CASUALTIES
A deep and comparatively uninjured German dug-out had been adapted for
use as a dressing-station. Its entrance lay in a little cup-shaped
depression with a steep, sloping bank behind it, and the position of
this bank and the entrance opening out of it away from the British
lines had probably been the saving of it from shell fire. Kentucky
groped his way down the dark stairway, and the bearers followed with
Pug on the stretcher. The stair was horribly steep, built in high and
narrow wooden steps which were coated with thick, slippery mud, and it
was with some difficulty that the stretcher was brought down. The stair
opened out direct into a large, well-built dug-out with planked floor,
walls and roof, and beyond it again a narrow passage led to a further
room, also well built and plank lined, but much longer, and so narrow
that it barely gave room for men to be laid across it. This chamber,
too, was filled with wounded, some of them stretched at full length,
others squatting close packed about the floor. The first room was used
by the doctors, because, being more widely built, it gave room for a
couple of tables. There were three doctors there, two working at the
tables, the third amongst the cases huddled along the wall. Kentucky
took his place, leaning back against the wall and waiting his turn, but
Pug was carried almost at once to one of the tables.
“Have you heard anything about how the whole show is going?” Kentucky
asked one of the orderlies. “Not a word,” said the man. “Leastways,
we’ve heard so many words you can’t believe any of ’em. Some o’ the
casualties tells us one thing an’ some another. But we’ve bumped the
Hun back a lump, that’s sure. They all tell us that.”
Kentucky stayed there some minutes longer, waiting his turn and
watching the doctors at their work. They were kept hard at it. The
casualties came stumbling down the stair in an unbroken procession,
and in turn passed along to the doctors at the tables. Most of those
that walked had bandages about their heads, faces, hands, or arms;
most of them were smeared and spattered with blood, all of them were
plastered thick with mud. Many had sleeves slit open or shirts cut
away, and jackets slung loosely over their shoulders, and as they moved
glimpses of white flesh and patches of bandage showed vividly fresh
and clean behind the torn covering of blood-stained and muddy khaki.
As fast as the doctor finished one man another took his place, and
without an instant’s pause the doctor washed from his mind the effort
of thought concentrated on the last case, pounced on the newcomer,
and, hurriedly stripping off the bandages, plunged into the problem
of the fresh case, examining, diagnosing, and labeling it, cleansing
the wound of the clotted blood and mud that clung about it, redressing
and bandaging it. Then each man’s breast was bared and a hypodermic
injection of “anti-tetanus” serum made, and the man passed along to
join the others waiting to go back to the ambulances. And before he was
well clear of the table the doctor had turned and was busied about the
next case. The work went on at top speed, as smooth as sweet-running
machinery, as fast and efficiently as the sorting and packing of goods
in a warehouse by a well-drilled and expert staff. It was curiously
like the handling of merchandise, if you gave your main attention to
the figures passing down the stairs, moving into line up to the tables,
halting there a few minutes, moving on again and away. The men might
have been parcels shifting one by one up to the packers’ tables and
away from them, or those pieces of metal in a factory which trickle up
leisurely to a whirling lathe, are seized by it, turned, poked, spun
about with feverish haste for a minute by the machine, pushed out clear
to resume their leisured progress while the machine jumps on the next
piece and works its ordered will upon it. That was the impression if
one watched the men filing up to and away from the doctor’s hands. It
was quite different if attention were concentrated on the doctor alone
and the case he handled. That brought instant realization of the human
side, the high skill of the swiftly moving fingers, the perfection of
knowledge that directed them, the second-cutting haste with which a
bandage was stripped off, the tenderness that over-rode the haste as
the raw wound and quivering flesh were bared, the sure, unhesitating
touch that handled the wound with a maximum of speed finely adjusted to
a minimum of hurt, the knowledge that saw in one swift glance what was
to be done, the technical skill, instant, exact, and undeviating, that
did it. Here, too, was another human side in the men who moved forward
one by one into the strong lamp-light to be handled and dealt with, to
hear maybe and pretend not to heed the verdict that meant a remaining
life to be spent in crippled incompetence, in bed-ridden helplessness;
or a sentence that left nothing of hope, that reduced to bare hours in
the semi-dark of underground, of cold and damp, of lonely thoughts, the
life of a man who a few hours before had been crammed with health and
strength and vitality, overflowing with animal fitness and energy. With
all these men it appeared to be a point of honor to show nothing of
flinching from pain or from fear of the future. All at least bore the
pain grimly and stoically, most bore it cheerfully, looked a detached
sort of interest at their uncovered wounds, spoke with the doctor
lightly or even jestingly. If it was a slight wound there was usually
a great anxiety to know if it would be “a Blighty one”; if it were
serious, the anxiety was still there, but studiously hidden under an
assumed carelessness, and the questioning would be as to whether “it
would have to come off” or “is there a chance for me?”
When Kentucky’s turn came he moved forward and sat himself on a
low box beside the table, and before he was well seated the orderly
was slipping off the jacket thrown over his shoulders and buttoned
across his chest. The doctor was in his shirt-sleeves, and a dew of
perspiration beaded his forehead and shone damp on his face and throat.
“Shell, sir,” said Kentucky in answer to the quick question as the
doctor began rapidly to unwind the bandages on his shoulder. “Dropped
in a shell hole next the one I was lying in with another man. That’s
him,” and he nodded to where Pug lay on the other doctor’s table.
“He’s hurt much worse than me. He’s a particular chum of mine, sir,
and--would you mind, sir?--if you could ask the other doctor he might
tell me what Pug’s chances are.”
“We’ll see,” said the doctor. “But I’m afraid you’ve got a nasty hand
here yourself,” as he carefully unwound the last of the bandage from
Kentucky’s fingers and gently pulled away the blood-clotted pad from
them. “Yes, sir,” agreed Kentucky. “But, you see, Pug got it in the
leg, and the bearers say that’s smashed to flinders, and he’s plugged
full of other holes as well. I’m rather anxious about him, sir; and if
you could ask....”
“Presently,” said the doctor, and went on with his work. “What was your
job before the war? Will it cripple you seriously to lose that hand;
because I’m afraid they’ll have to amputate when you go down.”
Kentucky was anxiously watching the men at the other table and trying
to catch a glimpse of what they were doing. “It doesn’t matter so much
about that, sir,” he said: “and I’m a lot more worried about Pug. He’ll
lose a leg if he loses anything, and mebbe he mightn’t pull through.
Couldn’t you just have a look at him yourself, sir?”
As it happened, his doctor was called over a minute later to a hurried
consultation at the other table. The two doctors conferred hastily, and
then Kentucky’s doctor came back to finish his bandaging.
“Bad,” he said at once in answer to Kentucky’s look. “Very bad.
Doubtful if it is worth giving him a place in the ambulance. But he has
a faint chance. We’ll send him down later--when there’s room--if he
lasts.... There you are ... now the anti-tetanic....” busying himself
with the needle “... and off you go to Blighty.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Kentucky. “And can I stay beside Pug till it’s
time to move?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “But I’m afraid we’ll have to let you walk if
you can manage it. There’s desperately little room in the ambulances.”
“I can walk all right, sir,” said Kentucky; and presently, with a
label tied to the breast of his jacket, moved aside to wait for Pug’s
removal from the table. They brought him over presently and carried
him into the other room and laid him down there close to the foot of
another stair leading to above-ground. Kentucky squatted beside him and
leaned over the stretcher. “Are you awake, Pug?” he said softly, and
immediately Pug’s eyes opened. “Hullo, Kentuck,” he said cheerfully.
“Yes, I’m awake orright. They wanted to gimme another dose o’ that
sleep stuff in there, but I tole ’em I wasn’t feelin’ these holes hurt
a bit. I wanted to ’ave a talk to you, y’see, ol’ man, an’ didn’t know
if another pill ’ud let me.”
“Sure they don’t hurt much?” said Kentucky.
“No,” said Pug; “but it looks like a wash-out for me, Kentuck.”
“Never believe it, boy,” said Kentucky, forcing a gayety that was the
last thing he actually felt. “We’re going down and over to Blighty
together.”
Pug grinned up at him. “No kid stakes, Kentuck,” he said; “or mebbe you
don’t know. But I ’eard wot them M.O.s was sayin’, though they didn’t
know I did. They said it wasn’t worth sendin’ me out to the ambulance.
You knows wot that means as well as me, Kentuck.”
Kentucky was silent. He knew only too well what it meant. Where every
stretcher and every place in the ambulances is the precious means of
conveyance back to the doctors, and hospitals, and the hope of their
saving of the many men who have a chance of that saving, no stretcher
and no place dare be wasted to carry back a dying man, merely that he
may die in another place. The ones that may be saved take precedence,
and those that are considered hopeless must wait until a slackening of
the rush allows them to be sent. In one way it may seem cruel, but in
the other and larger way it is the more humane and merciful.
“There’s always a chance, Pug,” said Kentucky, striving to capture hope
himself. “Course there is,” said Pug. “An’ you can bet I’m goin’ to
fight it out an’ cheat them doctors if it can be done, Kentuck. You’ll
go down ahead o’ me, but there ain’t so many casualties comin’ in now,
an’ the battalion bein’ on the way out will leave less to be casualtied
an’ more room on the amb’lance. You keep a lookout for me, Kentuck. I
might be down at the boat as soon as you yet.”
“That’s the talk, boy,” said Kentucky. A man hobbling on a stick came
in from the doctors’ room, and, seeing Kentucky, picked his way over
the outstretched forms to him. “Hello, Kentuck,” he said. “You got your
packet passed out to you, then. An’ you, too, Pug?” as he caught sight
of Pug’s face half-hidden in bandages.
“Cheer-oh, Jimmy,” said Pug. “Yes, gave me my little sooven-eer all
right. An’ the worst of it is I’m afraid they’ve made a mess o’ my
fatal beauty.”
“Never min’, Pug,” said Jimmy, chuckling and seating himself beside the
stretcher. “I see they’ve lef’ your ’andsome boko in action an’ fully
efficient.”
“Wot’s yours?” said Pug with interest. “Oh, nothin’ much,” said the
other. “Bit of shrap through the foot. Just good enough for Blighty,
an’ nothin’ else to fuss about. How far did you get?”
Pug tried to tell his story, but in spite of himself his voice
weakened and slurred, and Kentucky, catching Jimmy’s eye, placed his
finger on his lips and nodded significantly towards Pug. Jimmy took the
hint promptly. “Hullo, some more o’ the old crush over there,” he said.
“I must go’n ’ave a chin-wag with ’em,” and he moved off.
“D’you think you could find me a drink, Kentuck?” said Pug; and
Kentucky went and got some from an orderly and brought it and held it
to the hot lips. After that he made Pug lie quiet, telling him he was
sure it was bad for him to be talking; and because the drug still had a
certain amount of hold perhaps, Pug half-drowsed and woke and drowsed
again. And each time he woke Kentucky spoke quietly and cheerfully to
him, and lied calmly, saying it wasn’t time for him to go yet--although
many others had gone and Kentucky had deliberately missed his turn
to go for the sake of remaining beside the broken lad. Most of the
walking cases went on at once or in company with stretcher parties,
but Kentucky let them go and waited on, hour after hour. His own arm
and hand were throbbing painfully, and he was feeling cold and sick
and deadly tired. He was not sleepy, and this apparently was unusual,
for most of the men there, if their pain was not too great, lay or
sat and slept the moment they had the chance. Although many went, the
room was always full, because others came as fast. The place was lit
by a couple of hanging lamps, and blue wreaths of cigarette smoke
curled and floated up past their chimneys and drifted up the stairway.
Kentucky sat almost opposite the stair, and the lamplight shone on
the steps and on the figures that disappeared up it one by one, their
legs and feet tramping up after their heads and bodies had passed out
of vision. The ground above had evidently been churned into thin mud,
and the water from this ran down the stair, and a solid mass of the
thicker mud followed gradually and overflowed step by step under the
trampling feet. For an hour Kentucky watched it coming lower and lower,
and thought disgustedly of the moment when it would reach the floor and
be tramped and spread out over it, thick and slimy and filthy. His back
began to ache, and the tiredness to grip and numb him, and his thoughts
turned with intolerable longing to the moment when he would get off
his mud-encrusted clothes and lie in a clean hospital bed. Every now
and then some orderlies and bearers clumped down the stair into the
dug-out, and after a little stir of preparation a batch of the wounded
would walk or be helped or carried up out into the open to start their
journey back to the ambulances. But the cleared space they left quickly
filled again with the steady inflow of men who came from the doctors’
hands in the other room, and these in their turn settled themselves
to wait their turn squatting along the walls or lying patiently on
their stretchers. They were all plastered and daubed with wet mud
and clay, worn and drooping with pain and fatigue; but all who had a
spark of consciousness or energy left were most amazingly cheerful
and contented. They smoked cigarettes and exchanged experiences and
opinions, and all were most anxious to find out something of how “the
show” had gone. It was extraordinary how little they each appeared to
know of the fight they had taken such an active part in, how ignorant
they were of how well or ill the action had gone as a whole. Some
talked very positively, but were promptly questioned or contradicted
by others just as positive; others confessed blank ignorance of
everything except that they themselves had stayed in some ditch for a
certain number of hours, or that the battalion had been “held up” by
machine-gun fire; or that the shelling had been “hell.” “But if I’d
’a’ had to ha’ choosed,” said one, “I’d ha’ sooner been under their
shell-fire than ours. The Bosche trenches in front o’ us was just
blowed out by the roots.”
“Never seed no Bosche trenches myself,” said another. “I dodged
along outer one shell-hole inter another for a bit an’ couldn’t see
a thing for smoke. An’ then I copped it and crawled back in an’ out
more shell-holes. Only dash thing I’ve seed o’ this battle has been
shell-holes an’ smoke.”
“Anyways,” put in a man with a bandaged jaw, mumblingly, “if we didn’t
see much we heard plenty. I didn’t think a man’s bloomin’ ears would
’ave ’eld so much row at onct.”
“We got heaps an’ heaps o’ prisoners,” said a man from his stretcher.
“I saw that much. We muster took a good bit o’ ground to get what I saw
myself o’ them.”
“Hadn’t took much where I was,” remarked another. “I didn’t stir out of
the trench we occupied till a crump blew me out in a heap.”
“Did any o’ you see them Tanks? Lumme, wasn’t they a fair treat?...”
Talk of the Tanks spread over all the dug-out. It was plain that they
were the feature of the battle. Every man who had seen them had wonder
tales to tell; every man who had not seen was thirsting for information
from the others. The Tanks were one huge joke. Their actual services
were overshadowed by their humor. They drew endless comparisons and
similes; the dug-out rippled with laughter and chucklings over their
appearance, their uncouth antics and--primest jest of all--the numbers
their guns had cut down, the attempts of the Germans to bolt from them,
the speed and certainty with which a gust of their machine-gun fire had
caught a hustling mob of fugitives, hailed through them, tumbled them
in kicking, slaughtered heaps.
In the midst of the talk a sudden heavy crash sounded outside and set
the dug-out quivering. A couple more followed, and a few men came down
the stairs and stood crowded together on its lower steps and about its
foot.
“Pitchin’ ’em pretty close,” one of these informed the dug-out. “Too
close for comfort. An’ there’s about a dozen chaps lyin’ on top there
waitin’ for stretchers.”
Immediately there followed another tremendous crash that set the
dug-out rocking like a boat struck by a heavy wave. From above came
a confused shouting, and the men on the stair surged back and down a
step, while earth fragments rattled and pattered down after them.
In the dug-out some of the men cursed and others laughed and thanked
their stars--and the Bosche diggers of the dug-out--that they were so
deep under cover. The next shells fell further away, but since the
Germans of course knew the exact location of the dug-out, there was
every prospect of more close shooting.
Efforts were concentrated on clearing the wounded who lay at the top of
the stair in the open and as many of the occupants of the dug-out as
possible.
But Kentucky managed to resist or evade being turned out and held his
place in the shadows at Pug’s head, sat there still and quiet and
watched the others come one by one and pass out in batches. And each
time Pug stirred and spoke, “You there, Kentuck? Ain’t it time you was
gone?” told him, “Not yet, boy. Presently.” And he noticed with a pang
that each time Pug spoke his voice was fainter and weaker. He spoke to
an orderly at last, and the doctor came and made a quick examination.
With his finger still on Pug’s wrist he looked up at Kentucky and
slightly shook his head and spoke in a low tone. “Nothing to be done,”
he said, and rose and passed to where he could do something.
“Kentuck,” said Pug very weakly; “collar hold o’ that Germ ’elmet o’
mine. I got no one at ’ome to send it to ... an’ I’d like you to ’av
it, chummy ... for a sooven-eer ... o’ an ol’ pal.” Kentucky with an
effort steadied his voice and stooped and whispered for a minute. He
could just catch a faint answer, “I’m orright, chum. I ain’t afeard
none ...” and then after a long pause, “Don’t you worry ’bout me. _I_’m
orright.” And that was his last word.
Kentucky passed up the stair and out into the cold air heavily and
almost reluctantly. Even although he could do nothing more, he hated
leaving Pug; but room was precious in the dug-out, and the orderlies
urged him to be off. He joined a party of several other “walking cases”
and a couple of men on stretchers, and with them struck off across the
battlefield towards the point on the road which was the nearest the
ambulance could approach to the dressing station. The Germans had begun
to shell again, and several “crumps” fell near the dug-out. Kentucky,
with his mind busied in thoughts of Pug, hardly heeded, but the others
of the party expressed an anxiety and showed a nervousness greater
than Kentucky had ever noticed before. The explanation was simple, and
was voiced by one cheerful casualty on a stretcher. “I’ve got my dose,
an’ I’m bound for Blighty,” he said, “an’ gels chuckin’ flowers in the
ambulance in Lunnon. If you bloomin’ bearers goes cartin’ me into the
way o’ stoppin’ another one--strewth, I’ll come back an’ ’aunt yer.
I’ve ’ad the physic, an’ I don’t want to go missin’ none o’ the jam.”
They moved slowly across the torn fields and down along the slope
towards the road. In the valley they walked in thin, filmy mists, and
further on, where low hills rose out of the hollow, camp fires twinkled
and winked in scores on the hillsides. And still further, when they
rounded a low shoulder and the valley and the hills beyond opened wide
to them, the fires increased from scores to hundreds. “Bloomin’ Crystal
Palis on firework night,” said one man, and “Why don’t the special
constables make ’em draw the blinds an’ shade the lights?” said another.
Kentucky saw these things, heard the men’s talk, without noting them;
and yet the impression must have been deeper and sharper than he knew,
for there came a day when he recalled every spot of light and blot of
shadow, every curve of hill and mist-shrouded valley, every word and
smothered groan and rough jest and laugh, as clearly as if they had
been in his eyes and ears a minute before. In the same detached way he
saw the bodies of men lying stiff in grotesque, twisted postures or
in the peaceful attitudes of quiet sleep, the crawling mists and the
lanterns of orderlies and stretcher-bearers searching the field for any
still living, heard the weak quavering calls that came out of the mists
at intervals like the lonely cries of sheep lost on a mountain crag,
the thin, long-drawn “He-e-e-lp” of men too sore stricken to move,
calling to guide the rescuers they knew would be seeking them. And in
the same fashion, after they came to the ambulances waiting on the
broken roadside and he had been helped to the seat beside the driver of
one, he noticed how slowly and carefully the man drove and twisted in
and out dodging the shell holes; noticed, without then realizing their
significance, the legions of men who tramped silently and stolidly, or
whistling and singing and blowing on mouth-organs, on their way up to
the firing line, the faces emerging white and the rifles glinting out
of the darkness into the brightness of the headlights. The car made
a wide detour by a road which ran over a portion of ground captured
from the Germans a few weeks before. A cold gray light was creeping in
before they cleared this ground that already was a swarming hive of
British troops, and further than the faint light showed, Kentucky could
see and sense parked ranks of wagons, lines of horses, packed camps of
men and rows of bivouacs. From there and for miles back the car crept
slowly past gun positions and batteries beyond count or reckoning,
jolted across the metals of a railway line that was already running
into the captured ground, past “dump” after “dump” of ammunition, big
shells and little piled in stacks and house-high pyramids, patches of
ground floored acre-wide with trench mortar bombs like big footballs,
familiar gray boxes of grenades and rifle cartridges, shells again, and
yet more shells. “Don’t look like we expected to ever lose any o’ this
ground again,” said the driver cheerfully, and Kentucky realized--then
and afterwards--just how little it looked like it, and quoted softly to
himself, from the Battle Hymn again--“He has sounded forth the trumpet
that shall never call retreat.” As the light grew and the car passed
back to where the road was less damaged or better repaired their speed
increased and they ran spattering in the roadside to meet more long
columns of men with the brown rifle barrels sloped and swaying evenly
above the yellow ranks--”... a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished
steel,” murmured Kentucky. “Wot say?” questioned the driver. “Nothing,”
said Kentucky. “That’s the clearin’ station ahead there,” said the
driver. “You’ll soon be tucked up safe in a bed now, or pushin’ on to
the ambulance train and a straight run ’ome to Blighty.”
So Kentucky came out of the battle, and stepping down from the
ambulance, with an alert orderly attentive at his elbow to help him,
took the first step into the swift stages of the journey home, and the
long vista of kindness, gentleness, and thoughtful care for which the
hospital service is only another name. From here he had nothing to do
but sleep, eat, and get well. He was done with battle, and quit of the
firing line. But as he came away the war had one more word for his ear,
and as he was carried on board the hospital train, the distant guns
growled and muttered their last same message to him--“grapes of wrath,
of wrath, of wrath.”
And after he had lost the last dull rumble of the guns he still bore
the memory of their message with him, carried it down to the edge of
France, and across the Narrow Seas, and into the sheltered calm of
England.
He had been strangely impressed by the fitting of his half-forgotten
verses to all he had come through, and their chance but clear
coincidence worked oddly on him, and came in the end to be a vital
influence in picking the path of his immediate future and leading it
utterly away from other plans.