A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

The docks were crowded with men, horses, and stores, all being disembarked, and sent up country as rapidly as possible.

I found my brother, who had been on circuit when the war began, and could not get back to his home at Kimberley. He had been for some time at the Cape, and was shortly going to England.

I met a good many friends in Cape Town; some from Kimberley who had come down to recruit after the siege. All the civilians whom I met from there were loud in their appreciation of Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the way he had worked for them and cheered them through the siege—his especial thoughtfulness for the women and children.

I took the sisters to see his beautiful house, Groot Schuur, and to tea with some old friends of mine at Kenilworth.

I was anxious to see all I could of the military hospitals and how they were managed, as I had had no experience of work for the army; but my first visit to a large Military General Hospital was not encouraging, as I thought the wards looked dirty and untidy to a degree; the men had portions of food left on their lockers from previous meals, and this food was covered with flies. Knowing how much enteric there was in the camp, this, I thought, a great source of danger. The men were cheery, as usual, but complained that sleep was difficult to obtain owing to the live-stock in the beds; in some of the wards the legs of the beds were placed in condensed milk tins (containing some disinfectant), but even this was not always successful.

Another day I visited the Portland Hospital, and found everything very trim and the men very comfortable; the sisters had very nice quarters; they seemed rather horrified to hear that we had not brought any English maids with us, as they said they could never get on without theirs in this savage land (four miles from Cape Town!); but I have had to do with servants out here before, and prefer to manage with natives.

I subsequently visited another large general hospital, and found it much better kept than the first one, and the patients more comfortable; so I conclude it depends on the head a good deal, and not so much on the system.

A party of wounded men came in while I was there, most of them convalescents, but a few looked rather bad, and it seemed to be a very long time before they were put to bed.

I also visited the Red Cross Depot, and saw a good many ladies at work packing bags for the ambulance trains—a suit of pyjamas, a sponge, a handkerchief, a little writing-paper and a pencil, &c., in each bag, which must be a most welcome present for a soldier straight from the veldt.

We re-embarked on the same ship on 24th March, and had a very rough trip up the coast, calling at Port Elizabeth and East London. At the latter place the weather was very hot with a cloudy sky, and all the officers were in their white suits, when we were suddenly struck by a tremendous rain-storm with thunder and lightning, and the wind howling in the rigging; they had no time to change out of their white clothes, and in a few minutes looked like drowned rats.