Chapter XIX: By the Skin of Our Teeth

We were moved to the village very suddenly. There was no reason that we could see for the move. However, this transpired later. It was getting dusk when we reached the village. A and C Companies were sent at once up to the firing-line, and B and D Companies were lined along a ditch in support. The ditch had been prepared for habitation by the regiment who had held it before. At one point they had thrown some boards across the ditch and made a house underneath. This proved a very welcome shelter when later it came on to rain. We lay in the ditch for an hour or two listening to the last shells before nightfall, from one of our heavy batteries, singing overhead. The shells were sent in groups of three, and we could plainly hear each, whizz-whizz-whizz, chasing each other through the air, perhaps not more than twenty yards apart. We were comfortable enough where we were, and idly speculated on what errand of destruction the shells were bent. They sounded nasty great things to have coming in the wrong direction, and we wished the Germans joy of them.

About eight I felt hungry, and got out of the trench to have a look round. I had two tins of Mc'Conochie in my haversack, which I put in a pan of boiling water. Across a field to the front I saw a farm, and decided to go over and explore. In the field there were two or three curious heaps of straw, which proved to be the burial piles of dead cows, killed by shell fire, and covered over by the farmer in this rather ineffective fashion. The cows were getting smelly, and I did not stay long looking at them. I found the farm occupied by two old men and an old woman. One of the old men, over eighty, they told me, had taken to his bed and lain there with the shutters up for three days. He was half-dead from fright, and could not be induced to move. The old woman said they had had Germans billeted in the farm a week before. They had treated her and her old husband none too gently, driving them out of the house while they made soup in her cauldron. She had managed to hide one or two little bits of bread, and was making supper off a crust and some coffee. She put the fire at my disposal for getting supper ready for Goyle and the other officers in the company. They all came across a quarter of an hour later, Evans with a great possession--a tin of cocoa. There was plenty of milk to be had from the farm--indeed, it was a godsend to the old people to get a man to milk their cows--and we soon had a beautiful jug of thick, steaming cocoa. We then prepared the Mc'Conochie, and what proved to be our last meal all together was a good one.

It was getting late when we had finished, and we had to hurry back to the support trench. On the way, as I was going along at a quick trot, I came head over heels over a big object and nearly impaled myself on a spike. Apart from the smell of the cow, it was really most dangerous lying out there at night-time, and I sent a party of men back to bury it.

The trenches we were to take over lay just beyond the village along the crest of a slope. The section my company was responsible for ran just in front of three haystacks. A company extended away to our right, and the Dorchester Regiment continued the line to our left. The officer of the regiment we were relieving said to me: "You see those stacks--well, I should keep clear of them; the enemy have them set." I nodded, very tired at finding myself back in the firing-line, where we had been almost continuously for ten days, and not particularly interested in what the enemy had set or what they had not. In fact, as soon as I had seen the men distributed along the trench, and had given one or two orders about its improvement, I made straight for the centre stack, pulled as much hay as I could out of the side of it, rolled myself up, and went to sleep.

I was awakened by a sharp blow in the back. Looking up I saw Evans drawing his foot back to give me a second and harder kick.

"Get up, you blithering fool," he said; "your men are out all over the place."

I jumped to my feet, and, fastening my belt as I ran, dashed for the trench. I owed a lot to Evans for waking me. As Evans said, the men were all walking about outside the trench. I got them in immediately, and was preparing to follow when I thought of my bed, and went off to fetch it. One never knew when the next chance of leaving the trench might come. I was bending down, gathering a good armful of hay, when there was a report, a sensation like red-hot iron running through one, followed by acute pain, and I pitched head-forward into the hay. I had been hit. Very frightened and hurt, I crawled as fast as I could round to the side farthest from the enemy and sat down. I examined my wounds--a bullet through each leg. The shots were low down and did not look very serious. They hurt infernally, and I made a mental note to call the next man who said he never noticed he had been hit in the heat of an action a liar. I examined the wounds. Were they serious enough to warrant a visit to the field-dressing station and a possible return to England? I hoped devoutly they were. An attempt to stand soon satisfied me, and I fell down again, much relieved. All these thoughts were a matter of seconds; in the meanwhile there was a good deal going on round the stack. An enemy battery was playing round it with high-explosive shrapnel. The shells burst first one side, then the other, in front, behind, in all directions. The noise was deafening, and the lead in the air was just like a hailstorm; however, it was a stout stack, and kept me dry, though I confess I doubted getting away alive. After a few minutes the firing stopped, and, throwing myself on my side, I rolled as fast as I could for a support trench. I pitched head-first into the trench and landed on the top of two privates who were sheltering in the bottom expecting more shrapnel over at any minute. They were not expecting me, and thought their last hour had come when I fell on top of them. Getting our breath, we all three cursed each other. Then, seeing I was an officer, they became respectful. I explained I was wounded, and they helped me off with my puttees and bound up the wounds with the first-aid bandage which I ripped from my coat. In the meanwhile word was sent back for stretcher-bearers. As the firing had stopped these came up immediately, lifted me out of the trench, put me on a stretcher, and started off with me. We had to go down a road in full view of the enemy. For some providential reason they never fired at us, though I was about the last wounded man to be brought down that road. Halfway down the road the stretcher-bearers began to show signs of feeling my weight. I coaxed them on a few more yards, but when they came to the lee of a cottage they put me down and shook their heads; another bearer came to the rescue, and with the extra help the party proceeded. A hundred yards more brought us to a cottage which was being used as a field-dressing station. The cottage was beginning to fill, and wounded men lay about all over the floor.

"Oh, Gawd! Oh--! ----ooh!!"

"Shut up, can't yer?" a man shouted from the far corner of the room.

"I've got a 'ole in me big enough to put yer 'and in," the sufferer explained, and began again to groan and swear.

"Got a cigarette, mate?" A man deathly pale on a stretcher held out his hand to a comrade who was slightly wounded and standing beside him. The latter extricated a Woodbine from a crumpled packet and passed it down. The man on the stretcher lit the cigarette and puffed at it phlegmatically. It was doubtful whether he would live, and though he did not know this, he knew he must not have anything to eat or drink for many hours.

About fifteen or twenty of us were lying on the floor of a cottage. Outside, four or five hundred yards up the street, a lively fight was in progress for the possession of the village. After the firing-line the cottage seemed a haven of peace and safety.

"Hullo, they've got you."

"Morning, Doctor."

A young fellow, fresh from his training at a hospital, was standing beside me. He was our regimental doctor, and I'd always thought of him as a lucky fellow who rode on a horse when we were on the march, got his rations regularly at all times, and during a scrap enjoyed the security of the extra few hundred yards which he was supposed to have between his dressing-station and the firing-line. Well, here he was to look after me, anyhow.

"Got a bit of work to do to-day, Doctor," I said as he bound me up.

"Yes," he answered, adjusting a blanket as a pad under me, "there, just keep in that position and the bleeding will soon stop." He turned to the man next me.

"I've got some across the way, too," he said, as the orderly handed him fresh bandages. "They've been shelling the poor beggars, knocking all the slates off the roof."

As he spoke some shrapnel crashed against the roof of our cottage, sending a few tiles rattling to the ground. The doctor looked up.

"I think we're all right here," he said. "We've got a double roof. I always try to pick a cottage with a double roof. But those poor devils over the way are getting awful scared; I think I'll slip across to them."

The bit of road he had to "slip across" was catching most of the shells which the cottage did not, and was also the channel for a steady stream of rifle and machine-gun fire. I began to see there wasn't much in it, whether one was a doctor or a platoon commander.

More especially did I realize a doctor's difficulties when, later in the day, just as our doctor had finished looking at my dressings, a message came that the field-dressing station belonging to the regiment on our left had been set alight by a shell. He hastily organized a party of stretcher-bearers and orderlies and went off at once. Later he came back. He said it had been terrible to see the wounded lying helpless in the barn waiting for the flames, but somehow they had managed to rescue all and move them to a safer place, though the whole operation had to be carried out under rifle and shell fire. Each time a regiment is seriously engaged with the enemy at least 100 men are hit, often four times the number. The regimental doctor is supposed to bind up each one of these, and often when times are slack and a stray man here or there gets hit he will be sent for to come up to the trenches.

"'Allo, Jock," loud greetings were shouted by every one in the room to a little man standing in the doorway with a bandolier across his chest and rifle with bayonet still fixed. He was a grubby little fellow, with blood and mud caked all down his cheek, ragged clothes, and--as I had seen as he came up the cottage steps--a pronounced limp. It was Private Mutton, scallawag, humorist, and well-known character in the regiment.

"Yus, they got me," he said in answer to inquiries, "fro' me calf," he pointed to his leg, "and right acrost the top of me 'ead"--he raised his cap and showed where a bullet had parted his hair, grazing the scalp. "But I give the bloke somethink what did it." Private Mutton grinned at his bayonet. "Got 'im fair, right fro' 'is stomick."

I could not help feeling delighted, for I recognized in the muddy, gory, highly-pleased-with-himself little man the original of Thomas Atkins, of whose doings along the Indian frontier I had read thrilling accounts by Mr. Kipling, and whose quaint mannerisms I had often laughed at as represented on the stage of music-halls at home....

At 9 P.M. the ambulances came up.

The doctor went round quickly attending to each man. He bound up my wounds afresh and had me carried into an inner room. I lay there all day, and never shall I forget the experience. I could see nothing except a bit of the wall on the opposite side of the street. But I could hear. Just after I had been brought in fresh firing broke out. Rifle fire this time, sharp and insistent. Then there was a sound of stamping feet, and I heard an officer rallying the men at the corner of the street. The firing continued all day and sometimes seemed to rage almost at the door of the cottage. I gathered that the Germans were attacking the village in masses, and that it was touch-and-go whether we could hold out. Sometimes there would be a rush of men outside the window, and I would look to see if the pale grey uniform was there or if khaki still held the place. Every now and then a shower of shrapnel struck the roof of the cottage, and tiles went rattling to the road. All the while a section of our artillery fired incessantly. How gallant those guns of ours sound--Boom-boom-boom. They were fighting to their last shell. If the village went, they went with it. No horses could be brought up to draw them away in such an inferno. The doctor worked on quietly. His work extended now to houses on the left and right. He said it was terrible to see the fear of death on the faces of men shot through the stomach. He found time once to have a cup of tea with me and smoke a cigarette. Night began to fall and the room grew dark. I was glad of his company for five minutes. We were in the same boat, he told me--if the Germans got the village he was going to stay behind with the wounded.

At half-past five Evans came in with a smashed arm.

"Goyle has gone," he said. "He was hit twice before during the day. He was holding out with a few men there and got a third through the chest which did him. Edwards was shot through the knee, and we had to leave him. All the company officers are down. A company has been surrounded and cut off. Whew! you can't live out there." As he spoke the firing swelled to a din unequalled through the day. We heard shouts and curses. The Germans were making a final tremendous effort to break through.

"Our boys may do it," said Evans, "but there are not many left." I lay back against the wall, pulled out a cigarette, and threw one to Evans. We could only wait. Suddenly outside we heard a stamp of feet, a hoarsely yelled order, "Fix bayonets!" another word of command, and a mass of men rushed past the window up the street, cheering madly.

"That's the ----s," cried a stretcher-bearer, who came in excitedly. "They have been sent up from the reserve."

The doctor came in. "We've got two more regiments up; we shall be all right now," he said.

For a moment the firing continued, then died down. Night came and found us still holding the village, and at ten o'clock the ambulance took us away.

XX. "AND THENCE TO BED"

The horse ambulance took us back some three miles to the field ambulance, where we spent the night after being given some food and tea and having our wounds dressed. The accommodation was rough, just some straw on the floor, but to feel there were three miles between ourselves and the enemy gave one quite a feeling of being rested. At these field ambulances the work of dressing the wounded goes on incessantly day and night, and it is here that many a case of lockjaw or gangrene is prevented by the timely application of antitetanus injection or iodine. Among the wounded was a young German boy, not more than eighteen years old. The other wounded Tommies and the orderlies were very good to him, making quite a pet of the boy and giving him tea and cigarettes and asking him what he thought about the war. He had only had six weeks' training before being sent into the firing-line, and was a gentle enough creature bewildered by the fierce struggle into which he had been thrown.

In the morning a fleet of motor ambulances came to take us to the clearing hospital at railhead. Most of these ambulances were private cars fitted up at their owners' expense and driven in many cases by the owners too. Only those who have been wounded and travelled in a Government horse ambulance can appreciate the good work done by these volunteer Red Cross workers and their cars. After the lumbering horse vehicle rubber tyres and the well-hung body of a private car are an unspeakable relief to broken bones. Our driver was a young fellow who looked as though he had just left Oxford or Cambridge. He drove us very slowly and carefully over the twelve miles of bumpy road, and took us straight to the station in time to have us put on a hospital train which was leaving that morning for the base. How often at the beginning of the war on my way up to the Front had I seen these hospital trains go by and wondered--with a very pious hope that it might be so--if it would ever be my lot to take a passage in one. In those days as now every one knew that it was only a question of time before they were killed or wounded--few last long enough to become diseased--and to be stowed safely away in a hospital train labelled for England was the best fate that could befall anyone.

It was, then, with a feeling of supreme contentment that I allowed myself to be laid along the seat of a first-class carriage and propped up behind with a greatcoat and a pillow. On the opposite seat was a young gentleman not nearly so contented. He had been hit in the shoulder. He said his wound was hurting him; that he was not comfortable on the seat of the carriage; and that he considered tinned stew (which had just been brought us) a very nasty luncheon. I thought him a peevish and graceless cub and, when he snapped at the orderly who came to clear away lunch, rebuked him.

I said that he ought to be thankful for being where he was at all; that his wound was nothing compared to those of others in the train; that his whining and peevishness brought discredit on his uniform and regiment; and that he ought to be ashamed of himself for making such a fuss. As he was a second lieutenant just fresh from Sandhurst and I was an elderly subaltern of several years' service he did not argue with me, but looked at the floor, while I scowled at him from time to time across the carriage.

Eventually the train started and we began our journey to Boulogne. We had been told it would take about nine hours, and so prepared to make ourselves as comfortable as possible and sleep. Except for a visit from the doctor to ask if we wanted anything, and from a hospital nurse, nothing much happened for the rest of the day. The visit from the hospital nurse is one of the things I remember most clearly from an otherwise clouded period. It was the first taste of the infinite sympathy and solicitude which women give to men returned from the war. All who have experienced it--as every wounded man has in abundant measure--must have felt that anything he has suffered was worth such a reward.

After the visit from the hospital nurse we had some dinner and settled down for the night. About this time I began to notice that the blanket which had been folded in four and placed under my injured leg was slightly rucked at the corner. I could not reach it to adjust it myself and after the scene with my stable mate did not like to ask his assistance. Presently an orderly came by and I called him in to put it right. Half an hour later the same thing happened again and I had to call in another orderly. The little subaltern, who was dozing, opened one eye and looked at me reproachfully, but said nothing. Later, when the train pulled up with a jerk which nearly threw us off our seats, we both groaned softly, and when it did the same thing again I swore, and received a grateful look from the rebuked grumbler. In fact, to shorten the story, by noon the next day, when we were finally taken out of the train, I was half hysterical with pain, discomfort, and fatigue, and the little subaltern had nearly forgotten his troubles in his efforts to adjust my blankets with his sound arm and running to and fro fetching the orderly: the moral of this story needs no pointing....

At Boulogne we were taken by motor ambulance to one of the base hospitals. The hospital was a marvellous example of efficient emergency organization. Three days before it had been a hotel; and in this space of time--_i.e._ three days--the entire building had been converted into a thoroughly modern hospital with wards and operating-theatre. Most of the work had been done by the members of the hospital staff themselves, and, as we were taken in, the last bits of hotel furniture were still standing in the hall waiting to be removed.

By this time I was rather exhausted, and I cannot remember more than a matron in a dark silk dress with a very gentle, pretty face bending over me and asking me if I was comfortable, and my replying in a voice that was little above a whisper that it was good to be in bed. I think she said, too, something to the nurse about "not putting him to bed like that." I had been in the same clothes for a fortnight and they were very muddy, and I remember having my breeches cut off and being helped into a flannel night-shirt. I woke later to find a nurse beside me with a basin of water. "Would you like to wash?" she asked. I gazed at her apathetically. "Come on then, I'll do it for you," she said kindly. She dipped a piece of flannel in the basin and rubbed it gently over my face. Then she took one of my hands and rubbed that; then streaks of white appeared down my fingers as the caked mud was cleared. "There, I think that is all we'll do for the present," she said, and feeling beautifully clean--though in reality with ten days' beard and looking perfectly filthy--I lay back on the pillow.

After tea I sat up, accepted a cigarette from my neighbour, and took stock of the rest of the ward.

In the bed on my right was a man with a bandaged head; he had an orderly beside him and was dictating a letter. He was evidently feeling very weak, for he spoke with an obvious effort. The letter was about some lost baggage, and dictated with the utmost precision and detail. He ended by saying, "Signed James Brown, Captain and Adjutant"; and I couldn't help smiling, for it was so like an Adjutant to dictate a precise letter about some lost baggage, but it seemed so funny for him, weakened by his wounds as he was, to be lying there in bed doing it, and I felt sure it was more from force of habit than anything else.

At eight o'clock the day-sister made a round of the wards with the night-sister, handing over her patients till the next day. The night-sister was followed by a sort of understudy who, I remember, was tall and thin with rather a long nose. This understudy, who was referred to as "nurse" by the other two, was, I gathered, a sort of probationer, and not allowed to take much responsibility on herself.

By ten the ward was in darkness except for one green-shaded light, and I think I must have dozed a little, for I remember looking up suddenly to see the night-sister's understudy standing at the foot of my bed and gazing at me with a puzzled expression. Seeing me open my eyes she stretched out her arm and pulled towards her a glass-topped table with a bowl of dressings on it. Then she studied me again. I was still half asleep and watched her with half-closed eyes.

"Is it your _feet_?" she asked.

I nodded.

She lifted the bedclothes back from the foot of the bed and surveyed my bandaged feet for a minute or two. Then with a sudden air of determination she bent down and, catching my right foot by the big toe, lifted it deftly off the pillow on which it was resting. I gave one piercing scream which woke the whole ward and brought the night-sister running in. For the rest of the night I lay with one eye peeping over the sheet prepared to yell for help at the top of my voice if the young lady assistant came near my bed. The next day she returned to England for further instruction.

The following afternoon I was operated on and the bullet extracted from my ankle. A sergeant brought it me wrapped in cotton-wool and left me feeling quite reassured about the success of the operation....

I remember very well on the way up to the Front seeing a hospital ship leave one of the base ports. She was a beautiful looking vessel, painted white, with a great red cross painted on either side amidships. That hospital ship certainly looked comfortable, and I don't mind admitting that, at the time, I wished most heartily I was on board her with my job done instead of having to go up to the firing-line and do it. The wounded men on board all looked so happy and comfortable.

However, everything comes to him who waits--nothing more quickly than a bullet in these sanguinary days--and after a week at the base hospital at Boulogne I was given a ticket marked "cot case" and told I was going to be put on board a hospital ship for England. I smiled gratefully at the doctor, tied the ticket round my neck, put on a woollen waistcoat, muffler, and dressing-gown (all presented to me by the hospital) over my pyjamas, and waited my turn to be carried downstairs. In due course, with three others, I was taken in a motor ambulance to the ship, and from thenceforward was in the charge of the naval authorities.

We were carried up the gangway on our stretchers and placed on a sort of luggage lift which in the twinkling of an eye transported us below, where we were lifted on to swinging cots arranged in a large saloon. The quick, handy way in which everything was done was typical of the Navy, and having once spent six weeks on board a battleship, I felt quite at home again. Dinner was brought round soon after getting on board, and I ate soup, fish, roast mutton, and apple tart with the heartiest of appetites. Unfortunately, also, in the happiness of the moment, I drank a large bottle of Bass which seriously affected my slumbers during the night.

We did not leave until the following night, arriving at Plymouth at nine o'clock the next morning. However, it was no hardship to be aboard the hospital ship.

The cots were just as comfortable as beds; there was every appliance for dressing our wounds, and the nurses and doctors looked after us indefatigably. In such surroundings aspects of the war which are taken more seriously elsewhere are made light of. The patients made jokes about each other's wounds and their own, and all were so glad to be alive that pain and suffering were almost forgotten. There was one fellow in the cot next to mine who in the middle of a silence suddenly uttered an exclamation of annoyance. Asked what was the matter, he said he wanted to know the time and had just discovered he had lost his watch. It was a wrist watch, he explained, and must have been left on the arm they had amputated at the field ambulance.

At Plymouth we were taken on board a launch and landed at a quay close by the naval hospital. The ingenious cots devised by the Navy enable a wounded man to be moved bodily in his bed, all wrapped up and warm, to the bed in the hospital. They are so made that they can either be carried as stretchers, or slung from a ship's side, or put on hand-trolleys and wheeled. The Naval Hospital at Plymouth is a model of neatness and smartness, each patient in the officers' quarters gets a small room to himself which is called a cabin; the orderlies are all ex-sailors and handy and obliging as only sailors can be; and the naval nurses in their smart blue uniforms are a pleasure to watch.

I stayed at Plymouth for five days, when I was allowed to travel to London.

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SOLDIERS' TALES OF THE GREAT WAR

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I

WITH MY REGIMENT

By "PLATOON COMMANDER"

[_Ready_

_To be followed by_

II

DIXMUDE

A chapter in the History of the Naval Brigade, Oct.-Nov. 1914

By CHARLES LE GOFFIC

_Illustrated_

III

IN THE FIELD (1914-15)

The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry

IV

IN THE DARDANELLES AND SERBIA

Notes of a French Army Doctor

_Illustrated_

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
21 Bedford Street, W.C.