With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train

by Ernest Nathaniel Bennett

The run from De Aar to Belmont is about 100 miles. The ambulance train arrived there on the evening of the battle, and the staff on board found plenty of work ready for them. The wounded men were all placed together in a large goods' shed at the station. They lay as they were taken from the field by the stretcher-bearers. Lint and bandages had been applied, but, of course, uniforms, bodies and even the floor were saturated with blood. Such spectacles are not pleasing, but nobody ever thinks about the unaesthetic side of the picture when busily engaged in helping the wounded. "The gentleman in khaki," poor fellow, has often precious little khaki left on him by the time he reaches the base hospital. When the femoral artery is shot through one does not waste time by thinking of the integrity of a pair of trousers—a few rips of the knife and away goes a yard or two of khaki. If the cases had not been so sad we should often have laughed at the extraordinary appearance of some of the men. One soldier, for example, was brought into our train with absolutely nothing on him except one sleeve, which he seemed to treasure for the sake of comparative respectability! Wounded men frequently lose so much blood before they are found that their clothes become quite stiff, and the best thing to do is to cut the whole uniform off them and wrap them in blankets.

Perhaps it is worth while writing a few words about the general method pursued in the collection and treatment of our wounded men. In a frontal attack upon a position held in force by the enemy, our men advance in "quarter column," or other close formation, till they get within range of the enemy's fire. They then "extend," i.e., every man takes up his position a few paces away from his neighbour, and in all probability lies or stoops down behind whatever he can find, at the same time keeping up an incessant riflefire on the enemy. Far behind him, and usually on his right or left, the artillerymen are hard at work sending shell after shell upon the trenches in front. Every now and then the infantrymen run or crawl forward fifty or sixty yards, and thus gradually forge ahead till within two hundred yards of the enemy, when with loud cheers and fixed bayonets they leap up and rush forward to finish off the fight with cold steel.

Even from this skeleton outline it is easy to see that the wounded in a battle like Belmont and Graspan are all over the place, though the motionless forms grow more numerous the nearer we get to the enemy's lines. Now, strictly speaking, stretcher-bearers ought not to move forward to the aid of the wounded during the battle. The proper period for this work is two hours after the cessation of hostilities. But in almost every engagement of the present campaign our stretcher-bearers with their officers have gallantly advanced during the progress of the fighting and attended to the wounded under fire. Such plucky conduct as this merits the warmest praise. In the non-combatant, who has none of the excitement bred of actual fighting to sustain him, it requires a high decree of courage to kneel or stoop when every one else is lying down, and in this exposed position first to find the tiny bullet puncture, and then bandage the wound satisfactorily. Many and many a life has been saved by this conduct on the part of our medical staff, for if an important artery is severed by a bullet or shell-splinter a man may easily bleed to death in ten minutes. I have myself on one occasion in Crete seen jets of blood escaping from the femoral artery of a Turkish soldier, without being able to render him any assistance. In short, it is believed that quite three-fifths of those who perish on a battle-field die from loss of blood. In some cases a soldier may, by digital pressure or by improvising a rough tourniquet, check the flow of blood from a wound, but the nervous prostration which accompanies a wound inflicted by a bullet travelling nearly 2,000 feet a second is so great, that most men seriously wounded are physically incapable of rendering such assistance to themselves, even if they understand the elementary amount of anatomy requisite for the treatment.

At the same time it is only fair to point out that stretcher-bearers who advance during an engagement and render this gallant assistance to the wounded do so entirely at their own risk and must take their chance of getting hit. Complaints have been from time to time made, by persons who did not know the circumstances, that our stretcher-bearers have been shot by the Boers. If this took place during an action no blame can fairly attach to the enemy, for in repelling an attack they cannot of course be expected to cease fire because stretcher-bearers show themselves in front. The hail of bullets comes whistling along—ispt, ispt, ispt—and everywhere little jets of sand are spurting up. Can we wonder if now and then a stretcher-bearer is struck down? To put the case frankly—he is doing a brave work, but he has no business to be where he is. It is easy to see why the usages of war do not permit the presence of ambulance men in the firing line. Quite apart from the serious losses incurred by so valuable a corps, advantage might be taken by an unscrupulous enemy to bring up ammunition under cover of the Red Cross.

It is no easy task in the dark or in a fading light to find the khaki-clad figures lying prone upon the brown sand. But when the wounded are discovered the ambulance man finds out as quickly as he can the position and nature of the wound, and a "first aid" bandage or a rough splint is applied. The sufferer is raised carefully upon a stretcher or carried off in an ambulance waggon to a "dressing-station" somewhere in the rear. If there are not enough stretchers, or the wound is merely a slight one, the disabled soldier is borne away on a seat made of the joined hands of two bearers. A second row of ambulance waggons is loaded from the dressing-station—each waggon holds nine—and goes lumbering off to the field hospital. Here the men are laid on the ground with perhaps a waterproof sheet under them and a blanket over them. The R.A.M.C. officers come round, select certain cases for operation, and see to the bandaging and dressing of the others. Finally one of the ambulance trains arrives, about 120 men are packed in it and it steams off rapidly to some base hospital at Orange River, De Aar, Wynberg or Rondebosch.

Any detailed account of Lord Methuen's battles lies outside the scope of this little volume, and the British public know already practically all that can be known about the general plan of such engagements as Belmont, Graspan and Modder River.

Belmont is an insignificant railway station lying in the middle of as dreary a bit of veldt as can well be imagined. A clump of low kopjes run almost parallel to the railway on the right, and to ascend these hills our men had to advance over an absolutely level plain devoid of any cover save an occasional big stone or an anthill (precarious rampart!) or the still feebler shelter of a bush two feet high. In their transverse march our men had to cross the railway, and lost considerably during the delay occasioned by cutting the wire fences on either side to clear a way for themselves and the guns.

The Boers did not apparently intend to make any serious stand against Lord Methuen's column at Belmont. The fight was little else than an "affair of outposts" on their side and it seems very doubtful if more than 800 of the enemy had been left for the defence of the position. Their horses were all ready, as usual, behind the kopjes, and when our gallant men jumped up with a cheer and for the last 100 yards dashed up the rough stony slope in front, very few Boers remained. Most of them were already in the saddle, galloping off to Graspan, their next position. The unwounded Boers who did remain remained—nearly all of them—for good; rifle bullets and shrapnel and shell splinters are deadly enough, but deadliest of all is the bayonet thrust. So much tissue is severed by the broad blade of the Lee-Metford bayonet that the chances of recovery are often very slight. As volunteer recruits know sometimes to their cost, the mere mishandling of a bayonet at the end of a heavy rifle may, even amid the peaceful evolutions of squad drill, inflict a painful wound. When the weapon is used scientifically with the momentum of a heavy man behind it, its effects are terrible. Private St. John of the Grenadiers thrust at a Boer in front of him with such force that he drove not only the bayonet, but the muzzle of the rifle clean through the Dutchman. St. John was immediately afterwards shot through the head and lay dead on the top of the kopje, side by side with the man he had killed.

When our train, after its journey to Capetown, next returned to Belmont, few signs of the recent engagement were visible. The strands of wire fencing on either side the line were cut through here and there, and twisted back several yards where our fifteen-pounders had been galloped through to shell the retreating Boers. Now and again the eye was caught by little heaps of cartridge cases marking the spot where some soldier had lain down.

Less pleasant reminiscences were furnished by the decomposing bodies of several mules, and four or five vultures wheeling over the plain. Some enthusiasts on our train had on the previous journey cut off several hoofs from the dead mules as relics of the fight. Our under-cook had secured a more agreeable souvenir of Belmont in the shape of a small goat found wandering beside the railway. This animal now struts about a garden in Capetown with a collar suitably inscribed around its neck, and the proud owner has refused a £10 note for it. Before their abandonment of the position the enemy had hurriedly buried a few of their dead, but it is very difficult to dig amongst the stones and boulders, and the interment was so inadequate that hands and feet were protruding from the soil. In fact several of our men whose patrol-beat covered this ground told me it was terribly trying to walk among these rough and ready graves in the heat of the day.