August 27.—Monday.—My foot gets on very slowly. Veldt-sores, as they are called, are very common out here, as though you may be perfectly well, as I am, the absence of fresh food makes any scratch fester. Most entertaining talks with the other chaps in the tent. The Captain has been several times, and brought papers.
August 28.—This is a very free-and-easy field hospital; no irksome regulations, and restrictions, and inspections. A doctor comes round in the morning and looks at each of us. The dressings are done once in twenty-four hours by an orderly. He is a very good chap, but you have to keep a watchful eye on him, and see that he doesn't put the same piece of lint on twice; yet you must be very tactful in suggestions, for an orderly is independent, and has the whip-hand. An officer walks round again in the evening, pretty late, and says he supposes each of us feels better. This very much amused me at first, but, after all, it roughly hit off the truth. We are nearly all slight cases. Meals come three times a day, and otherwise we are left to ourselves. The food might, I think, be better and more plentiful. I have had the privilege of hearing Tommy's opinions on R.A.M.C. orderlies, and also those of an R.A.M.C. orderly on Tommy, or perhaps rather on his own status and grievances in general. Inside the tent Tommy was free and unequivocal about the whole tribe of orderlies, the criticism culminating in a ghoulish story from my right-hand neighbour, told in broadest Yorkshire, about one in Malta, "who stole the — boots off the — corpse in the — dead-'ouse." Outside the tent a communicative orderly poured into my ear the tale of Paardeberg, and its unspeakable horrors, the overwork and exhaustion of a short-handed medical corps, the disease and death in the corps itself, etc. I conclude that in such times of stress the orderly has a very bad time, but that with a column having few casualties and little enteric, like this, he is uncommonly well off. His class has done some splendid work, which Tommy sometimes forgets, but it must be remembered that it had to be suddenly and hurriedly recruited with untrained men from many outside sources, some of them not too suitable. My impression is that they want more supervision by the officers. The latter, in this hospital, are, when we see them, very kind, and certainly show the utmost indulgence in keeping off duty men who are not feeling fit for work.
[ CHAPTER XI. ]
HOSPITAL.
August 29.—Suddenly told we were all to go to Pretoria by train, railway being just open, it seems. I am disgusted with the slowness of my foot, and at being separated from the Battery. It goes to-morrow back to Pynaar's River, and then joins a flying column of some sort.
August 30.—I write lying luxuriously on a real spring-mattress bed, between real sheets, having just had my fill of real bread and real butter, besides every comfort, in a large marquee tent, with a wooden floor, belonging to the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital, Pretoria. I landed in this haven at four o'clock this morning, after a nightmare of a journey from Warm Baths. We left there about 2.30 P.M. yesterday, after long delays, and then a sudden rush. Williams came over to say good-bye, and the Captain, Lieutenant Bailey and Dr. Thorne; also other fellows with letters, and four of our empty cartridges as presents for officers of the Irish Hospital in Pretoria. We were put into a truck already full of miscellaneous baggage, and wedged ourselves into crannies. It was rather a lively scene, as the General was going down by the same train, and also Baden-Powell on his way home to England. The latter first had a farewell muster of his men, and we heard their cheers. Then he came up to the officers' carriage with the General. I had not seen him before, and was chiefly struck by his walk, which had a sort of boyish devil-may-care swing in it, while in dress he looked like an ordinary trooper, a homely-looking service jersey showing below his tunic. As the train steamed out we passed his troops, drawn up in three sides of a square facing inwards, in their shirt-sleeves. They sent up cheer after cheer, waving their hats to Baden-Powell standing on the gangway. Then the train glided past camps and piles of stores, till the last little outpost with its wood fire was past, and on into the lonely bush. It was dark soon, and I lay on my back among sacks, rifles, kit-bags, etc., looking at the stars, and wondering how long this new move would keep me from the front. We stopped many times, and at Hamman's Kraal took aboard some companies of infantry. At intervals down the line we passed little posts of a few men, sentries moving up and down, and a figure or two poring over a pot on a fire. About midnight, after a rather uneasy slumber, I woke in Pretoria. Raining. With the patient, sheep-like passivity that the private soldier learns, we dragged ourselves and our kit from place to place according to successive orders. A friendly corporal carried my kit-sack, and being very slow on my feet, we finally got lost, and found ourselves sitting forlornly on our belongings in the middle of an empty, silent square outside the station (just where we bivouacked a fortnight ago). However, the corporal made a reconnaissance, while I smoked philosophical cigarettes. He found the rest in a house near by, and soon we were sitting on the floor of a room, in a dense crowd, drinking hot milk, and in our right minds; sick or wounded men of many regiments talking, sleeping, smoking, sighing, and all waiting passively. A benevolent little Scotch officer, with a shrewd, inscrutable face, and smoking endless cigarettes, moved quietly about, counting us reflectively, as though we were a valuable flock of sheep. We sat here till about 2.30 A.M., when several waggons drove up, into which we crowded, among a jumble of kit and things. We drove about three miles, and were turned out at last on a road-side, where lanterns and some red-shawled phantoms were glimmering about. We sat in rows for some time, while officers took our names, and sorted us into medical and surgical classes. Then a friendly orderly shouldered my kit and led me into this tent. Here I stripped off everything, packed all my kit in a bundle, washed, put on a clean suit of pyjamas, and at about 4 A.M. was lying in this delicious bed, dead-beat, but blissfully comfortable. Oddly, I couldn't sleep, but lay in a dreamy trance, smoking cigarettes, with a beatific red-caped vision hovering about in the half light. Dawn and the morning stir came, with fat soft slices of fresh bread and butter and tea. I have been reading and writing all day with every comfort. The utter relaxation of mind and limb is a strange sensation, after roughing it on the veldt and being tied eternally to two horses.
There are twelve beds in this tent, and many regiments are represented among the patients; there is an Imperial Light Horse man, who has been in most of the big fights, a mercurial Argyll and Sutherland Highlander, with a witty and voluble tongue; men of the Wilts, Berks, and Yorks regiments, and in the next bed a trooper of the 18th Hussars, who was captured at Talana Hill in the first fight of the war, had spent seven months at Waterval in the barbed-wire cage which we saw, and two since at the front. It was under his bed that the escape-tunnel was started. He gave me an enthusiastic account of the one "crowded hour of glorious life" his squadron had had before they were captured. They got fairly home with the steel among a party of Boers in the hills at the back of Dundee, and had a grand time; but soon after found themselves surrounded, and after a desperate fight against heavy odds the survivors had to surrender.
September 2.—Getting very hot. Foot slow. The reaction has run its course, and I am getting bored.
September 4.—Monday.—In the evening got a cable from "London," apparently meant for Henry (my brother), saying "How are you?" and addressed to "Hospital, Pretoria." Is he really here, sick or wounded? Or is it a mistake for me, my name having been seen in a newspaper and mistaken for his? I have heard nothing from him lately, but gather that his corps, Strathcona's Horse, is having a good deal to do in the pursuit of Botha, Belfast way.
September 5.—Got the mounted orderly to try and find out about Henry from the other hospitals (there are many here), but, after saying he would, he has never turned up and can't be found. There are moments when one is exasperated by one's helplessness as a private soldier, dependent on the good-nature of an orderly for a thing like this.