Trench-foot, shell-shock and the other well-known by-products of war
on the Western Front always got the bulk of medical notice, while our
rarer Macedonian efforts remained neglected. My friend McTurtle has
nervous prostration, with violent paroxysms at the mention of leave
or demobilization, and the medical profession can only classify him as
"N. Y. D., or Not Yet Diagnosed (malignant)."
McTurtle is a Staff-officer. A famous Atlantic liner dumped him at
Salonica in 1915, and when the first infantrymen panted through the
town in search of non-existent billets McTurtle was to be seen in the
window of a villa giving bird-seed to his canary. At Salonica it is
not considered good form to ask openly what a Staff-officer's job is,
but he allowed friends to gather that he had an indirect connection
with that fine old regiment, the Macedonian Labour Corps.
After some time (about three decorations and a mention in despatches,
as McTurtle measured time) the overland leave route was opened, and
the far-reaching shadow of war plunged suddenly across McTurtle's
unlikely threshold. He was called upon, like many another harmless
Staff-officer, to give up his simple comforts and to face hardship
and suffering for a scrap of paper (authorising him to travel to
Manchester). At first McTurtle was content to let the younger men of
the Base make a stand against the aggression of the front line. Being
the only support of an aged Colonel and no mere youth, he left it to
the reckless A.P.M.'s, the dashing Camp Commandants and the carefree
dare-devil Field-Cashiers to repel the infantry and gunners. But his
conscience was uneasy, and indeed his apparent lack of proper feeling
was commented upon by others. Once an A.D.C. handed him a white
feather in the Rue Venizelos.
At length it became obvious that the Base was losing ground. The
infantry and gunners, outnumbering the Staff by at least two to one,
were gaining positions on each leave-party. The issue was trembling in
the balance, and McTurtle answered the call. With set lips he sought
the nearest orderly-room sergeant.
Before a week was out the night saw a train creeping through the
gloom towards Athens and McTurtle sitting wakeful amongst four snoring
infantrymen. He thought piously of the time when the Staff should
reach such a pitch of organization that it would be needless--nay,
impossible--for infantry to continue to exist. Towards dawn he fell
into a doze, and when he waked it was light. He lowered what had been
the window and looked out.
McTurtle hates heights, and in his cloistered Salonica life he had
never realised that the trains of Greece ran about like mice upon a
cornice. Four hundred precipitous feet yawned beneath his horrified
eyes, and at his first involuntary gasp the teeth he owed to art and
not to nature left him and swooped like a hawk upon a distant flock of
sheep. The shepherd, a simple rustic unfamiliar with modern dentistry,
endeavoured to sell them subsequently to a Y.M.C.A. archaeologist as
genuine antiques.
At that moment the train stopped. McTurtle thought that his loss had
been noticed, but as he made his way to the kit-truck for some more
teeth he discovered that a landslide barred the way. The train backed
cautiously for ten minutes and stopped again. Another landslide. The
leave-party remained stationary for thirty hours, eating the rations
thoughtfully provided for such a contingency.
In due course McTurtle found himself on the front seat of a motor
lorry breasting the spurs of Mt. Parnassus. The dizziness of his path
was invisible to him, for in a Grecian summer you can see nothing out
of motor vehicles but dust.
But when the lorry reached the summit of the pass the sea-breeze from
the Gulf of Corinth cleared the air and he saw for the first time the
peaks on one side and the gulfs on the other, with the road writhing
down canyons and gorges like a demoniac corkscrew.
"Fine view, Sir," remarked the driver.
McTurtle gulped assent. "Bit dangerous, 'o course," continued the
driver chattily. "There was a steam roller went over the edge just
'ere three days ago. Nice young fellow as drove it. Beg pardon, Sir?
Oh, I thought you spoke.
"Yes, 'e went too near the edge and it gave like. No nearer than we
'as to go, o' course: you watch while we pass this French-man....
There was a lad took a lorry over three weeks ago. 'Ad an attack of
fever while 'e was driving and went unconscious. 'Ave you 'ad malaria,
Sir? I get it something cruel meself. Comes on sudden like.
"Blimey, you 've got a touch coming on now, 'aven't you?"
At Itea, on the Gulf of Corinth, the party was ordered to return owing
to a German offensive in France. McTurtle went back under chloroform.
A week later it made another attempt, but was stopped by the Austrian
offensive in Italy. McTurtle went back under morphia. At the third
attempt it got through, but without McTurtle.
His nerve is gone, and he is marooned at Salonica. He cannot face the
overland route, and he cannot get home all the way by sea just yet. In
spite of all his endeavours he cannot become a naturalised Greek and
stay there, because of linguistic difficulties.
But what he wants to know is, why can't the medical authorities
recognise "leave-shock" as a disease and send him home by hospital
ship?
* * * * *
[Illustration: _First Girl_. "AN' YER ACTCHERLY MEAN TER SAY THEM
BOOTS COST FIFTEEN SHILLIN'?"
_Second Girl_. "AH, BUT THEY'RE WORF IT--THEY SQUEAK!"]
* * * * *
"The King has awarded a Knight Commandership of the Bath
to Lieutenant-Colonel ----, C.B., in charging
customers excessive prices for milk by giving short
measure."--_Provincial Paper_.
We should have thought the Pump would been more suitable than the
Bath.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SPREAD OF THE "DAZZLE" CULT.]
* * * * *