THE LOST CANADIAN LABORATORY.
At the War Office in London, in the autumn of 1914, I met Captain
Sydney Rowland of the staff of the Lister Institute. He was a man who
had made a reputation in the scientific world and had just been
authorized by the British War Office to purchase a huge motor caravan
to be equipped as a mobile laboratory. The caravan had been built
originally by a wealthy automobile manufacturer at a cost of 5,000
pounds, and had been completely equipped for living in while touring
the country. It even had a little kitchen, and the whole affair was
lined with aluminium. Tiring of it, the builder had sold it to a
bookmaker who used it for less legitimate purposes.
Captain Rowland had heard of this machine and finally located and
purchased it. All the expensive interior was torn out and replaced
with work benches and sinks, while shelves and racks were provided for
glassware and apparatus. It was a beautifully equipped, compact
machine, and he was justly proud of it.
When he took it over to France he drove it up to the army area
himself, and told me that as he approached the front through villages
and towns at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour he had an
absolutely unimpeded road. After one look at this huge affair, which
was about the size of one of our large moving vans, bearing down on
them like a runaway house, people fled or took to the side roads.
Captain Rowland described with great glee the sensation it had caused,
and his enjoyment of that drive.
That was the first mobile laboratory, the beginning of the field
laboratories and the model upon which all others were constructed. The
list of equipment prepared and used by Captain Rowland was also used
as the basis for the requirements for all mobile laboratories
subsequently equipped. A second bacteriological laboratory and two
hygiene laboratories were sent out before permission was obtained from
the Director of the Canadian Medical Service, to send out a Canadian
laboratory. For some unexplained reason the Canadian Government
refused the necessary funds for the chassis so that we were compelled
to pack our equipment in twenty-four numbered cases, all of which
could be carried on a three-ton motor lorry. I had discovered that the
officers in charge of these laboratories at the front had already
found them too small to work in comfortably, and had removed and
placed the equipment in some convenient house, using the lorry merely
to carry their equipment. We were able to carry twice as complete an
equipment, costing altogether less than $2,000 in a borrowed lorry,
and saved the cost of $10,000 for the motor chassis.
When the first Canadian Division went to France, No. 1 Canadian
General Hospital had been left behind on Salisbury Plain, to take care
of the sick. It had been decided that I was to go to France in command
of the Canadian Mobile Laboratory, and that I should take with me two
officers and several men from the staff of that hospital. The Lozier
car which had been given me by the Canadian Government was also to go
as part of the equipment. After working in the office of the Director
of Medical Services for a couple of weeks straightening out the
records in regard to typhoid inoculation, and cerebro-spinal
meningitis, and in purchasing the necessary equipment, I received word
that the laboratory was to go to the front immediately. The
Surgeon-General accordingly made all the necessary arrangements, and
left for France, while I went down to Bulford to wait for the expected
telegram which was to speed us on our way.
We waited over three weeks for the message, growing more and more
desperate every day. Finally we went up to London and found that
somebody had made a mistake and that we were supposed to be in France
long ago. We were instructed to leave on the second day following.
The men were all greatly excited at the good news. We had a farewell
dinner that night at the mess, which assumed a somewhat convivial
character, and when I left to drive two visitors into Salisbury, the
hospital dentist was making a rambling, tearful plea to a few
hilarious auditors, on behalf of Ireland, while the great majority
were paying no more attention to him than if he did not exist.
Next morning with our equipment, men and car, we set out for
Southampton, amid the envious farewells of our brother officers, whose
call had not yet come. Everything was loaded on board the transport
at noon, and late in the afternoon we left for Havre, accompanied by
two torpedo boat destroyers.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL M.S. MERCER, C.B.
Former Officer Commanding Third Canadian Division.
Killed in action, June, 1916.]
After some delay at the Havre docks for petrol, we got away and
reported our arrival at one of the rest camps on the outskirts of the
city. Our elation at having finally arrived in France was marred only
by the news that we would probably be detained at the base for two or
three days. Having been informed that the Hotel Tortoni was the
liveliest place in town to stay, and not to go there on any account,
we went and concluded that we had been the victims of a practical
joke, for we had not seen anything so dull in all our lives; it was as
dull and as good as a hotel at Chautauqua. There was more "life" to be
seen in an English hotel in a minute than one could see in the Hotel
Tortoni in a month.
As there were no theatres or concerts to go to and nothing else to do,
we went to bed in the chilliest bedrooms that I had ever been in up to
that time. I soon learned that French hotel bedrooms in winter have
the same cold, clammy feeling as the interior of refrigerator cars in
summer. This accounts, perhaps, for the French being a hot-blooded
people.
Of all the cities of the world that it has been my privilege to visit,
the city of Havre is the dirtiest, the ugliest, and the least
interesting. We could find no public buildings with even the slightest
pretence to beauty, and the rest of the city was as dull and
commercial as it is possible for a seaport town to be; one can say
little more than that, in consideration of any city. With the
exception of the docks and the casino there is nothing of interest,
and even the casino, like all the casinos in France, had been
converted into a hospital.
After two days of killing time, our orders came through to leave for
the front, two of us to go by motor and the rest by train. Our
experience with the British officer at the base had certainly been
pleasant and proved to be a happy augury of our future relationships
with them. The British officer in France is quite a different man from
the same officer in England, and does not impress you with the fact
that the war is being carried on by his individual efforts.
At the base we learned for the first time that we had been a great
source of anxiety to some of the officials of the British army three
weeks before, when the war office had announced our departure from
England. When we had failed to report our arrival at Havre the
authorities had assumed that we, being Canadians and more or less
independent, had gone off on a little trip of our own into the
interior of France. In their efforts to locate us they had telegraphed
far and wide; consequently when we did arrive everybody knew of us as
"The Lost Canadian Laboratory" and seemed to be quite pleased that we
had been found. When anything goes astray in the army it causes a
tremendous amount of consternation and trouble until it is located;
the easiest thing to lose is a soldier in hospital but as he can talk
this matter usually rights itself sooner or later.
The morning on which we set out on our first day's "march" to the
front was misty and raw, and motoring was very cold. Even this early
in the season--mid March, 1915--the fields were being ploughed, but
the ploughing and harrowing was being done by women, old men and
boys. Hardly one able-bodied man was to be seen, the contrast with
England in this respect at that time being very marked. A crowd of
schoolboys pleading for souvenirs were made to earn them and amuse us
by running races while we had a tire replaced.
The banks on the roadside were yellow with the first primroses, and
patches of golden daffodils could be seen in the woods, though spring
seemed to be far enough away that chilly day. It was characteristic of
one's experience in France that, as we sat down to dinner that evening
in an Abbeville hotel I had beside me an officer in the British army
who had been in Canada for a number of years and who had, during that
time, been a frequent caller at my home in Toronto. The spontaneous
manner in which the two of us rose and rushed at each other with
outstretched arms would have done credit to native born Frenchmen.
As we approached the front, the long straight French roads gave way to
winding narrow ways, frequently paved with cobble stones called pavé.
The country became flat, and the roadside ditches were filled to the
brim with water. That we were within the sphere of military operations
became more and more evident. Motor cars carrying officers passed
frequently; motor transports carrying food and fodder rumbled along
the roads or were parked in the outskirts of villages or in village
squares; motor ambulance convoys were drawn up in front of hospitals,
and, in general, we felt that we were nearing the real seat of
operations, the front line.
It was a drive of a hundred miles to the little town which was to be
our headquarters for nine long months, and I remember the thrill that
I had when we first saw the effects of shell fire--a hole about two
feet in diameter in the bricks above the door of the Hotel de Ville.
As we later discovered, the village authorities had decided not to
repair that hole but to leave it as a memorial of the day when the
Germans had been driven from the town and had fired some shells back
into it, killing a dozen of the inhabitants.
After reporting to the corps headquarters in town, we were instructed
to attach ourselves to No. 7 Clearing Hospital, where we were made
most welcome by the commanding officer and his staff. Colonel Wear
found billets for us in the town, and a splendid room for a laboratory
in the Hotel De Ville. This room, 22 × 36 feet, had been the banquet
hall and band room, and was well lighted by windows and gas. When
equipped as a laboratory it presented a most imposing appearance, and
from it we had a fine view of the village square, commonly called the
Grande Place. As everything going through the town had to pass by our
windows in order to cross the bridges over the canals, we could view a
continuous panorama of never-failing interest whenever we had the
leisure to look down upon it.
Captain Rankin found his billet at the top of a house on the opposite
side of the square from the laboratory; Captain Ellis found his in a
house in the corner of the square, and mine proved to be a little room
over a grocery shop on another corner of the square. My room was
reached by passing through the shop, up a very steep staircase, and
through a storeroom filled with boxes of soap, biscuits, bundles of
brooms, and other staples. The room itself was clean but without heat,
and I usually fell asleep after a couple of hours of shivering in the
depths of a damp, cold, feather mattress. Eleven crucifixes and two
glass cases of artificial flowers, together with portraits of the pope
and local curé, constituted the decorations of the room, and was
typical of the region, for this part of France was thoroughly
Catholic.
Our equipment did not arrive for three days, so that we had some
opportunity to look around and get our bearings in the area in which
we were to work. The Director of Medical Services of the army had
called just after we arrived, and had given us instructions. Like all
the British officers we met in the field, he treated us with the
greatest kindness and consideration. Faultless in dress, precise in
manner, with monocle and carefully trimmed hair and moustache, he gave
one the impression of just having stepped from his dressing room after
a bath. And yet his knowledge of the military game as it applied to
the medical service was just as accurate, precise and complete as his
external appearance indicated. He was a tremendous worker and
efficient to the last degree, as his record since has demonstrated.