Easter Eve, 1879, 6 A.M.

My dear Friends,—I am always thinking of you, and as my Easter greeting, I could not help copying for you part of a letter which one of my brother-in-law’s family had from Col. Degacher (commanding one battalion of the 24th Regiment in Natal), giving the names of men whom he recommended for the Victoria Cross, when defending the Commissariat Stores at Rorke’s Drift. (His brother, Capt. Degacher, was killed at Isandhlwana.) He says:

“Private John Williams was posted, together with Private Joseph Williams and Private William Harrison (1/24th Regiment), in a further ward of the Hospital. They held it for more than an hour—so long as they had a round of ammunition left, when, as communication was for the time cut off, the Zulus were enabled to advance and burst open the door. A hand-to-hand conflict then ensued, during which Private Joseph Williams and two of the Patients were dragged out and assegaied (killed with a short spear or dagger).

“Whilst the Zulus were occupied with the slaughter of these unfortunate men, a lull took place, which enabled Private John Williams (who with two of the Patients were by this time the only men left alive in the Ward) to succeed in knocking a hole in the partition and taking the two Patients with him into the next ward, where he found Private Henry Hook.

“These two men together, one man working whilst the other fought and held the enemy at bay with his bayonet, broke through three more partitions, and were thus enabled to bring eight Patients through a small window into the inner line of defence.

“In another ward facing the hill, William Jones and Private Robert Jones had been placed: they defended their post to the last, and until six out of seven Patients it contained had been removed. The seventh, Sergeant Maxfield, 2/24th Regiment, was delirious from fever, and although they had previously dressed him, they were unable to induce him to move; and when Private Robert Jones returned to endeavour to carry him off, he found him being stabbed on his bed by the Zulus.

“Corporal Wm. Allen and Fd. Hitch, 2/24th Regiment, must also be mentioned. It was chiefly due to their courageous conduct that communication with the Hospital was kept up at all—holding together, at all costs, a most dangerous post, raked in reverse by the enemy’s fire from the hill. They were both severely wounded, but their determined conduct enabled the Patients to be withdrawn from the Hospital. And when incapacitated from their wounds from fighting themselves, they continued, as soon as their wounds were dressed, to serve out ammunition to their comrades throughout the night.”

These men who were defending the house at Rorke’s Drift were 120 of his (Col. Degacher’s) men against 5000 Zulus, and they fought from 3 P.M. of January 22nd, to 5 A.M. of the 23rd. There is a Night Nurse’s work for you. “When shall such heroes live again?” In every Nurse of us all. Every Nurse may at all costs serve her Patients as these brave heroic men did at the risk and the cost of their own lives.

Three cheers for these bravest of Night Nurses of Rorke’s Drift, who regarded not themselves, not their ease, not even their lives; who regarded duty and discipline; who stood to the last by God and their neighbour; who saved their post and their Patients. And may we Nurses all be like them, and fight through the night for our Patients’ lives—fight through every night and day!

Do you see what a high feeling of comradeship does for these men? Many a soldier loses his life in the field by going back to help a drowning or a wounded comrade, who might have saved it. Oh, let us Nurses all be comrades; stick to the honour of our flag and our corps, and help each other to the best success, for the sake of Him who died, as at this time, to save us all!

And let us remember that petty selfishnesses and meannesses and self-indulgences hinder our honour as good soldiers of Jesus Christ and of the Unseen God, who sees all these little things when no one else does!

What makes us endure to the end? Discipline. Do you think these men could thus have fought at a desperate post through the livelong night if they had not been trained to obedience to orders, and to acting as a corps, yet each man doing his own duty to the fullest extent—rather than every man going his own way, thinking of his own likings, and caring for himself?

How great may be men and women, “little lower than the angels,” and also how little!

Humility—to think our own life worth nothing except as serving in a corps, God’s nursing corps, unflinching obedience, steadiness, and endurance in carrying out His work—that is true discipline, that is true greatness, and may God give it to us Nurses, and make us His own Nurses.

And let us not think that these things can be done in a day or a night. No, they are the result of no rough-and-ready method. The most important part of those efforts was to be found in the patient labour of years. These great tasks are not to be accomplished suddenly by raw fellows in a night; it is when discipline and training have become a kind of second nature to us that they can be accomplished every day and every night. The raw Native levies ran away, determining our fall at Isandhlwana. The well-trained English soldiers, led by their Officers and their Non-commissioned Officers, stuck to their posts.

Every feeling, every thought we have, stamps a character upon us, especially in our year of training, and in the next year or two.

The most unruly boys, weak in themselves—for unruliness is weakness—when they have to submit, it brings out all the good points in their characters. These boys, so easily led astray, they put themselves under the severest discipline, and after training sometimes come out the best of us all. The qualities which, when let alone, run to seed and do themselves and others nothing but harm, under proper discipline make fine fellows of them.

And what is it to obey? To obey means to do what we are told, and to do it at once. With the nurse, as with the soldier, whether we have been accustomed to it or not, whether we think it right or not, is not the question. Prompt obedience is the question. We are not in control, but under control. Prompt obedience is the first thing; the rest is traditional nonsense. But mind who we go to for our orders. Go to headquarters. True discipline is to uphold authority, and not to mind trouble. We come into the work to do the work....

We Nurses are taught the “reason why,” as soldiers cannot be, of much of what we have to do. But it would be making a poor use of this “reason why” if we were to turn round in any part of our training and say, or not say, but feel—We know better than you.

Would we be of less use than the Elephant? The Elephant who could kill a hundred men, but who alike pushes the artillery train with his head when the horses cannot move it, and who minds the children and carefully nurses them, and who threads a needle with his trunk. Why? Because he has been taught to obey. He would be of no use but to destroy, unless he had learnt that. Sometimes he has a strong will, and it is not easy for him to get his lesson perfect. We can feel for him. We know a little about it ourselves. But he does learn in time to go our way and not his own, to carry a heavy load, which of course he would rather not do, to turn to which ever side we wish, and to stop when we want him to stop.

So God teaches each one of us in time to go His way and not our own. And one of the best things I can wish each one of us is that we may learn the Elephant’s lesson, that is to obey, in good time and not too late.

Pray for me, my dear friends, that I may learn it, even in my old age.

Florence Nightingale.