FROM BLOEMFONTEIN IN A HOSPITAL TRAIN TO PRETORIA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11948, 23 January 1901, Page 3

FROM BLOEMFONTEIN IN A HOSPITAL TRAIN TO PRETORIA.

An army nurse, writing from the Palace of Justice Hospital, Protoria, September 26, to "The Hospital Nursing Mirror" says: Luck has attended us. Instead of being given work at base hospitals, six of our party were sent to Springfontein and the rest to Bloemfontein; the former simply an encampment on the veldt, which left onq wondering ty'liat there was to name before Tommy and his paraphernalia arrived. Those of us who were sent to Bloemfontein were temporarily quartered in the Dames Institute—in peace time an industrial school for girls, but now commandeered for medical purpose?. As the hospital accommodation was limited: six of us were housed in a marquee just outside tho gates, and were initiated into the comicalities of tent life. Tho night was very windy, and the canvas flapped about and provided more fresh air than we desired. The tent from tho insido looked like an oldclothes shop with, bonnets and towels, cloaks and undergarments pinned up to the canvas, and tho picturesqueness of tho whole was increased by the nresenco of a Btray lamb and tho hospital cat t.Jiat found their way in in the morning. We had jusfrtwo days in Bloemfontein and were their ordered to proceed by No. 3 hospital train to Pretoria. After various vicissitudes of bursting boxes, lost lugRage, and, not least, conveyance in an ambulance waggon guaranteed to stimulate the most torpid liver, we boarded our train on Sunday evening. One of the Sistors in charge told us she hart travelled in it 11 months and over 50,000 miles. The berths, arranged in double rows on each side with a passage-way about 3Jft wide down the centre, were most comfortable, as we found by experience; tho upper ones have email windows, from which a splendid view of the country can be had. \ T ery few wounded now travel in the hospital trains, the eases being chiefly convalescent enterics. We found it far nicer than the mail train, having tho run of two wards containing 40 out of tho S6 on hoard. A water famine seems inseparable from railway travelling in South Africa—one realises then in a. small way what horrible discomforts our soldier? havo so eheerfullv put up with—indeed, in. conversation, almost evcrv man will toll you hfl didn't mind the bullets so much, but that short rations, hard marches, and want of water were worse by far to bear. We had some cxeitements by the way. At one place railed Geneva we wero within halt im hour of the enemv; i»deed, from the time of leaving Bloemfontein till the Va»l Riy« was pressed, the enemy was more or less at liana. If we found it hard at times to l'calife that wo wero really in the presence of actual war, trrim reminders, were at hand. The .skeletons and bodies of .thousands of animals—horses, mules, sheen-in all stages of decomposition, testified to the terrible sacrifice of animal lito which -had been exacted, and which accounted easily for eases of enteric on tho lines of communication.— Exchange.