Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Embarked on the SS 'Salamis' at Albany on 21st March 1900

A NURSE'S EXPERIENCES.
Mr. J. A. Peart, the secretary of the Transvaal Nurse Fund, has received the following letter from Nurse Speers, one of the contingent of nurses sent from this colony to South Africa : -
"No. 7 General Hospital, Field Force,
Estcourt, Natal. 4th July, 1900.
I fully intended to have written sooner, but we three-Sister Milne, Nurse Emmens, and I-who are at No. 7, have up till now been exceptionally busy. At present we are on night duty, so we ave an odd night's time to sit down for an hour or so. We had a most terrible time coming over, and through the disagreeableness of one or two of our nurses we were the talk of the whole ship. I just wish those people who said we were not wanted here could see how much they are in need of trained nurses, particularly those whose friends and relations are only privates in the army. Of course, the officers fare all right. It is not one Sister and two or three orderlies to 56or 60 of them. I am afraid we are stuck here. we were hoping, as we were a field hospital, that we would be fortunate enough to be sent on to Pretoria, but we hear this morning that No. 2 from Wynburg has had that honour, so we are like the boy and the balloon, we are out of it. We forfeited our day's sleep and went roaming over the old battlefields of Colenso and Pieters Hill, etc. It is very interesting, but very sad, graves everywhere, beginning here in Estcourt and going on right the way as far as we went and further. We got a few shrapnel shells and pieces of lyddite, and various other things, and saw some wonderful Boer trenches.' It is marvellous how they were even shifted at all, and I think General Buller and the Tommies who fought under him deserve the highest honour that can be done to them. It is a wonder there is an english soldier left alive. The fire they have had to face was most terrible, in the Boers being such indifferent shots they have muck to be thankful for General Buller is spoken so highly of by all his men. It is so nice to hear them, and I think there is not one but what would go through it again with him if the necessity arose. But oh, they are so weary of the hardships and sickness. If you could only see what wrecks the cursed fever and dysentery make of them, you would sympathise with them in their desire to be away from Africa. All such fine young fellows, too, some not more than 18 years old, and scores of them married and with families. And then to see the wanton destruction of everything. Homes that people have been working to get together for years all laid waste. Bridges and railway lines and buildings all more or less destroyed.
This makes even us who are away from the fighting line and see no wounded realise in a small degree what war means. It is not individual deaths only. It is wholesale misery everywhere. We had a drink of water from the famous Tugela. It is a lovely river, but just now fordable in many places; while being very deep in others. Of course, at the Colenso fight it was running a banker, as it was in the midst of the rainy season. We are having it bitterly cold at night, and the Drakensberg Mountan. is this morning covered in snow. It is a beautiful sight to see. We have just heard that Mrs. Naylor is seriously ill at Ladysmith. We mean to find out, if possible, whether this is true, and if so to go and see her. It is rather hard luck to be ill in a strange land, and a land of battle, too. Such a number of the English nurses have died. They don't seem to stand it as well as we colonials do, but it does not do to boast. When a Sister dies her things are sold off by auction, just as the soldiers' are, except, perhaps, a few trinkets or so. I think
we shall be the colour of Kaffirs by the time we leave here."

Western Mail Saturday 25 August 1900 page 43