by Lark, Sarah
“And my gun was at hand. It’s not the first time we’ve fought the blokes, you know.” The Scottish regiment seemed to have participated in the war from the beginning. “I shot one of them right off his horse, and then everyone was awake.”
In spite of all the guards and patrols, two Boer commandos had attacked the British camp around three in the morning. The Australians, however, had fought them off just as successfully as the Scots. On the British side, there were no casualties to mourn, but three Boers had been left for dead or dying.
Kevin heard Dr. Willcox, who had just arrived, dressing down two orderlies. They had woken neither Kevin nor Barrister when the badly wounded foe was brought in. Now he was dead—and Kevin saw for the first time one of the dreaded Boer fighters. He did not look very impressive—he wore neither uniform nor boots, just a bloodstained jacket, corduroy pants, and thick, soft leather shoes. He had blond hair, a broad face, and a stocky build.
“We couldn’t have done much for him, probably, but this is unacceptable,” Willcox shouted at the orderlies. “Even when it’s the enemy, we treat him. It’s our humanitarian duty. Now, take the man out and see if he has any papers on him—maybe you’ll find out his name. It should be recorded, so the family can be informed after the war. We fight hard, boys, but we’re not animals. It’s bad enough that the other side has no respect for the rules.”
Willcox greeted Kevin, and the doctors had just enough time to look over the serious cases they had stayed up operating on the previous night. One man had died, but Barrister and Kevin had at least saved two. Willcox had them sent off to the field hospital on the van Stout farm.
“Tell the driver to go slowly, so they don’t get shaken too much,” he instructed the orderlies. “For now, it should be fine. If dozens need to be transported again—”
The sounds of battle from the direction of Wepener did not bode well. Kevin and Willcox were already deep in surgery before the cook had brought them breakfast. They gulped down bread and coffee between two patients. The wounded followed one another much faster here than in the field hospital. The doctors on the front mostly handled first aid—and screening. Kevin was horrified when Willcox classified two cases as hopeless and had them laid on straw to die.
“But we could still try,” he said. “A bullet grazed the lung, seems like. This one does have a chance.”
Willcox looked at him sympathetically. “He would have a chance if we had more time and more doctors. But like this, he’s taking someone else’s place. I’m sorry, Drury. If he lasts until tonight, I’ll try it then.”
Kevin now saw the military chaplains. They were much needed here, comforting the wounded and giving others last rites. He wondered how they could even hear themselves think. The groans and screaming in the first-aid tent were infernal. Kevin and Willcox could not keep up with the administration of opiates. Add to that the incessant noise of battle, and after only a few hours, Kevin was completely demoralized. His uniform clung to his body, soaked through with sweat and blood.
“Are we at least making progress?” he asked a lightly wounded soldier, having pointed the man toward a hospital transport wagon.
“I think so, sir. The howitzer bombardment is having an effect, and they’re running out of ammunition in the fort. Plus, we seem to have the commandos outside under control. They seem to realize they can’t defeat a whole army. But are we going to enter the town today?”
Kevin was almost surprised when the day at last reached its end. With the dwindling light, the shooting ebbed, and in the last hours, fewer wounded had come to them. He and Willcox were finally able to turn to the difficult cases. Kevin did what he could, but it was cold comfort. He had seen too much blood that day and been unable to help too many men.
Late that night, Tracy arrived to relieve him. In the field hospital, things had also calmed down. He had been able to change his clothes and looked crisp once more. Not to mention more optimistic. It had done him good to be able to undertake successful operations.
“It ought to be over tomorrow,” reported Willcox, having spoken with a high-ranking officer. “Their defenses are holding, and they’ll fight to the last bullet, if not to the last drop of blood. But in truth, they’re already beaten. We’ll be marching into Wepener no later than the afternoon.”
“So, all for nothing,” Tracy said.
Kevin was already saddling his horse to ride back to the van Stout farm. Tracy followed him outside and lit a cigarette.
“The Boers had the town, then we had the town, then the Boers again, now us again. For each of these exchanges, a hundred men have died. And in the end, we’ll give it back to the Boers. We can’t keep it garrisoned forever, you know. It’s mad. This whole war is mad.” He took deep, rapid drags.
Kevin was about to ask why Tracy had volunteered for war with that mentality, when Sergeant Willis appeared.
“Doctor? Good, you’re still here. I can’t find Willcox. But there’s something you should see. We’ve taken a few prisoners.”
“Wounded?” asked Tracy.
Kevin moved to rehitch his horse.
“Yes and no. We captured a sort of Boer field hospital. Three wounded and two women.”
Willis led the doctors to a heavily guarded covered wagon. The canvas was pulled back, and three English soldiers pointed their guns at the people inside. Two middle-aged women, their neat clothing smeared with blood, and a brown-haired, bearded man with his arm in a sling. His clothing was like that of the dead man Kevin had seen that morning: once-white corduroys combined with a vest and a sort of frock jacket along with a hat with a wide, floppy brim. His bright eyes stared wrathfully at Kevin. The women were caring for two other men lying on straw beds.
“The two men are heavily wounded,” said Willis. “One of the women started cutting already, took a bullet from that one’s shoulder, I think. The other’s bleeding like mad, and they can’t get it under control.”
Kevin climbed into the wagon. The bearded man put himself immediately in the way and spat a few words of Afrikaans at him.
“Remove him,” Willis ordered.
The guards did not need to be told twice. However, they really had to wrestle the man away. Simply threatening him with a weapon had no effect. He seemed ready to let himself be shot. The women likewise resisted when Kevin now turned to the wounded men, but at least they did not become violent. They did not respond when Kevin warmly introduced himself as a doctor and there to help.
“Do they not speak English?” he asked.
Willis snorted. “Earlier, they understood it quite well.”
Tracy had joined them and tried translating, but could not wring a reply from the women either.
Kevin gave the men a cursory examination. “The one needs rest more than anything,” he declared. “The operation to remove the bullet could have been done more precisely, and the poultice the ladies made doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But fine, home remedies sometimes work. The ladies seem to have experience. I’m fairly certain we can save him. But the second one needs an operation as soon as possible. Before that, his leg must be bound better or he’ll bleed out. I suggest we do that at once, and then take the whole group to the field hospital. We can operate there, and the women can look after their patients afterward.” Kevin turned to the older of the two women. “Is he a relative of yours?”
She glared at him. “You my son not touch. I care my son.”
Kevin shook his head. “If we don’t operate, your son will die. Dr. Tracy, could you translate? I don’t think she understands me.”
Tracy repeated Kevin’s words in Dutch, but the woman’s expression did not change.
“My son not touch!” she repeated, then launched into a sermon in Afrikaans.
Tracy raised his hands helplessly. “Oh, she understands you,” he said. “But she won’t, under any circumstances, allow an Englishman to operate on her flesh and blood. What’s more, she’s convinced she can save the boy. With God’s help.”
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��Can’t anyone convince her that God sent us to help?” asked Kevin, flinching as the woman let loose a cannonade of curses.
Tracy rubbed his forehead. “I don’t need to translate that, do I?”
Kevin shook his head. “Can we move her a little ways off?” he asked Willis. “So she can still see him, but—”
Willis nodded and turned to the remaining guard. “Private, keep these women at a distance while the doctor does his work. Actually, wait a moment. I’ll get reinforcements so they don’t scratch your eyes out.”
In fact, it did take two soldiers to tear the women away from the wagon. They then watched, cursing and lamenting, as Kevin and Tracy applied a professional tourniquet and a compression bandage. The patient was quite young, twenty at most. Kevin was touched by his pale face and his blond, patchy beard. The boy reminded him of Doortje.
“That’ll hold until the hospital.” He finally turned to the soldiers. “Please have these people sent to the van Stout farm immediately. On this wagon, so the patients aren’t moved. I’ll be right behind. We’ll have to perform the operation tonight. If we tie it off too long, the boy will lose his leg. Oh yes, and watch out when you let the women back in. Don’t let them tear the bandage off.”
Kevin thought he saw a happy flash in the woman’s eyes when he mentioned the farm. The soldier let her go, and she rushed to her son’s side.
Tracy held out a pack of cigarettes to Kevin and lit one for him. Kevin caught himself sucking in the smoke as fiercely as Tracy had before.
“What is wrong with these people?” he asked. “The woman would rather let her son die than have an Englishman save him. Maybe I should have explained I’m really a New Zealander.”
Tracy shook his head. “We’re all the same to them,” he said. “I tried explaining I’m from Australia, but it got me nowhere.”
“So, you had Boer patients yesterday too?” Kevin asked.
“No, but I—” Tracy fell silent a moment and took another deep drag. “For me, all this here is terra incognita. I haven’t done an amputation since school. I’ve been an ophthalmologist for five years. And, well, we didn’t have anything to do on that farm for three days. So, I offered to fix Mrs. van Stout’s eyes.”
Kevin looked at him in disbelief. “And she refused?”
Tracy nodded. “She’s got cataracts, easily operable. She’d regain her full power of sight.” He mused. “But yes, she refused. God had decreed that she be blind, and she was not about to let some filthy Englishman change that.”
Kevin rubbed his tired eyes. “That—that’s incomprehensible to me. What did her daughter say?”
“The charming Mejuffrouw Doortje?” Tracy mocked. “She delivered a few scathing Bible verses. Old Testament, of course. They seem to see it as something of a weakness that Christ didn’t ascertain the nationality of the sick before healing them. No chance, in any case. And you’ll certainly have fun with that lot, Drury.” He gestured to the covered wagon just then rolling out of the camp. “Honestly, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with them.”
When Kevin’s horse arrived at the van Stout farm, the covered wagon stood at the main entrance, but he saw no sign of either the inmates or the guards. Kevin hoped to find both in the barn, but he saw only the guards, in a heated discussion with Drs. Barrister and McAllister.
Kevin greeted his superior and his colleague. “So, you’ve already heard,” he said. “A tear of the femoral artery. We need to operate immediately to save the leg. Now, where the hell is he?” Kevin looked around.
“It really wasn’t our fault,” the soldier who had driven the covered wagon said. “I thought, you know, the women seemed to know each other, and no one would have anything against it if they took care of the men themselves.”
“Which women?”
“The ones from the wagon and the van Stouts,” McAllister explained. “If I understand these men here properly, our hostesses took in the new arrivals. It was apparently a warm greeting. The private thinks they’re related. At any rate, they had their servants carry the men into the house—and now they’ve barricaded themselves in one of the children’s rooms. Knives between their teeth and ready for anything.”
“What?” Kevin asked, horrified. “And you let them go?”
The private shrugged.
“We made a mistake, sir,” the higher ranking of the two admitted. “But like he said, it seemed they were family. And the women on the farm, they did allow a hospital here and—”
“After everything I just did trying to save him, how could you—” Kevin took a deep breath. “How do we get them out?”
“We don’t,” McAllister said. “They don’t have guns anymore, sure, but they’ve got kitchen knives. And they’re threatening to gut themselves before they let us touch their men again. Is it worth it?”
“It’s about the principle,” Kevin declared. “We’re the British Army, damn it! Couldn’t we take them by surprise?”
McAllister shook his head. “No. They won’t fall for that again. And they chose that room strategically. The only way would be to storm it. And then we’d have to explain to high command why we had to shoot a bunch of women.”
Kevin groaned. “But there has to be a way.”
“It is about the principle, Dr. Drury. You’re absolutely right,” said Barrister. His long fingers raked nervously through his mustache. “But perhaps not military principles. We’re doctors. People come to us when they want to be healed. When they don’t want to be healed, they stay away. In civilian life, we don’t force anyone. But now you want to drag patients onto the operating table by force? That won’t do, Drury. As much as it pains me not to help. The staff corporal here tells me the boy’s practically still a child. But he’s under his mother’s guardianship, and she gets to decide. Our hands are tied.”
Kevin wanted to argue, but he saw that his superior was right. As was Angus. It would be unfair to endanger soldiers’ lives by forcing them to overpower these desperate women. Still, that boy’s face . . .
“I would agree, Dr. Barrister, if it were really the patient’s decision,” he said carefully. “But no one asked him. Does he really want to die?”
“So, ask him if you get a chance, Drury. Or convince the van Stouts. It’s not up to us.”
Chapter 6
“And so, they built the camp. They tied the heads of the horses and oxen together, and arranged the covered wagons in circles to provide cover. Everyone gathered wood and thornbushes and filled in the gaps that way. The men anchored the wagons in the ground and readied their muskets. The women and children would reload them after the men fired. Oh yes, Thies, they had weapons, our grandfathers. They knew, you see, that they would need to fight for their land, but they also knew that God was with them. And so, they said prayers once more before the Kaffirs came. Even as the savages rushed the wagon fort, our brave forefathers called on God, for he had led them here. No, Mees, the Kaffirs did not have guns. God did not allow it. They had only knives and spears. But what spears! Long and sharp as razor blades, and giant shields stretched with skins. And how they looked! Hundreds and hundreds of giant warriors, dressed only in loincloths and feathers, their shameful bodies damnably painted.”
Doortje van Stout tied on a fresh white bonnet, listening with half an ear as her mother told her little brothers of the Great Trek. Of wagon forts and battles, of many dead, and ultimately, of victory. Of the land God had promised the Boers, and which they had paid for in blood.
Doortje could also have told these stories, and someday, when she had her own children, she would. Knowledge of how the land was taken must be kept alive. Doortje’s mother, Bentje, had not been present on the Trek. And her grandparents must still have been children when the English had conquered Cape Town and tried to take everything from the Boers: their language, their laws, their church—and most of all, their slaves. God had not wanted it so. And so, the pioneers had set out over the mountains, their households loaded in oxcarts, their livestock driven alongside
them by slaves. At night, they had circled the wagons to protect themselves from wild animals. And from the heathen blacks who would not accept that God had sent the Boers. He punished them gruesomely for that: in the Battle of Blood River alone, three thousand Zulu warriors had fallen. But the right arm of the Lord shielded the Boers. Not a single dead and only three wounded.
Doortje recalled having once asked why God could not have simply destroyed the English from the start. Or never have made the Zulu Kaffirs. They weren’t good for anything, anyway. Only a few were suited for work on the farms, and even they were fools. She was still furious with Nandi for her failure to defend them. Bentje had possessed an answer for that, but Doortje could no longer recall it. Surely, it had been a silly, improper question. Like asking why the English were winning again now. For they were; Aunt Jacoba and Cousin Antina said so. The English had annihilated Uncle Jonas and Cousin Cornelis’s command, and now Aunt Jacoba’s husband was missing; Antina’s husband, Willem, was gravely wounded; and Cornelis lay dying. If that English doctor was to be believed. Aunt Jacoba and Cousin Antina insisted he was already better. The bleeding had stopped, at least. And they would all pray for him together again in a moment.
Doortje felt the lace around her bonnet and checked that her hair was modestly hidden beneath it. She must look proper, especially for prayers. Before her mother lost her sight, she had sent the girl back to her room regularly to change an imperfectly ironed bonnet or a smudged apron. It had been difficult for Doortje to learn these things. She much preferred to work in the fields than in the house, and most of all, loved sticking her nose in books. But that was sinful, of course—if also occasionally useful. Doortje’s father had made his children learn English. It was easier to defeat an enemy you knew, he preached, and that made sense to Doortje. However, it was not simple to learn a language and hate it at the same time. None of the other children had gotten very good at it, but Doortje had worked hard to please her father. Alas, she still saw the disappointment every time he looked at her.