The Tale of a Field Hospital

The South African War, of which this Tale is told, is already near to be forgotten, although there are many to whom it still remains the most tragic memory of their lives.

War is ever the same: an arena, aglare with pomp and pageant, for the display of that most elemental and most savage of human passions, the lust to kill, as well as a dumb torture place where are put to the test man's fortitude and his capacity for the endurance of pain.

This brief narrative is concerned not with shouting hosts in defiant array, but with the moaning and distorted forms of men who have been "scorched by the flames of war." It deals with the grey hours after the great, world-echoing display is over, with the night that ends the gladiator's show, when the arena is occupied only by the maimed, the dying and the dead.

It is admitted that in the South African War the medical needs of the Army were efficiently and promptly supplied. This account serves to show of what kind is the work of the Red Cross in the field. It may serve further to bring home to the reader the appalling condition of the wounded in war when--as in the present campaign in the Near East--the provision for the care of the sick is utterly inadequate, if not actually lacking.

FREDERICK TREVES.

THATCHED HOUSE LODGE, RICHMOND PARK, SURREY. November, 1912.

Preface to the First Edition

In this little book some account is given of a field hospital which followed for three months the Ladysmith Relief Column, from the time, in fact, that that column left Frere until it entered the long-beleaguered town. The fragmentary record is based upon notes written day by day on the spot. Some of the incidents related have been already recounted in a series of letters published in the British Medical Journal, and certain fragments of those letters are reproduced in these pages, or have been amplified under circumstances of greater leisure.

The account, such as it is, is true.

It may be that the story is a little sombre, and possibly on occasions gruesome; but war, as viewed from the standpoint of a field hospital, presents little that is cheery.

It appears that some interest might attach to an account of the manner in which our wounded faced their troubles, and of the way in which they fared, and under the influence of that impression this imperfect sketch has been written.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

1. The Field Hospital 2. Frere Camp 3. The Hospital Dog 4. The Morning of Colenso 5. The Hospital under the Ridge 6. Inside an Operation-Tent 7. The Surgeons of the Field Hospitals 8. A Professional Visit by Rail 9. The Hospital Train at Colenso 10. The Nurses at Chieveley 11. Some Traits in the Men 12. The Sign of the Wooden Cross 13. The Men with the Spades 14. The Marching 15. Spearman's Farm 16. The Hospital at Spearman's 17. The Two White Lights 18. After Spion Kop 19. The Story of the Restless Man 20. "Did We Win?" 21. The Fighting Spirit 22. The Body-Snatchers 23. Seeing Them Off 24. A Funeral at Spearman's 25. Absent-Mindedness 26. At Chieveley Again 27. A Journey to Ladysmith 28. A Straggler 29. How a Surgeon Won the Victoria Cross 30. "SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI"

THE TALE OF A FIELD HOSPITAL

I

THE FIELD HOSPITAL

The Field Hospital, of which some account is given in these pages, was known as "No. 4 Stationary Field Hospital." The term "stationary" is hardly appropriate, since the Hospital moved with the column, and, until at least the relief of Ladysmith, it followed the Headquarters' camp. The term, however, serves to distinguish "No. 4" from the smaller field hospitals which were attached to the various brigades, and which were much more mobile and more restless.