“These two men together, one man working whilst the other fought and held the enemy at bay with his bayonet, broke through three more partitions, and were thus enabled to bring eight Patients through a small window into the inner line of defence.
“In another ward facing the hill, William Jones and Private Robert Jones had been placed: they defended their post to the last, and until six out of seven Patients it contained had been removed. The seventh, Sergeant Maxfield, 2/24th Regiment, was delirious from fever, and although they had previously dressed him, they were unable to induce him to move; and when Private Robert Jones returned to endeavour to carry him off, he found him being stabbed on his bed by the Zulus.
“Corporal Wm. Allen and Fd. Hitch, 2/24th Regiment, must also be mentioned. It was chiefly due to their courageous conduct that communication with the Hospital was kept up at all—holding together, at all costs, a most dangerous post, raked in reverse by the enemy’s fire from the hill. They were both severely wounded, but their determined conduct enabled the Patients to be withdrawn from the Hospital. And when incapacitated from their wounds from fighting themselves, they continued, as soon as their wounds were dressed, to serve out ammunition to their comrades throughout the night.”
These men who were defending the house at Rorke’s Drift were 120 of his (Col. Degacher’s) men against 5000 Zulus, and they fought from 3 P.M. of January 22nd, to 5 A.M. of the 23rd. There is a Night Nurse’s work for you. “When shall such heroes live again?” In every Nurse of us all. Every Nurse may at all costs serve her Patients as these brave heroic men did at the risk and the cost of their own lives.
Three cheers for these bravest of Night Nurses of Rorke’s Drift, who regarded not themselves, not their ease, not even their lives; who regarded duty and discipline; who stood to the last by God and their neighbour; who saved their post and their Patients. And may we Nurses all be like them, and fight through the night for our Patients’ lives—fight through every night and day!
Do you see what a high feeling of comradeship does for these men? Many a soldier loses his life in the field by going back to help a drowning or a wounded comrade, who might have saved it. Oh, let us Nurses all be comrades; stick to the honour of our flag and our corps, and help each other to the best success, for the sake of Him who died, as at this time, to save us all!
And let us remember that petty selfishnesses and meannesses and self-indulgences hinder our honour as good soldiers of Jesus Christ and of the Unseen God, who sees all these little things when no one else does!
What makes us endure to the end? Discipline. Do you think these men could thus have fought at a desperate post through the livelong night if they had not been trained to obedience to orders, and to acting as a corps, yet each man doing his own duty to the fullest extent—rather than every man going his own way, thinking of his own likings, and caring for himself?
How great may be men and women, “little lower than the angels,” and also how little!
Humility—to think our own life worth nothing except as serving in a corps, God’s nursing corps, unflinching obedience, steadiness, and endurance in carrying out His work—that is true discipline, that is true greatness, and may God give it to us Nurses, and make us His own Nurses.