All around the operation-marquee men were sitting and lying on the ground, waiting for their turn at the surgeon’s hands; while here would be a great heap of dusty rifles, and there a pile of discarded accoutrements, tunics and boots, and elsewhere a medley of boxes, panniers, canteen tins, cooking pots, and miscellaneous baggage. A few helmets were lying about which had probably dropped off the stretchers, or had been removed from the dead, for some of them were blood-stained and crushed out of shape, or riddled with holes.
The saddest cases among the wounded were those on the stretchers, and the stretchers were lying on the ground everywhere, and on each was a soldier who had been "hard hit." Some of those on the stretchers were already dead, and some kindly hand had drawn a jacket over the poor, dust-stained face. One or two were delirious, and had rolled off their stretchers on to the ground; others were strangely silent, and at most were trying to shade their eyes from the blinding sun. One man, who was paralysed below the waist from a shot in the spine, was repeatedly raising up his head in order to look with persisting wonder and curiosity at limbs which he could not move and in which he could not feel. Here and there groups of dusty men, who had been but slightly wounded, were sitting on the ground together, too tired and too depressed even to talk, or at most muttering a word or two now and then in a whisper.
Overworked orderlies were busy everywhere. Some were heating water or soup over the camp fires; others were hurrying round to each wounded man with water and bread. The majority were occupied in helping the injured to the tents or were concerned in attempting to relieve those who seemed in most distress.
The surgeons in their shirt-sleeves were working for their lives. Some were busy in the operation-marquee, while others were going from man to man among the crowd upon the ground, giving morphia, adjusting limbs, and hurrying each of the wounded into the shelter of a tent with as much speed as possible. Yet, although the whole ground seemed covered with stricken men, the dismal ambulances were still crawling in, and far over the veldt the red cross flag of other wagons could be seen moving slowly up to the naval ridge.