Concerning Medical Blokes

The Army Medical Corps is a chain of many links. Let the lay mind which has condensed its conception of the Corps’ duties into “picking up the wounded,” reflect upon an interwoven organization of Base Hospitals, Convalescent Homes and Rest Camps; Auxiliary Hospitals, Isolation Hospitals and Dermatological Hospitals; Stationary Hospitals (which are liable to move about) and Casualty Clearing Hospitals—we are working up the chain from the back to the front—Motor Ambulance Units and Hospital Trains and Hospital Ships; Divisional Receiving Stations, Field Dental Units, Field Operating Units and Field Laboratories (these all hear the firing of the guns); Field Ambulances (which comprise within themselves Field Hospitals), Dressing Stations and Advanced Dressing Stations (these get bullets through their tents and shells in their bivvies); and, end of the chain, the Medical Blokes with the Regiments. They are the last link; they are the tip of the longest tentacle of the Medical octopus. Truly, modesty forbids me from adding that they are the sweetest violet in the bunch.

The Medical Blokes are detailed from the Ambulance at the rate of an N.C.O. and one man to each Regiment. Thereafter they become part and parcel of that Regiment; live with it, move with it, minister to it; share its trials, troubles, tribulations, triumphs and rum issues. Nevertheless, in cold, official fact, they still belong to the Ambulance, being upon its supernumerary strength—“attached for duty and discipline to the Xth Regiment.” This little complication has its unsuspected advantages, for it sometimes breeds in the mind of an R.S.M. a shade of doubt as to exactly how far the Medical Blokes come within his jurisdiction, and he is constrained to permit them a certain independence of existence and exemption from routine. They obey “Reveille;” they approximate their appearance on the horse-lines, to groom, feed and water, as nearly to the Regimental schedule as the exigencies of the medical service permit; they generally manage to scratch an instant to be present at the cook-house at meal times; at the Quartermaster’s bivvy when he is doling out rations, and at the Orderly Room on pay-day. Their liabilities discharged, they are leftfree to order their time as they please. They are usually to be found lurking in the medical tent, though they sometimes go to earth in a bivvy pitched somewhere in its vicinity.

In addition to the two above-mentioned stalwarts, the Regimental medical establishment carries a Medical Officer and an offsider, a trooper of the Regiment, detailed for the job, who, in course of time, is likely to become so imbued with the spirit of his surroundings that he is not to be distinguished from genuine Medical Blokes themselves. Nominally he is intended for water duties; to carry out daily at the area drinking-water supply the mysterious rite (known to the uninitiated as “chlorinating” and to the rank and file as “poisoning”) by which the further existence of cholera and other germs in the water is discouraged. He is the man responsible for making the water taste as if there were a very dead camel lying a hundred yards further up the stream whence it was drawn; while tea made with it always seems to have been cut with an oniony knife. Yet he deserves a certain amount of pity. If he over-chlorinates, the whole Brigade will blaspheme him and his activities; if he under-chlorinates, Medical Officers accuse him of encouraging epidemic; and the happy medium of chlorination is so deucedly elusive that he never strikes it!

By way of transport for their chattels the Medical Blokes have a cart, called Maltese, a square contrivance on two wheels and no springs, drawn by three horses abreast. You can pick it out on the road at the tail end of the Regimental transport in company with the water-cart. It is invariably overloaded with what looks like a lunatic’s purchases at a bargain auction sale—or somebody’s goods undergoing a back street removal—baskets, bottles, barrels, boxes, bedding, brushes, blankets, bivvies, buckets, to say nothing of all the things which begin with other letters of the alphabet. The driver of the cart is not a Medical Bloke; he is a Philistine from the transport lines.

There are cinema-and-picture-nourished imaginations at Home who fancy war as one unending, crimson, bloody pageant of battle, whereas it is merely a different sort of humdrum existence from their own, with occasional violent patches of excitement. Also, they worship the A.M.C. man as the Red Cross Hero of the Piece, whereas ... never mind. But you will grant me that, of all the A.M.C. personnel, the Medical Bloke gets nearest to the heroic rôle. He shares the hazards of a fighting unit; he is an all-but combatant. When the squadrons go out to fight he sloughsall his bulky baggage, puts gauze, wool, bandages, iodine and scissors into his haversack, and follows. Comes at dawn—we have branded dawn for ever as the battle hour—a moment when a ragged, scattered line of men begin to walk forward up the gentle slope of a low ridge. This is attack. The split and scatter of shrapnel, the hiss-bang-crash of H.E., and z-z-z-en of flying fragments, make death a chance in the shallow gully. But the top of the ridge is the edge of open, machine gun-swept country. It is a hundred yards to the crest—and death for someone. This Medical Bloke, the wind well up, has shrunk himself into a crevice and waits for a call. He desires nothing better than to stay there. He watches the men walking up the slope—such everyday, wise, silly, plain, good, bad, smart, childish men—just simply walking up the slope. And in that moment our Medical Bloke realizes that they are better men than he, because they are walking up that slope of whichheis afraid. Are they better? He is walking, rather slowly, up the slope now. He runs a few steps and drops behind cover on the crest, and waits for the need that will call him. Fate grants him a few minutes’ spell, and then puts him to the test. “Stretcher-bearers!” they cry to the left. The Medical Bloke can see two men bending over the third, and he faces one of those decisions which mould character. Quite properly, he may wait until they carry the man to him, behind cover (there are troopers whose hazardous duty it is to act as stretcher-bearers), or he may walk out and help. He walks out as steady as he can; it is quicker and ... well, what peculiar right has a Medical Bloke to the safety of cover when the men are “out there”?

It is little enough can be done in action for the wounded; to cut away the blood-clotted clothing, to clap a rough dressing of iodine and gauze on the wound, or a crude splint on a smashed limb; to get the man to comparative cover, to rig some sort of a shade over him and to give him water; and then to wait—for the M.O. to come with the skill that soothes and the hypodermical needle of comfort. But the bitterest game of patience on earth is played when the tide of battle fails to flow onward, and the wounded lie all the livelong, sun-tormented day in the fire-swept zone, and the Medical Blokes can only watch and wait for nightfall to give safe-conduct to the ambulance carts or the camels, with great, unwieldy, white cacolets, which come to carry their poor shattered charges to sanctuary.

Believe me, romantic reader, that I will now reveal the trueraison d’êtreof Medical Blokes; the nature of their life-work, their excuse for existing. It is not, bless you, ministering to the wounded under fire. Itismerely tobandage up septic sores and to distribute a variety of pills, most commonly known in the proportion of “two of these and one of those.”

The daily life of the Medical Bloke hinges on “Sick Parade.” It is the Daily Event. The M.O. sits enthroned in the Medical Tent. Orderly corporals present their list of competitors. One by one they enter and face the Presence. Pulses, tongues, throats, eyes, temperatures are submitted to scrutiny. The questing stethoscope roams over bared bosoms and backs. Each man speaks his piece—the most sick say least and the least sick say most, as a general rule.

“Give him two of these and one of those,” prescribes the M.O., and the victim, a handful of tablets clutched in his fist, retires. The rewards to be gained by braving “Sick Parade” run up a scale from “Medicine and Duty,” through “Light Duty” and “Exempt Duty,” to “Evacuate,” which last is the coveted prize.

“Go and get your gear together and be ready to go to the Ambulance,” directs the Medical Bloke, and the patient sees at once visions of the cushy comfort of a Base Hospital, wherein he may hope to wallow shortly. He has netted a trip!

Medical Blokes have a restless job. Sickness and accidents call upon them at any time. Men drop into the Medical Tent at all hours of the day and night for “a couple of pills for a headache,” or something else. “Got any liniment?” is the next inquiry, followed by a request for eye-lotion. In this country a scratch or a graze does not heal in the course of things—it is just as likely to turn septic. Neglected, it spreads and develops initiative; it breaks out in fresh places without waiting for theskin to be knocked off. Hot foments and ointment dressings are the cure. Bandaged hands are the badge of the Palestine campaigner. Half the men, half the time, have either boils or septic sores. They meander into the Medical Tent in pairs, and out of hours, to get them bandaged. They are met there with scant courtesy—probably they are the umpteenth interruption to the letter which the Medical Bloke is trying to write; but I do not think it is often that they turn away unattended to. The Medical Blokes are just ... your friends, servants and comrades, the Medical Blokes.

“LARRIE.”

CONVALESCENT

MOUNTING FIRST GUARD IN JERICHO

HALT AND REST

1. CHURCH AND TOMB OF THE VIRGIN2. JAFFA GATE, JERUSALEM3. CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, JERUSALEM4. CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM

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