While the train was being loaded the nurses waited at the hotel or store. The hotel, a little unpretending bungalow, represented one of the three or four dwellings which made up the settlement of Frere. It was kept by Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, to whose hospitality we were, on this and other occasions, much indebted. Mr. Wilson and his family were excellent representatives of the many sturdy and loyal colonists who are to be found throughout Natal. When the Boers approached Frere they were compelled to fly to the south, and when they returned to what had once been a home, they found such a wreck of a house as only Boers can effect. Everything had been looted that could be looted, and what could not be removed had been ruthlessly broken up. Even the books in the ample book-case had been torn to pieces. The empty rooms were filled with filth and wreckage, and nothing had escaped the obscene hands of these malicious marauders. Every cupboard had been torn open and, if possible, torn down; every drawer had been rifled of its contents; and on the floor, among fragments of broken chairs and crockery and discarded articles of clothing, would be found a photograph of a child, trampled out of recognition, or some small keepsake which had little value but its associations. The Boers, indeed, do not stop at mere looting, but mark their visits by fiendish malice and by a savage mischievousness which would not be unworthy of an escaped baboon.
The train carrying the hospital and its possessions moved on to Frere Station, where it took up the equipment of officers and men. There was a passenger carriage with one compartment in which were accommodated the nurses and three others. The officers, sergeants, and orderlies rode on the piles of baggage which filled the open trucks.
The day was blazing hot, and thirst proportionate. The heat oppressed one with the sense of something that had weight. Any breeze that moved was heavy with heat.
At last we started for the actual front, full of expectancy and in the best of spirits. The distance to Chieveley is about seven miles across the veldt, across the trestle bridge, and past the wreck of the armoured train. The train moved up the incline to Chieveley very slowly, and as we approached the higher ground it struck us all that the incessant artillery and rifle firing, and the constantly repeated crack of the "pom-pom," were hardly consistent with the much-emphasised "walk-over."
Outside Chieveley Station, the station of which we were to see so much later on, the crawling train stopped, and a galloper came up with a message requesting me to go down to the battlefield at once. At the same time, Major Brazier-Creagh, who was in charge of the hospital train, and who was always as near the front as he could get, came up and told us that things were going badly at Colenso, that we had lost several guns, and that the wounded were coming in in scores.
V
THE HOSPITAL UNDER THE RIDGE
My wagon and mules were already at Chieveley when the train reached that place, and I was able to start for the scene of action without a moment's delay.
From Chieveley the grass-covered veldt slopes evenly to the Tugela and to Colenso village, which lies upon its southern bank. This slope, some few miles from Chieveley, is broken by a long ridge, upon which the 4.7 naval guns were placed. From this ridge the whole battlefield could be viewed.
Under the shelter of the ridge, and close to the great guns, four little field hospitals were pitched, and here I made my first acquaintance with the circumstances of war. Each field hospital would be represented by a small central marquee, which formed an operating and dressing station, and a number of bell tents around it, which would accommodate in all about one hundred patients.