The Tale of a Field Hospital

by Frederick Treves

At daybreak on the morning of December 15th the Field Hospital was already astir. While it was yet dark the silence of the camp was broken in upon by the rousing of the orderlies, by much slapping upon the sides of silent tents, by much stumbling over darkened tent ropes, and by sudden calls of "Get up, you chaps," "Tumble out," "Chuck yourselves about." "Why don't you wake a man up?" cries out one peevish voice among the recently roused. "Why don't you make a noise?" says another in sleepy tones. "Is the whole camp afire and is the Boers on us, or is this your idea of calling a gentleman?" mutters a sarcastic man, as he puts his head out of the fly of his tent.

In a few minutes everyone in the camp is on the move, for there is little needed to complete a toilet beyond the tightening of a belt and the pulling on of a pair of boots. All are in the best of spirits, and the collecting together of goods and chattels and the preparing of a hurried breakfast proceed amidst infinite chatter and many camp pleasantries. We are at last on the move. We are the last to go. This is the day of the long expected battle, and we are to push on to the front. The real fighting is to begin, and there is not a man who is not possessed by the conviction that the Boers will to-day be swept from the Tugela--if they have not already fled--and that General Buller will have a "walk over."

One cannot but be reminded, many times since, that the advance to Ladysmith was always spoken of as a "walk over."

Moreover, everyone is glad to leave Frere--dreary, sweltering Frere. Since the column left it has become a waste of desolation; the very grass has been already worn away, and there is nothing but an expanse of bald earth, scarred with the landmarks of a camp that was, glistening with empty meat and biscuit tins which flash in the sun, and dotted over with a rabble of debris. The picturesque cavalry camp, with its rows of restless horses, is now only indicated by more or less formal lines of dirtier dirt. The avenues and squares of white tents are gone, and in their place is a khaki waste covered with the most melancholy of refuse.

At the outskirts of great towns there is usually, in a place or two, a desert plot of land marked off by disreputable relics of a fence and trodden into barren earth by innumerable untidy feet. If such a plot be diversified with occasional ash heaps, with derelict straw, and with empty tins and bottomless pots and pans, it will represent in miniature the great camp of Frere after the column had moved to the river.

Frere was indeed no longer Frere. It had become suddenly quiet, and the depressed garrison left behind were almost too listless to watch, with suitable jealousy, our preparations for departure.

On this particular morning the sun rose gloriously. Out of the gloom there emerged rapidly the grey heights of the far-off Drachenbergs, and as the light of the dawn fell full upon them, their ashen precipices and pinnacles became rose-coloured and luminous; and the terraces of green which marked the foot of each line of barren cliff seemed so near and so strangely lit that many a man, busy in the work of striking camp, stopped to gaze on these enchanted mountains. The whole range, however, looks chilled and barren--as barren, as solitary, as unearthly as the mountains of the moon.

Before the peaks of the Drachenbergs were well alight the boom of our great guns sounded with startling clearness, and it was evident that the prelude for the battle had begun.

In due course a train of goods wagons backed down to the side of the hospital. The tents and countless panniers, boxes, sacks, and miscellaneous chattels of the hospital were packed upon the trucks. Our instructions were to proceed by train to Colenso, and to there unload and camp. There was apparently no doubt but that the village by the Tugela would immediately be in our hands. Early rumours reached us, indeed, that the Boers had fled, and that no living thing was to be seen on the heights beyond the river. These rumours were soon to be discredited by the incessant roar of cannon, and later by the barking of the "pom-pom" and the minor patter of rifle firing.

Four nurses were to go with the train: the two who had accompanied me from London, Miss McCaul and Miss Tarr, and two army sisters from Netley, Sister Sammut and Sister Martin.