Then a kind sergeant-major helped me to get our baggage on to a trolley and take it up to the medical store, where it would be quite safe; and after that I went up to see some friends on the Berea, and they most kindly took me in.
From them I learnt many things; amongst others, that our old hospital had been turned into a Rest Camp of 300 beds, and that they thought we were to have the chance of going back there, but, for various reasons, they strongly advised us not to do so if we could avoid it; that our late medical officers had already been sent farther up-country (we had hoped to work for them again, but did not succeed in doing so).
On Sunday morning I went to report "ourselves" to Major ——, and he was very pleasant and kind, wanted to hear all about our voyage home, &c., and asked me where we wanted to go? So I told him "as near up to the front as we could get"; then he told me that the order from the Natal P.M.O. was for us to return to Pinetown, but if I liked he would wire to him to ask him to let us go up-country, and that we could stay with our friends till he got a reply.
I had a quiet Sunday in Durban, meeting many friends, and going to church in the evening.
The next morning I met Sister at the station, and the first thing she said to me (before I could tell her the orders) was, "Sister, I won't go to Pinetown, I would rather resign, if they want to send us there." So then I told her that our fate was waiting on a wire from the P.M.O.; and as we walked along to the office she told me a good deal of what she had heard about Pinetown—of course we can scarcely judge how much of it is really true, but at any rate it appears that some of the sisters now there seem to think that they have come out to South Africa only to enjoy themselves, and that they are setting about it in a way which no lady would care to emulate.
It was rather strange that we should both have received the same advice from quite different sources: "Don't go there."
Together we went to the office, and stayed there some time, but no wire had come; they thought we should probably go somewhere by the 6 P.M. mail train. We were advised to take some food if we went up, as meals on the way were uncertain. So I stocked my tea-basket, and bought some potted meat, &c., in case we went.
All day we had to hover near the office or within sound of the telephone, and at 5 P.M. a wire came for us to go up to No. — General Hospital by the mail train.
One of the medical officers kindly helped us to get our baggage to the station, and secured a carriage for us.
It is always a shaky journey up from Durban, but we got some sleep, and the next morning, when we were having breakfast at Glencoe, we were delighted to meet Major ——, of the Royal Engineers, an old patient of ours, who has done splendid work up this side; he was going down to Ladysmith.