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Updated: May 28, 2025
"I've just seen me two orderlies swimmin' away down-stream." The sick, wet and filthy as they were, had to be hurried away in dhoolies to the chapels and churches again. They will probably be safe there as long as the Geneva flag is not hoisted. December 16, 1899. This is Dingaan's Day, the great national festival of the Boers.
These were outspanned near a field hospital when the affair began, and as it was thought necessary to get the wounded out of possible danger quickly, they had to be removed some little distance in dhoolies. Meanwhile the Boers were getting guns on to a kopje where they might have enfiladed one of our most important lines of defence.
I found myself with the Irish Fusiliers at Range Post, where the road crosses to the foot of Waggon Hill. The stream of ambulance was incessant covered mule-waggons, little ox-carts, green dhoolies carried by indomitable Hindoos, knee-deep in water, and indifferent to every kind of death.
They came down the hill between a lane of blazing rifles, sometimes the flash not being more than five yards from them. =Within the Boer Lines.= 'Of course, as soon as it was light the doctors of the Bearer Company, with dhoolies, were out to seek amongst the rocks for the wounded and the slain, and it was not long before I was on my way to join them.
We have heard that tale before, but still, here the Boers are fighting for freedom and existence if ever men did. To-day's bombardment nearly destroyed the tents and dhoolies of our field hospital, but did little else save beheading and mangling some corpses.
He met Major Sandars directly, and their greeting was warm in the extreme. "The scoundrels tried to poison us," said the major. "Yes, yes, I know," cried the doctor; "but is any one hurt?" "A few scratches there in the dhoolies," said the major. "No one killed?" "Not a soul, thank heaven," cried the major. "But we shall have our work cut out. Ah, here's Horton. All right in the rear?"
Under the Red Cross flag the dhoolies then began to go out to pick up the results of the battle. For an hour or so that work lasted, the dead and dying being found among the ant-hills where they fell. Then we all trailed back, the enemy shelling our line of retreat from three sides, and we in such a mood that we cared very little for shells or anything else. November 4, 1899.
They were still too weak to walk any distance and had to be carried in roughly-constructed "dhoolies" by the Haussas. Their relief on learning that the seaplane was safely alongside the river was great, especially when they were promised that the work of repairing the floats would be put in hand forthwith. "Your C.O. evidently wants to get rid of us," declared the pilot smiling.
The cries of the wounded told me at once what had happened. Summoned by telephone, the dhoolies came quickly up and bore them away, together with the remains of the dead. Three of the wounded died before the night. In the middle of the morning much the same thing nearly happened to the 5th Lancers.
It also commands the beginning of the Maritzburg road, where it passes across the "Long Valley," between Range Post and Bluebank. The doctors and ambulance men who went out after the brief cavalry action on Friday morning report they were fired on while carrying the dead and wounded in the dhoolies. The Boers retaliate with a similar charge against us in Modder River.
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