[Dec. 15, 1899
Within the tents the surgeons plied their work of merciful cruelty. "Each of the three operating tents," says Sir William McCormac, "contained two operating tables, and as fast as a patient was taken off the table another took his place. Awaiting their turn, the wounded were lying outside in rows, which were being continually augmented by the civilian bearers coming in from the field. As each wounded man reached the hospital he was served with a hot cup of Bovril, large cans of which were boiling outside the tents. The way in which the wounded had been dressed on the field, and each man ticketed with the nature of his wound, his name, and regiment, was excellent, and was very useful for identification. This also saved much time at the field hospitals, because the seriously wounded could be at once discriminated from the more trivial cases.... The praise of the regimental officers and men in respect to the way in which the Royal Army Medical Corps had done their duty under heavy fire was unanimous and unstinted. An officer of the Devons, wounded in the foot, told me that he managed to get to a hut near the bank of the river, which was being used as a dressing station. This hut was continually under heavy fire, and he described the behaviour of the medical officers as magnificent.... The work performed in the operating tents was, in my opinion, of great efficiency, the operations being deliberately carried out with skill and despatch under the very trying circumstances of intense heat, hurry, and excitement all round. The Royal Army Medical Corps officers of these hospitals had started their surgical work about 3 a.m., and when I visited them in the evening they were still hard at it, having had no food meanwhile and no time for rest, and the work went on for hours afterwards. Altogether some 800 patients passed through the field hospitals during the day. The men showed the utmost pluck and endurance."
THE FATAL TELEGRAM: "KILLED IN ACTION."
And yet in the midst of the scene of suffering and sorrow one thing consoles the heart. Why was it that these men faced these frightful conditions and endured the rain of bullets and shrapnel and shell splinters? Was it not because of their faith in those unseen things for which the Christian martyr of old laid down his life? The martyr died for God; these men were ready to endure all things for duty and for their country. Of such motives the Englishman rarely speaks. Yet in the heart of the nation "there is an instinctive recognition that a man's part is not to shirk the hardships or escape from the sorrows of life." It was this recognition that had brought thousands of men—"duke's son, cook's son, son of a belted earl"—of their own free will thousands of miles across the sea to lay down their lives in the flower of their age.
Impressions of an eye-witness.
Dec. 15, 1899.] Our Wounded Well-treated by the Boers.
The impression produced upon spectators by the fight is thus described by one who was present, not as a correspondent or combatant. "X and I," he writes, "were present through that massacre of our poor brave troops and volunteers at Colenso on Friday; on the battlefield, within the lines actually. Shells burst within a thousand yards of us. We saw the dead and wounded carried away till cart after cart was full to heartbreaking overflowing. The wonderful artillery practice and the roar and rattle of rifles, Hotchkiss, Maxims, and cannon, up to the great earth-rending lyddite death-dealers, kept us in a state of excited enthusiasm. X had nightmare, as you may imagine, that night, and details of the scenes we witnessed must have been sickening enough reading for you. If this was only a 'reconnaissance in force,' what must a battle be?... I often feel as if I were out of my mind, or in some dream or other state, for it is all bewildering and stupefying, and this intense heat in any case grievously affects me. No rain, no cessation of its suffocating fury night or day. How can the troops endure it?"
HOSPITAL COOKS PREPARING BEEF-TEA.