A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

Then came the ructions, and now the sisters have to give everything, and I believe they are going to put on a third night sister, so I think things will go more smoothly in time.

The Lady Superintendent has only once been round my line since I have had charge of it.

I had a curious case the other day that gave us a good deal of anxiety—that of a young lance-corporal, who had been bad with malaria, but was better and able to sit up in bed. I left him one night very cheery and bright, and the next morning I happened to meet the night sister as she went off duty, and she said, "Oh, Sister, I forgot to report that that lance-corporal of yours in tent 3 did not seem so well, and he was sick this morning." I thought that I would go and look at him first instead of beginning my round in tent 1, and I was shocked to find the poor boy quite unconscious, and almost pulseless. Of course I sent for the doctor and got brandy, hot bottles, &c.; the doctor thought it was all up, but he injected strychnine; he said he thought it must have been typhoid and not malaria, and that this meant perforation. Anyhow, the boy began to revive; I hardly left him all day, but now I think I may say he is out of danger; I really think it was heart trouble, perhaps embolism, but I have seldom seen a man pull round after being as nearly gone as he was.

Of course you will have heard that the poor old Tantallon Castle, the ship on which we first came out, has gone down on Robben Island. The passengers and the mails were saved, and I was rejoiced when a nice, soft little blanket arrived that my people had sent out by her; I roll myself in it inside my sheets, and am much more comfortable.

It is a curious thing that so many ships in which I have travelled have gone to the bottom: I made one trip years ago up the coast on the Drummond Castle, and went down the coast on the Courland Castle; I also went home from Tenerife on the Fez—they have all gone down, and now the Tantallon Castle has shared their fate.

There was a big dance one night about three miles from here, to which twelve of the sisters went, and another night there were some theatricals. I daresay I am wrong, but somehow these festivities seem a little out of place while the war is still going on. Some of the sisters appear to think that they have come out here to have as much fun as they can get, and they talk about very little except the men they have been dancing with, and so on.

The wind has been tremendous lately, and four of the patients' tents have been blown to ribbons; we seem to spend most of our time on duty trying to keep the men's tents up (with not more of the gale than is absolutely necessary blowing round the bad cases), and most of our time off duty in attending to our own tent-pegs, &c. Of course wind here always means dust, and sometimes it seems as though the stones fly up and hit you in the face, and unless one takes great care the patients' milk is soon full of sand.

Really, if it was not that the men suffered for them, some of our difficulties would be amusing. When this hospital was a "Field Stationary" all the men had warm, grey flannel shirts; when it became a "General" they were given instead white cotton shirts and white flannel vests. That was all right at first, but recently the hospital has been enlarged, and, though there are plenty of the cotton shirts, they have run out of the flannel vests. Now the winter has begun, and we have many men in with rheumatism and chest complaints, and the tents are very cold, but the poor chaps are only given cotton shirts. I know there are plenty of the old "greybacks" in the store, but because this is now called a General Hospital they are not correct, and so cannot be issued, and the men must wait till more vests arrive! We have all fussed about it as much as we could, and we bought flannel shirts at the store for our worst cases (a man is always most grateful for an extra shirt to take with him when he goes away, so they won't be wasted), and now, at last, the old greybacks have been dealt out. At last they have got some boilers on wheels, so that we can get hot water in the tents; but why should we have to wrestle so long to get things that make so much difference to the health and the comfort of the men? The Lady Superintendent is always saying that she does not know how we should have done in Ladysmith; but we all reply that we should have tried to make shift, but we can't see why we should have to "make shift" here quite so much, with an open line to the base.

I do wonder when the war will be over: the poor Tommies are so heartily sick of it, and are beginning to try every means to get sent home; you see most of the excitement of war has pretty well worn off, and now they just have to keep on trekking about the country, destroying farms, and bringing in Boer women and children to the refugee camps. They generally collect more destitute people on the way than they reckoned for, and, as they have to feed them, the rations for the troops run short, and the men are cut down to half rations (and sometimes quarter rations); and some columns out this way have had nothing but "mealie meal" (Indian corn), and not too much of that, for some days before they got into camp. Sometimes they have been on such short rations that men have had to be punished for stealing their horses' rations of mealie meal. When they pass through a village, the first place they make for is the baker's shop, and it is very soon cleared, and you see the men going on with loaves slung around them, and rather in the way of their rifles. When you consider that they are generally marching all day in a hot sun, and that in summer the nights are often wet, and in winter they are generally frosty, and the men just have to lie down hungry on their mackintosh sheet (no tents), with their greatcoat and sometimes one blanket; that they hardly ever have a chance of shooting at a Boer, but are constantly being sniped at during the nights—is it any wonder that they are utterly weary of it all?

We have not heard so much about Boers being close around here since General Dartnell's column went through, and now the sisters are generally allowed to ride again.