From Aldershot to Pretoria

by William E. Sellers

Parade services in Ladysmith were difficult to hold. They were, however, held as regularly as possible. The chaplain would mount his horse about 4.45 a.m., and ride off to some distant post. For a quarter of an hour he would pray with and talk to the men, and then ride to another service at some further post. And so in the early morning he would conduct three or four different parades. 'Often,' says Mr. Hordern, 'they used to hold them in the trenches, so as to be out of reach of the Boer guns. All the men had their rifles, ready to rush to their posts at a moment's notice. Every Sunday there was a celebration of the Holy Sacrament in the open air, and I shall never forget the sight—the officers and men kneeling together, just leaving their rifles as they came up to communicate, and going back to their posts immediately afterwards. The Boers pretended never to fight on Sundays, but they could never trust them. One day they dropped eight shells into one of his cavalry parade services which was assembling. Although the Boers pretended to keep Sunday and not fire, yet some Monday mornings a new gun would open on them that was not in its position on the Saturday. That was one way of keeping Sunday.[16]

The English church was open for worship all through the siege. It was the only church not used as a hospital; but its windows being small and its roof low, it would not have made an ideal hospital, and it did splendid duty as a church. The other churches—the Wesleyan, Presbyterian, and Dutch Reformed—were gladly surrendered for hospital purposes, for there was all too little hospital accommodation, and all too great a need.

For the most part the chaplains spent their Sunday mornings in visiting their men, going from regiment to regiment, and speaking a word for Christ wherever possible.

As the months passed, and the Boer attentions became more personal and incessant, the troops at the front had to leave their huts or tents and sleep in the open, and everywhere tents, if used at night, were folded up by day, and the troops were left absolutely without cover through the terrible heat, except such as they could find behind rock, or bush, or tree.

Disease in Ladysmith.

And then came disease! Ladysmith had been singularly free from enteric before the war. The scourge of South Africa had passed it by. But it follows an army like an angel of destruction. For weeks its broad wings hovered above our troops, and then with fell swoop it descended.

Intombi Hospital Camp was formed right under the shadow of Mount Bulwane, and by an arrangement with the Boers one train per day to Ladysmith and back was allowed to run. It began with 250 patients, and at one time had as many as 1,900. The formation of the camp meant to some extent a division of Christian work. Messrs. Macpherson, Thompson, Owen S. Watkins, Cawood, and Hardy, together with Father Ford, remained in the town and camp. Messrs. Hordern, Tuckey, Pennington, and Murray, together with Father O'Donnell, the Roman Catholic chaplain, went to Intombi. Later on, when the hospital became so crowded that it was impossible for the enfeebled staff of chaplains to cope with the work, Mr. Macpherson joined them.

It is impossible to speak too highly of the heroism of these Intombi chaplains. At first it is hard for most men to face shot and shell, but there is always a thrill of excitement with it, and there is a strange fascination in danger of this kind, which has a weird charm all its own. But to face death in a great hospital camp such as this! To be all day and half the night visiting the sick and dying where there are no comforts, very little food, and the medicine has run short; to see that hospital steadily grow,—men on the bed-cots, men lying between them; to watch men struggling in the agonies of the disease, with dying men close beside them; to have to step over one prostrate figure to get to the side of some dying man and whisper words of comfort and prayer, while shrieks of agony come from either side; to feel weary, becoming gradually weaker through want of food, to know that ere long one's own turn would come, and the inexorable disease would claim its victim; to go through the same daily round of loathsome duty, and find in it one's highest privilege; to endure, to suffer, to dare, to sympathise, to soothe, to help; evening by evening to listen to the last requests of dying men, and morning by morning to lay them in their hastily dug graves—all this requires heroism compared with which the heroism of battle pales into insignificance. We do not wonder that the Intombi chaplains were mentioned in despatches, and that the love of the soldier goes out to these devoted men.

As Mr. Watkins felt it his duty to remain in Ladysmith Town with his men, Mr. Murray had charge of the Wesleyans in Intombi, as well as of the Presbyterians. But, as a matter of fact, in face of such stern realities as disease and death, all names and sects were forgotten. The chaplains were all brethren, the men were all human beings for whom Christ died, and each did his best for all. Open-air parade services were tried for the convalescents, but it soon became impossible to hold them. The chaplains went round the marquees and prayed with and talked to the men. The Church of England chaplains had Holy Communion every Sunday morning, and for one month, until sickness prevented, there was daily Communion.