Dr. Powell came back from the fight later. He had been tending the wounded and dying there. Tired and weary as he was, he at once set to and tied my head up, first shaving off some of my hair. I don’t remember much after this. I remember Sergeant Elliott (of Edinburgh) was brought into the tent with his foot shattered by a pom-pom, and we groaned out a duet throughout that night. In the fight Elliott was holding some horses when a pom-pom shell burst in their midst, shattering Elliott’s foot and finishing off several horses, including his own. Managing to get hold of another mount, he rode up and reported himself to Captain Noblett, by whom he was of course ordered to the rear. So, badly wounded as he was, Elliott rode those five miles back to camp unaided. Next day or the day after—I do not remember exactly, as I was unconscious for two or three days, off and on—the ambulance waggons drove up, and into them we were shoved. Colonel Lumsden, Captain Noblett, Captain Chamney, and Sergeant Hewitt, I think, all were there, seeing us off and helping us to ‘keep our peckers up.’ My one complaint was that Captain Chamney wanted to shave off my moustache when he was doing the V.C. trick on the veldt. I asked him why he wanted to. He was much surprised at the question, and told me in answer that ‘there were too many Boers doing the shaving for him to think of it himself.’ I must have imagined the whole thing, I suppose, when I was lying ‘silly.’
_Photo: Harrington_ HERBERT N. BETTS, D.C.M. ]
Another incident which was referred to briefly by Colonel Lumsden, who for obvious reasons did not make much of it, is thus described in detail by Trooper Preston: