A Nurse's Life in War and Peace

by E. C. Laurence

The doctors told us that four of these patients could not live through the first night (several of them had severe hæmorrhage), but they all struggled through that night, and it was a week later when one poor fellow of the Royal Artillery slipped through our fingers from sheer exhaustion, without ever having become conscious. His mates told us that he had been in a hospital previously with a sunstroke, and had been down with typhoid for some time before he arrived here.

I can't describe the condition of these men; they have not had their clothes off for weeks, creeping things are numerous, but we are getting them clean by degrees. Those who have been ill some time have sore backs—I can't say "bed-sores," as they have had no beds.

Many of them have come from Elandslaagte, and I believe they are very short of both milk and water up there—none of the latter for washing purposes.

Several of the men had been with us over a week before they became conscious of their surroundings at all; but in the case of those who were conscious, the comforts of a good bed, and a good wash, brought tears of gratitude to their eyes. With many of them it was months since they had slept in a bed: few have done so since they landed in this country, and some of them seem such boys to have gone through so much.

I spent a good deal of my time at first helping the sister in the officers' ward, getting her patients washed and made comfortable, and it was most piteous to see these young fellows—most of them, probably, brought up in luxury—so wasted and thin, and so grateful for the little that we could spare time to do for their comfort.

Lieutenant —— had been laid up for two months with a bullet in the groin, and is now very ill again with typhoid.

Captain ——, of the R.A.M.C., had been all through the siege of Ladysmith, and had typhoid up there; now he has liver trouble and looks wretchedly ill; I fancy he will have to go home for operation.

Captain ——, of the Royal Artillery, was the worst case of typhoid amongst the officers, for some time his temperature persisting in keeping up to 105 and 106, and he was very delirious; he was always thinking he could see parties of Boers, and he told me I was the worst scout he had ever come across, as I did not see them. He is doing well now.

Lieutenant ——, of the Army Service Corps, had been ill for four weeks with typhoid before he was landed here (still with a very high temperature). He told me that no less than five times had he been moved on a stretcher, from one place to another, as his regiment shifted about, and he said that the order to move always seemed to come in the evening, when his temperature was at its highest, and he was feeling so bad, that at last he begged them to leave him behind to die; they had never been able to give him suitable food, and often not enough of unsuitable, and when at last he got to the line he had 280 miles of jolting over a single-line rail, before he reached us—such treatment for a case that, at home, we should be almost afraid to lift from one bed to another! But he is really mending now, and I hope we shall soon be able to send him home to recruit.