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
I should much like to have had longer stay both at Colenso and
Ladysmith, there was so much of interest both in the places and in the
people one met; but I wanted to visit a few places on the way down, so I
left Colenso the next morning at 9.30. My first stop was at Chieveley,
where there had been a big hospital, but all that remains now is a
little closed-in graveyard, with nearly two hundred graves; many died
from wounds, but many more from enteric. They had a clever way of
marking the graves, each man's name, regiment, &c., being written on a
slip of paper and enclosed in a medicine bottle and securely stuck into
the mound.
I saw poor Lieutenant Roberts' grave (it has a plain stone with an
inscription, but I hear a cross is being sent out); they had brought him
from Colenso on the ambulance train the evening of the day he was
wounded. The station-master told me he had helped to lift him out of the
train, and he seemed sensible and comfortable then, but he died the same
night.
I saw a very fine redoubt at Chieveley made by the Royal Engineers, but
it was never used. I took the next train on to Mooi River. Before we
reached Frere station we passed the place of the armoured train
disaster, and the graves of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who fell there.
Wherever you go there seem to be graves dotted about, most of them
enclosed with barbed wire, and some with a cross set up, or the man's
initials marked out in empty cartridge-cases.
There is a large hospital at Estcourt, but I had only time for a hasty
lunch at the station there, as I wanted to have an hour or two at Mooi
River, to see the hospital, where I knew one of the doctors, and where
it seemed probable that we should be sent when we first arrived; on the
whole, I am glad we were _not_ stationed there, though they have had
more interesting surgical work than we have.
Unfortunately my friend was away, but the superintendent kindly showed
me round, and I had tea in the sisters' mess.
They have 950 beds, nearly all under canvas. It was blowing hard, and
while I was there it began to rain, and it was snowing on the
Drakensberg, and very cold, so every one looked rather miserable. It is
a desolate place on the bare veldt.
I left again on a goods train at 4.30, and rattled down to Maritzburg by
9 P.M., where I meant to stay the night.
Miss ---- kindly met me at the station, and we drove down to her house
in a riksha; she has been taking in convalescent nurses, and feeding
them and giving them a rest. She has had much anxiety about her
brothers, one of whom was commandeered and had to fight for the Boers,
together with his son (a boy of sixteen). They were with Cronje at
Paardeberg, and are now prisoners at St. Helena; another brother was
fighting for us, and was taken prisoner by the Boers, but released when
we took Pretoria.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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