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Our military arrangements have not included a suitable hospital service, because the ambulances are too heavy and unwieldy. The French seem to have been afforded very good service by the so-called cacolets saddle horses with pack saddles for the sick and wounded. These are excellent for use in colonial countries.
Men dropped right and left, and a halt was made while the wounded were placed on the cacolets. The sides of the square turned outwards, the Mounted Infantry formed its left-front corner, and Jack and his comrades were in the left face.
We wanted sleepers, rails, and locomotives for the railway; pipes, pumps, and other materials for the water-supply; waggons, motor-lorries and light-cars for transport purposes; sand-carts, cacolets, and ambulances for the R.A.M.C.; and, with the exception of most kinds of vegetables, food. All this had to be brought overseas.
But many had for the time wholly lost their sight; they stumbled on the tufts of halfa, and rolled on the ground, so that we were obliged to hoist them on the cacolets. The general, in a state of much uneasiness, called a council of such members of the military corps of health as were found in his column.
Each camel carried two cacolets, one clamped to each side of a specially constructed saddle. To a wounded man the motion was the very refinement of torture, especially if the other cacolet were occupied by a heavier man.
Hussars and Lancers scouted in the scrub at each side, and within moved the clump of camels, with humorous eyes and supercilious lips, their comic faces a contrast to the blood-stained men who already lay huddled in the cacolets on either side.
It was too steep to assail from the front, and if they moved far enough to the right the general hoped that he might turn it. On the top of those ruddy hills lay a baronetcy for him, and a few extra hundreds in his pension, and he meant having them both that day. The Remington fire was annoying, and so were those two Krupp guns; already there were more cacolets full than he cared to see.
There are people who can still remember, on the roads of Perigord, the cacolets carrying merry parties to marriage feasts and other gatherings. In a few of the great dining-rooms the visitor will still notice the alcove volante a bedstead, that is a little house in itself, put into a cosy quiet nook where a person can get into bed without being observed by others in the room.
The troops all partook of a hearty meal before the start was made. Sir Herbert Stewart and the rest of the wounded were taken down in the cacolets with the column. Rupert Clinton had remained in the zareba when the square had marched forward.
Men fell fast, and frequent halts had to be made to enable the doctors to attend to the wounded, and place them in the cacolets. The front face and sides of the square advanced in fair order, but there was much confusion in the rear face, caused by the lagging camels. Skirmishers were thrown out on either side, and these did their best to keep down the fire of the enemy.
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