Mary also records in her diary horrific scenes of the war-torn nation: "widows and orphans--cripples, maimed, wounded;--bleeding, moaning wretches, crawling away from bloody battle-fields, dying with hunger or thirst, or fainting from their wounds beneath a burning Southern sun; and long narrow ditches, where, beneath the yellow clay, lay thousands of mangled, unshrouded,
uncoffined men in reeking uniforms" (284).
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined - just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations West Each night above his mound.