S.S. "Orient" (en route for Home),
March 1902.

I was very sorry to say good-bye to Kimberley, but I was also getting very home-sick, so early one morning I once more joined the train, to stroll across the Karroo and down to Cape Town.

I had armed myself with a large stock of literature, kindly given to me by friends, and also by the librarian of the Kimberley Public Library (who gave me a noble stock of back numbers), and this I distributed to the men at the blockhouses on the way. Poor fellows, they have a trying time of it, they must be very wide awake and alert, or any night the Boers may cross the section of line for which they are responsible, very likely leaving a little dynamite to wreck the next train; and yet for weeks and perhaps months never a Boer may come near their particular section.

The trains were still not supposed to travel at night, so we tied up about 6 P.M. on the first day at De Aar. After dinner I was just thinking it was very slow, not knowing any one in the place, and I thought I would go to bed, when I saw a General strolling along the platform, and with him a young officer whom I soon recognised as an old Pinetown patient, and whom I was very glad to meet again.

The General soon departed, and then Captain —— took me for a jolly moonlight walk round De Aar; he was still a little lame from his wound, so was acting as Adjutant for some Yeomanry there. It was pleasant to hear about many other old friends, and also a little about the course of the war in that part of the country.

The next day, as we proceeded down the line, we passed some troop trains going up with men who had just arrived fresh from England—I think some of the Scots Guards, the Manchesters, and the Lancashire Fusiliers. Some of them were tightly packed in open waggons, and appeared to think they were having a rough time already, but, as the weather was warm and dry, they were not so badly off. They seemed very glad of the few papers which I could give them, as they had seen none since they landed. Their chief anxiety seemed to be as to whether they would have the chance of firing off a little ammunition before the war is over.

That night we tied up at Matjesfontein, and I much regretted I could not stay a day there to explore the battlefield; but I did not know which day they wanted me for duty, so I had to hasten on.

The next morning I arrived in Cape Town; and, after a "wash and brush up," I went to see the P.M.O., who was most kind, and said that if I was willing to do light duty on the voyage, I certainly need not pay for a passage. If I was ready, he would like me to go on board the Orient on the 12th (it was then the 8th).

I had a few very pleasant days with some friends at Rondebosch; but I was unable to get about much to see other people, as I was again very seedy with dysentery, and had to doctor myself rather severely in order to get ready for duty on the 12th.

I came on board that morning at 10 A.M., but there was such a gale blowing that we did not get away till 5 P.M. the next day.

There are about thirty officers and between 500 and 600 men on board, almost all of them invalided home, and it is awfully sad to see so many "wrecks" of the war.

The P.M.O. is a major of the R.A.M.C., and he is just as strict with the orderlies as the major I worked with at Pinetown; so the men are well cared for, and I am enjoying working for him.

I was the first sister to join the ship, and, as I found the cabins would be very full, I asked if I might act as night sister, and thereby I secured a cabin to myself.

I have had plenty to do most of the way, as there have been several men and one officer very ill all the time; but we have had no deaths on the voyage, and most of the patients seem to be mending now.

On my first night on duty I had been round the hospital, and then I thought I would take a look at the convalescent men in the swinging cots (ninety of them), and I found there a poor colour-sergeant, who had been out only a few months, going back with hopelessly bad heart disease from overstrain; he was unable to lie down, and so breathless and blue, I got him transferred to the hospital, and was able to make him comfortable with pillows, &c. He has been such a good patient and has improved a little, but I fear he can never work again, and he is a married man.

There are two quite young lads who have been having epileptic fits frequently on the voyage—I suppose brought on by exposure to the South African sun.

A young Yorkshire farmer of the Yeomanry was invalided home as a "phthisis" case, but he came into hospital the day after we sailed with a temperature of 105°, and he has been desperately ill with enteric all the way (severe hÆmorrhage, &c.). He must have had fever for some time before it was diagnosed—the temperature being attributed to his chest condition. He is still very weak, but I think he will pull through.

One night I was told that a man in the swinging cots was "rather peculiar," so I went down to see him first thing, and found his cot empty. I flew up on deck, and met some stewards, who had collared him on the upper deck. We made him snug in a safe corner of the hospital with a "special" for that night. Then, there was one poor fellow who had lost an arm, and two who had each lost a leg—one of the latter a sergeant-major, who was wounded at the same time that Colonel Benson was killed at Vlakfontein. He was a Kimberley man, and the poor man's wife and two little children were all killed by one Boer shell during the siege of Kimberley. He is going home to get fitted up with a cork leg, and will then return to South Africa.

Perhaps the saddest cases of all were the eleven lunatics we had on board. They had to be very safely kept with special guards and other precautions; and, in case they should try to go overboard, they had a high-railed enclosure on deck as an airing ground. Some of them are very mad and violent, but some seemed so nearly sane that it was a question whether they had not pretended to be mad in order to be sent home.

I was not supposed to visit these men in the night, because, to get to them, I should have had to go a long way through the troops' sleeping quarters, but the medical officer went to see them on his last round, and, every two or three hours, I used to stay in the hospital while the wardmaster went along, and brought word how they were.

One night the medical officer went along, and when he returned he told me he had found their door unlocked and no guard on duty; fortunately they were all asleep. The next day this tale was about the ship, and very soon it was altered to the following version—"Last night Mr. —— had found that all the lunatics had escaped; he and Sister thought it better not to make a fuss. Instead, they caught the first eleven men whom they met and locked them up; they were not the real lunatics, but they had been bribed with extra 'skoff' to play the game and say nothing about it: but the real lunatics were still at large!" After that, if any one came up to a man rather quietly, there was a big jump, and "Hullo! are you one of them?" and then a great chase round the deck!

There were some hard cases, too, amongst the officers; two of them who had thighs broken by Boer shells, but were just beginning to walk again—one, however, with a short leg, and the other with a stiff knee.

A Yeomanry officer, badly shot in both arms, had one hand still quite useless; but I hope an operation may improve matters. He had had a dreadful time in the jolting ambulance waggons, unable to hold on, or to save himself with either hand.

Then, there was a young doctor who once, when our men were surprised and many of them taken, was going round dressing the wounded, when some Boers came up and shot the wounded as he was dressing them, and afterwards led him out several times saying they were going to shoot him, but eventually he got safely away. There were two officers shot through the lungs, but I think they will recover in time; and there was another young fellow shot in the region of the spine, and paralysed all down one side and leg; and yet another (quite a boy) shot in the thigh and paralysed on that side. Neither of these two could move without assistance; and, though they were all wonderfully bright and cheerful, I know I often found them lying awake for hours together, and it is hard for a young Englishman to face the thought that he may never be able to walk or ride again, even when he has received his wound in defence of his country.

As I finish this letter, we are just anchoring for the night in Southampton Water, off Netley Hospital; and, curiously enough, it is March 3rd, the very day I sailed for South Africa two years ago. To-morrow we hope to land at Southampton.

After a little time at home, I hope to persuade a sister of mine to pay a visit with me to another brother in the United States, and to some relations in Canada and Nova Scotia; then I must settle down to some steady work in England.

I would not have missed nursing through this war for a great deal. We have often had rough times, and anxious times, and of course I have not been able to do much, but I have been able to help a few men to recover their health and strength; and, perhaps, also to help a few in their last hours, men whose own relations would have given much to have been in my place, where it was not possible for them to be. And, however busy I was, I could at least find time to remind them that ... "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." ...

Still no one, who has not seen it, can realise the sorrow and the suffering that war entails; and I am almost inclined to agree with a man who was in Kimberley during the siege, who helped Mr. Cecil Rhodes in his work there, and who afterwards, when asked if he was not glad that he had had the chance of assisting Mr. Rhodes in his great work, said, "Yes, but when I think of all the suffering those unfortunate women and children had to endure, I think if I was ever again in a country where war was imminent, I should take a ship to the other side of the world, and stop there till it was over!"

I fear that we are not likely all to be able to do that; but I trust this war will have had the effect of making people think, and that should there ever be another war in our time, we may be better prepared for it.

War must always mean suffering, but the suffering might be enormously lessened if we were better organised in times of peace.

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