THE FIELD HOSPITAL
When he came to, it was daylight, and two Stretcher Bearers were tugging
at his feet. The weight of him seemed terrific, but eventually they
hoisted him on to the stretcher.
Some of his men gathered round, and told him that "they'd soon put him
straight at the hospital."
He smiled, rather wryly, but still he smiled, and mumbled: "Well, good
luck, No. 5 Platoon."
And so they carried him away, feet foremost.
They plunged along the muddy paths. He was convulsed with fear that they
would overturn him. And the jolting sent red-hot pains through his head,
and twisted his back terribly.
A Company came straggling up the path, led by no other than the Major,
who had been his Company Commander at the beginning of the war.
"Well, young feller, how are you? You'll be all right in a day or two."
Reply was impossible for him, and the Major hurried on.
The men who followed seemed shy of him. They looked at him covertly, and
then turned their eyes quickly away, as if he were some horrible
object. It annoyed him not a little.
That journey was the most painful thing that happened to him. But each
sickening jolt had the compensation of landing him a yard nearer the
hospital, and the hope of easing his pains buoyed him up somehow.
When they arrived at the Gunner's Cave, the Stretcher Bearers put him
resolutely down, and intimated that it was not "up to them" to take him
any further. The Ambulance, they said, ought to be there to "take over"
from them. But there was no sign of an Ambulance, and meantime he was
literally thirsting for the attentions and comforts of a hospital. His
natural reserve broke completely down. He begged, and entreated, and
prayed them to take him on.
After a little hesitation, they set out once more with a little
excusable cursing and grumbling.
It was about seven o'clock when at last they laid him down in the hall
of the hospital, and departed with unfeigned gladness.
Two Hospital Orderlies carried him along a passage and into the
identical billiard-room that he had seen from the garden.
A Doctor undid the soiled bandages with quick, strong fingers, and bent
down to examine the wound with an expression of concentrated ferocity on
his face. An Orderly brought a bowl, and the Doctor began to wash the
place.
It was a painful business, but nothing to be compared to the pain
produced by the "prober." They even tried to shave the hair from the
affected spot. He bore it as long as he could. But it was too much. His
left side shook and trembled. It was too terrible to begin to describe.
"It's no good," he said, "it's more than you can expect any one to put
up with. You'll have to stop it."
So they tied his head up once more, and he was carried upstairs into a
bedroom. They lifted him on to the bed, managed at length to divest him
of his jacket, turned some clothes over him, and left him.
* * * * *
In an hour a raging fever had taken hold of him.
Only intermittently, during the next three or four days, did he so much
as touch the world of realities. The only improvement was his face,
which had to a great extent relaxed. Otherwise the pain and the
paralysis were the same, and all the time the fever raged within him.
Somehow, when he awoke from his horrible dreams it was always dark. And
the remarkable thing was that the same nightmares seemed to haunt him
with persistent regularity. Always he lay down upon a hillside--nebulous
black, and furry. Always too, he had been "left," and the enemy was
swooping quickly down upon him. He would wake up to find himself once
more inert upon the bed, would curse himself for a fool, and vow that
never again would he allow his mind to drift towards that terrible
thought again.
J.O. double F.R.E? What was it? A Name? Whose? When and Why? He would
catch himself worrying about this many times. He would awake with a
start, and realise that the solution was a perfectly easy matter. Then
he would straightway fall asleep, to worry once again.
There was a big vase on a table near the bedside. He took an implacable
dislike to it, and longed to shatter it into atoms. "Horrible
pretentious affair," he would mutter.
When he awoke from his fever, he would always make frantic efforts to
hang on to consciousness. To this end he would always call the Orderly,
ask the time, demand water or Bovril--anything to keep him a little
longer in touch with the world.
Sometimes he would see bleared faces looking down upon him out of the
dizzy greyness. He remembers being told that "the Colonel" was coming to
see him. He never knew whether it was his own Colonel or some A.D.M.S.
The thought did indeed come to him that he was going mad. But he had not
the power to worry about the discovery, and insensibility would claim
him once more before he could realise the terrors of insanity.
All this time he lay on his back. It was impossible to move him, but he
longed to lie comfortably on his side, as he had always been accustomed
to do. He was sure he could sleep then--ordinary sound sleep, free from
worry, phantomless, refreshing. How he longed for it!
One evening a Doctor came to him and told him that they were going to
move him away. The news was by no means a relief. He did not feel equal
to the exertion of being carried about. He wanted to be allowed just to
lie quietly where he was, and live or die, just as Fate decreed. For
anything more, he had no energy; and the prospect of another journey
appalled him.
In the dead of night four silent Orderlies heaved him on to a stretcher,
carried him downstairs, and out of the château. His stretcher was then
slid into an ambulance, and he awaited impatiently the filling of the
others.
Another stretcher was slipped in by his side. It was too dark to see the
man upon it, but he was apparently suffering from the last stages of
thirst. He had been shot through the roof of the mouth and the throat,
and could not swallow. He was dying of thirst and hunger. He begged and
entreated them for water. He pleaded with them, tried to bribe them,
tried to order them, tried to bully them. It was pitiable to hear a
strong man brought so low. And if they gave him a drop of water in a
teaspoon, he would cough and choke to such a degree that it was obvious
that too frequent doses would be the end of him. He would gurgle, and
moan, and pine. It was awful.
They were journeying to the Clearing Hospital. The road, bad at the best
of times, was now pitted with shell holes, and was truly abominable. "Is
a country," he said to himself, "that will not allow its wounded
pneumatic tyres to ride upon, worth fighting for?"
They jolted on through the remaining part of the night. At dawn they
were disembarked, and put to rest in a little farm-house, where they
gave them soup and milk. But there were only mattresses thrown on a
stone floor, and the pain in his spine was so acute that he almost
forgot about his head.
His companion on the journey was placed in the same room. At the
beginning of the night he had pitied the poor fellow immensely. But his
prayers and entreaties were too pitiful to bear. What he must have been
suffering! It added an extra weight to his own burden. Thank God, he had
never been very thirsty!
"Just a little water! Just a drop. I won't swallow it. I won't! I swear
before Heaven I won't! Just a teaspoonful! Please!... Oh! I'm dying of
thirst.... Only a drop.... I won't swallow it this time.... There's five
pounds in my pocket." He would gurgle and groan pitifully for a moment.
Then in a voice, astoundingly loud, but thick with blood, he would
shout, quaveringly: "Orderly, blast you, you ----, give me some water, or
I'll--"
Sad to say, there came a time when the Subaltern could bear it no
longer. His own troubles and the entreaties of the other unnerved him.
"Give him water! Chuck it at him! In a bucket!" he shouted in a frenzy.
"Let the poor wretch die happy, anyway."
The Corporal in charge came over to him.
"You might get me some milk, Corporal," he said.
"For you, sir?"
"Oh no! You ----, to water the plants with, of course!"
"I was only asking, sir."
"All right, Corp'ral. Can't you see I'm a little upset this morning?"
* * * * *
They carried him on to the Clearing Hospital in a motor Ambulance, and
deposited him in the hall of a little estaminet that had been turned
into an Officer's Hospital.
A Doctor and Sister were conversing in low tones outside a closed door.
"I'm afraid there are all the symptoms of enteric," she was saying.
Neither of them took the slightest notice of him. But he was getting
used to being carried about and never spoken to, like a piece of
furniture. And the Sister entranced him. The Clearing Hospitals were the
nearest places to the fighting-line that women could aspire to. He had
not seen an English lady since leaving England. And her waist pleased
him. Such few French peasant women had any waists at all. And her voice
was higher-pitched; more intellectual, if less poetic.
When the two of them had quite finished discussing their "case" she
called for an Orderly, and without so much as looking at him, said,
"Put that one in there," indicating another door. Another Orderly was
fetched, and the painful business of hauling him off the stretcher on to
a bed began once more.
The novelty of his surroundings occupied his mind. The bed was soft, and
his spine ceased to ache. A feeling almost akin to contentment stole
over him, as they left him in the clean, cool bed. His companion without
the throat had been put in another room. There was only one more bed in
this one, and the occupant was sleeping peacefully.
About four o'clock in the afternoon he heard the faint ring of spurred
boots in the hall.
"This is an Officer's Ward, sir," a voice was saying.
The Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, followed by another Officer only
less distinguished than himself, came slowly in.
"Poor boys!" he said. "How are you getting on?"
"All right, thank you, sir," he answered, smiling with pride.
"Here's the latest news from England," added the great man, as he
dropped a paper on the bed. The Subaltern's left hand almost shot out of
bed to grasp it. He looked up just in time to see them disappearing
through the doorway.
He tried to read the paper, but the effort brought the very worst pains
back again to his head, so he concealed it under the coverlet of the
bed. He was determined to keep that paper. It was already growing dark,
when the young Doctor of the Ward came to his bedside, smiling.
"We are going to operate on you at eight o'clock," he said. "It will be
all right. We'll soon put you straight."
"Straight?" he echoed. "Yes, I dare say you will!"