At 6 P.M. we saw the funeral of sixty-three Highlanders--all buried in
one long trench close to the line. No shots were fired over the vast
grave, but tears rolled down many a bronzed cheek and the bagpipes
played a wild lament. Surely there is no music like this for the burial
of young and gallant men. The notes seem to express an almost frenzied
access of human sorrow!

Soon after this my old Sudan acquaintance, Frederick Villiers, passed
through the train. He did not recognise me in my uniform and I did not
make myself known to him as he was with an officer and I was only an
orderly. I wonder if he remembers that dreadful night, 31st August,
1898, when we lay side by side in the desert at Sururab, soaked to the
skin from a tropical downpour, and, to make his misery complete, he was
stung in the neck by a large scorpion.

We ran down to Orange River with our first load of wounded men, and just
as we were crossing the sappers' pontoon bridge over the Modder a trolly
or small waggon broke loose and rushing down the incline in front met
our engine and was broken into matchwood. Most of our cases on this
first run were "severe" or "dangerous". Some of the men had no less than
three bullet wounds, and several were still living whose heads had been
pierced by bullets. During a former journey, after Belmont, poor ---- of
the Guards lived for several days with a bullet through his brain; he
was apparently unconscious or semi-conscious and struggled so
desperately to remove the bandages from his head that it took three
orderlies to hold him down. When he died the wounded soldier next him
burst into tears.

Amongst some cases peculiarly interesting from a medical point of view
was that of a Highlander who had three of his fingers shot off with the