=Terrible Scenes at Intombi Hospital.=

But let us return to Intombi.  Slowly the average number of cases was increasing.  Daily at 9.30 the mournful procession passed to the cemetery.  That cemetery contained at last about seven hundred bodies.  Every grave was marked and numbered.  Mr. Hordern began this work, but when his health failed, Mr. Murray continued and completed it.  So that there is a strict record left of every one lying there, and any one wishing to erect a tombstone can do so.  Such service as this was thoughtful indeed, and friends at home will greatly appreciate it.

For three weeks at Intombi they were on quarter rations.  Then, as Buller’s guns were heard in the distance, they were allowed half rations; but on Ash Wednesday morning, the morning of relief, they were reduced to quarter rations again.  What this meant who can tell?  How could they resist disease?  There are horrors over which we throw a veil.  Sufficient that they were necessary horrors—­that they could not be prevented.  But only the doctors and the chaplains know what our men passed through in Intombi camp.  But no one complained—­that was the wonder of it.  ‘Oh! sir, when do you think Buller will get through?’ was the nearest to complaint ever heard.  They suffered and they died, but they murmured not.

=’The Way He was Absent-minded was that He Forgot Himself!’=

Listen to what Mr. Hordern has to say about it:—­

’Every morning they had the awful procession of dead carried down to the cemetery, each man sewn up in his own blanket, and reverently buried, each man having done his duty and laid down his life for his Queen and country.  And the brave old Tommy Atkins was called “an absent-minded beggar,” a fine title itself, though it referred to him in the wrong way.  He was not absent-minded, for he had a warm corner in his heart for those at home.  The way he was absent-minded, was that he forgot himself.  I knew one man who had two or three letters from home, which he carried about in his pocket, and although he longed to read them again, he dare not do so because, he said, he should break down if he did.  The boys never forgot their homes.  There was one dead soldier, a poor lad of the Irish Fusiliers, who was shot through the body, and afterwards in searching his clothes they found a letter ready written and addressed to his mother.  He hadn’t a chance of posting it. He was not an absent-minded beggar. He didn’t forget to write to his mother.  When they pulled his letter from his pocket, it was impossible to post it, as it was covered with his blood.  I re-addressed it and sent it off to the dead soldier’s mother.’

There was another story which showed the forgetfulness of the soldier for himself.  That happened in the relieving column.  An officer was badly wounded.  It was dusk, and our troops had to retire down the kopje under cover, though next day they took it.  When they retired that night, the wounded officer could not be moved, and so four men refused to leave him.  They remained with him all night without food or water, in order to protect him from the bullets which were flying about—­one lying at his head, one at his feet, and one on either side.  Those were absent-minded beggars—­absent-minded for themselves!