[Illustration: FOR THE GREATER COMFORT OF THE WOUNDED. The McCormack-Brook wheeled stretcher-carriage is largely used in South Africa.] [Sidenote: [JAN. 6-9, 1900.] [Sidenote: Heroes in rags.] [Sidenote: Mud everywhere.] [Sidenote: JAN. 9, 1900.] _Composition of the Second and Fifth Divisions._] On the 6th the base hospitals at Pietermaritzburg had been cleared of the wounded; on the 8th the Frere hospitals were likewise emptied, and that evening 700 civilian stretcher-bearers, or "body-snatchers" as they were called by the troops, arrived at the front. They were a nondescript lot of men, ill-clad, poorly-shod, but, as their deeds upon the battlefield showed time and time again, surpassingly brave. For them there were no laurels, no honours, no mentions in despatches, not even the _gaudium certaminis_ which so often paralyses the sense of fear. Yet they did their duty and something more; with placid devotion they followed the fighting line, and many of them laid down their lives in noble efforts to succour the wounded and dying. All honour, then, to this ragged corps! In the last few days torrents of rain and continual thunderstorms had made of the veldt a morass, of the roads bottomless sloughs of despond, and of the spruits and watercourses, which furrowed the country side, roaring torrents; but the plight of Ladysmith admitted of no excuses or delays. On January 9, at last, the advance began. From Estcourt, Sir Charles Warren's Division pushed forward to Frere, after a terrible march through the mud, and slush, and tropical rain. "The hills," writes Mr. Atkins, the _Manchester Guardian's_ correspondent, "seemed to melt down like tallow under heat; the rain beat the earth into liquid, and the thick, earthy liquid ran down in terraced cascades.... From Estcourt to Frere the division waded, sliding, sucking, pumping, gurgling through the mud: the horses floundered or tobogganed with all four feet together; the waggons lurched axle-deep into heavy sloughs and had to be dragged out with trebled teams of oxen." "Crossing the swollen spruits was fearful," writes an officer. "At one place my horse fell and I went into the water head over heels and had to swim. The whole veldt was one sea of deep, slushy mud." At one point a strange river appeared--a roaring torrent of a few hours' growth--and checked the column. An engineer officer sounded and reported ten feet. The pontoons were called for, when a bold colonial rode up, looked at the stream, spurred his horse in, and quietly sped across. As the rest of the column followed him, there were many jests at the expense of the engineer officer. The men had a miserable bivouac that night at Frere, where most of the wet soldiers had to lie out in the mud. Yet the men bore the discomfort cheerfully, with the spirit of Mark Tapley, and made the best of a bad job. [Illustration: [_Photo by Middlebrook._ HOW THE MOUNTAIN BATTERY IS CARRIED.