For it's apt to raise anger and pique.
(With apologies to the Authors.)
XXXII
Pinetown, Natal,
July 1900.
Since my last letter we have had a good many changes of patients, some being sent back to the front, and others going home by various hospital ships. It is so nice to see some who were carried in desperately ill, able to march down to the train so cheery and bright, and tremendously grateful.
We sent thirty home by the H.S. Dunera last month, and were just hoping to have time to breathe, and to get the sheets and blankets washed, when we had a wire to tell us to expect seventy-five more; so we had a scramble to get the beds and bedding ready for them, and they nearly filled us up; but they were not quite such a bad lot as our previous batches had been, and there were a good many wounded by way of a change.
We were still short-handed, so had to do a good deal of sorting of patients; turning some wards into convalescent wards, that needed only occasional visits from a sister, and no night orderlies—a sergeant patient being made responsible for good order in the ward.
Several of the orderlies are still ill: the mess-room man has had a relapse, and will not be fit for work for some time; the second compounder has also been very bad with typhoid—delirious for more than a week—but I think he will do all right now; it has been awkward, as the first compounder can only just crawl about after his spell of illness.