From Aldershot to Pretoria

by William E. Sellers

And now came the chaplains' work! It is not in the firing line that war seems the most dreadful. It is when the wounded are gathered from the field, and the results of the battle are seen in all their ghastliness. And in this case the wounded could not be tended where they were. It was onward, ever onward, with our men. Only two hospitals, instead of at least ten—the number the doctors thought necessary—had been sent to the front, and the wounded must be got back to base hospitals as quickly as possible.

Back they came, a ghastly procession, in heavy, lumbersome ox-waggons, with no cover from the sun or rain. Oh! the terrible jolting; oh! the screams of agony. 'Better kill us right out,' cried the men, 'than make us endure any more!'

It is not for us to say that all this was unnecessary. It is for others to judge. You cannot conduct war in picnic fashion. The country ought to know its horrors and get its fill of them. But we will not attempt the description. Already others have done that. Suffice it to say that the baggage camp, in which were the chaplains and some of the doctors, seemed an oasis in the desert to these agonized travellers.

The day for parade services had gone by, and all days were now the same; but there was other work the chaplains could do, and this they attempted to the best of their ability.

The Rev. E.P. Lowry wrote:—

'Yesterday a long convoy arrived bearing over 700 sick and wounded men. They were brought, for the most part, over the rough roads in open waggons (captured from the Boers) from the fatal front, where days before they had been stricken more or less severely. They still had a long journey before them, and it so happened that they set out from here in the midst of a thunderstorm; but as I passed from one waggon to another I found them bearing their miseries as only brave men could. About 300 of them belonged to the unfortunate Highland Brigade. One of these had been shot through the wrist of his left hand at Magersfontein, and he was now returning shot through the wrist of his right hand. The next, said he, with gruesome playfulness, will be through the head. Corporal Evans, of the Gloucesters—one of two brothers whose name is much honoured at Aldershot—I found in the midst of this huge convoy stricken with dysentery. The Cornwalls seemed to have suffered almost as heavily in proportion as the Highlanders, and it was to me no small privilege to be permitted to speak a word of Christian solace and good cheer to men from my own county.

The Wounded Canadians.

'But I was struck most of all by the number of noble-looking Canadians among this big batch of wounded soldiers, all of them proudly glorying in being permitted to serve and suffer in the name of so great a Queen and in defence of so glorious an Empire. Among them I found Colour-Sergeant Thompson, the son of one of our American Methodist ministers, Rev. James Thompson. Resting against the inner side of a waggon-wheel was a most gentlemanly Canadian, shot through the throat, and quite unable to swallow any solids. To him, as to several others, I was privileged to carry a large cup of life-renewing milk. Lying on another waggon was a middle-aged Canadian, shot through the mouth, and apparently unable at present to swallow anything without pain; but he begged me, if possible, to buy for him some cigarettes, that he might have the solace of a smoke. But there is nothing of any kind on sale within miles of this camp. Yet the cigarette, however, was not long sought in vain; and a word of Christian greeting was made none the less welcome by the gift. Lying by this man's side was a wounded French-Canadian, who could scarcely speak in English, but had come from far to defend the Empire which claimed him also as its loyal son; and yet another sufferer told me that he had come from Vancouver, a distance of 11,000 miles, to risk, or, if needs be, to lay down his life for her who is his Queen as well as ours. As in the name of the Motherland I thanked these men for thus rallying around our common flag in the hour of peril, and tenderly urged them to be as loyal to the Christ as to their Queen, the meaning look and hearty hand-grip spoke more eloquently to me than any words. In almost every case the responsive heart was there. Of these Canadians—the first contingent—our generals speak in terms of highest praise; but already some twenty have been killed and nearly seventy severely wounded. The Dominion mourns to-day her heroic dead as we mourn ours. They sleep side by side beneath these burning sands; but thus are forged the more than golden chains which bind the hearts of a widely-sundered race to the common throne around which we all are rallying.'[8]