THE AISNE AND THE TRAGEDY OF THE SUNKEN ROAD.
On arriving at Serches on the Aisne our ambulance pulled off into a
sloping grassy field, and the tired horses were taken out, fed, and
rubbed down. Fires were lit and we all prepared to enjoy ourselves by
resting in the glorious sun’s rays, washing, shaving, and smoking a pipe
in comfort. For the past few days we could not smoke in the open owing to
the rain.
A tremendous artillery engagement was going on at the front. Our
batteries were posted behind a long ridge not far from where we were,
and every gun was in action, making the air resound with the bursting
charges. It was not by any means a one-sided affair, as we were soon to
know. The enemy were firing from a ridge on the other side of the river,
and they had got our positions very accurately. At one o’clock a Taube
flew over our position and dropped three bombs. Two fell near us with a
terrible clatter, one on the road to our left down which we had come, and
one about 400 yards behind us in a belt of trees. The third one actually
fell in our field, and plunged itself angrily into the soft turf. Our
position was obviously not a safe one for a Field Ambulance, and we got
orders to retire two miles farther back. We did not move off, however,
till 5 p.m.
[Illustration: HALT AT SERCHES.]
Major B—— and I walked through the village of Serches and turned up the
road leading to the right behind a steep ridge which flattened out into
a plain of about one to two miles’ width. This plateau fell abruptly
on its northern side right on to the Aisne River. When climbing up
this road, which led to the summit of the ridge, we passed numerous
stretcher-bearers bringing in wounded to the 13th Field Ambulance,
which was also quartered in the village. The men with slight hand or
head wounds were walking, and the serious cases were on stretchers. The
Germans had got the range of the ridge summit towards which our road led,
and were freely plastering it with shrapnel and Black Marias.
On approaching the top of the rise we saw two of our batteries on our
right, and three on our left well forward in the plateau, and busily
engaged. Our guns at this date were not concealed from inquisitive
Taubes by trees and foliage—that lesson had not yet been learned by the
conservative Briton. German shells were bursting on the ridge in good
line for our guns, but about a quarter of a mile short. Our road now
took a direct turn for the far side of the plateau, and here it went
through a deep cutting down to a bridge which spanned the river. On the
left-hand side of the road at the cutting there was a large gravel pit
or cave where road-metal was obtained. The road across the plateau was
open and exposed, but from the cutting to the banks of the river it was
lined with pine trees. Major B—— and myself were standing on the road
at the top of the ridge trying to make out the German positions with
our field-glasses. A gunner officer, seeing the red-cross brassards on
our arms, hurried up and said, “You are urgently wanted in the sunken
road about a mile and a half down. Two doctors have just been killed and
there are a lot of badly wounded on the road.” We had no dressings of
any sort with us. We had come thus far out of curiosity, not expecting
that it was such a “hot corner.” We, however, went forward at the double
along this exposed road, passing upturned waggons, dead and dying horses,
khaki caps and overcoats, overturned and smashed water carts. Out of
breath, we reached the cave and found how urgently necessary we were.
The scene defied description. The cave was a shambles of mangled forms.
Nineteen wounded men were lying in the loose sandy gravel, having just
been brought in by their surviving uninjured comrades. One was on the
point of death from a shrapnel wound of the brain—the bullet had passed
through the orbit. There were fractured limbs, shrapnel wounds of the
chest, abdomen, and head, shell wounds and concussions. We did all we
possibly could with first-aid dressings. We got the uninjured men to take
off their puttees, and these we used as bandages; rifles were employed
as splints for the lower limbs, and bayonets for the upper limbs. One
poor officer, Captain and Quartermaster M——, an old soldier with two rows
of ribbons on his coat, had a badly shattered thigh and knee. He was
suffering tortures, and his anguished face showed the strong efforts
he made to control himself. Lieut. W——, R.A.M.C., a civil surgeon, had
a smashed ankle-joint. We sent at once for ambulances and stretcher
parties. These soon arrived, and the terribly wounded men were conveyed
to the Field Hospital which had just been arranged at Serches.
Poor Captain M—— died that night, and was buried near a stone wall in the
garden at the old farmhouse of Mont de Soissons, and the doctor had to
have his leg amputated later. He was a very plucky man. Even when wounded
and lying in helpless pain, he gave instructions about the other wounded
men.
After the wounded were sent away I walked a few yards down the road to
the place of the disaster. Here was a scene of ghastly horror. On the
road lay mangled and bleeding horses, dead men lying in all sorts of
convulsed attitudes, upturned waggons, smashed and splintered wood.
Add to this the agonised groans of our wounded men, the shrill scream
of dying horses, and that impalpable but nevertheless real feeling of
standing in the face of the Creator—one can, perhaps, then feebly picture
this scene of carnage, of the solemnity of death, and of the pitiless
woe of this devastation. Where could one find here a trace of the glory,
pomp, and magnificence of war?
The story of the incident is one not uncommon. A party of men of the West
Kents were sitting by the roadside beyond the cutting, having a meal of
bully beef and biscuits. As they were eating, a cavalry ambulance came
up from the bridge over the Aisne. When the ambulance was abreast of
the West Kents, a German battery landed a Black Maria on the ambulance,
and at the same moment shrapnel burst right amongst them all. The heavy
explosive and the shrapnel did terrible execution. Captain F——, R.A.M.C.,
was killed outright, the other doctor was badly hurt. Eight men of the
West Kents met instantaneous death; eight horses were killed, and three
horribly mangled and flung off the road by the violence of the explosion.
On examining these dead men on the road it was noticeable that they had
all received a multiplicity of wounds. One man, a burly sergeant-major,
had a big hole in his head, another huge hole in his neck, a lacerated
wound of the chest, and one boot and foot blown completely away. All had
widely open staring eyes. The expression seemed to be one of overwhelming
surprise and horror.
Poor fellows! Their moment of surprise and horror must indeed have been
brief, for death is dealt out at these times with a lightning flash.
[Illustration: GUN TEAMS AT THE MARNE.]
[Illustration: THE WAY TO THE SUNKEN ROAD.]
In describing events in this war one unconsciously has to turn to
superlatives. “Devilish, hellish, bloody, awful, and terrible” are words
that come most trippingly to the tongue. This war is superlative in
all its moods and tenses. Superlative in the number of men engaged, in
the extent of the battle front, in the duration of the battles, in the
misery it is causing and has caused, in the awful loss of life, in the
mutilating wounds caused by the shrapnel, in the number of the missing,
in the atrocities, inhumanities, and blasting cruelties of the enemy,
and in their wanton destruction of all that is sacred and revered.
“Few few shall part
Where many meet.”