But the Canadians, the British, the Americans, or the French, are not yet ready to quit! Nor will they be till the day comes when Prussian militarism is curbed so thoroughly that your boys and mine will not have to give up their lives in conquering it ten years from now!
About a month after the Canadians had taken Vimy Ridge we relieved the —— Canadian Battalion in the town of Vimy, where our battalion was in support to another battalion holding the front lines some distance in advance. Our Regimental Aid Post on our previous stay in this town had been in the cellar of a brewery near the railway station. Since we had left the shelling in the neighborhood had become so severe that this cellar had been abandoned. It had caught fire and all the woodwork had burned up. Out of curiosity I visited this old cellar on our arrival at Vimy and found it still hot as hades from the heating up of the brick and cement. It was absolutely uninhabitable. So we were forced to search for other quarters.
The officers of No. —— Canadian Field Ambulance, with that camaraderie so prevalent out there, invited us to share with them a couple of old cellars to which they had gone on deserting the brewery. We accepted gladly. One of their two cellars they used as sleeping and eating quarters, the other as a dressing station where they were kept exceedingly busy attending the wounded. The Germans had the range of Vimy to a nicety, and with true German love of destruction they poured five hundred to a thousand shells into the ruins daily. Whenever the Germans are driven from a village, their practice is to ruin it by high explosive shells sent from their new line of defense. And these two cellars were about the center of the Vimy target.
The previous day two officers of the field ambulance were standing a few feet apart in a little room off from the cellar used as sleeping quarters. A table stood between them, on which were two lighted candles. Suddenly through the floor above came a four-inch shell, just missing the table, and sinking into the floor. Fortunately for the two officers it did not explode—it was a dud. The rush of air caused by the shell extinguished one of the candles. The other remained lighted. It may be understood easily that the officers felt a bit unnerved. After staring at the hole in the floor for some moments, Captain M—— picked up the lighted candle in one hand and the extinguished one in the other and endeavored to light one from the other. His hands shook so that he could not make the candles meet. After a number of vain attempts to bring them together he gave it up. His nervous system was so shaken that he was sent to the rest station on two weeks' leave.
We arrived shortly after the shell had gone through the cellar. Captain M—— himself told us of it, and his humorous description of his attempts to get the candles within six inches of each other was ludicrous in the extreme.
After an appetizing supper eaten in the cellar with the officers of the field ambulance, we medical officers took turns attending to the many wounded who were arriving. All went well till eleven o'clock that night, when we heard the whirr of gas shells coming in our direction. As they burst close to us, we soon smelt their penetrating, pineapple odor. The Huns continued to pour them in large numbers in our direction, and, as the town of Vimy is in a hollow at the foot of Vimy Ridge, the atmosphere soon became laden with the poison gas which, being heavier than air, sinks to the bottom of any hollows. The air in our cellars became saturated with the filthy, death-dealing gases in spite of the wet blanket which we hung over the entrance to prevent their entering. Had we been able to stay in the cellar and keep the blanket tightly placed over the entrance, our misery would have been much less, but wounded were coming in from all directions and we had to keep going in and out, in turns, to the cellar in which we did our dressings. The gas kept thickening every minute.
To add to the discomfort these gas shells contained two gases. One entered the lungs, causing congestion of their tissues followed by inflammation, suffocation, and death if a sufficient amount were inhaled; the other, lachrymatory gas—called tear shell gas by the soldiers—which not only inflames temporarily the conjunctiva of the eyes, but is cursedly irritating while it lasts.
Naturally we quickly adjusted our gas masks. But, as it was fifty feet from one cellar to the other, and we dared not flash lights to pass over the stone and mortar of the fallen walls, we found it necessary to remove our masks for moving, as well as for the purpose of tying up the wounds in an acceptable manner. Thus, by midnight, our eyes were as red as uncooked beefsteak and they felt as if they had been sandpapered. Our lungs on each respiration felt as though they were gripped in a closing vise. The gas masks act by filtering the inhaled air through a chemical, which neutralizes the poisonous materials in the gases. When we removed them we had severe attacks of coughing which were relieved only by breathing through the mouthpiece of the masks.
Hours dragged slowly by. Still the whirr of approaching shells and the soft thud of their bursting continued. Misery? Never elsewhere had we experienced anything akin to it—the inflamed eyes; the suffocation in our lungs; the knowledge that inhalation of sufficient of the gas would put us into Kingdom Come. We knew that we could easily get out of this poisonous atmosphere by climbing to the top of Vimy Ridge, only a few hundred yards behind us. But we did not, for that would be deserting our posts.
All these things combined to make it the most miserable, soul-torturing night we had ever experienced. And, to add to it all, our artillery was in a hollow nearby where the gas was so thick that it prevented our gunners from retaliating, making it all take, and no give. We all learned that night what it felt like to long to desert. We learned that there are times when a man who is brave enough to be a coward deserves sympathy. But, thank God! there are few such men in our armies. The brave man and the coward, both, at times, experience the same sensation of fear, the coward allowing the emotion to conquer him, while the brave man grits his teeth and carries on.
For nearly five hours we endured this misery, wondering when we would have inhaled enough of the poison to put our names among the casualties. One of the strange things that struck me during that long night was that I heard no word of censure or condemnation of the Germans who were the cause of our suffering. We cursed war in general; we cursed Vimy and all that pertained to it; we cursed the inactivity of our artillery; and we cursed the gases; but the misery was taken as one of the fortunes of war, and no one wasted his breath in vain attempts to beat the Germans with his mouth—as Lord Roberts expressed it at the beginning of the conflict. Often when I am five thousand miles away from the firing line, sitting, perhaps, in a smoking-car, and listening to the abuse of our enemy, I think of this circumstance.
After nearly three hours of the wretched gassing, I had been lying for some little time in the upper of two bunks, wearing my mask, feeling very much smothered, and wondering if it were pleasanter to die quickly from the gas or slowly from the mask. For the masks give a most uncomfortable feeling of impending suffocation. Finally, I decided that I preferred the gas to the mask. I pulled it off, swore softly to myself, and muttered that I chose a quick death in preference to a slow one.
"Same here, doc," said a jolly voice from below me. "I took off my bally mask some time ago, and have been lying here wondering how long you were going to endure it."
Looking down I saw the smiling face of Captain S——, a chaplain, who had been there the previous day, burying some of our brave boys who had paid the greatest price that man can pay. He was a most courageous chap, always good-humored under any circumstances, and the gas had not lessened his courage. We joked for a few moments, then we tried, without success, to argue courage into a little cockney for whom this was a cruel initiation into the firing line, and whose "wind was up," as the boys express it when a man's nerve is about all gone. I don't know what happened to the little cockney in the end, but my last memory of him was that he was still arguing that this was no place for a white man, with which sentiment we all agreed. Shortly we were glad to reapply our masks, as the air became almost thick enough to cut with a knife, and that vise on our chests kept tightening.
Though the night seemed a thousand years long, it finally came to an end just as our nerves were at breaking point. The gas masks had been on our faces for the better part of five hours. What sighs of relief we gave as those abominable shells ceased to come over, and in their place we heard the crump of high explosive shells! Dame Nature completed the blessing by pouring down a drizzling rain which dissolved the gases and cleared the air, the rain then lying in opalescent pools in the shell-holes.
How glorious God's fresh air seemed to us after that atrocious experience! With what pleasure we laid aside our masks, though they had without doubt saved our lives! How exquisite to feel that the grains of sand between our eyelids and eyeballs seemed to be absorbing! And what a satisfaction to know that, despite the agony of it all, we had done our bit like men; for the greatest gifts that God can give are those necessary for the playing of a man's part!
Day was breaking when two runners came from the officer commanding B Company, to tell me that he wanted me to come over to the railway embankment, where his dugout was, to see a number of his men who were suffering severely from the gas. To come for me these boys had to cross a field for three hundred yards where the enemy were dropping Jack Johnsons—immense high explosive shells. The boys had nearly been caught by one of them, and they thought it unwise to recross the ground just then, as the shells were still falling. I leaned against the ruins of this old stone building, and watched the shells exploding for some minutes.
Gas attacks have a most depressing and demoralizing effect on everyone. I have never made a trip with as little pleasure as that I felt at the thought of this one before me. A medical officer can, but very rarely does, refuse to go to cases. He may insist on having them brought to him, as there is only one medical officer to a battalion, and his death may make it awkward for his unit till he is replaced by another surgeon from the nearest field ambulance.
However, though there was no let-up to the shelling, there was no alternative but to go. So I called the runners and my corporal and we started over. Whether it was due to the depressing effects of the gassing that we had gone through I know not, but at any rate this was the only occasion during my service at the front on which I had a real presentiment that death was going to meet me. Distinctly do I remember expressing to myself the following inelegant sentence:
"I believe this is the last damn walk that I am ever going to take!"
But, fortunately, presentiments seldom materialize. Our trip across that field was without even a narrow escape. The shells obligingly burst not closer to us than two or three hundred yards, and we reached B Company headquarters in safety. There a number of men were in rather a bad condition—as a matter of fact, one was dying—from the effects of a shell which had struck directly into their dugout. It killed one man by impact and gave the others such a concentrated dose of the gas as to put them into a dangerous condition.
As a result of this gas attack many of our men had to go to the hospital, and those of us who escaped that were depressed for several days. Gassing weakens the morale of troops. Men do not fear to stand up and face an enemy whom they have a chance of overcoming, but they do hate dying like so many rats in a trap, when death is due to a gas against which they cannot contend except by keeping out pure air and breathing through masks a mixture of carbon dioxide, poison gas, and air.
Fighting with gas is cowardly and is against the rules of civilized warfare. Only a race which cares for naught but success, no matter how attained, would employ it. True, we now retaliate in kind, but we should never have considered this method of warfare as worthy of civilized man, except in self-defense. If you are fighting a wild beast of the jungle, jungle methods are in order. I, for one, believe that retaliation is the only method to combat an enemy who has shown himself ready to use any means to attain his end.
When one battalion goes out of the line it is relieved by another, and no section or company of a battalion may go from its point of duty until a corresponding section or company has relieved it. Reliefs, except on very quiet parts of the line, are usually carried out by night to keep the enemy from being aware that they are going on. A severe shelling during a relief is always more likely to cause many casualties than at other times. Battalion H.Q. goes out last. As each company or section is relieved it notifies H.Q., and when all are relieved, H.Q. takes its departure, having handed over all necessary documents and information to the incoming battalion.
Because the human nervous system can stand only a certain amount of abuse battalions can be kept in the line only a certain length of time, which depends upon the activity upon that front, upon the exposure of the lines to the enemy, and so the extra nervous strain, or sometimes upon the urgency of advance or retreat. A relief may be very welcome, or very unwelcome, depending upon the same things, but also to a certain extent upon the quality of the dugouts in the lines, and the kind of accommodation outside. For, strange to say, the dugouts in the lines may be preferable, even with their added danger, because, on arriving at your rest station, your battalion may find, instead of the good billets they hoped for, a few forlorn-looking one-inch board huts, with only one-half the required accommodation, the temperature below freezing, and no stoves; or you may find only tents; or you may find virgin forest in which you are to build your own camp, while the rain comes down with monotonous persistence.
It is midnight in the late winter, and the adjutant, Major P——, and I are just leaving H.Q. dugout on our way to reserve billets. The trenches are very dark, the light from the stars overhead not reaching to their depths. We throw down a glare from a flashlight, and a Tommy's voice angrily cries:
"'Ave a 'eart there, myte; d'ye think ye're the only man in the army? Douse the glim." So we douse it, and decide that the best way to keep peace in the army is to pick our way along. Gradually our eyes become accustomed to the dark, and instinctively our feet keep on the trench mats as we twist and turn along the trenches. An occasional flare or star shell from the front lines aids us for a moment, but plunges us into deeper darkness afterwards. Our feet slip on the semi-frozen mud of the mats, over our heads in both directions shells sing at intervals, and we hear the pounding of the guns and bursting shells before and behind us. In the quieter moments we can hear a quarter of a mile away the rattle of transport wagons on the hard road as they bring their nightly loads of ammunition and food to the dump where we are going and where we expect to find our horses.
We arrive at the dump, and here one might think he was in the midst of a large city market just before the dawn. Limbers, general service wagons, pack mules and men make a jumble of hurrying, scurrying workers. No lights dare be shown for fear of drawing the shells of the Germans, who have the range of this dump and have been shelling it during the day. Someone tells us our horses are just around a bend in the road, and we make our way there, and find the grooms holding the animals, which have become cold and restive with waiting.
Mounting, we start on a five mile ride along a hard stone road, dodging and picking our way among transport wagons and foot soldiers all along it. The road is bordered with trees which look like phantoms in the sighing night breeze. The stars are twinkling brightly and peacefully; to our left the big guns flash and roar and their shells sing overhead, and on the other side flares are being thrown up by the battalions in the line. The north star is well up to our right, so we are riding due west.
We approach a corner where we turn a little northward. Flashing from the window of a small house on the corner is a light that should not be there. The adjutant who is a strict disciplinarian draws up his horse opposite the sentry and proceeds to "strafe" him for negligence. (How many new words during the next few years will be the result of the war!) We take the road to the right and a couple of miles in advance we see the dim shadows of those ancient and architecturally beautiful towers on the hill of Mont St. Eloy. The Huns have for some days been trying to complete their ruin, recently destroying a corner.
At 2 a.m. we arrive at wooden huts just behind the towers. Our Colonel, who had preceded us, with that fine thoughtfulness that characterized him, had arranged that a battalion in some adjoining huts supply us with tea and toast—a banquet after our cold night ride. By 3 a.m. we are sleeping fast on the floor in our Wolseley kits, as we are to rise at 6 a.m., for by 7 a.m. the battalion is to be on the march to a wood four miles back. As the camp we are in was shelled yesterday by the Germans, causing thirty casualties, we had better get out of range while we can.
At the appointed hour we are all up, our kits are rolled and piled on a transport by our batmen, and a hurried breakfast of bacon, bread and tea partaken of. I see a few sick and send a couple to the field ambulance, the battalion marches away, the camp is inspected to see that all is spick and span,—for each battalion must always leave a clean camp behind it—and we are on the road to map location W 17 c 4 9, the only description we have of our new home.
As we start we pass the bodies of five dead mules, victims of yesterday's shelling. The roads are crowded with soldiers, horses, and motor transports of all sorts. It is a bright cool day—Sunday by the way—and a picturesque scene meets the eye. In addition to the busy, hurrying roadway traffic, the fields show life of varying forms and pictures of interest to a seeing eye. On one side in a field stands a battalion forming three sides of a square. The fourth side is filled by the regimental band playing, "Lead, Kindly Light," the padre standing beside them. It is an open air church service. As far as the eye can see are military huts, tents, drilling soldiers, and piles of ammunition, but in the distance, overtopping all, is the spire of a church, dumbly supplicating us to send our thoughts upward to the Prince of Peace, as everything on earth seems to tell us to give our minds to the Gods of War. And sailing high above the church steeple are two military aeroplanes, like guardian angels ready to protect their loved ones. Beyond them in the dim distance hangs the lazy, sausage-shaped form of an observation balloon. Above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth, one sees war, war, war!
Here and there one passes white limestone farmhouses of France with red tiled roofs, the buildings forming a square about the court. The latter is filled to overflowing with its ever-present pile of manure, at one side of which always stands the well, raised, it is true, a little above the manure dump, but built of brick and mortar through which in many cases permeate the fluids from this cesspool in the center. A medical friend of mine once told me that the peasant farmer objects to chloride of lime being put on the manure, as it gives a disagreeable taste to the water!
Then as far as the eye can see the fields that are not employed for military purposes are tilled and cultivated. How it is done is something very difficult to understand, for one never sees anybody working in them except an aged man and woman, or a young child. Those in the prime of youthful manhood are all fighting for their adored country, la belle France. On the corner of one of these cultivated areas stands one of those small, stone shrines so common in France. This one was erected, so it said in carved letters, in 1816, "to the honor of his beloved child, Eugenie de Lattre, by her father."
The date unconsciously carries one back to the great Napoleon. If he could rise from his magnificent tomb in the Invalides and look about him in the midst of a war which dwarfs his famous battles into insignificance, what would his thoughts be? No longer would he see his famous guard on prancing steeds and with flowing plumes charging bristling British squares, as they did in his last great fight at Waterloo. He would find them in somber, semi-invisible garb, standing shoulder to shoulder with their one-time hated enemies, the latter clad in plain khaki, both facing the same foe, the Prussian, whom he had once humbled by marching into Berlin, but who had later helped the British defeat him at Waterloo. And many he would see groveling in the earth in trenches, dugouts, and tunnels, like so many earthworms. Some few he would discover who, with the French love of the spectacular, are sailing thousands of feet in the air, or leagues under the surface of the sea.
We pass through a village, Camblain L'Abbé, where we go into the town major's to inquire about water supplies for our men. The town major, a Canadian of fifty, reminds one of us of an old friend of the same name in Chicago, one of the many Canadians who has made good—very good—in the United States. It is a brother!
So, it is being continually shown that this war has made the world an even smaller place than it was before. Our information obtained, we move on to our new camp, a virgin forest one-half mile above Camblain L'Abbé, where there is no sign of tent, hut, or dwelling of any kind. But the men are already lolling happily on the bare ground, ignoring the pounding of our guns a few miles north and inhaling with anticipatory pleasure the fragrant odors of stew, steaming in the Battalion field cookers just below the brow of the hill.
The busy work of turning an open forest into a camp to be occupied by one thousand men for a week or more is already in progress. The tents have not arrived, but brigade has promised to get them along shortly. Plans are being made as to where each company is to be, where orderly room will be most convenient, what is the best position for the H.Q. and the other officers, where the cook houses, cookers, water carts, latrines, refuse dumps, canteen, batmen's quarters, medical inspection tent, shoemaker, tailor, transport department, and the hundred and one other departments and sections are to be located.
You see, it is not as easy as it sounds to take a thousand men and encamp them in a proper manner. Gradually the chaos is subdued, and as tents and half-built huts come they are quickly placed in their proper positions. While it is all in progress one is likely to stumble over the Colonel who has stolen half an hour from his busy work to sit on the ground and eat some bully beef, biscuits and chocolate, and who insists on everyone else doing the same; or to bump into the corpulent form of the R.S.M.—regimental sergeant major—who is everywhere, directing everything, in the way that only a R.S.M. can do, though his crossest word is usually grumbled through a smiling ruddy face, for his heart is proportionate to his large size.
The day advances, night is coming on, and the tents have arrived only in sufficient numbers to cover one-third of the officers and men. Fortunately the sun still shines, though the March air is getting colder. A sleep in the open air promises to require extra blankets which do not exist in the camp. However, everyone smiles, and there is at least a gradually, though slowly, increasing amount of cover for the men of the battalion. Some of the men, wiser perhaps through previous like predicaments, are choosing the sheltered side of a small hill, and are digging shelters for themselves over which they are putting coverings of boughs. As it turns out they are wise, for in the end only sufficient coverings come for two-thirds of the battalion, and consequently, a few officers and quite a few men sleep in the open with only a blanket and their overcoats for covering. And Nature, the deceitful jade, who had smiled kindly upon us all day and promised us a dry, though cold, night, about midnight and for two days succeeding poured torrents of rain down upon us.
The sick parade grew larger and the ground became lakes of mud. The cook-houses—so-called—which were only fires built in hollows, had their fires so drowned that we all ate primitive diet as well as lived most closely to nature. Everyone, as usual, had his consolation in laughing at the discomforts of the others, till order came out of chaos in the days that followed.
To anyone who has served any time at the front the above word will bring back recollections of various kinds, for dugouts are of varying types. The term is employed to denote any shelter in the neighborhood of the firing line, from the funk hole which is only a recess cut into the side of a trench with little or no shelter above it and none at the entrance, to the cavity dug down into the ground a distance varying from ten feet to seventy, and strengthened by supports of wood, steel, or concrete. It is also loosely used to denote cellars, caves, and shellholes which may be employed as means of protection from rifle bullet, shrapnel, or high explosive shell.
It is probably true in dugouts, as in many of the other necessities of war, that we learned much from the German, for he was probably the first to recognize the protection rendered by a well-built—or, rather, well-dug—reënforced hole in the ground. At various times when we have taken portions of the German lines we have found well-made homes underground, with two or more long entrances, one at either end, so that if one is hit by a shell, the other affords a means of exit to the inhabitants.
Those we took at Vimy seemed almost free of rats, which statement could not truthfully be made of our own dugouts. I don't know whether the German has some method of getting rid of rats, but I do know from practical and irritating experience that the German either has no method of freeing his dugouts of lice, or else thoroughly enjoys the company of vermin. None of us who occupied his underground dwellings, even if only for a few days, came back free from these annoying and disgusting companions. So tenacious and clinging were they that it took repeated baths and changes to free us of them. One might conclude that they had been treated in a brotherly way by the Hun.
Of course, as Kelly said, scratching is common in the best circles out there. The man who has to reach over his shoulder in an attempt to remove an irritation from that almost unattainable spot between the shoulder blades is not shunned or looked at askance, but serves only as a source of amusement to his companions. Underwear searching is a common, very common, form of pastime. Though you may have been a very dignified and sensitive soul, your sensitiveness gradually dulls until you care not a "hoot" who may see you sitting in a brilliant sunshine anxiously scanning your clothes; or rising at midnight from a much-troubled sleep and by dim candle light beginning the often well-rewarded inspection.
So far as the ordinary Tommy is concerned, he ignores not only his acquaintances but the world in general. There he sits in his bare pelt and performs a massacre which in numbers dwarfs almost to infinity the killings of the Armenians by the Turks. In the town of Vimy I one time passed a jocular, though profitable, hour at this occupation while I sat on the floor of the cellar of an old brewery with a Scotch padre on one side of me, and a Nova Scotia major on the other, all absorbed in the same intense search, while above our heads the shells every little while hit the fallen walls of our shelter. And through the thin-walled partition that separated us from our soldier-servants we heard propounded a most momentous question which showed us that they too were employing their time to advantage. The question was:—
"Say, Kelly, what the h—— will all the lice do for a living after the war?" And for once Kelly was floored.
Often dugouts are but shelters dug into the wall of a trench, a thin sheet-iron roof put on top, and two or three layers of sandbags on top of that. This gives protection against bullets, shrapnel, or bits of shell, but a straight hit from a medium-sized shell would go right through. And yet it is strange how seldom these are hit direct, considering their large numbers. This may in part account for one's feeling of relative security while in them, but this feeling is no doubt also partly due to our resemblance to the ostrich which hides its head to avoid danger. Be this as it may, many a good night's sleep have I passed in shelters such as this, with shells bursting within one hundred yards at frequent intervals during the night. During the month previous to the Battle of Arras my orderlies and I lived in an abode of this nature most of the time, only 500 yards from our front line trenches. Shells continually fell well within the hundred yard radius of it—as a matter of fact, shortly afterwards this dugout was completely blown in—yet no one worried in the least about it. This is not told as a strange experience, for all officers who have served at the front have often lived in the same surroundings. This experience is related only to illustrate one type of protective shelter.
Deep dugouts vary in depth anywhere from ten to forty or fifty feet in cases where the soldier has had to do all the digging, but in some cases where limestone quarrying has been extensively carried on there have often been found, ready to hand, caves, sixty to one hundred feet in depth, such as the famous Zivy cave, opposite Mt. St. Eloy. There are many of them about this region, some of which, as the one mentioned, are large enough to give shelter to 1000 men. Usually there is a circular airshaft in the center. This shaft in Zivy cave was the target for months for German gunners, as they had occupied this region, and knew it well. In fact the story is told that in this cave, or one of the others near about, 800 Germans were gassed and killed by the French when they retook this ground. How much truth is in the story it is difficult to say. But at any rate, all through the hard, cold winter of 1916-17 the Canadians who were holding this front found good protection and some warmth in this cave for many of their men, though at all times the air in it had a grayish tinge, as the ventilation was hardly up-to-date.
On one occasion at 11 p.m. Colonel J—— and the writer found Zivy cave as welcome a sight as ever struck the eye of man. Coming into the trenches, we stumbled into a heavy Hun artillery barrage. After a number of close shaves, in two of which we were buried in mud from the exploding shell, we were heavily dragging our feet through the thick mud of Guillermot trench when a shell struck full in the trench twenty feet in front of us, nearly bursting our ear drums. We pressed closely against the wall of the trench, awaiting the next. It came almost immediately, landing thirty feet behind us,—bracketing us.
"The next will get us, sir," I said.
"Not on your life, doctor," cheerfully replied Colonel J——. And he was right, for a few moments later we were stumbling into the entrance of Zivy cave, and that slimy, dark, four-foot opening was more welcome to us than would be today the spacious rotunda of the Savoy. I always admired the Colonel's cheerful confidence, but, as Kelly well said, "Confidence is a foine thing, but it raly has very little affict in stoppin' a Hun shell that's comin' yer way." This, the Colonel unfortunately found out in the Battle of Arras.
From one of these deep caves on the Vimy front previous to the battle of Easter Monday, tunnels miles in length, electric lighted, were built, leading to different headquarters, aid posts, ambulance depots, and to various points in No Man's Land. They were of inestimable service when the day of battle arrived. No doubt they will be among the show-places of France to encourage tourist traffic after the war.
The entrance to deep dugouts is usually only high enough to go through in a stooped position; and in this case the easiest way to enter them is to back down. After some practice one gets accustomed to this manner of progression, and it becomes easy—as if our bodies had reverted to the days of our cave-dwelling ancestry to accompany the turning back of civilization's clock. The two entrances preferably point away from the enemy lines, but in case of advance the enemy dugouts may be taken over in spite of the fact that their entrances seem to invite a shell to enter. And, rather strangely, shells rarely seem to make a straight hit on an entrance.
Cellars are quite often utilized as shelters where a little village has become incorporated in the lines. They often make comparatively luxurious places of residence for officers and men, as luxury goes in these parts. The fallen brick walls, in addition to the cellar roof, give fair protection, though a straight hit by a shell would mean a good chance of death to those within. As breweries are usually the most palatial buildings in French towns, they are often chosen as headquarters, or as dressing stations either for field ambulances or regimental aid posts. A brewery at Aix Noulette which, not excepting the church, was the only building not destroyed by shell fire, for many months served as a most complete advanced dressing station. The rats were plentiful, as they are in most dugouts, and often their little beady eyes would stare in a startled manner at one's flashlight, and their bodies remain in a sort of hypnotized immobility. But this brewery gave shelter to thirty or forty patients, and was exceedingly useful, till one day a selfish artillery officer came along and placed a battery of heavies just behind it to draw German fire on the brewery. This is a disagreeable habit of the artillery, to choose hitherto safe locations and to turn them into uninhabitable ones, to the disgust of those about.
One cellar dugout in Calonne is worthy of description. It was in the cellar of what had been a large residence. We used it as a regimental aid post, and it was by far the most luxurious that I have had the pleasure of seeing. In the room of the cellar occupied by the M.O. the walls had been papered, a fireplace installed, and it contained two comfortable beds, arm chairs, two carved oak-framed mirrors, and a well-tuned piano with a stool. This was only four hundred yards from the front line. Often as the shells dropped all about us a group of officers sat there in the warm glow of a coal fire—the coal probably filched by our batmen from the fosse nearby—while someone of a musical turn played the piano, and the others sang such classical ditties as, Annie Laurie, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, and Another Little Drink Wouldn't Do Us Any Harm.
One morning, after a night of jollity such as this during which the shelling had been fairly heavy, one of the orderlies found a "dud" in the next cellar which, had it exploded, would have jolted the piano a bit! An engineering officer mentioned to me that he had been passing the previous night, and could not believe his ears when he heard the singing and the piano accompaniment. Could he be blamed?
I hasten to add that this was the only dugout in which such luxury as this existed, or anything approaching to it. This cellar had one other advantage. It still had enough of the walls and roof standing to allow us in spare moments to look through the holes made by shells and see what was happening in No Man's Land. And on one occasion the writer stood up there and watched every detail of one of the most successful raids ever put on by a battalion on the British front.
It was a cold winter's day, and the ground had a complete covering of snow. Just at daybreak a box barrage was put on a part of the German line on our front. Our men climbed out of the trenches, and apparently at their leisure went across to the German lines. One of the men carried a telephone with wire coiled about it which he unrolled as he went, and Major R——, M.C., telephoned back to H.Q. in our lines that all was proceeding well. They returned with one hundred prisoners, at that time a record number for a raid. The boy, aged twenty, who had carried the telephone coolly rewound his wire, and brought phone and wire back with him, getting a bullet in the thigh, but finishing his work, and later receiving a military medal for his conduct. I was called down from this interesting sight to dress him and some others of our wounded, as well as many German wounded who were brought in prisoners.
For those who are unacquainted with barrages, it may be explained that a box barrage is a heavy shelling put on the enemy lines in the form of a box, taking in the front line and some of the supports in such a manner that those within it cannot get back and reinforcements are unable to come up from the rear. The enemy are then dependent upon shell, and machine-gun, and trench mortar fire in retaliating.
We obtain the identification of the troops opposite by the prisoners taken, as well as getting from them in different ways information useful to us and detrimental to the enemy. Of course the enemy employs like methods, but during the winter of 1916-17 on our different fronts we positively owned No Man's Land.
The handling of the sick is not so easy a matter as the caring for the wounded in the lines, for the reason that it is not what disease the man has that the medical officer must decide as much as whether he has any disease, or has simply joined the Independent Workers of the World. In other words, is he really ill, or is he just suffering from ennui, has he at last become so "fed up" with it all that he has decided to go sick, running the gauntlet of an irate M.O. with the hope of receiving a few hours or days of rest at the transport or in the hospital? It may be a lucky father who knows his own son, but it is a fortunate medical officer who knows his own battalion. If he does it is fortunate for the M.O., for it makes his toils lighter. But it may not be so fortunate for the poor devil who has just decided that once again he will endeavor to "put it over" the doctor. For the latter gets to know the regular parader, and meets him with a suspicious look of recognition.
"Well, Jones, and what is it this time?" asks the M. O. in tones so cold that the poor victim can almost taste Pill No. 9, or Castor Oil as he listens. If he is not ill, but is simply sick and tired of the mud, dirt, rats, lice, discipline, and discomfort—as we all get at times—he will have to tax his ingenuity and his acting ability to convince the doctor that his pains in his legs and back are real, not imaginary; or that his right knee is swollen, when the practised eye of the physician says it is not. If he is an old soldier and knows the game well, he may get away with it, sometimes with the tacit consent of a sympathetic medical officer.
Tommy is not the only one who endeavors at times to get out of the lines with imaginary ills. His officers, and some medical officers for the matter of that, occasionally set him the example. It is very human on occasions to long for comfort instead of discomfort; cleanliness in place of dirt; a decent, white-sheeted bed in exchange for a hard, uncomfortable, and possibly vermin-infested bunk; and to wish to indulge in peace, quietness, rest, safety, and civilization after the noise, fatigue, dangers, and barbarism that give truth to the saying that war is hell. But the officer gets the same treatment as does his men. On one occasion I saw a colonel removed from an ambulance to make room for a badly wounded Tommy.
And it may safely be said that if the ordinary soldier hates the sick parade, his abhorrence of it is mild in comparison to that felt for it by the battalion representative of the Army Medical Corps. It is a thorn in his side that makes itself felt daily. And the reason is that he is between three fires,—the Assistant Director of Medical Services who expects a low sick rate in the different units; the battalion and company commanders who expect the men on parade, which means fit and on duty, while at the same time insisting, quite rightly, that the men get every attention at the hands of the medical department; and a certain small percentage of the men for whom the novelty and glamour of the war has worn off and who have become tired of the food, and find the work arduous and monotonous. It is this small percentage of the men—not large in numbers, but present in most units—who make the work difficult, for they begin to wonder how they can escape the working parties or the dangers and hardships of the trenches, and if by any chance they have varicose veins, flat feet, rheumatism, short sight, or any of the thousand and one ills that man is heir to, they immediately begin "swinging the lead," as the boys call malingering. In the Royal Army Medical Corps they call it "scrimshanking."
The M.O. is not popular with leadswingers or scrimshankers. A witty Tommy once said that all you can get from an officer of the medical department is a pill number nine—made up mostly of calomel—"an' if 'e hain't got a pill nine 'e'll give ye a four an' a five."
No doubt the man who "swings the lead" is to be sympathized with at times. Often he is given work to do almost beyond human endurance, his dugout may be a mudhole, his clothes soaking from a downpour of rain, his rations short, and, finally, perhaps the rum ration, the one cheery thing on a dark day, is missing. He has done his bit anyway—or thinks he has—and his only possible relief is to say that he is too ill to go on the next day. Occasionally, he has an attack of what a sharp little French Canadian sergeant called frigidity of the feet, and he dreads his next tour in the front line. At any rate, for one cause or another, he decides to go before the M.O. And many funny stories are told of the attempts made by men to get a few days' "excuse duty," which means a few days with nothing to do. Two men are overheard at the following conversation:
"Say, Bill, what are you goin' to tell the croaker?"—a common name for a stern M.O.
"Oh, I've got bad rheumatic pains in my back."
"The devil you have; that's what I had. Well, I'll go strong on diarrhea."
Each tells his story. It depends on how sick they appear or how often they have been before his medical majesty in the past as to the result. The latter at least may work a day off, at the expense of a nauseating dose of castor oil, taken at once, and some lead and opium pills, consigned to the gutter as soon as the sick man is out of sight. The former probably gets M.&D., that is medicine and duty, which translated means, carry on, with perhaps a good rubbing of his back with a strong liniment.
My corporal told me a story of two men who opened a can of bully beef and for four days left it standing on the parapet during hot weather. Then they ate it with the hope of getting ptomaine poisoning.
Another chap is said to have feigned insanity by giving all his attention to snatching up every bit of paper he could find in the trenches or out of them, and studiously endeavoring to make the bits of paper into some important document. He carried out this apparently foolish search so long that at last he was pronounced insane and given his discharge from the forces. On receiving his discharge papers he studied them carefully as he walked away. Another soldier heard him murmur:
"Why, that's the paper I have been searching for all the time."
Deafness is one of the commonest complaints of a soldier who is scrimshanking. The soldier tells the M.O. that for some months past his hearing has been lessening and that at last he is so deaf that he cannot carry on. He claims that while on sentry duty or "standing to" in the front line he has already nearly shot one officer and three different men because he could not hear them giving him the password. The M.O. in a loud voice questions him as to his name, place of birth, age, and so on, and so on, keeping his face straight and his lips hidden, to avoid allowing the soldier, if really deaf, to read his lips. Gradually the voice of the officer is lowered, and the man who at first had difficulty hearing his loud tones, unconsciously, if faking, answers the lowered voice till he is answering to a voice that is almost a whisper.
Then comes suddenly a change in the manner of the "croaker." He becomes stern and rebukes the man, ordering him forth to do his duty like the other men of his battalion, and not ever again to dare to come on parade with a plea of deafness, under a threat of marking him plain "DUTY," which means criming and a likelihood of twenty-eight days first field punishment.
Looking backward one can think of many amusing incidents in which some chap tried to get out of the lines, and perhaps succeeded in so doing, by an imaginary ill. A soldier named Jones who had not been long in the lines became a regular caller upon me. As usual at first every consideration was shown to him, but as his face appeared and reappeared almost daily, and as the said face was suffused with the glow of health, his form of the robust type, and his complaints always functional—that is, consisting of symptoms only, with nosignsof a real disease to cause them—I began to feel certain that he was a "lead-swinger." On his first call or two he had been "excused duty," but as my suspicions grew firmer that he was simply shifting his work onto the shoulders of some other poor Tommy, my manner toward him grew rather reserved, and finally antagonistic.
About this time he came to see me at one of my daily morning sick parades. He tried to look as ill and dejected as his very healthy appearance would permit.
"Well, Jones, what is the trouble this time?" I asked harshly when his turn came.
"I can't swallow, sir. I can't get any food down my throat. I don't know what's the matter, sir, but I had this happen to me ten years ago, and I nearly died. I was in the hospital for three months."
"How long since you have swallowed any food, Jones?"
"Well, I managed to get down a little, night before last, but not a bite since then, not a bite. And I'm feeling awful weak. I don't think I could carry on long like this. But of course I'll do my best, sir."
"Yes, I suppose so, Jones," I answered, feeling certain that he was lying. "Of course a few days without food really does most of us good. A friend of mine regularly goes a week on nothing but water whenever he feels a bit 'livery,' as the English say. And then you remember there was a man once who went forty days fasting. He became quite famous. So another day or two won't hurt you, Jones. However, if it went too long it might become serious. So I want you to report back here tomorrow morning, sure, if you have not succeeded in swallowing by that time. I have in my panier a stomach tube, and we'll pass it down through your esophagus and open it up. It's a very tender passage," I continued without smiling, "and you must expect severe pain from the passing of the tube; unfortunately we have nothing to deaden the pain, but you can stand it if you make up your mind to do so. Now you do your best to swallow like a good fellow, and I think you will succeed, but be sure to come back tomorrow if you don't. That'll do, Jones. Next."
As a matter of fact I had no stomach or esophageal tube, but I was just trying out a little Christian Science treatment, for, as Dooley says, if the Christian Scientists had a little more science and the medical men a little more Christianity it would not matter much which you called in, so long as you had a good nurse. And the moral treatment proved effective in this case, for Jones did not come back next day; nor did we see him again till nearly a week had passed when he came in on parade again.
"What's doing this time, Jones? Can't swallow again?"
"Oh, no, sir. I got my swallowing back all right." I could hardly resist the temptation to smile. "But since then I vomit all my food. Haven't kept a thing on my stomach since I saw you, sir. I saw your man, Kelly, the other day, and he was so unkind as to tell me that I had better take something with claws in it. He seemed to think I was swinging the lead, and I'm a sick man, sir," with an injured air which, however, did not take any of the healthy red from his cheek. I stepped outside and asked the corporal in charge of the sick from his company what diet Jones was able to eat.
"Diet! He don't eat no diet, sir. He eats every darn thing in sight and looks for more," was the sneering reply.
"I thought so. Now, Jones," I said sternly, "if you come on sick parade again, when you are not sick I'm going to put in a crime charge against you for malingering. Now, get out."
And he got out, and that was the last time I saw him on sick parade.
The chaps who fake are nearly always new arrivals in the line. One such came hopping into my dugout in the middle of the night, with his boot, sock, and puttee, off one foot which he carefully kept off the ground. He said he had been blown up by a shell and buried, severely injuring the foot he had bared. I examined the foot tenderly and found a swelling half the size of an egg just over the inner side of the ankle. He howled with pain when I touched it, so my examination was rather cursory—that is hurried. Without diagnosing the condition, I swabbed it with iodine, merely to do something, and applied a dressing, telling my assistant to make out a hospital entry card for him. After leaving him to go back to my bunk, for I was tired, I happened to glance around and saw a broad grin on his face. Stepping back I took off the dressing, and carefully examined the swelling notwithstanding his protest that it was very painful. I found then that it was simply a fatty tumor—an excess, but harmless, growth of fat in a localized area—which had probably been there for years. He then admitted the fact that the swelling had been there for years, but of course still claimed that he had hurt his ankle a few minutes before. As it showed no sign of it, he went back to duty!
Every medical officer has many such incidents after a few months of service. They often add a bit of humor to a dull business. Rather strangely, the parades are always larger out of the lines than in them, for the vast majority of the men hold it as a point of honor to stick it out, no matter how rough it may be, while in the line. But as soon as the battalion gets out of the line and hard training, route marches, equipment cleaning and inspection begin, the parades increase in size. Often the men hope that they will be given excuse duty, which means that they have nothing to do for that day. Or, should the parade be held at a late hour, some few of them prefer to stand about the M.O.'s tent awaiting their turn, to doing some drill or route march. The sick parade is held daily at a fixed hour, and as a rule the earlier the parade the smaller the number who come. If it is held before all other parades, only the really ill come, for the others would but add to their daily number of parades if they came pretending to be ill.
A medical friend of mine had an interesting way of keeping down the numbers at his parade. He was a young man with a ministerial air, wore eyeglasses, and was apparently very serious, though underneath the outer covering was a rich vein of humor. When his numbers grew too large to suit him, in other words when fifty to one hundred came, to practically all he gave an ounce of castor oil, to be taken in his presence. One day the colonel came to him and said that he had had some complaints from the men that the only thing they got from the M.O. for all complaints was castor oil. The medical officer's face remained long and serious, and looking at the colonel over his spectacles, he said:
"Well, do you know, my dear colonel, that castor oil is a wonderful remedy, marvelous, almost miraculous. Can you believe it on my sick parade a week ago today there were seventy-five sick who came. I have given them nothing but castor oil, and so many are cured that today only seventeen came to see me. It's really an astonishing remedy. Wouldn't you like to take an ounce of it, sir?"
"No, damn you, I wouldn't," roared the colonel, as he made his exit.
I was sitting in his tent one day when a lieutenant came in to see him, saying that ten years before he had broken his clavicle—"collar bone,"—and that over the old fracture he was having so much pain at times that he feared he would have to get a month off.
"Ah, yes, my dear Mr. Blank. Would you kindly divest yourself of your clothes till I examine the shoulder?" and the half of his face on my side screwed itself up into an exaggerated wink, which meant to me that he considered that this officer was trying to "put one over." He probably knew him!
When the officer had stripped, Capt. Smith asked him to show the exact spot of tenderness, and the lieutenant put his finger with exactitude on a certain point. Captain Smith touched the spot with his fingers, the officer exclaiming, "Oh, that hurts, doc," and drawing back in pain.
"Ah, yes, I'm sorry, but I'll be careful, Mr. Blank," and he examined gently the shoulder, arm and chest, but always finished the examination by pushing in fairly hard with his finger and saying, "Now that's where it hurts, Mr. Blank?" And Mr. Blank would each time cringe with the pain of the touch. He repeated this again and again, but I noticed that each time he came back to the tender spot he chose a point an inch or so from that which he had chosen the last time. Finally he had poor Blank saying, "Yes, that's the spot," when the spot touched was nearly six inches from the original sensitive point. At last the doctor said, very seriously:
"Yes, yes, Mr. Blank, that painful condition must be attended to. It is a strange condition, don't you know, for as I go on examining it, the tenderness shifts about a great deal, and I feel sure that with a little rubbing it may be driven out altogether. Now this liniment is the very thing, the very thing. Yes, yes, twice daily, night and morning. Good afternoon, my dear Blank. Don't fail to come back if it troubles you any more;" and Blank went out looking a bit sheepish, while the doctor turned to me again with his face wearing that exaggerated wink. Then he continued, as if he were just carrying on an interrupted conversation, "You know, Manion, some of these officers are exceedingly troublesome, exceedingly so, when they happen to swing the lead, for one must appear to have the greatest consideration for them. Now I have one extremely interesting case of laryngitis in one of the officers. It goes every now and then to the extent of complete loss of voice. Troublesome condition, for he cannot give his orders to his men, and to hurry him back into condition I have sent him twice to the hospital. Now, though this officer's courage is absolutely unquestioned, I find myself at times wondering if it may not be just that general fed-up feeling that we all get rather than laryngitis that affects him. Captain Thompson is a great friend of mine which makes it all the more difficult, but you know, my dear chap, really it's so easy to quit speaking aloud, and just whisper instead. I wonder does he talk in his sleep? By Jove, that would be interesting. I must make inquiries.
"But," he continued, "I told him off a bit a couple of nights ago. One of our companies was putting on a raid at daybreak, and the officer in charge of the raid is not overburdened with nerve. One-half hour before the raid he started to groan, when we were all in headquarters dugout together, and said he had a very severe pain in his stomach or bowels. Though I doubted the pain, I examined him carefully, and finding no real cause for it I allowed him to carry on, and, to do him justice, he went over the top like a man and did his bit in the raid as well as anyone could have done.
"But just after I had examined him Thompson stepped up familiarly to me and said: 'Do you really think, Smith, that So-and-so did have a pain?' 'Damn you, Thompson,' I replied, 'what right have you to ask me such a question?' 'Oh, come now, Smith, really, do you think hedidhave a pain?' 'Well, frankly, Thompson,' I answered, in a low, confidential tone, 'I am losing so much of my faith in humanity, don't you know, that I find myself doubting if you have any laryngitis when you lose your voice!' And with a good-natured burst of laughter he left me. But I somehow feel that he won't have laryngitis again for some time!
"But honestly, Manion, my great surprise always has been, and still is, not that so many try to get out of the line, but that in spite of the dangers and hardships 95 per cent. of officers and men do their hard, dangerous, trying jobs with a smile and without complaint. How very little cowardice there is in the world!"
And anyone who has served out there must agree with that opinion, particularly when he remembers the great numbers who have remained at home, facing no guns, braving no dangers, enduring no hardships. The above stories are told to illustrate the humorous side of the life; for all praise and gratitude is due to the men who have served out there in the noble cause of the allies. If at times some officer or man gets tired of the mud, rain, lice, shells, dirt, and dangers that he is daily encountering, and tries to get a few days in civilized surroundings, he is but showing a very human side to his nature.
Diagram Showing Route of Wounded from Firing Line to Base Hospitals.Diagram Showing Route of Wounded fromFiring Line to Base Hospitals.
The method of caring for the wounded at the front depends a great deal upon whether a battalion is holding a set of trenches on a standing front, or advancing, either in a big push, or in a raid. The medical officer to a fighting battalion is the member of the Army Medical Corps who is closer to the firing line than any of the other officers of that corps in the whole theater of war. He is served by the nearest field ambulance, whose stretcher bearers not only evacuate the wounded from his R.A.P.—regimental aid post—but also keep him supplied with medicines, dressings, splints, and other medical and surgical necessities. His food is sent up with that of the remainder of his battalion from his own battalion transport.
The field ambulance evacuates the severe cases to the nearest C.C.S.—casualty clearing station—which is the closest hospital to the lines. It is at the C.C.S. that the necessary operations are performed. Here the real surgical work of the medical corps begins, for up to that station it is much a matter of first aid. From the casualty clearing station cases that look as if they will require protracted attention are transferred to ambulance trains, which convey the cases fifty, sixty, or more miles to the base hospitals at the rear, perhaps about Boulogne, Havre and other towns reasonably well out of danger. And from these hospitals the wounded or sick may be transferred again, this time to hospital ships which cross the channel to one of our channel ports. At these points they are once more put aboard ambulance trains and distributed to hospitals in London, Manchester, Canterbury, Edinburgh or any of the other large hospital centers.
Suppose that a battalion is holding a part of the entrenched front, roughly one thousand yards square. The medical officer always travels with his battalion. In an area such as this his R.A.P. would be in a dugout somewhere in the vicinity of the one which is used as headquarters for the battalion. A medical officer's position is toward the rear of his battalion whether the men are on the march, in an advance, or holding the lines, for the reason that the wounded and sick are naturally sent toward the rear. Very commonly the R.A.P. is about half way from the rear support trench to the firing line.
The dugout of the M.O. is generally of the superficial variety. It has a roof made up of two or three layers of bags of sand piled on top of a layer of boards, just sufficient to give one a feeling of security in a most insecure position. A straight hit from a shell on the roof of this type of dugout means that a new medical officer will be required for that battalion at once. I have a vivid recollection of my first experience in such a dugout, long before I had become accustomed to living in them by the week. It was on a fairly active front near Bully Grenay. I had been sent from a field ambulance to relieve the regular M.O. while he took a well earned leave. His palatial residence was only about two hundred yards from the front line, its ceiling was less than six feet from the floor, for my head hit it whenever I stood up, and the rain which poured for days trickled down our necks as it filtered through the roof in many places. The shells kept dropping most annoyingly that first day, hitting everywhere except exactly on the center of the roof, and I knew it was only a matter of minutes till one landed there. Then to add to my uneasiness the sergeant lit a fire with wet wood which made a black smoke that poured from the bit of tin which was used for a pipe in the roof. This was the finishing touch, for I felt certain that every gunner on that front was using that smoke for a target. Turning to the sergeant, I asked with as cool a manner as I could command:
"How close do those shells have to come before you would consider it advisable to move out?"
"To move out? Oh, coming through the roof, I guess," he answered, with a blank stare. I did not dare to ask any more questions, but I thought to myself,—"what a nice, healthy time to move!" It took some time for me to become accustomed to that billet, but out there one learns to become accustomed to anything.
In front of the Medical Officer are the men who hold the line. There are four platoons to a company, four companies to a battalion; and with each platoon is one stretcher bearer, making sixteen bearers to each battalion. These stretcher bearers are trained in first aid, dressings, setting fractures and so forth by the M.O. of their regiment when they are out at rest billets behind the lines. In the lines they accompany their platoons and companies, and when the men go over the top in raids and advances the stretcher bearers go with them, stopping to dress and care for the wounded as they cross the battle area.
No finer set of men serve out there than the stretcher bearers, whether they serve with a battalion, an ambulance, or any other unit. Their work is without the stimulation or excitement the fighting men get, but has the same dangers and hardships. They go over the top as do the others, and it is their duty to carry wounded with all haste through heavily bombarded areas. The fact that, out of thirty-two stretcher bearers used by me in three days, thirteen were hit, well illustrates the dangers that these boys cheerfully go through. A good story is told of one of them, a chap who in civil life had been a "tough" in the slums of one of our large cities, and who had seen the inside of a jail more than once, but who as a stretcher bearer faced coolly, even gayly, any extraordinary danger to get his wounded to the rear.
He was in charge of a squad for Number —— Canadian Field Ambulance one day. He and his men were taking a stretcher case over a ridge which was under constant and heavy shell fire. Tiring, he commanded his squad to stop and rest. They obeyed, but demurred, saying that it was too dangerous a place to rest.
"Naw," he said, lighting a cigarette after handing one to the wounded man, "there ain't no danger. Sit down an' take it easy."
"But, look here now, Tom," the others argued, "you may be the first to have one of those bally shells blow you into Kingdom Come."
"Not—by—one—damsite," he slowly replied, "I've got a hunch dat I'm goin' to slip me arm round Lizzie once agen before dey get me;" and he lay on the ground and thoughtfully puffed at his cigarette. So the others joined him, for their bravery was unquestioned; and with the philosophy so common out there, one said,—"Well, I guess we can stand it if you can." Tom had puffed at his fag a few moments with the shells dropping dangerously near, when, without changing his position, he asked:
"Did you mugs ever hear de story of de two specials wot met in Lon'on de oder day? Naw? Well, I'll tell yez. Two special constables met, an' one o' dem had no hat, coat all torn to rags, bot' eyes black, an' some hair gone. 'Hello, Brown,' says de oder, 'wot-a-hell's wrong wid yez?' An' de first answers: 'Ye know dat purty little Missus Smit wot lives behind de Lion an' Dragon whose husban's gone to de front? Well, he ain't gone!'"
Even the wounded man joined the laugh. They all finished their smoke without even glancing in the direction of the shells bursting nearby, when the stretcher was picked up and carried safely to the rear. His officers all say that they would as quickly trust Tom in a ticklish job as any other man in the world. But he is just an example of the thousands of loyal, life-risking stretcher bearers—some, like Tom, rough, uneducated, uncouth; many others with the culture acquired in college halls and drawing rooms—who are daily and nightly giving of their blood and their service to the men in the lines.
These bearers wear a red cross on the arm, are non-combatant troops and carry no rifles. Each two of them carry a stretcher, and all of them carry a little haversack slung over the shoulder and filled with large and small surgical dressings, bandages, scissors, splints, and perhaps a bottle of iodine. Being non-combatant troops they are supposed to be allowed to carry out their work in comparative safety, but they really run the same risks as the combatants. This is to be expected in severe actions, for a machine-gunner or artilleryman cannot even try to avoid the stretcher bearers when they are mixed up, as they always are, with the fighting troops.
But, at any rate, the Germans get the reputation of caring as little for red crosses or white flags as they do for scraps of paper. One afternoon I stood in a trench one-quarter mile from Willerval which was held by our troops, and in the ruins of which there was an advanced dressing station of a field ambulance. For some reason two ambulances came over the crest of Vimy Ridge in broad daylight, in plain view of the Germans, and ran rapidly down into Willerval. They arrived without mishap, but one-half hour later I saw them start back over the ridge a few minutes apart. The first one had got one-half way up the steep side of the ridge when a heavy German shell lit thirty feet behind it. And then shell after shell dropped behind it all the way up the steep slope. Fortunately the gunner's aim was short, for the car disappeared from view over the crest. Then the second car made the trip, the German shells falling behind it just as they had with the first one. They both got out in safety, but no thanks were due to the Huns who had done their best to get them with heavy shells. That was one instance in which I saw the Germans shell two ambulances which could not have been mistaken for any other type of vehicle.
Suppose a soldier is hit by a piece of shell or sniper's bullet while he is in a trench which his battalion is holding. He is first attended by the stretcher bearer nearest to him at the time, who should use the man's own aseptic dressing which each soldier is compelled to carry in the lining of his coat or tunic. The injured man is then taken to the dugout of the M.O., if necessary on a stretcher, where the M.O. rearranges the dressing, gives a dose of morphine if pain is severe, and after seeing that all hemorrhage is stopped and the man is comfortable, he hands the case over to the field ambulance stretcher bearers who always serve him and live in an adjoining dugout. This squad carries the case back—through the trenches if there is no hurry, but overland if haste is important—to the advanced dressing station of the field ambulance. If this should be a particularly hard trip it may be done in relays. For there relay post dugouts are established with other bearer squads.
The A.D.S. is usually situated a mile or so in the rear of the trenches, preferably in a large cellar, but at any rate in a fairly well sheltered area where cots are ready to receive fifty or more patients. At the A.D.S. one or two of the medical officers of the field ambulance are stationed with a large staff of men. The patient is here made comfortable; given coffee or cocoa; name, number and battalion recorded; and finally he is inoculated with anti-tetanic serum. This has practically wiped out tetanus, or lock-jaw, which was very prevalent at the beginning of the war. He is kept here till a convenient time, which may be after dark, when he and any others who may have come in are put into ambulances and taken to the M.D.S.—main dressing station—of the field ambulance, another two or three miles behind. The M.D.S. may be in some old château, or in a group of huts, or, if the weather is mild, in tents. Here a light case, or slightly wounded man, may be kept for a few days and then sent back to the line or to a rest station to recover his stamina and quiet his nerves. But if the case should be a serious one, such as a shattered leg or arm or a large flesh wound that will take a considerable time to heal, he is again transferred by ambulance to the C.C.S.—Casualty Clearing Station—another two to four miles back.
The C.C.S., usually in huts or tents, is the first real hospital behind the firing zone. It may have accommodation for a couple of hundred patients; is supplied with X-Ray equipment, a well-arranged operating room with expert surgical assistance, and is the nearest place to the line that trained nurses are sent. Here for the first time since he left the line the patient gets all those little motherly attentions that only a woman can give. The injured man may be kept here days, weeks, or even months if he happens to be a case that would be endangered by moving. All immediately necessary operations are at once performed, and often a seriously wounded man from the firing line may be lying anesthetized on the operating table of a C.C.S., being operated upon by expert surgeons within two or three hours of receiving his injury—practically as good attention as this type of injury would receive in civil life.
This is particularly the case where a man has been wounded in the abdomen, from which wound he may quickly develop peritonitis and reach the valley of the shadow of death in a few hours if prompt attention is not given. It is also done in cases of head or lung injuries, or in any wound causing uncontrollable hemorrhage. In any of these emergencies, after the M.O. in the line has given all immediately necessary attention, the patient is ticketed SERIOUS by him, and he is rushed with all speed to the A.D.S., perhaps at great personal risk to the stretcher bearers. Here he is quickly transferred to an ambulance which may have to rush him over heavily shelled roads, missing the main dressing station altogether, and taking him direct to the C.C.S. for his life-saving operation.
After varying periods in the C.C.S. the patients are sent by ambulance trains, which run almost to their doors, to base hospitals at the rear. From here they are re-transferred to hospital centers in England and Scotland.
So much for the methods used in caring for the wounded in the lines during stationary periods. The same principles and methods are employed during big advances, but of course on a larger and more thorough scale. All the arrangements are made during the weeks preceding a push; extra stretcher bearers are trained; the field ambulances increase their staffs, particularly just behind the firing lines, in order that the field may be cleared of wounded at the first lull in the fighting. The whole intricate system is so complete and so well arranged that hundreds of cases may be rushed through in a few hours, some of them being comfortably in bed in English hospitals the evening of the day on which they received their "Blighty."
It must be remembered that in actions of a severe nature, such as great advances, the first object of the advancing troops is to obtain their objective and to hold it. Therefore care of the wounded may not be possible till the action is over. But during these hours the wounded are by no means without attention. It is here that the battalion stretcher bearers do their finest and most self-sacrificing work. They go over the top with the fighting troops, and as the men are hit it is their duty to give them first aid, while the fight still goes on, with machine-gun bullets whistling by their ears and shells bursting all about them. Their duty it is, and nobly they perform it, to dress the wounded, stop bleeding if possible, and temporarily set fractures. Then they place the wounded men in the most protected side of a shellhole, or in any other sheltered spot, and pass on to the next needy one, after placing any bit of available rag on a stick or old bayonet to attract the attention of the field clearing parties who come over that area. In the meantime the wounded who can walk—walking cases—make their way to the point at which the M.O. is caring for the injured. After getting the required attention, they walk on back to the A.D.S. of the field ambulance.