Chapter XXII: Ready to Return

I read this in the letter of an Army Service man printed in _The Evening News_. "There was a Guardsman in hospital in France with me who had eight bullets in him, besides three ugly bayonet wounds. He had the constitution of a horse, and after he had his 'rattles,' as he called the bullets, taken out he swore that he would be back before Christmas to square accounts with the Germans. All he wanted was to return to the fighting."

"He lies upon his bed of pain.
Despite of nurses deft and kind
He is unhappy; it is plain
That something weighs upon his mind.
Ask him his dearest wish to name,
And, smiling even on the rack,
He tells, without a trace of shame,
How he is anxious to get back."

In a half humorous way our soldiers took their wounds. They knew from experience, as a distinguished officer once said to me, that a battle field is a disagreeable place, but keen soldiers that they were, they thought that there was one thing worse than a battle, and that was not to be in one. Many soldiers were quite indignant at being sent home for what they called "scratches that will heal."

A sergeant was anxious to return to the war because he thought that he ought not to have been sent away from it. He was hit by five bullets, but why for this trifling matter should his colonel have ordered him out of the firing line and into an ambulance?

Men make light of wounds in arms, hands and feet. "They have just earned us a little rest. We shall soon go back to the trenches again."

A correspondent thus wrote of a second Lieutenant of the Royal Scots: "Only this morning he drew me a picture of war and its effect upon the novice. 'Imagine your chaps groaning all around you, your best pal shot through the heart at your feet; imagine the shrapnel screaming above--I was knocked down and stunned four times in a few minutes by shells exploding--imagine houses burning, women shrieking, and all about the place the mangled bodies of men and horses, and blood, blood, blood. I suppose I'm chicken-hearted, but I only left school last year.'

"'And your wound?' 'Oh, it's not much; still, I'm going home this afternoon. Never want to see any more war.'

"Two hours later I saw him leap into a train labelled ----. 'Where are you off to?' I asked. 'Back to the front. Can't bear the idea of my regiment being there and me loafing about some health resort.'"

A private of the Royal Sussex Regiment wrote this from a hospital in France: "My hand is very painful, but it will soon get better, I hope, as they want us back in the firing line, and every man away means fifty Germans kept alive and kicking."

Rifleman G. Harper wrote to his brother from a hospital at Paignton: "A bullet went through the left side of my face, struck my teeth, turned downwards, and just missed the main artery. The surgeon says I am one in a thousand to be alive, so it is better to be born lucky than rich. I don't think they will let me go out there after this, but if I get a chance I am off after their blood again."

A medical officer said to an interviewer, "I am glad to have been through the hottest part of the battle of the Aisne, and at the hottest corner, and only hope to get back in time to see the aftermath. The attitude of the wounded is wonderful, for all those who are not seriously hurt do nothing but talk about getting well and having another go at 'those ---- Germans.'"

After our King had visited in an hospital soldiers sent back from the war the spirit of all the wounded was voiced by a man who, describing his impression of the King's visit, said, "He's real human, that's what he is, and I, for one, shall be glad to go back and fight for him again."

"So shall I," came in chorus from every bed in the ward.

A corporal of the Coldstream Guards wrote: "If you look over the official lists of casualties you will see that I was 'killed in action,' so, strictly speaking, I ought not to tell you anything. I am looking forward to getting back to the firing line, and hope the Germans will find me a lively corpse."

For bringing fifty-nine men out of action when all the officers and non-commissioned officers were killed or wounded, T. Burns, of the Middlesex Regiment, was made a King's Corporal. At the battle of Mons a bit of shell hit him between his eyes and he got a bullet through a thigh and one through a wrist. Even this was not enough of it. "I am going out again as soon as I am well. I am itching for sweet revenge, or another coconut shie. 'All you knock down you have.' What a game!"

_The Morning Post_ correspondent wrote: "I saw a colonel yesterday who has been invalided three times. He had seven bullet wounds, and had lost two toes by a shell. The last time he was wounded, though he lay exposed to a murderous fire, he ordered away all rash attempts of his men to succour him. When his last wounds were healed in an hospital in the South of France he was so anxious to return to duty at the front that the only leave he asked for was twenty-four hours in Paris to visit his wife. Not that the front is exactly pleasant, but because being away from it is just impossible."

A newspaper correspondent lately wrote that he saw a train full of officers and soldiers leaving London to go back after a few days' leave to their "funk holes" at the front. "They were," he wrote, "as cheerful as boys off to the seaside for a holiday."

Probably, however, some of our soldiers are not now as ready to return to the war as they were when they knew less about it. They have no desire again to "wade knee deep through blood." A wounded man who returned lately to England said when he found himself in a comfortable hospital bed, "I could do with a rest here until they send for me to make me Kaiser."

One of the Coldstream Guards, who had been invalided home, was asked if he was keen to return. He replied, "No, I am not a liar or a lunatic, and only a liar or a madman would say that he was anxious to return to hell. Still, I'll go if they want me with a good heart."

When a man has done his "bit" in the war he is sometimes unselfish enough to wish to give some one else a chance. Once bitten twice shy; turn about is fair play.

"Send out the Army and Navy, Send out the rank and file, (Have a banana!) Send out the brave Territorials, They easily can run a mile. (I don't think!) Send out the boys' and the girls' brigade, They will keep old England free: Send out my mother, my sister, and my brother, But for goodness' sake don't send me."

Many soldiers who had retired from the Army were ready to return to it. It does them credit that they should in this way desire to help their country. One of these heroic volunteers is Piper Findlater. It will be remembered that he gained the V.C. at Dargai in October, 1897, when he continued playing "The Cock o' the North" after being wounded.