The wind has been tremendous lately, and four of the patients' tents have been blown to ribbons; we seem to spend most of our time on duty trying to keep the men's tents up (with not more of the gale than is absolutely necessary blowing round the bad cases), and most of our time off duty in attending to our own tent-pegs, &c. Of course wind here always means dust, and sometimes it seems as though the stones fly up and hit you in the face, and unless one takes great care the patients' milk is soon full of sand.
Really, if it was not that the men suffered for them, some of our difficulties would be amusing. When this hospital was a "Field Stationary" all the men had warm, grey flannel shirts; when it became a "General" they were given instead white cotton shirts and white flannel vests. That was all right at first, but recently the hospital has been enlarged, and, though there are plenty of the cotton shirts, they have run out of the flannel vests. Now the winter has begun, and we have many men in with rheumatism and chest complaints, and the tents are very cold, but the poor chaps are only given cotton shirts. I know there are plenty of the old "greybacks" in the store, but because this is now called a General Hospital they are not correct, and so cannot be issued, and the men must wait till more vests arrive! We have all fussed about it as much as we could, and we bought flannel shirts at the store for our worst cases (a man is always most grateful for an extra shirt to take with him when he goes away, so they won't be wasted), and now, at last, the old greybacks have been dealt out. At last they have got some boilers on wheels, so that we can get hot water in the tents; but _why_ should we have to wrestle so long to get things that make so much difference to the health and the comfort of the men? The Lady Superintendent is always saying that she does not know how we should have done in Ladysmith; but we all reply that we should have tried to make shift, but we can't see why we should have to "make shift" here quite so much, with an open line to the base.
I do wonder when the war will be over: the poor Tommies are so heartily sick of it, and are beginning to try every means to get sent home; you see most of the excitement of war has pretty well worn off, and now they just have to keep on trekking about the country, destroying farms, and bringing in Boer women and children to the refugee camps. They generally collect more destitute people on the way than they reckoned for, and, as they have to feed them, the rations for the troops run short, and the men are cut down to half rations (and sometimes quarter rations); and some columns out this way have had nothing but "mealie meal" (Indian corn), and not too much of that, for some days before they got into camp. Sometimes they have been on such short rations that men have had to be punished for stealing their horses' rations of mealie meal. When they pass through a village, the first place they make for is the baker's shop, and it is very soon cleared, and you see the men going on with loaves slung around them, and rather in the way of their rifles. When you consider that they are generally marching all day in a hot sun, and that in summer the nights are often wet, and in winter they are generally frosty, and the men just have to lie down hungry on their mackintosh sheet (no tents), with their greatcoat and sometimes one blanket; that they hardly ever have a chance of shooting at a Boer, but are constantly being sniped at during the nights--is it any wonder that they are utterly weary of it all?