THE INFIRMARY (PART 3)

The spectre of Tom Higgins whose nightly visits to Evan in the cottage which had once served as an infirmary and temporary mortuary, goaded the young solicitor to unearth every sliver of information he could lay his hands on. Tom’s enlistment at the age of nineteen to fight in a far flung corner of the British Empire, would give him insight into the lives of ordinary working class men leading their lives in nation states ruled by the aristocracy and wealthy industrial barons of the industrial revolution. Geo-politics at the end of the nineteenth century was dictated by the unbridled greed of “big money” in pursuit of mineral wealth that could be extracted from regions subjugated by colonial powers exerting military power.

In England there had been a rapid transition from family farming to commercial agricultural industrialisation throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Reliance on family labour had shifted to a dependence on wage labour in the agricultural sector. It was as a wage labourer (farm hand) that Tom had been employed after he had learnt to read and write at elementary school level. He was functionally literate for employment as a farm labourer. In 1899 he earned a meagre income in exchange for the hard toil he put into the back breaking work of a farm hand. The hard slog of his daily grind, hauling massive sacks of produce around, stacking bales of hay and, at shearing time - wool, endowed him with a powerful physique.

Tom was a cantankerous chap whose visits to the village pub after wages had been paid on Fridays often resulted in liquor fuelled brawls. One such Friday he picked a fight with the wrong crowd and apart from suffering a severe thumping that left him with a broken arm, the tough and disorderly patrons who lambasted him were fellow labourers on the farm where he was employed. His injury was severe enough to make it impossible for him to perform heavy manual labour for a few weeks. At least two other labourers had also been put out of action by the altercation. Their landowner, a commercial farmer, was not enamoured of his belligerent workforce and fired them on the spot. Tom Higgins was unemployed.

Military recruitment for the Boer War which broke out in October of 1899 was a Godsend to him. A shilling and thrippence per day, as well as a uniform and rations, enticed Tom to enlist without batting an eye. For a young fellow in robust health since his recovery from the injury in the barfight this seemed like a swell proposition. Once he had signed up for service, he was assigned to a unit and shipped to South Africa without undue delay. It was a long trip on a liner that had been commandeered for the transport of troops who were packed cheek by jowl into every nook and cranny. A comfortable sea voyage it was not. Stormy seas, sea sickness and the constant barking of orders by superiors were par for the course. It was with some relief that they all disembarked in Cape Town, given rudimentary training, and were transported forthwith to the field of conflict by troop train.

Evan, the articled clerk reading about the inadequate preparation given to combatants, had a twinge of sympathy for Tom and his fellow “Tommies” (the derogatory term ascribed to British soldiers by the Boer Afrikander troops). Serving as poorly prepared and poorly regarded troops under the direction of toffs such as Redvers Buller and Lords Kitchener and Roberts, Tom and his fellow combatants were treated as little more than cannon fodder. Regarded as Riff Raff recruited from the dregs of the British working classes, the British generals and officer corps (members of the aristocracy one and all), cared little for the lives and welfare of their men, it seemed, because they sent them on ill considered sorties more suited to warfare of a bygone era. The ambush into which Tom rode on that fateful day was expertly executed by Boers who were underestimated by the likes of the British officers – written off as rough looking beggars in the field. These Boers that were looked down upon as a rag-tag mob of farmers inflicted damage that took the British generals by complete surprise. Their sieges were astoundingly effective and when they were defeated in conventional warfare, they turned to a brilliant guerilla strategy superbly suited to small armies facing off against the overwhelming might of great imperial powers. A war they expected to be over by Christmas, dragged on to 1902 and cost the British a pretty penny and massive loss of life. Moreover, their own scorched earth response to their inability to decisively subdue the Boers, and their ham handed administration of a dreadful concentration camp regime, heaped on their nation opprobrium that has not substantially abated, despite the passage of a century.

Evan’s insight into the life of a very ordinary working class Englishman was telling. Sent to fight a war not of his own making, and his status in a class ridden society, relegated him to a rung in the ladder of fighting men in which his life counted for little. It was of little wonder to him that Tom would remain a restless soul, stomping night after night through the infirmary to put his stamp on that haunted cottage after his demise. Tom’s dogged determination to be recognised as the essence of a human spirit and soul, made sense in light of the wilful disregard with which his class of man had been treated by his kinfolk during his sojourn here on earth. The phantom with the wooden stump left an indelible impression on the budding solicitor – a presence in death that had not been accorded him in life.

Tom’s tale brings to mind the story of Lazarus, the poor beggar, who was implored by the rich man who went to Hell, to assuage his thirst by dipping his finger in water to cool the wealthy fellow’s tongue. Tom’s nightly visits in this “stomping ground” from whence he had departed and been comforted in the bosom of Abraham, had the ring of one who warns the rich man’s relatives about the place of torment to which he had been relegated. He paces the cottage night after night, but never appears in the flesh – prevented from crossing over that deep chasm between the departed and those who still have time to mend their ways and also to treat their fellow man with dignity, regardless of their station in life. 

©Paul M Haupt