Towards the end of September I again got into harness, worked for about a fortnight, and then knocked up with acute neuritis in my head, with herpes, &c. I was cross, but the pain in my head was too bad for me to worry about anything else. I was warded in a medical ward, given big doses of morphia at pretty frequent intervals, and generally fussed over, as I had the honour of being a "very interesting and unusual case." When my head got better the pain started down my legs—sciatica—so they kept me in bed for some time, and when I got up I was rather a wreck, and they said I must go south; so once more I went off to stay with some relations near Southampton, and it was the middle of November before I eventually got back to work. Just fancy having to take from May to November to get over scarlet fever and its effects, especially when the fever lasted only about a couple of days. Of course every one who came to see me after I got back, wanted to know how long I had been at work, as they supposed I should be sent off duty for something else before I had worked a fortnight!
While I was down near Southampton, I went once or twice to the docks to see the first troops going off to South Africa. The men looked very fit and trim in their new khaki suits, but they were very tight packed on the troopships and liners. One day I saw the Kildonan Castle off with 2400 men on board; crowds of people to see them off, and such cheering and singing of "Auld Lang Syne" and "God Save the Queen." Some of them looked such boys to go out and rough it at the front, and it is sad to think that they can't all come back—one wonders how many?
I wish I could go too. Opinions seem divided as to whether the war will soon be over or not.
XXV
R.M.S. "Tantallon Castle,"
March 1900.
I couldn't stand it any longer; all my friends were going off to the front; and, though many people said the war would be over before they landed, we kept hearing accounts of how bad the enteric was, and that the nurses were being overworked, so I felt I must at least offer to lend a hand.
I was afraid if I sent in my papers in the ordinary way I might get sent to a home station to free some Army Sister to go out, and that would not have suited me at all, so I thought I would go down to the War Office, and see for myself if I could get sent to the front.
About the middle of January I boldly went down and asked to see the Secretary of the Army Medical Department. I quite expected to be told I could not do so without an appointment, but I think the orderly must have thought I had an appointment, for he showed me into a waiting-room, and there a strange thing happened: there were several people waiting, and amongst them a gentleman whose face I thought I knew, but I could not remember where I had met him before. After a few minutes he came up to me and said, "I think you are Miss L.?" and I said I had been trying to think whether we had met before, and where? and then he reminded me of how we had travelled down the Nile on the same post boat in 1898, and had talked of South Africa then, as he knew of my brother out there. Then he said, "But what do you want here?" and I replied, "Like every one else, I want to get sent out to the Cape." After he had meditated for a few minutes he said, "Well, I'm offering to give them a field hospital of one hundred beds, and to run it for three months at the Cape. If they accept it, will you go with it?" Of course I said I would like a shot; and then he was sent for to see the Secretary, and I waited and waited, and thought he must have forgotten all about me; but at last an orderly came to say, "The Secretary wished to see Miss ——," and the people who had been waiting longer than I had glared at me, as I was escorted to the Secretary's room.