of the lead without a murmur. No doubt this Boer missile will find a place in a corner cupboard in some cottage among the delectable villages of Devon, and will be for long the wonder and admiration of devoted women folk.

Among other traits, one notices that the soldier clings with great pertinacity to his few possessions, and especially to his boots. When the haversack has been lost, and when the tunic has been cut up to make its removal more easy, or left behind because it is too blood-stained, there is little remaining in which the owner may bestow his goods unless it be in his boots. There was one poor man I remember at Spearman's, who was in great distress because, just as he was being sent down to the base, he had lost his solitary boot. He said it contained a puttie, a tin of jam, two shillings in money, and a bullet that had been taken out of him. These are no mean possessions.

The puttie also is not lightly discarded. If not used as a gaiter it is useful for many other purposes, and especially is it considered well to wind it round the abdomen as a cholera belt, for the soldier has great faith in anything in the way of a belt.

When the men were bathing together in hundreds at Springfield, there was an opportunity of seeing such variety in the matter of abdominal belts as could never have been dreamed of. Some of these favoured garments were mere shreds and rags, and were worn probably in order to keep faith with some good soul at home who had made her boy promise he would never leave off his belt. Other binders were undoubtedly home-made, and the work of anxious mothers and wives who believed in red flannel and plenty of it. Some of the belts were knitted, and were made to be pulled on, but they had shrunk so much from repeated wettings, and had become so infantile in their proportions that the owner of the garment had to get at least one comrade to help him pull it over his hips. When it was at last in place it quite constricted the body, and justified the comment of one bather, who exclaimed to his belted but otherwise naked friend: "Well, ye've got a waist on ya, if nothink else!"

XII

THE SIGN OF THE WOODEN CROSS

After Colenso, No. 4 Stationary Field Hospital returned to the same quarters at Frere, and at Frere we remained until January 13th, 1900, nearly a month. The wounded who fell on the unhappy 15th of December had been satisfactorily disposed of, thanks to the admirable arrangements made by the Princ.i.p.al Medical Officer, Colonel Gallwey, C.B. Not a single wounded man was left out on the field on the night of the battle.

On that particular Friday every man had been attended to before midnight, and on the following Sunday all the wounded who had fallen on the 15th were comfortably housed in one or other of the hospitals at the base.

Our tents, although emptied of the wounded, soon began to be filled up with cases of sickness, and especially with cases of dysentery. Those who presented the slightest form of the disease could be sent down to the base, but when the type was severe the patient did better with as little movement as possible. Those, therefore, who remained in our lines presented a large proportion of examples of serious illness.

Provisions were ample, medical necessities abundant, and the ladies of the Colony were infinitely kind in forwarding to Frere comforts of all sorts. Our tents were by no means filled, and yet, in spite of what may be considered favourable circ.u.mstances, there were a good many deaths.

Deaths mean the need for burial, and a little burying ground was marked off in the rear of the hospital, close to the railway line. As weeks went by the little enclosure needed enlargement, and so the engineers came and fenced it round afresh with a wire paling, and gave it a fit aspect of formality. The names of the dead were indicated on tablets of wood, and now and then the comrades of a man, or the survivors of the tent he died in, would erect over the mound a wooden cross.

These crosses were made usually out of provision boxes, or perhaps from a whisky case, and many were very admirably finished and very cleverly carved, and many were curious of design. They represented long hours spent in tedious hacking at a tough slab of wood with a pocket-knife, and, after that, infinite patience in the cutting out of the letters of the dead chum's name. Finish would be given to the lettering by means of a tin-opener.

These crosses will be found all over the land of the war. Few of them will long survive the wind and the rain and the blistering sun, and the hand of the Kaffir who is lacking of fuel. So long, however, as they dot the solitary veldt they will be symbols of the tenderest spirit of good comradeship, of the kindly heart of men who are supposed to be little imbued with sentiment, and of that loyal affection for his friend which is not among the least of the qualities of the British soldier.

Here and there some elaborate monuments with some promise of permanency have been erected. There is one, for example, in which the inscription is fashioned out of empty cartridge cases stuck into cement. There is another carved with some art out of stone.

I think, however, that those sleep best who lie beneath the wooden cross fashioned with labour and some occasional dimness of eye by the pocket-knife of an old "pal."

XIII

THE MEN WITH THE SPADES

The graves at Frere were dug by our own men, or rather by a small fatigue party from a regiment near by. Nearly every morning they came, the men with the spades. There were six of them, with a corporal, and they came up jauntily, with their spades on their shoulders and with pipes in their mouths. They were in their shirt-sleeves, and there was much display of belt and of unb.u.t.toned neck. Their helmets were apt to be stuck on their heads in informal att.i.tudes. They were inexpressibly untidy, and they made in their march a loose, shambling suggestion of a procession.

They came past my tent about breakfast time, and every morning I wondered whether the men with the spades would come, since, when they came, I knew that a death had taken place in the night, and wondered who it was.

As in some way symbols of death, as elements in the last services to be rendered to the dead, the men with the spades filled me with great curiosity. They came up cheerily, and when they reached the outskirts of the hospital the corporal would call out to any orderly he saw: "Well, nipper, how many have we got to dig to-day?"

When they had finished they went by my tent on their way back to camp: still the same untidy, shambling lot; still, as a rule, smoking, and still with the appearance of being infectiously cheerful.

I know well enough, however, that there was little cheeriness among these men with the spades. They were dull enough in their inmost hearts. The soldier is much impressed by a burying and by the formalities which surround the dead. And as he knows he must not "give way" he is p.r.o.ne to cover his easily stirred feelings by an attempt at a "devil-may-care" att.i.tude, and by an a.s.sumption of rollicking indifference. It is, however, a poorly executed pretence, and it needed no exceptional ac.u.men to see that in reality no small shadow of unhappiness followed the little shuffling procession, in spite of their pipes and their jauntily posed helmets and their laboured jokes.