By New Zealandes.

Otago Witness, Issue 2647, 7 December 1904, Page 69

By New Zealandes.

The Author, having been pressed to publish this narrative in Book Form, wishes, prior to deciding on doing so, to ascertain what amount of support he is likely to be accorded, and therefore invites those who would be willing to guarantee to buy one cloth-bound copy (or more), at the price of 3s 6d, to send in theii names ana addresses to the Editor of the Otago Witness as soon as possible. If only one relation of each New Zealand soldier who went to South Africa does this the publication will be assured. LIST OP SUBSCRIBERS TO "NEW ZEALANDERS AND THE LATE .WAR." D. M., Cave ... 6 copies B. ML., Maraekekeko, H. 8.... 3 „ J.,0. S., Riverton »„ ... 1 „ M. F., Lumsden .., < ... 1 „ J. T. B. Owate ... ... 1 », B. J-, -Pleasant Point, Lake "Co. 1 ' „ E-. G. A. H., Kakaaui ... 1 „ J. M. 8., Stony Creek, Balclutha 7^' „ J. P., Glenorchy, Lake Wakatipu 1 „ it. J. C., Waimangaroa Junction Westport - .-.'.• 1 „ CHAPTER Xl.— (Continued.) Of course, the minds of friends in New Zealand of troopers at ,the front were gieatly exercised by the reports of neglect in the hospitals, especially when details came to hand of the case of the son of a -ChristchuTch resident*, who at - once at great expense cabled money to Capetown to supply the invalid's wants.^ The matter was brought up at a meeting of the committee of the .Patriotic Fund .in Christchurch, and money .was voted to"' be placed in the hands of Major Pilcher, the Government agent at the Cape, to meet all such cases. ' Sergeant Strong, of Rangiora, wrote from Eimberley Hospital: "Everybody here expects..tie hospital inquiry will end up in a farce. " Th© Comniissioners might if left to themselves find some cause (because there is "a cause) for the complaints- made by Mr BurdettrCoutts in,- some of-- tß^ Homepapers. The, dinners are almost invariably cold, the ."tea" is something beastly to taste, the porridge is burnt, and- boiled withoutits, most-necessarf- essential, salt- and' the jnilk is either -turning goya or- else quite ( l3tror- So -you.' may guess there is still room foe improvement,, although th.6 conditions are considerably better than they were at the- beginning of the war. -After that date there was ,a great improvement, on- account ok complaints ' by th"© doctors and the sister." ' - -, Strong's complaints seem, rather frivo* lous, considering ,the difficulties" which' the hospital's management had to meet. But Sergeant Hodgson, when interview^, appeared to labour under grievances too heavy_to bear mention, for, after stating that in the hospital in Vereeninging — a, private one handed over for the use 1 of the military — there were nine bedv with only a foot's space between each, he said it was under the control of a Major Ds<tor, who , treated his patients well T and ' was gradually getting them accustomed to solid! food, when he was called away, and his place taken bjr a, lieutenant doctor, who had only the most rudimentary ideas of hospital practice,' for he changed the men's diet, putting them back pn milkj in addition to which eight more invalids were taken in,i~so that the- beds., were- almost touching. Here Sergeant Hodgson abruptly summed the matter up with the exclamation, "I should like to meet some of' the men who had' the running of that hospital, to punch their heads!" v Trooper A. M> Mackintosh, on the contrary, who had been in Bloemfontein Hospital, three weeks with pneumonia/ and.,, then was 'sent .to; Wynberg, says-h e was" nr" the Dames Institute with soma- 200, other patienis, and the. treatment was all that cc-iild be .expected." Trooper .Mackintosh considered -.himself "one- of th'e, -fortunate ones," as hundreds- of men were being sent v back invalided, and- most of IE em had to - bp put up in.' tents or. field hospitals. Tt was impossible feo get up the -conveniences required."" _ . N Colonel Robin informed the Premier, in reply to inquiries, that' he feared there had been reason for complaint, but the matter ■was being looked into. The difficulty of obtaining reliable evidence on any such subject is well known, and during the confusion caused by a great war it"*- must* of course, be quadrupled. Much sympathy must be felt in this connection with theparents of Trooper Saxon, whose grief at the death of their son, , who' had been left ill at Beira when his squadron started for Rhodesia, was embittered by a harrowing statement, contained in a letter from a special corespondent, of the cruel -neglect"' of Saxon, of which the writer had> been an eye-witness ; which statement was lately entirely contradicted by the evidence of some Australian Bushmen, who had been Saxon's fellow-patients in the hospital till !his death. Of course, it is impossible now to ascertain which statement wag correct, and the doubt must remain to distress Saxon's relatives for life. Surgeon-captain Fenwick, of the Second ]Sr.Z.M.R.'s, who later was plague officer in East London, seems to have remained silent on the vexed question of hospital management ; but devoted himself to practical alleviation of the sufferings of the rerounded by th.3 invention of a portable fcJding stretcher for use with mounted intfantry- Whilst trekking with flying columns, 3>r Fenwick found the question of carrying stretchers a very annoying problem. Even when a pair were fixed on a trained packihorse any pate out of a walk soon scattered' them abroad. If they were slung over th© shoulders of a mounted orderly the rider was sadly hampered, and the ikorse frightened. As the column had no proper aJbul&nca* the stretchers were rele-

gated to the baggage waggons, which were always in the rear. In order to meet this difficulty Surgeon-captain Fenwick has devised a stretcher which can be carried in aa enlarged carbine bucket attachable to the saddle ox a medical orderly, whilst the canvas portion can be .rolled and fixed: behind the saddle. The weight of the stretcher is about 371b. The pole is hinged in the middle by a figure-of-eight hinge, and, to'strengthen this when unfolded, an iron sheath, 12in long, slides along the pole. At one end of each pole\is fixed an iron traverse and a leathern strap. These lie along thft pole when folded and placed in the bucket, which is 2ft deep. When required for use, the poles are removed from the bucket, unfolded, and the iron sheath slipped along the pole till it covers ; the hinge. Each pole is then passed through the canvas end, the traverse and leathern shoulder strap fixed to the opposite pole, and the stretcher is ready for use. Surgeon-captain Fenwick has been assisted in working out this scheme by Sergeant Palmer, late of the Cape MountedRifles (medical staff) and Thorney croft's Mounted Infantry. He has had over 20 years' experience, having been through six j campaigns, and thinks the scheme practicable and much needed. ! Troopers Shand, Culling (who had been j in three hospitals), and Selwyn Joyce could ' not say too much of the care and kindness they received, and the last added, "Yesterday Lady Robots visited the hospital — such a nice, homeiy lady, — and I had the pleasure of shaking hands with and talking to her. Then" she gave us all a bunch of j flowers." - v j .Even in far Rhodesia the hospitals appeared, by the report of the correspondent with the Fifth N.Z.R.M.'s, to have "been admirably managed. He specially mentioned "the excellence of the Chartered; Company's ' hospital in Umtali, and the Victorian nurses in it. But in the hospitals of * Bamboo Creek and Marandellas he says things were not all what they should have been. He wrote: — "At Bamboo Creek v there was practically no preparation made for the" comfort of the sick. The medical staff, no doubt from want of experience of the climatic effects on men, especially of healthy, robust physique, did not seem to realise the seriousness of their cases. At- Marandellas there was better accommodation for the inmates, but there were many complaints of the boorish, ill-condi-tioned orderlies; who were picked up more or less promiscuously, or Ttdio offered their services, hoping to avoid the heavier duties of men in the ranks-. The huts. were in a filthy condition. But wherever there have been nurses there. has been nothing lacking 'in comfort and kindly treatment. -There certainly has been the unavoidable crowding, ,arid ' herein lies the cause for complaint, but it 'is undoubtedly on the part of the 'overworked nurses.- • But they, did their duty pleasantly and well, andrthey do not complain, and tike men all through the K.F. Forces, are unrestricted ,in their eulogiums of our colonial nurses." The nurses appear to have been all through, the campaign, without exception, tender' and devoted beyond all praise. "The*boys"' letters teem with instances of their goodness to them. Corporal Hatfield' said he was cared for all the 13 weeks he' was at Woodstock Hospital as if he had been in his own home ; and curiously enough the civil ' surgeon, Dr Hugh Acland, andi the nursing sister, whose devotion practically saved his life, were both New Zealanders, from Canterbury, though both came from England. He says of the nurse, that not the roughest Tommy would use a wrong word if she were in the ward, and that it was nothing unusual to hear a man say, if he wanted anything, "I'll ask Sister Rowley for it, because 'she'll get it if it's to be got, and she never \forgets anything." Trooper Culling— he- of the three hos-pitals—-said the medical staffs were the perfection of,, kindness, and so were the nurses. He found no difference between thosa from _Home and the colonials. Sergeant Legge; frightfully wounded by soffcnosed bullets a^ Bothasberg, wrote .from Harrismith of the comfortable hospital,, and padded: "Sister- Speed), of- Timam, is look ing after me, so' I'm all right." - The nurses were equally full of the •praises of the men? — their patience, and unselfishness, and courage, even under the iniction of being invalided " by the hated .enteric' without the glory of wounds. Sister Littlecott, of Ashfeurton, New Zealand, -wrote that "of the many duties falling :ti> a nurse's lot, not the least was writing the home letters of the sick, ill or well. Their one -cry ■ was : ' Say I'm all rig at, . sister ; say. I'm having a good time. Don't say I'm sick ; they'd only worry over it. Often when the popr brave hearts were nearly sobbing out their last strong breath ths cry was still the same — c Say I'll b9 well soon, sister; don't say I'm sick.' When the letters were to sweethearts things were even more embarrassing, patients saying, 'Oh, you know what to say, sister. Just say what you'd say yourself.' " Though there were a good many complaints of the dishonesty or neglectfulness of hospital orderlies, there is no doubt that many of these men performed their arduous duties unselfishly and well, and, one can only hope, not always without recognition and reward. One such case was so touchingly described by the Daily Mail's correspondent at Orange River that we shall conclude this chapter hj transcribing it, with apologies to the writer for being unable at this distance to seek his permission. "Because there was nothing dashing or thrilling about the acts of Joseph Hinton, private of the Royal Army Medical Corps, I almost hesitate to do him into print. * Speaking- of the \voundcd remiaids ihe Author t/hat the reason so comparatively few of the New Zealanders were invalided by wounds was that they took all the cover possible (as Tommy was slow to do), and that it is very difficult for even a first-class shot to hit a man on horseback, and both in riding to a kopje and in going away from it the colonial makes it hard for the enemy to gauge the distance by riding at sja.' angle— 'never in a direct lin^-

1 For over four months Private Hinton has been nurse in charge of the enteric fever and other dangerous cases at Orange Pviver, in one of the field hospitals there. The duties of a nurse in charge of one of the marquees which do duty for wardis are many and arduous. There are no whitecov'sred beds and dimity window curtains ; no polished floor and shining brasses ; no soft-footed women moving about the quiet ward ; no twittering birds on the big trees outside ; no texts on the walls. There are none of these things in a field hospital. The keen-eyed orderly, bare-armed and alert, picks his way carefully over the prostrate forms lying on the hay-covered floor of the shaking marquee. A word of encouragement here, a word of reproof there, and an eye ever open for the "dustdevils ' that sweep across the blustering plain, and will ' throw back ' and even kill the patient who is at the critical stage of enteric. When the ' devil ' comes the ' fly ' ot the" tent must be quickly lowered and pegged down, and the dust and sand tand debris which have whirled in, in spite of all precautions, must be removed. Doing his duty in such a. hospital, Hinton, for four months, simply devoted himself to his patients. Long after the time came which released him from duty he would sit amongst his suffering comrades, fanning them, attending on them, and doing all that lay in his humble power— for Hinton made no pretensions to aristocratic origin — to alleviate the suffering of those who were fortunate enough to come into professional contact with him. After four months' hard work Na,ture stepped in, and Private Hinton died of the disease he had been fighting ." Let the friends of Joseph Hinton, and of all who lost those dear to them in South Africa, lay to heart -the brave words of Ruskin, who wrote after the Crimean war : "I will appeal at once to the testimony of those whom the war has co&t the dearest . . . those who can never more gee sunrise, nor watch the climbing light gild the easteipi clouds, without thinking what graves it has gilded first, far diown behind the earth-line ; who never more shall 'see. the crocus bloom in spring without thinking what dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of. Balaclava. Ask their witness, and see if they will not reply that it is well with them and with theirs ; that they would have it no otherwise ; ■would not, if they mTg-ht, receive back their gifts of love and. life, nor taker again the purple of their blood' out of the cross on the breastplate of England." (To be -continued.)