A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

I shall be so glad when the men can get time to cut the long grass round the camp, as there are a good many snakes about (two have been killed quite near my room). We all wear canvas gaiters, as a sort of protection; but there are other weird creatures about, and one night a wire came from the next station to say that a leopard, or some such creature, had carried off a Kaffir baby, and we were to look out for the beast; so the men were much excited, but they have not seen anything of him.

Last Sunday was Easter Sunday, and the men had a much needed day of rest, but the sisters and officers went on most of the day unpacking and sorting the things most urgently needed. We knocked off in the evening, and went to service at the Pinetown church.

The next day (April 16th) we had started work as usual, when the Sergeant-major's whistle summoned all hands: a wire had come to say that a troop train had been thrown off the line about three miles from here.

The Major went off with the medical officers and orderlies, with stretchers. I provided them with brandy, water, a mug, a corkscrew, &c., and then hunted up some lint and bandages, and a few splints, and sent them after them.

Two or three orderlies who were sick in camp came down to see what the alarm meant, and wanted to go to help, but they did not look fit for a three miles' run in the burning sun, so I told them to collect all the natives who were left behind, and we made a hasty clearance of the building that was to be an officers' ward (temporarily used as a store-room). We set several boys to work to scrub the floor and clean the windows, while the orderlies fitted some beds together, and the sisters collected the bedding and made them up, and I got the most necessary ward fittings out of the store, so that when the stretcher party arrived we had quite a workable little surgical ward ready for them.

Two poor fellows had been killed, and fifteen mules were either dead or had to be shot; three men of the Army Service Corps were injured, one with a badly broken leg, and the others with concussion, &c., and two black mule-drivers had each a dreadfully smashed up arm. The Major had a tent pitched for these natives, not far from the ward. It is a wonder they were not killed, as they were in the same truck with the poor mules.

One sister and some orderlies were told off to look after these, our first, patients; and then we returned to our building occupations.

I did not put a night sister on for these few cases, but I take a prowl round some time during the night (the fleas always wake me up at least once, otherwise I am so tired I don't think I could wake myself), just to see that the orderlies are awake, and managing all right, and the medical officers go round the last thing before turning in, and we are all about by 6 A.M.

One of the injured A.S.C. men had been ill before he arrived here, and it looks as though he is in for typhoid.

Last night, after a more than usually scorching day, we had torrents of rain. The poor orderlies were washed out of their tents, and all their things were soaked. They are not used to roughing it, and don't enjoy it.