A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

He had a fine collection of shells and other relics; his cottage had been used by the Boers as a telegraph station, and we found he had been in the smash-up of the armoured train, when Winston Churchill was taken prisoner.

As Mrs. D. had her baby with her, and it was now a really bad dust-storm, this man kindly stopped a goods train with his red flag, and we returned comfortably to Colenso in the guard's van.

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.