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 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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