A Regimental Surgeon Read online

  Night and morning they shelled the road bridge, which they suspected we were trying to repair; the trenches, the pontoon bridge, the working parties they knew were out also shared the attentions of the German gunners, but never did they actually get the hospital with a high explosive shell. The roof and walls were riddled with shrapnel, rifle and machine-gun fire, but the main building survived. Shells fell in our garden, in the fields beside us, in the road. We never knew whether they spared us deliberately or whether we were too well screened by trees. Regimental headquarters, then consisting of Coke, Rupert Dering and myself, led an irregular life between an old stone cider cellar, dug deep into the bank that sheltered us by day, and the hospital. This cellar provided them both with rather damp straw beds; and in the hospital we met for breakfast and our evening meal. I slept above the hospital and was awaked always at five by the morning shelling; the glass had all, long since, been blown in, and such dressing as I did was a very draughty performance. But the back of the house looked on to the West Kent trenches, and the practice the German gunners made was excellent. Once I heard a shell coming and saw the haystack tremble and quiver as it lodged inside, without bursting. But our curiosity never led us to disinter that shell from the hay.

  The ambulance came at night to fetch my wounded away; the 14th Field Ambulance from Serches over the bridge at Venizel; the 13th, through La Sermoise down to the river bank. And the stretcher bearers carried the men across the pontoon bridge. But they never liked the job, for they ran a constant risk from shelling. The groping fingers of the searchlight and the star shells on Chivres Hill would discover them on the road, and the orderlies fled hastily to the ditches. The German position was on Chivres Hill, a long wooded range that lay back 600 yards from the river and dominated our whole position. It was very strong, well entrenched, and well wired in.

  The Yorkshire Light Infantry, who had been left as the reserve battalion of the Brigade in La Sermoise, had one very bad day from shrapnel in Gombeen Wood that guards the approach to Conde Bridge. When I crossed the river that night, to look for some West Riding wounded that had lost their way, I met the K.O.Y.L.I, medical officer busy with the hundred odd casualties his regiment had suffered there. For shrapnel fire in a wood is most terrifying; the balls fall in all directions; one is never safe, and the crashing of the bursts of shell through the branches of the trees exaggerates the terror.

  Conde Bridge was the weak point on the river and our patrols kept a sharp eye on it at night, especially as the Germans were often crossing the stream to fetch hay and fodder from the French farm-house. This bridge was always strongly guarded, and in the early days one of our motor-cars with two intelligence officers, blindly trusting, had paid the last penalty for their rashness. On the road stood the car, twisted sideways as the engine had stopped, the driver and its two occupants all dead: nor could we in that no-man's-land salve the car or bury its grim occupants. When we evacuated the Aisne the car was still there, with its dead freight, and for all we know it is standing there today.

  We had German wounded in our hospital, trophies that we took at the crossing—small dark Wiirtemburgers; and they watched me with frightened, rabbit eyes. We had to keep two of them for four days when ambulances could not get to us; one terribly wounded in the back. Whenever one of our soldiers, badly mangled by a bursting shell, was brought into their room they looked at me with timid furtive eyes, as if they feared that I should make reprisals. But they were very patient and uncomplaining; the other wounded men liked them and shared chocolate and cigarettes impartially between them. And when the ambulance took them away, they gave us their photographs. In those days there was no animosity at all on the part of any of us toward the German; only a sincere admiration for their soldierly qualities and the patience with which their wounded endured their sufferings.

  One night, at Missy, Dalrymple, the subaltern in charge of "D" Company, accompanied by Skinner, his sergeant, did a very fine bit of cutting out work up the river. The Germans had been using a motor launch and two rowing boats to cross the river, and "D" Company determined to have them. Silently they made their way right into the enemy territory one night; but the launch was moored by chains to rings in the wall. Skinner, undaunted, muffled his chisel with cloth and cut through the chain. At every stroke they feared the wakeful enemy patrols; but luck was with them and they towed their fleet of boats in triumph down to us.

  All this time, and we held the bridge and road at Missy for three weeks, we lost constantly by shell and snipers and my hospital was always full. Many of our casualties arose from sheer carelessness. The West Kent trenches ran in front of an orchard; and that was more than our men could stand: the apples were red and Tommy would not be denied. Heedless of danger he would go out with a long pole to bring his prizes in. But the sniper, from the tree tops, knew his weakness too; and those rosy apples were bought by very bitter sacrifice. Nor could our men resist fishing in the river. They could not wait for the bursting shells to do their fishing for them. Often the officers watched, with horror, before they drove the fishermen back to their dugouts, the vain attempts of some modern Izaak Walton to beguile the fat chub with chunks of bully beef.

  There was the greatest difference between our dour and silent K.O.S.B. and the mercurial Londoners that made up so many of the men of the West Kents. There was always laughter and talk as I walked along the West Kent trenches, on those still warm afternoons when the German gunners took their rest, to see some friends in Missy village. Three most charming officers they had who were always kind and generous to me; Martin, the CO., who was later our Brigadier, Buckle, the second in command, and Legard, the Adjutant. The last two lost their lives at Riche-bourg l'Avoue, on that last dreadful day in late October, when the West Kents paid so great a price for disputing the advance of the Prussian Guard before La Bassée.

  The morning shelling roused us early; Coke and Dering would come to the breakfast that Turnbull, Dering's servant and our cook, would prepare. Bacon, tea, ration bread occasionally and (tell it not to Madame of the farm) perhaps a little of her butter or an egg or two that I had extracted from her the night before by the use of magic words, " les pauvres pauvres blesses!" We never lingered long at breakfast, for we never could tell when the inquisitive shell, that fell in the garden, might not find the house instead. After our first meal, I made my morning visit to yesterday's wounded and saw the morning sick parade. The rosy apples told their story in the dysentery that plagued both battalions; but we felt that the cold and exposure of the nightly vigil in the trenches were, perhaps, as much responsible for these internal disorders as the fruit. Fortunately for us all I was able to take the worst cases into shelter; for I had beef tea, castor oil and opium to relieve them. After a day or so, back they returned to duty again. When the hospital work was over, a funeral or two, in the dahlia beds beside the garden wall, had to be conducted with all ceremony.

  There was no prayer book in the regiment; but use had made us familiar with the funeral service. Leaving the orderlies to exercise their art of carving upon crosses for the graves, I stepped lightly across the road to the headquarters cellar; carefully choosing the little bit of cover that was the snipers' despair. Dering would then send my request for one or more ambulances to Brigade. Leaving him with Coke to settle the affairs of the battalion, I would steal a corner of Dering's straw bed and finish the sleep I had been robbed of by the early morning visit of the ambulance. After luncheon, when the sun worked round, we would idly watch the Taube that sought to locate our heavy gun battery in the woods by La Sermoise. Their method of signalling, in those days, was by coloured tracers of smoke, that the observer dropped like tiny silk ribbons in the sky. When above the battery the aeroplane would perform a figure of eight; the centre represented by the crossing of the lines would be right over the target. If the resulting shell was too much to one or the other side, or over or under, the correction would be signalled by a coloured tracer. They did not pay much attention to our antiaircraft guns. Bu
t when our machines were up for all the world like amber dragon flies with silver shining bodies, in the clear blue sky—the whole heavens would be filled with the fleecy clouds of cotton wool that were their shrapnel. Occasionally we would see combats in the air; but nothing seemed to result beyond the driving away of the enemy aeroplane. When aeroplanes are sent up to observe, they have no right to fight. Sometimes one of our machines would be above us, and the falling pieces of shrapnel casing would drive us back to our funk-holes until the display was over.

  We would often discuss German methods of war, and I found no false pride among our regular trained officers. The initial surprises in this war have been worked by the enemy. He it was who first discovered the value of heavy howitzers and the mortars that reduced Liege and Namur; the art of and the use of the machine gun, and the extraordinary mobility of that weapon. Then there were the risks his machine-gun section would take in pushing up a gun at night to effect the deadly enfilade. We had known at Mons his superiority in aeroplanes. The development of the sniper's art, in his hands, we first met with in the passage of the Marne. Now, we have for countless decades known the sniper; we have met him on the Indian Frontier; we have felt his power in South Africa; but we have never employed him as a real adjunct in our wars. The German snipers, as far as we could gather at this time, were from the Jaeger battalions; and recruited from the forest rangers of the big Imperial and ducal forests of East Prussia. Later only did I learn that sniping was also a disciplinary measure. Men, convicted of minor offences in the German trenches, would be sent out with 24 hours' supply of food and 200 cartridges; the empty cases they had to show, as evidence of their exertions, behind or near our lines. These sharpshooters were most excellent shots, and, in those days, must have had fixed rests and telescopic sights. The trees of Chivres Wood, whose foliage hid the snipers, were 700 yards from our long communication trench along the Missy Road; yet he would get the men of our fatigue parties, time after time, and usually through the head.

  Sitting one evening, in the warmth of the declining sun, outside headquarters cellar, we saw the most wonderful of all wonderful escapes. The men were out of their dugouts, on the grass at the edge of the wood; their voices, loud, Scotch and argumentative, floated up toward us; suddenly without warning a " rafale " of high explosive shell burst among them; four shells, bang, bang, bang, bang. When the smoke cleared and I was among them, I found, instead of the fragments of humanity I had expected, that one man only had been scratched.

  The moral and physical effect of shelling seems to vary with the degree of burial by the earth of the blown-in trench; to be partly buried by a shell is always a shock to the nervous system and most of us had that experience at one time or another. An unexpected sound found that our nerves were rather jumpy for many months after. But men who have been completely buried and have to be dug out are often in a most pitiable state; crying and distraught, though nowhere actually wounded. Then it is that a big dose of morphia and a quiet rest works like a charm; for, in six hours, the man will usually be able to return to duty; relieved by the sound sleep that, more or less, washes out the memory of this shock to his higher cerebral centres.

  The effect of fatigue is interesting to analyse; the strain is far more nervous than physical. After the bad day we had on crossing the Aisne, and the still more anxious night with the wounded, all of us who fed together were strangely affected as soon as the immediate strain was lifted from our shoulders two days later. We would always want to sleep; anywhere and at all hours; at our meals especially. Conversations were broken off by one or the other falling asleep. Turnbull, our cook, had to wake us up in the middle of a meal. We would wander in our talk and strange delusions filled our minds. They tell me that I talked of horses with white fetlocks; and I am not a horsey man. I know that Dering could not get his mind off chickens in a farm. Coke, also, had his special delusion. After a few days these delusions would fade away; but the excessive sleepiness and a strange appetite for sugar, in the form of jam or chocolate, would remain with us always.

  One night a very young intelligence officer came in to join us in the bully beef stew that Sergeant Robertson would cook for us day by day at La Sermoise and bring across the river in the darkness. He was serenely confident, and his mission was to make a night reconnaissance of the German position by Conde Bridge. We would say nothing to dissuade him, but gave him some warning of what we ourselves had learnt from our patrols. Never again did we hear anything more of him; nor did we then think that he would have the ghost of a chance of getting back. As he said good-night to us we thought of the motor-car near Conde Bridge, with its ghastly occupants, and shuddered.

  It must not be taken for granted that the German position was allowed to rest in peace during those soft September days. Our gunners sprayed the trees with shrapnel and made the snipers most uncomfortable; while our big cow guns, on Ciry ridge, plastered their trenches with high explosive. But we had far less ammunition to waste than they. One of the favourite efforts of our big guns was to shell Conde Fort in the early hours of the morning; at the time, so our intelligence agents told us, that the enemy ration parties came to draw their supplies. Three or four shells at 2 a.m. must have annoyed them intensely. Anyhow, we always got shelled at Missy most savagely the day after such attentions on the part of our 60-pounders. It was after one of these night shellings that the spire of Missy Church at last fell; it had been shelled constantly the whole fortnight. I had been to see the interior, or what was left of it, a few days previously when the whole nave was a mass of ruins.

  General Cuthbert, our Brigadier, came one day to say good-bye on his return to England. He had been in command of the 13th Brigade from the beginning, and we were all very sorry that he was leaving us.

  About this time there was a sp3' scare, and we were all on the look out for two officers in French uniform who might be expected in a Staff motor-car, at any moment. Any officers answering to this description who attempted to get information would have been very sharply dealt with. I heard afterwards from French officers that it was a favourite trick of the enemy to send spies, dressed as British officers, behind the French lines; and, in the uniform of French officers, behind the British lines. They trusted in the unfamiliarity of the respective Armies with Allied officers; and the natural disinclination to submit possibly genuine Allied officers to the insult of arrest as spies.

  Before this war, as a civilian, I cherished some of the commonly held views as to the ability of Regular Army officers; but the more I had to do with regimental headquarters the more highly I began to appreciate the very high level of capacity and general intelligence displayed by the average Commanding Officer and Adjutant of an infantry regiment. It is one of the disadvantages of a free country that every fool is free to criticise and condemn those who, in particular, may not and certainly would not trouble to answer criticism so ill-informed. But there is one thing that has been established as a result of this war; it is that it requires as much ability and a good deal more character, to run a regiment well than to run the affairs of an average business house.

  Soon came the news that the whole Fifth Division was going back to enjoy a really good and well-earned rest. We had heard this before; but on this occasion the most sceptical believed that we had a holiday before us. So, when we were relieved by the Lancashire Fusiliers, we marched back to Ciry, over the familiar pontoon bridge, in the highest spirits, nor had we one regret in leaving Missy behind us. In the courtyard of the high walled barn that sheltered my Dressing Station on the first dreadful day of crossing, we left Amos and forty-seven N.C.O.'s and men; in my hospital garden many more. It will be my first and most pleasant duty to write to the Professor of Moral Philosophy in Paris, whose home we used as a hospital, to tell him how grateful we were to be able to trespass upon so hospitable a house. His linen and blankets, I feel he would agree, could never have been put to better purpose. And his dahlias, beside his garden wall, will gain an added beauty from the British and German de
ad that nourish them.

  CHAPTER III

  THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES

  Back, that night, we marched through La Sermoise to Ciry to bivouac in the woods all next day. We were uneasy lest our promised rest should not, after all, come about; but still we had faith. When, however, the next day took us on to Serches, and the following days to Hartennes, of familiar and unpleasant memory, the sad conviction dawned upon us that we were in for no manner of rest this time. On Ciry Hill we paused beside the grave of our Regimental Sergeant-Major, McWhinney, who, together with Captain Murray, our Quartermaster, had been blown up by the same shell some two weeks previously. As a rule, the road through the wooded slopes of Ciry hill was hidden from the guns on Conde Fort; but just at this spot a white ribbon of road peeped out from among the green and lay in the full view of the enemy position beyond the Aisne. Thus, when our transport and the West Kent wagons halted to allow the Cavalry ambulance to pass, a big shell fell among them. At the moment the ambulance was passing, Murray and the Sergeant-Major were sitting by the roadside. The shell killed poor McWhinney outright; Murray was badly wounded; many transport men were killed, with two of the medical officers of the ambulance. Murray died later, and is buried at a farm near Serches. There were 6 feet 5 inches of McWhinney and every inch was good; both were most invaluable officers.