A Regimental Surgeon Read online

  From Hartennes we marched to Longpont; and we felt convinced that we were off to Ostend. Probably we should garrison the town, we thought, and live in one of the big hotels; how we would enjoy the last of the summer bathing! Marching always by night, and hiding in the woods by day to escape the observation of the watchful Taubes, we pressed on to Longpont and Villers-Cotterets.

  Now, the long rest in Missy trenches, wet and cold and exposed, had brought about a peculiar neuritis in the feet of all officers and men. This, no doubt, was partly due also to the fact that we had not had our boots off for three weeks. There was a peculiar numbness of the big toe especially, and intense pain in the feet on marching, but after a few miles the pain was relieved, only to return with redoubled vigour when a halt was called and we might rest. Rest, however, we could not; but kept marching up and down the road. By day when we tried to sleep in billet or bivouac the pain kept us all awake. The only remedy was to keep our boots on while we slept; and to take the phenacetin we were so plentifully supplied with. A very lame and halting battalion passed through Villers-Cotterets one night; and after a most exhausting march came down the hill to the quiet mill and farm of Wallu. Of all this long march, of all our billets and bivouacs, these two days' rest at Wallu are the pleasantest recollection. Arriving at five in the morning, the companies took immediate possession of the farm and mill and lay down to sleep. But for Headquarters we could see no place, till we spied a house, a shooting box by the antlers that adorned the outer walls, and the large kennels behind the house. We were very tired, short-tempered, cold and hungry, and I fear, we battered on the door with no great ceremony. Judge, then, of our astonishment when an upper window was raised and a beautiful young lady leant out and asked in perfect English who we were and what we wanted! Profuse apologies! All we asked of Mademoiselle was a room to sleep in! Then an elderly gentleman appeared and welcomed us very kindly; throwing mattresses from his upper windows and giving us the key of his lower rooms. We very soon laid the mattresses on the floor, and Coke was soon asleep. But, by this time, our host had appeared in a flowered dressing-gown. He woke his servants, lit the kitchen fire and helped the mess sergeant to cook us breakfast. Two very pleasant days followed in the society of that charming young lady and her father. When we left, Miles, the transport officer, presented our hostess with Punch, one of the transport horses, now quite exhausted, but giving every hope, with food and care and rest, of regaining his former vigour. Mademoiselle was delighted, especially when we told her Punch's story: how he had been hit high up in the neck at Mons and dropped for dead, the traces cut and the horse abandoned. But what was Miles' surprise to find in his transport lines, three days later, on the morning of the battle of Le Cateau, that the dead horse had come to life. Among all the crowded transport of the Third and Fifth Division the gallant horse had found his way in the necessary disorder of a very hurried retirement, back to his own regiment again. The wound had merely the effect of stunning the horse temporarily.

  From Wallu we marched past Bethancourt, north of Crépy, the scene of the last rearguard action the battalion had fought in in the great Retreat, and on to Pont Ste, Maxence. Crossing the river Oise on a pontoon bridge, we entrained and made our way through Amiens to Abbeville. We detrained, and in two days, partly on our feet and partly by French motor transport, the whole Brigade reached St. Pol. Here we billeted one night with the village priest and set off towards Bethune through the industrial and mining region of North-Eastern France.

  On the way we got into touch with the French Cavalry and Colonial troops, Senegalese, Turcos, Spahis in all their highly picturesque equipment. But we did not fail to notice how spent and exhausted the horses, not only of the artillery ammunition trains, but also of the cavalry, appeared. Ours were in no better case.

  Finally we arrived at Beuvry and billeted at the château. In the huge stable yard there was room and enough for the whole battalion and their transport. Our hostess, a widow, made us very welcome, prepared us an excellent dinner, and with her two daughters, entertained us most kindly. We slept in real beds that night, but not for long as far as I was concerned, for at two in the morning I was called up by the French surgeon in charge of the infantry battalion in Beuvry, and bidden come with him, in haste, to see a man who had been badly wounded by a French sentry. I woke up my sergeant, and packed our surgical panniers on to a stretcher and brought it along with us to the house where the wounded man lay. The story was a strange combination of circumstances! An old man, sixty-five years of age, deaf and dumb, had chosen that night at 11.30 to go for a walk in the village street. Being deaf he could not hear the French sentry's repeated challenge; being dumb, he could not have answered, if he had. So the sentry shot and only too well. It was war, and the country was alive with spies; one could not blame the sentry. But the old man was " in extremis." I gave him ease of his pains, while the French doctor comforted the relatives. When I got back to the only real bed I had had since I left England, it was time to move on again: the battalion was at breakfast, and the transport fallen in. Coke made a very graceful farewell to our hostess, and we marched out for Annequin in the densest of dense fogs, little knowing that the fog was to be our salvation.

  Making our way past the stone barricades that blocked the street, we swung right-handed beyond the town and marched, still in fog, along the road that faced the château and the woods of Vermelles. Here we were again in touch with the French on our right, and for the time, we and the West Rents, who followed us, were under the command of the French Brigadier-General. The fog showed signs of lifting, so trenches were hurriedly dug in a field of sugar beet beside the road; the road ditches were deepened to form a reserve trench and the regiment gained safety. And not a moment too soon; for, the fog lifting, we were within 300 yards of the woods that encircled the château. Had we still been in that open road, it would have spelt disaster. At a cross road was a small restaurant. Here I established my advanced dressing station; while half a mile back along the road that was at right angles to our position, the second and third dressing stations were placed; one behind a line of haystacks; the other farther back in a deep culvert where the railway crossed: farther back still the Maltese cart was driven into the courtyard of a farm under a high slag heap. From this farm an easy road led back to Annequin, so that the line for the evacuation of the wounded seemed fairly secure. But when I got back to the battalion, Dering's sound judgment showed me that I was wrong, for he feared that the slag heap would be shelled as an observation post belonging to the heavy French battery behind it, and that my sergeant with the Maltese cart would be in danger. But now the fields were swept with rifle and machine-gun fire; in the distance the blue-jacketed French Hussars galloped for the railway embankment and safety. It was too risky to get back now, and I certainly could not send a stretcher-bearer. Lying in the ditch with my back to the enemy, I watched the shrapnel screaming over us to sweep the crest and slopes of the big slag heap: watched the mine shafts and mine buildings gradually crumble and disappear and felt worried for Sergeant Thompson. The gunnery practice was excellent. Soon there slipped down beside me a young French sous-officier of the nth Hussars, Bazin by name, the son of the man who wrote " The Nun ": he spoke excellent American, and beguiled me with stories of the Uhlans he had shot at Longwy and in Alsace. Quite a number of these exploits I could well believe, for he was very cool and quiet under the shelling that we were having. Small, dark and debonair, he was the incarnation of Doyle's " Brigadier Gerard." Then I slipped across to the little house to see that the stove was lighted and all ready for the casualties that were sure to come. Beside the wall of the house, and in shelter, were two beautiful French armoured cars that had crept quietly up from behind. On one was mounted a pom-pom, on the other a mitrailleuse; both of the most exquisite design. Little, low, grey cars they were with the muzzle of the gun pointing out behind through a mantlet of steel, that showed the marks of many shrapnel balls. The officer in charge of the Colonial artillery exhibited his two
treasures; then, getting an order from his staff, he boarded the mitrailleuse car and proceeded to go into action. Now, just here was a lane that led at right angles up to some haystacks in front of the enemy position: the road was sunken and the shelter good. On the reverse gear these two little cars followed one another quite slowly and cautiously, under the shelter of the bank, until they reached the cover of the haystacks. Then they commenced firing point blank into the wood; the pom-pom in series of five shells; the mitrailleuse so rapidly that one could not count. The French mitrailleuse fires much more rapidly than our machine guns or the Germans'. Then the enemy spotted them; a shell fell in the roadway, and out of action came those cars bounding down the lane at full speed, to draw up once more triumphantly beside my wall. The French gunner calmly unscrewed the hot barrel of the mitrailleuse* replaced it by a cold one, and looked to me for the approval I could not withhold.

  Then the West Kents from behind our position arrived to take over part of our trenches, and the French General came to consult his two English Colonels. At 3 p.m. precisely —they compared their watches—the attack would start: the West Kents on the left and the French infantry on the right. At 3 p.m. exactly, the West Kents, two companies of them, rose from their trenches and rushed forward to the assault. Then the enemy declared their strength and fire was poured, as it seemed, from hundreds of machine guns within the wood and along the château wall. Down went the men of the West Kents taking cover in the high tops of the sugar beets: fortunately high enough to cover the man and his pack. As the French battalion rose to advance the enemy fire was on them. The French were very gallant in the matter of charging. They are quite different from us. Our men charge in open order and short rushes; the French in platoons like coveys of partridges. They rise together and spread out like a fan, then again converge in a hollow or a bank, like a covey jugging in a grass field at night. Their line of advance was open stubble beyond the roots, and the October sun shone brightly on them, twinkling on their red legs. They would chatter together: one could hear their voices well behind. Then they would agree on another good bit of cover and rise to spread out; then close in again. But the German machine gunner was no fool, and trained his gun where they had dropped, and as the red caps appeared all together above the sheltering fold of ground, he let them have it. It could not be done, and back came the blue and red figures, back into the West Kents' trenches. On the yellow stubble were the thick parti-coloured bundles, so vividly distinct in the sunshine.

  The West Rents had fifty casualties that afternoon, and Croker, speaking to me later, could not say enough for the most intrepid way in which the French doctor and his stretcher-bearers went right out among the sugar beets under very heavy fire to find, pick up, and bring back quite a number of the wounded.

  The K.O.S.B. then fell back to the road and made a flank march of about a mile to the left, and, opening out, advanced under cover of the trees and hedges to attack the village of Cuinchy, just west of the canal. There was a lot of front to cover, and we could not afford to have a company in reserve. "A" Company held the main road out of Annequin and the big barricade. "C" Company, led by Gillespie, rushed the cemetery in great style and held it. "B" Company advanced over open ground and dug themselves in, with Smith, the company commander, badly wounded in the arm. " D" Company, as usual, struck a bad patch to the right of the canal where the enemy were in strength, and at last won to the shelter of some haystacks. My main dressing station was placed in a cottage well behind, under the charge of Thompson, the most reliable, and kept, by orderly, in touch with the Field Ambulance right back in Annequin. I watched the companies into action, standing with Coke and Dering by a cottage. But soon the machine-gun fire told us that " D" Company was getting it badly, and I knew that this was no place for me. With my orderly I found a sheltered path up to the left flank of " D" Company and broke in the door of a house on the main road. Soon we had the fire lighted and all the mattresses from above brought down to the warm kitchen. Peeping over the wall, we found that what we had feared was correct; the open ground over which the company had advanced had taken its toll of men and officers, and on the plough-land in front of the sheltering belt of sugar beet I could see the tell-tale straps on the bodies of two officers. They were lying on their sides and were very still, and I knew what that meant. The rest of the company had won the cover of the haystacks, and had thrown up a shelter trench in the roots. Then dusk fell, and mercifully put an end to the fight; though the field was almost as light as day with burning haystacks and star shells. Our guns had set light to the haystacks behind the enemy trenches; every movement of ours was visible, and the search for wounded among the green tops of the beets was quite a ticklish task. It was difficult enough to find the wounded, right away in front of the trenches, the undaunted fellows who had led the company far ahead; and not an easy matter to keep one's sense of direction. Only by the methodical beating of the roots, in line, could one be sure that one's stretcher-bearers would not become disorientated and wander on into the enemy trenches. Five burning haystacks I had taken as my landmark, but no sooner were we out than the same haystacks seemed to be duplicated suddenly at all points of the compass. Times without number machine guns opened fire, stretchers had to be dropped and cover taken by lying flat. But we got them all back, and then I turned to two haystacks where some other wounded lay. There I found Dalrymple wounded in the thigh, but very excited and happy; he was proud of the men that afternoon, and refused the morphia I offered him to ease the pain of the stretcher journey that was before him. Many men were dead and many wounded beyond hope. In the open among the first to fall were Major Allan and young Woollcombe. Death had come to them very swiftly and without pain; they lay as they pitched forward without movement, shot through the heart.

  Very busy were we in that little house: sixty wounded for morphia and dressings. They were most grateful for the warmth, for wounded men surfer acutely from shock, they are so cold, so sweaty and so thirsty. When the morphia acts and the tea and the inevitable cigarette, that incomparable sedative for shaken nerves, arrive, the whole aspect of a dressing station alters. Unless a man is wounded desperately, he soon becomes quite cheerful and very talkative. Morphia stills the pain without having a great narcotic effect in times of excitement like this. At three o'clock in the morning the last wounded had been taken to the main dressing station, and the ambulances were waiting. Dalrymple was eating an egg, and in the most wonderful spirits: he had changed his mind about the morphia. Smith was in great pain; the paralysis of his hand showed a serious nerve injury. Only yesterday his wife had written, hoping that he would get the " nice " wound that would bring him safely back to her: her wish was granted, for it was quite plain that Smith would have to be, for many months, at home before his arm was well again.

  The ambulance drove away and we were free to sleep, but not for long. At the first light, the machine guns woke me again. Back we went to the little house that did us such good service the night before. But this time things were better organised, and seven dressing stations were established; three along the front line in sheltered cottages; four in easy stages between the line and the village of Cambrin, where our headquarters were.

  With difficulty I found the senior French officer—he was then engaged with one of our artillery observation officers; the barrel of a mitrailleuse poked through the tiles of a house. My wishes stated, this very courteous officer put the whole town at my disposal. Any house I liked to take and all the resources of the town were mine. So Thompson was installed in the Mairie. We had to break the doors down; but I felt that the best only was good enough for the wounded of our battalion. In each of the two smaller stations were two stretcher bearers, with stoves alight, kettles boiling and dressings ready. To every station a sheltered path, a row of willow trees or a sunken road. The wounded were brought straight in and help was ready at once.

  Again poor "D" Company, this time under Caird from "C" Company, with Macrae as his only subaltern, had its usual bad
luck. Orders had been given out the night before from Brigade for an attack by " B" and "D" Companies at dawn. It appears that the German information was not faulty, and the enemy was ready for us. In the night, just after our night patrol, under the indomitable Sergeant Skinner, of motor launch fame, had got into touch with the Dorsets to our left along the canal, the watchful enemy had run a machine gun into the back garden of my dressing station and had us enfiladed.

  At dawn the companies rose and advanced to the attack; but it was more than flesh and blood could stand, and there was nothing for it but the cover of the roots. But here the roots were thin and the men's packs showed above the green tops. Up and down that line of packs the machine gun swept until our field gunners forced it back. All day were the enemy infantry in front sighting their rifles on the packs, shortened the range a trifle and picked off our devoted men. When I crept along the roots that night there were thirty-nine all lying in a row. One could only tell the dead because they did not groan when shaken; all were stiff with cold or death. The wounded were dragged out by the heels into the trench and safety, the dead we had to leave. There was one unconquerable man with bright red hair, almost more conspicuous than the bonnet, which all men in action are ordered to remove. He was in a state of rigor mortis with his rifle to his shoulder and his cheek pressed closely to the stock; a little shelter trench thrown up before his red head and his entrenching tool left in front for cover. He had realised that his worst enemy was the machine gun on his left and had turned to fire at it: he must have collected a lot of other men's ammunition, for in addition to his own 150 rounds, he had fired at least 200 more before death fixed him in the attitude of life. I knew the man for an old soldier; he had the Belgian ribbon in his bonnet that only the original men of his battalion had got from the Belgian girls the night before Mons.