With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance TrainBennett, E. N. (Ernest Nathaniel), Sir
History
With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train
Bennett, E. N. (Ernest Nathaniel), Sir
Red Cross and Red Crescent; South African War, 1899-1902 -- Hospitals, charities, etc.
At 6 P.M. we saw the funeral of sixty-three Highlanders--all buried in
one long trench close to the line. No shots were fired over the vast
grave, but tears rolled down many a bronzed cheek and the bagpipes
played a wild lament. Surely there is no music like this for the burial
of young and gallant men. The notes seem to express an almost frenzied
access of human sorrow!
Soon after this my old Sudan acquaintance, Frederick Villiers, passed
through the train. He did not recognise me in my uniform and I did not
make myself known to him as he was with an officer and I was only an
orderly. I wonder if he remembers that dreadful night, 31st August,
1898, when we lay side by side in the desert at Sururab, soaked to the
skin from a tropical downpour, and, to make his misery complete, he was
stung in the neck by a large scorpion.
We ran down to Orange River with our first load of wounded men, and just
as we were crossing the sappers' pontoon bridge over the Modder a trolly
or small waggon broke loose and rushing down the incline in front met
our engine and was broken into matchwood. Most of our cases on this
first run were "severe" or "dangerous". Some of the men had no less than
three bullet wounds, and several were still living whose heads had been
pierced by bullets. During a former journey, after Belmont, poor ---- of
the Guards lived for several days with a bullet through his brain; he
was apparently unconscious or semi-conscious and struggled so
desperately to remove the bandages from his head that it took three
orderlies to hold him down. When he died the wounded soldier next him
burst into tears.
Amongst some cases peculiarly interesting from a medical point of view
was that of a Highlander who had three of his fingers shot off with the
result that his arm and side were paralysed; in another case a bullet
tore its way through and across the crown of a soldier's head and caused
paralysis of the opposite side of the body. Another man had, so it was
said, been hit on the shoulder; the bullet passed right through his body
piercing his lungs and intestines and coming out at the thigh. Yet,
strange to say, the poor fellow was in excellent spirits and complained
only of slight pain in the abdomen.
There was one death at Magersfontein which seemed especially painful to
ourselves. It was that of a young officer in the Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders who, after the fight on the Modder, came into our train and
had a kindly word for every one of his wounded men; he walked along the
wards shaking hands with them and giving them little money presents as
he passed. His voice was full of sympathy, and at length he broke down
utterly in his compassion for some of their terrible wounds. His tears
did him credit, and we heard with genuine sorrow that he had fallen at
Magersfontein. So good a man was indeed worthy of a longer life and a
kindlier fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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