OUT OF IT
Every man who goes into the active service of the present war knows that
someday, somehow, somewhere, he is going to get plugged. We have
expressions of our own as to wounds. If a chap loses a leg or an arm or
both, he'll say, "I lost mine," but when there is a wound, no matter how
serious, yet which does not entail the loss of a visible part of the body,
we say, "I got mine."
So it was as time wore on, I "got mine" in the right shoulder and right
lung. A German explosive bullet caught me while I was in a lying position.
It was at Ypres; we all get it at Ypres.
The thing happened under peculiar circumstances. It was the second time in
my army career that I volunteered for anything. The first time was the
night I went on listening post; the second time I got plugged, and plugged
for good.
We had repulsed the enemy several times. We were running short of
ammunition and our position was enfiladed. It was absolutely necessary, if
all of us were not to lose our lives, that some one should bring up
ammunition.
The ammunition dump lay about a mile back of our line. An officer called
for volunteers to creep back for a supply. It was broad daylight, but
twenty-eight other lads and myself stepped forward willing to attempt the
task.
The men who remained behind had a command to keep up a rapid fire over the
enemy trenches which would lend us some cover. No matter how perfect this
covering may be, it is never completely effective in silencing the enemy
fire. Quite a number of bullets scattered about us as we clambered along
the short communication trench, and up into the open. This was my first
experience in running away from bullets, and I proved in the first five
seconds of that journey that a man, no matter what his propensities for
winning medals may be, can run much faster from bullets than he can toward
them.
Among us were boys of several other companies, and on the way out three of
the twenty-nine got hit. I did not know whom. We kept on, breathless and
gasping, running as we were under the weight of full equipment and dodging
bullets as we went. Shells were falling round us too, now. We were not
happy.
At last we got to our destination and picked up the boxes. A box of
ammunition weighs a hundred or more pounds, so we decided that three of us
should carry two boxes. The boxes are fitted with handles on each end.
We started off running at top speed, then dropping flat on our stomachs to
fetch our breath and rest our aching arms. The enemy was rapidly getting
thicker. We rose and rushed forward another stretch. At three hundred yards
from the trench, the greater number of our crowd had fallen. We dropped.
Then our hearts stood still, for from our trench there came a silence we
could feel.
We knew what it meant. There was no need for the enemy to increase the
rapidity of his fire over us and over the boys in the trench to let us know
what was up. Our ammunition had already given out, and we had to face the
last few hundred yards without protection, meager though it had been
throughout. We knew there was not a man in that trench who had a bullet
left. We knew that as far as we were concerned, we were done. We
metaphorically shook hands with ourselves and wished friend self a long
good-by. We looked at the sun and said "Tra-la-la" to it, and we wondered
in a flash of thought what the old world would be like without us. We
wondered where we would "light up."
All this passed in a moment of time, and then we decided that it would be
better if we paired up, two men taking one box of ammunition. This offered
a smaller target for the busy enemy, and also made for increased speed in
covering the remaining ground.
We sprang up once more and dodged and doubled as we leaped through the rain
of bullets, machine gun and rifle. How we lived I don't know. I was sharing
a box with a lad whom I heard the fellows call Bob. He was no more than a
boy, but we were much of a size and ran light. We were the only two of the
twenty-nine left on our feet. To-day I am one of five of that bunch left
alive.
About fifty yards from the trench we dropped for a last rest before the
final spurt which would decide the whole course of events in the next ten
minutes. Would we reach that trench and turn in our box of ammunition, or
would we "get ours" and would the boys so eagerly waiting for us be
surrounded and captured? Or would many of them do what they had threatened?
"If it comes to surrendering," several had said in my hearing, "I will run
a bayonet into myself rather than be taken."
When a man is lying close to the ground there is not so very great a chance
of his being hit by bullets. They pass overhead as a rule. It is when a man
is kneeling or standing, or between the two positions that the great danger
lies. The lad Bob and I were just in the act of rising when mine came
along. I felt no more than a stinging blow in the right shoulder, a searing
cut and a thud of pain as the bullet exploded in leaving my body. I fell on
my face and blood gushed from my shoulder.
"Hit hard or soft?" queried my companion, as he threw himself down beside
me.
"Don't know," I gasped.
"You're hit in the mouth," he said, as the blood poured from between my
lips.
"No, by gum, you're hit in the back!"
I gasped, nearly choked, and spluttered out: "You're a liar; I'm not hit in
the back." But there was a gash in the back where the exploding missile had
torn away and carried out portions of my lung and bits of bone and flesh.
I closed my eyes. Then from a distance I heard Bob speak.
"I'm going to fix you," he said, and knelt beside me. He got into such a
position that his own body shielded me from any of the enemy bullets. It
was a marvelous piece of bravery; less has earned a Victoria Cross.
He turned me round so that my head was toward our reserves and my feet were
toward the Germans. In almost all cases when a man is hit he falls forward
with his face to the enemy. In all probability he will become unconscious.
When he awakes he remembers that he fell forward. A blind instinct works
within him and makes him strive to turn around. He knows danger lies ahead,
but friend and safety are back of him.
Bob shifted me round. "Remember," he whispered, "that if you should faint,
when you come to you are placed right. You are in the right
direction--don't turn round."
A wonderful motto for a man to carry through life. Bob had no thought of
future or fame. In keen solicitude for a fallen comrade he uttered words
which mean more in these days of war and blood than do the words of poets.
"You're in the right direction--don't turn round!"
Then the lad got up to go on. He struggled to lift the box of ammunition.
I whispered to him hoarsely: "You're not going on--you will never get
there. It is certain death."
"Good-by, old boy," was his answer. "You don't think because the rest of
you have gone down that I am going to be a piker. Say 'Hello!' to Mother
for me should you see her before I do."
I have never seen his mother. I do not know her. If she lives she has the
memory of a son who, though a boy in years, was a soldier and a very
gallant gentleman. Bob tried to reach the trench, but a rain of bullets got
him and he fell dead only a little way from me.
I lay where I had fallen for some time. I don't know how long, but long
enough to see our boys captured by the enemy. And in so dreadful a plight
as I was I had to smile. Those men who had boasted they would kill
themselves, surrendered with the rest. Life is very sweet. There is always
a chance of living, and always a chance of escape no matter how brutal the
system in German prison camps.
Every man in that trench surrendered honorably. Not a man had a bullet
left. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and it is hard to die when there is
youth and love and strength.
As evening wore on I feared that I too might be captured, and I commenced a
weary struggle to crawl back across the field. It was while I was resting
after such an effort that a wonderful moment came to me. I saw the Lord
Jesus upon His cross, and the compassion upon His face was marvelous to
see. He appeared to speak to me.
"I am dying," I muttered, and then thought, "Shall I pray?"
Of outward praying I had done none. I thought about it and wondered. To
pray now--no, that was being a piker. I had not prayed openly before, now
when I was nearing death it was no time for a hurried repentance and a
stammered prayer. I watched the vision as it slowly faded, and a great
comfort surrounded me. I was happy.
I crawled on and reached a shell hole. It must have been an hour later that
a despatch rider came to me. His motorcycle had been shot from under him,
and he was striving to reach his destination on foot. He spoke to me, and
then placed me in a blanket, which he took from a dead soldier. In this he
dragged me to the shelter of an old tumbledown house. It had been riddled
with shot and shell, but the greater part of the outer walls were standing,
and it was shelter.
I begged the despatch rider to give me his name. I begged him to take some
small things of mine to keep as a token for what he had done for me. But he
would have nothing. He hurried away with the intention of sending help to
me, and as he went I begged his name once more. "Oh! Johnnie Canuck!" said
he. And there it remains. I do not know the name of the man who dragged me
to comparative safety at such terrible risk to himself.
Behind the old house where I lay there was a battery of British guns,
4.7's. After a while the enemy found the range, and their shells commenced
bursting round me. God in Heaven! I died a hundred deaths in that old ruin.
Once a shell hit what roof there was and a score of bricks came crashing
about me. Not one touched. I seemed charmed. I could hear the shells
screeching through the air a second before they burst near where I lay. Of
bodily pain I had little. The discomfort was great; the thirst was
appalling. I thought I should bleed to death before help reached me.
But there was nothing to compare with the mental strain of
waiting--waiting--waiting for a shell to burst. Where would it drop? Would
the next get me?
I hoped and longed and waited, but help did not come. I never lost
consciousness. Darkness came and dawn. Another day went by and the shelling
went on as before. Another night, another dawn and then two Highland
stretcher-bearers came in. They raised me gently. The bleeding had stopped,
but that journey on the stretcher was too much. I had been found and I let
myself drift into the land of unknown things.
I woke before we reached a dugout dressing station. Here I was given a
first-aid dressing and immediately after carried away to an old-fashioned
village behind the lines. At this point there was a rough field hospital,
an old barn probably. There were eighty or ninety wounded there when I
arrived. Among the many French and British were some Germans. The very next
stretcher to me was occupied by one of the enemy.
The Red Cross floated over the building, but that emblem of mercy made no
difference to the Hun. The shells commenced to find range, and in a short
time the roof was lifted off. A wounded man died close to me. I can only
remember the purr of a motor as an ambulance rushed up. Then I saw four
stretcher-bearers; two grabbed the German, and two caught hold of me. We
were rushed to the ambulance and driven at maddening speed through the
shell-ridden town.
Though I was barely conscious, though I believed that I was nearing my last
moments, I remember how it struck me vividly,--the contrast in the methods
of fighting. German shells were blasting to pieces the shelter of wounded
men and nurses. German wounded were being cared for by those whom their
comrades sought to kill. The Hun might have killed his own. It did not
matter. What is a life here or there to a Hohenzollern? And the
Allies--here were two British stretcher-bearers bent under the burden of an
enemy patient. They were striving to save his life from the fire of his own
people.
I do not remember any more after I was put in the ambulance. I came to
myself in a base hospital in France. I was strapped to a water bed.
Everything round me was soft and fresh and clean, and smelled deliciously.
There was a patient, sweet-smiling woman in nurse's costume who came and
went to the beck and call of every man of us. We were whimpering and
peevish; we were wracked with pain and weary of mind, but that nurse never
failed to smile. Call a hundred times, call her once, she was always there
to soothe, to help, to sympathize, and always smiling. Her heart must have
been breaking at times, but her serene face never showed her sorrow or her
weariness.
Often and often I am asked, "Why didn't you die when you were lying out
there on the battle-field?" Why didn't I die? I could have, several times,
but I didn't want to die, and I knew that if I were found I need not die.
We raw soldiers when we go to France are interested in the possibilities of
being wounded. We know we've more or less got it coming to us, and we begin
quietly to make inquiries. We notice all those men who wear the gold
honor-bars on their sleeves. Yes; for every wound we get we have the right
to wear a narrow strip of gold braid on the tunic sleeve.
We talk to the man with the honor-bar. We ask him how he was treated in the
hospital. He may be doing the dirtiest fatigue duty round trench or camp,
he may be smoking or writing a letter, but the minute be hears the word
"hospital" he drops everything. If he be a Cockney soldier he will repeat
the word: "'Orspital, mate--lor' luv ye, wish I wuz back!"
That is the feeling. Talk to a thousand men after this war; ask them their
experiences and they will tell you a thousand different stories. Ask them
how they were treated in the hospital and there is but one reply: "Treated
in hospital? Excellent!"
There is only one word. The great Red Cross--Royal Army Medical Corps--is
practically one hundred per cent. efficient. The veterans will tell the
youngsters, "If you're wounded and have to lie out--then, lie out--don't be
foolish enough to die while you are lying out--because you can't die once
they find you."
YOU CAN'T DIE.
We remember that. We remember facts, too, that we hear from time to time.
We remember that out of all the casualties on the western front, only two
and a half per cent. have died of wounds. We remember that we have a
ninety-seven and a half fighting chance out of a hundred, and we are
willing to take it. Some of us have read of other wars and we know, for
instance, that in the American Civil War, from the best available
statistics, over twenty-two per cent. died of wounds--and the reason? No
efficient medical corps--no Red Cross--no neutral flag of red on white.
I was taken over to London as soon as I could be moved. I was in the Royal
Herbert Hospital at Woolwich. It is not possible to describe in detail the
treatment. The doctors were untiring. Hour after hour and day after day
they worked without ceasing. The nurses were unremitting. No eight-hour day
for them!
And here again I saw the treatment of the German wounded. They were in
wards as gay with flowers, as cool, as clean, as delightful as ours. They
had German newspapers to read, and certain days of the week brought a
German band, drawn from among fit prisoners, to play German airs for the
benefit of the sick prisoners. We think of this, and then we meet a British
or French soldier who has been exchanged or who has escaped from a German
hospital prison! It is hard to think of it calmly. The first impulse is to
follow the law, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But that is
not the way to-day of the square fighter.
At this hospital I was operated on and it was shown that it was an
explosive bullet that hit me. Several pieces were taken out of me, and
these I keep as grim souvenirs. Several other pieces are still in my body,
and not infrequently by certain twinges I am made aware of their presence.
I have never seen an explosive bullet, and few of the Allied soldiers
believe that many of us have felt them. Should one of the Allies be found
making an explosive or Dum-Dum bullet, he is liable to be court-martialed
and shot. There are those of us who would like to use them, but it is not
what we like, it is what we may or may not do. It is discipline, and
discipline forbids a brutal warfare. Thank God that we are fighting this
war on the square, that our leaders are _making_ us fight it on the square.
Thank God that no attempt has ever been made to brutalize the troops of the
Allies.
Part of the four months I was incapacitated was spent at Dobson Volunteer
Red Cross Hospital, and here I was again struck with the marvelous devotion
of the women. Day after day many of the leading women would come in,
duchesses and others of title, and seek for Canadian lads to whom they
could show kindnesses. Luxurious cars waited to drive us out for the air;
flowers, fruits and books reached us, and quantities of cigarettes.
When the boys of the U.S.A. reach British hospitals in England, as no doubt
they shall, they will find the same enthusiasm, the same attention bestowed
upon them from the first ladies of the land and from the humblest who may
only be able to give a smile, a cheery word or maybe a bunch of fragrant
violets.
Two weeks before I was wounded I was recommended for a commission by my
former colonel, Maynard Rogers, and the official document came to me while
I was in the English hospital suffering from my wounds. It was a great
source of pride and satisfaction that my commission, which I prize so
highly to-day, was signed by the late Sir Charles Tupper, father of the
Canadian Confederation and one of the Dominion's greatest statesmen.
But my fighting days are over. I am "out of it," but out with memories of
good fellowship, real comrades, kindness, sympathy and friendships that dim
the recollection of death, of destruction, of blood, of outrage, of murder
and brutality.