We turn to the hospital ship.
Two great 'brows,' or covered gangways, connect her with her native
land. Down these the stretchers are beginning to pass, having been
raised from below decks by cunning mechanical devices which cause no
jar; and are being conveyed into the cool shade of the dock-shed. Here
they are laid in neat rows upon the platform, ready for transfer to
the waiting hospital train. Everything is a miracle of quietness and
order. The curious public are afar off, held aloof by dock-gates.
(They are there in force to-day, partly to cheer the hospital trains
as they pass out, partly for reasons connected with the grey-painted
ship.) In the dock-shed, organisation and method reign supreme. The
work has been going on without intermission for several days and
nights; and still the great ships come. The Austurias is outside,
waiting for a place at the dock. The Lanfranc is half-way across the
English Channel; and there are rumours that the mighty Britannic[1]
has selected this, the busiest moment in the opening fortnight of the
Somme Battle, to arrive with a miscellaneous and irrelevant cargo of
sick and wounded from the Mediterranean. But there is no fuss. The
R.A.M.C. Staff Officers, unruffled and cheery, control everything,
apparently by a crook of the finger. The stretcher-bearers do their
work with silent aplomb.
[Footnote 1: These three hospital ships were all subsequently sunk by
German submarines.]
The occupants of the stretchers possess the almost universal feature
of a six days' beard--always excepting those who are of an age which
is not troubled by such manly accretions. They lie very still--not
with the stillness of exhaustion or dejection, but with the
comfortable resignation of men who have made good and have suffered in
the process; but who now, with their troubles well behind them, are
enduring present discomfort under the sustaining prospect of clean
beds, chicken diet, and ultimate tea-parties. Such as possess them are
wearing Woodbine stumps upon the lower lip.
They are quite ready to compare notes. Let us approach, and listen, to
a heavily bandaged gentleman who--so the label attached to him informs
us--is Private Blank, of the Manchesters, suffering from three "G.S."
machine-gun bullet wounds.
"Did the Fritzes run? Yes--they run all right! The last lot saved
us trouble by running towards us--with their 'ands up! But their
machine-guns--they gave us fair 'Amlet till we got across No Man's
Land. After that we used the baynit, and they didn't give us no more
vexatiousness. Where did we go in? Oh, near Albert. Our objective was
Mary's Court, or some such place." (It is evident that the Battle
of the Somme is going to add some fresh household words to our
war vocabulary. 'Wipers' is a veteran by this time: 'Plugstreet,'
'Booloo,' and 'Armintears' are old friends. We must now make room
for 'Monty Ban,' 'La Bustle,' 'Mucky Farm,' 'Lousy Wood,' and
'Martinpush.')
"What were your prisoners like?"
"'Alf clemmed," said the man from Manchester.
"No rations for three days," explained a Northumberland Fusilier close
by. One of his arms was strapped to his side, but the other still
clasped to his bosom a German helmet. A British Tommy will cheerfully
shed a limb or two in the execution of his duty, but not all the
might and majesty of the Royal Army Medical Corps can force him to
relinquish a fairly earned 'souvenir.' In fact, owing to certain
unworthy suspicions as to the true significance of the initials,
"R.A.M.C.," he has been known to refuse chloroform.
"They couldn't get nothing up to them for four days, on account of our
artillery fire," he added contentedly.
"'Barrage,' my lad!" amended a rather superior person with a
lance-corporal's stripe and a bandaged foot.
Indeed, all are unanimous in affirming that our artillery preparation
was a tremendous affair. Listen to this group of officers sunning
themselves upon the upper deck. They are 'walking cases,' and must
remain on board, with what patience they may, until all the'stretcher
cases' have been evacuated.
"Loos was child's play to it," says one--a member of a certain
immortal, or at least irrepressible Division which has taken part in
every outburst of international unpleasantness since the Marne. "The
final hour was absolute pandemonium. And when our new trench-mortar
batteries got to work too,--at sixteen to the dozen,--well, it was bad
enough for _us_; but what it must have been like at the business end
of things, Lord knows! For a few minutes I was almost a pro-Boche!"
Other items of intelligence are gleaned. The weather was 'rotten':
mud-caked garments corroborate this statement. The wire, on the whole,
was well and truly cut to pieces everywhere; though there were spots
at which the enemy contrived to repair it. Finally, ninety per cent.
of the casualties during the assault were due to machine-gun fire.
But the fact most clearly elicited by casual conversation is
this--that the more closely you engage in a battle, the less you know
about its progress. This ship is full of officers and men who were in
the thick of things for perhaps forty-eight hours on end, but who are
quite likely to be utterly ignorant of what was going on round the
next traverse in the trench which they had occupied. The wounded
Gunners are able to give them a good deal of information. One F.O.O.
saw the French advance.
"It was wonderful to see them go in," he said. "Our Batteries were on
the extreme right of the British line, so we were actually touching
the French left flank. I had met hundreds of _poilus_ back in billets,
in _cafés_, and the like. To look at them strolling down a village
street in their baggy uniforms, with their hands in their pockets,
laughing and chatting to the children, you would never have thought
they were such tigers. I remember one big fellow a few weeks ago, home
on leave--_permission_--who used to frisk about with a big umbrella
under his arm! I suppose that was to keep the rain off his tin hat.
But when they went for Maricourt the other day, there weren't many
umbrellas about--only bayonets! I tell you, they were marvels!"
It would be interesting to hear the _poilu_ on his Allies.
The first train moves off, and another takes its place. The long lines
of stretchers are thinning out now. There are perhaps a hundred left.
They contain men of all units--English, Scottish, and Irish. There are
Gunners, Sappers, and Infantry. Here and there among them you may note
bloodstained men in dirty grey uniforms--men with dull, expressionless
faces and closely cropped heads. They are tended with exactly the
same care as the others. Where wounded men are concerned, the British
Medical Service is strictly neutral.
A wounded Corporal of the R.A.M.C. turns his head and gazes
thoughtfully at one of those grey men.
"You understand English, Fritz?" he enquires.
Apparently not. Fritz continues to stare woodenly at the roof of the
dock-shed.
"I should like to tell 'im a story, Jock," says the Corporal to his
other neighbour. "My job is on a hospital train. 'Alf-a-dozen 'Un
aeroplanes made a raid behind our lines; and seeing a beautiful Red
Cross train--it was a new London and North Western train, chocolate
and white, with red crosses as plain as could be--well, they simply
couldn't resist such a target as that! One of their machines swooped
low down and dropped his bombs on us. Luckily he only got the rear
coach; but I happened to be in it! D' yer 'ear that, Fritz?"
"I doot he canna unnerstand onything," remarked the Highlander. "He's
fair demoralised, like the rest. D' ye ken what happened tae me? I was
gaun' back wounded, with _this_--" he indicates an arm strapped
close to his side--"and there was six Fritzes came crawlin' oot o'
a dug-oot, and gave themselves up tae me--_me_, that was gaun' back
wounded, withoot so much as my jack-knife! Demorralised--that's it!"
"Did you 'ear," enquired a Cockney who came next in the line, "that
all wounded are going to 'ave a nice little gold stripe to wear--a
stripe for every wound?"
There was much interest at this.
"That'll be fine," observed a man of Kent, who had been out since
Mons, and been wounded three times. "Folks'll know now that I'm not a
Derby recruit."
"Where will us wear it?" enquired a gigantic Yorkshireman, from the
next stretcher.
"Wherever you was 'it, lad!" replied the Cockney humourist.
"At that rate," comes the rueful reply, "I shall 'ave to stand oop to
show mine!"