A Nurse's Life in War and PeaceLaurence, E. C. (Eleanor Constance)
History
A Nurse's Life in War and Peace
Laurence, E. C. (Eleanor Constance)
Military nursing; Nursing -- Great Britain; South African War, 1899-1902 -- Medical care
At 4.30 the next morning we arrived at Colenso. It was very cold and
very dark, but Mr. Edwards (the hotel proprietor) met us, and with him
we stumbled across the veldt to his hotel, which is just a one-storey
shanty, as their house had been knocked to pieces by the Boers.
Unfortunately he could not possibly take in my friends, so they had to
stay at the station.
I was very glad to be able to tumble into a clean bed and have a good
sleep, and by breakfast-time I was quite fresh again.
Then I was annoyed to find that I could not get a horse, as they were
all engaged, and I had hoped to be able to ride to Ladysmith and to
Spion Kop; however, I got on all right in the end.
That morning we climbed Hlangwane Hill, and saw some really wonderful
Boer trenches; you absolutely can see no sign of them in broad daylight
till you nearly walk into them.
Then we saw the place where Colonel Long lost his guns (the dead cavalry
horses are still lying there); and where poor young Lieutenant Roberts
was mortally wounded in trying to save them; and where Major Baptie,
R.A.M.C., won his V.C.--I think by carrying Lieutenant Roberts into a
donga and staying with him, and other wounded, all through that day of
heavy firing, trying to keep them comfortable with some morphia he had
with him.
We picked up as many pieces of shells and shrapnel as we could carry,
and walked back along the banks of the Tugela.
I heard that a luggage train would be passing at 2.30 P.M., so I thought
I would go into Ladysmith by that, and see whether there was any chance
of getting out to Spion Kop from there. There are very few passenger
trains now (except just the mails), so we are allowed to travel in any
train that happens to stop, but of course they don't undertake to keep
to any particular time.
Directly after lunch I strolled down to the station--no station-master
or any official there, but I met a gentleman who told me that he had
walked all the way out from Ladysmith, and was expecting to have to wait
for the mail train to take him back, so he was very glad when I told him
I knew the next goods train was going to stop there; he said his wife
was in the waiting-room, so we walked along to find her, and soon I
discovered she was Mrs. ----, Secretary of the Women's Patriotic League
in Durban, whom I had not actually met before, but with whom I had had
much pleasant correspondence, as they had been very kind in helping us.
So we trained in to Ladysmith together, and on the way they pointed out
to me the remains of the great dam which the Boers made to try to flood
Ladysmith out, also the neutral camp of Intombi; there is no hospital
there now, only the cemetery, sadly full of graves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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