WE LEAVE BELGIUM.
At the end of November our ambulance was ordered to St. Jans Capelle. We
were not sorry to leave our house, with its evil pond and manure heap,
and the voice of Madame.
Madame, by the way, was very amiable when we told her that we were to
leave. She did not say that she was sorry, but she no longer screeched
at our cooks or railed at our men for eating her straw. Just as our
ambulance was about to move off, and Madame stood at the door with the
first approach to a frosty smile that we had ever seen on her face, a
French sergeant and ten men of a balloon section arrived. The sergeant
had a lump of chalk in his hand and scrawled on the door, “Ballon. 3 sous
Officiers. Hommes x.” He brusquely informed Madame that the quarters
just vacated by us were to be at once taken by his balloon section.
Madame raged and raved, but the sergeant was imperturbable, and suddenly
quietened Madame by saying that if she objected very much he would begin
to think that she was a German spy. The sergeant told us that as a matter
of fact they were not satisfied about Madame’s husband’s patriotism. We
knew that Madame and her sulky husband would now have a much worse time
than when we occupied the house, for at least we tried to give little
trouble, and lavishly paid for any vegetables, milk, or food that we got
from the farmer. The French insist on the “articles of war,” and when
they occupy a house they really do occupy it and make themselves very
much at home.
This mention of Madame’s husband being of doubtful honesty, reminded us
of a curious incident that occurred early in our stay at this place.
There was another farm close to the one we occupied, and this farm was
owned by a man who, we were told, was a cousin of “Monsieur our farmer.”
At this house a man was stopping who said that he was a refugee from
Ypres. He told us that he was a baker from Boston, United States of
America, and that he and his wife, who were Belgians, had been visiting
their native country when war broke out. He said that his wife and two
children were in Brussels when the Germans occupied the city, and that
he himself was stopping with a friend in Ypres when the Germans first
bombarded it; he then left Ypres and came to stop at this farmer’s house.
This man used to walk every day along a road which passed behind some
French batteries of 75 mm., but one day he did not come back. We asked
his farmer friend what had become of him, and he said that he had left
to go to America. We thought the circumstance odd at the time, and when
our sergeant told us about Madame’s husband being under suspicion we
asked him if he knew anything about this other man, the Boston baker. He
said that he did, for he had seen the fellow arrested and sent back to
be tried for spying. That perhaps explained why Madame did not like us,
and why her vituperation and objections were suddenly silenced when the
French balloon sergeant talked about German spies.
After leaving the inhospitable cottage-headquarters, our ambulance had a
long day’s trek over the Belgian frontier to St. Jans Capelle. This place
was close to Bailleul. We put our men into billets near at hand and got
quarters for ourselves in the Convent, where the sisters gave us a big
dormitory full of clean white beds with blankets and sheets. This was
indeed luxury after all our roughing times from the Marne till now. We
were always perfectly willing to undergo inconvenience and hardships, but
none of us ever missed an opportunity of availing himself of the luxuries
and amenities of civilisation whenever they presented themselves. We had
the fine front room of the Convent for a dining- and sitting-room, and,
greatest boon of all, a fire to sit round. The cold was intense at this
time, and the whole country was frozen hard in snow and ice. This was the
period when frostbite was so terrible to our men in the trenches, and
the Clearing Hospitals and Ambulance Stations were so busy treating the
frozen men.
It was found necessary to relieve frequently the freezing soldiers in
the advanced trenches, and every three days they were allowed out from
the terrible mud ditches, with death on the parapet and frostbite at the
bottom.
Braziers of burning charcoal were put into the trenches, but were
found to be ineffective and harmful to the feet. The people of England
did magnificent work in sending out gum boots, skin overcoats, and
protectives of all sort, but in spite of all that was done the frostbite
incapacitated many men. The recoveries were always slow, and could not
be effected at the front, so all these limping men were sent back to
England for rest and change. Many methods of treatment were tried for
the frostbite, but time alone seemed to be the chief curative factor. In
some cases the feet were swollen, and small bloody exudates could be seen
under the big toe and the outer side of the foot where the boot pressed.
Sometimes the skin was broken and ulcers formed at the site. In other
cases toes became completely gangrenous or dead. The feet were rubbed
and massaged with various oils and swathed in cotton wool, but wrapping
in wool aggravated the suffering, and the men felt much more relief when
the feet were left exposed. The worst time for the cold-feet men was
from one o’clock to three in the morning. They would often go off to
sleep peacefully, but would wake up at these hours suffering excruciating
pain in their feet and calves and up the spine. Nothing would relieve
this pain but hypodermic injections of morphia. One officer described
his state to me, and said that he had been standing in a trench in mud
over his boot-tops. At first his feet felt very cold, and he tried to
warm them by stamping, but this method of exercise was too sloppy. Then
sensation seemed to go and he felt quite comfortable, because although
his feet felt very heavy they did not feel cold, only dead. On the fifth
day he could hardly walk and had to be helped out of the trenches. He
was unable to walk to the ambulance, a short way back, and the feet were
found to be so swollen in hospital that the boots had to be cut off. Then
the worst time of all came on, for as the circulation gradually returned
he suffered diabolical pain in his feet and calves, and this pain was
always worst in the early mornings. Eight weeks after having been lifted
out of the trench he was still limping about with two sticks, and was
making a normal but very slow recovery.
[Illustration: GOING TOWARDS THE TRENCHES AT YPRES.]
[Illustration: FRENCH SOLDIERS GOING TO THE TRENCHES.]
This officer told me that one night the men in his trenches were ordered
out to make a bayonet attack, but half of them were in such a condition
that they could not crawl out of the trench. Fortunately the Germans were
pushed back by those who could, otherwise the poor devils left behind
would have been captured or killed.
The Indians round the Bethune district suffered very severely from the
frostbite, and these poor men deserved our greatest sympathy during this
period, trying and terrible enough to men reared in a fairly rigorous
climate like that of England or Scotland. The misery of the life to men
who had never lived out of tropical India was enough to wear down any but
the stoutest hearts. History will give due credit and praise to these
Indians, that they rose superior to their environment and soon proved
what sterling good soldiers they are. I visited at an Indian Clearing
Hospital the first lot of casualties from the M—— Division. This Clearing
Hospital took over the École Jules Ferry at Bethune, and occupied it
for a few weeks after our Clearing Hospital had vacated it. The doctors
belonged to the Indian Medical Service, and the native Indian doctors
belonging to the subordinate medical service acted under the white
doctors. Some temporary lieutenants of the Royal Army Medical Corps were
also on the staff.
The dusky warriors were arriving in scores, brought in on motor
ambulances, and very woeful they looked, covered with mud and bloody
bandages. They had not been long at the front, and their first experience
of modern war was a very desperate ordeal.
The night was dark and gloomy and a heavy rain was soaking the
countryside. The mud-splashed cars dashed into the dripping courtyard,
fitfully lit up by the sombre gleams of smoky lanterns tied to posts.
Round about were the dark-faced bearers ready to help out the wounded.
Those who could walk got out of the ambulances themselves and the
stretcher cases were taken out by the bearers. The scene on this night
impressed one with the far-reaching character of this war, for here were
men from the central plains of India, the far-off frontiers and the
slopes of the Himalayas, gathered together in a muddy, marshy region of
France, and wounded in trying to hold a line of ditches against the most
determined and scientific fighting men of Europe.
“Rulers alike and subject, splendid the roll-call rings,
Rajahs and Maharajahs, Kings and the sons of Kings,
From the land where the skies are molten
And the suns strike down and parch.
Out of the East they are marching,
Into the West they march.”
One swarthy Sikh with a fine beard was asked what he thought of the war.
“Sahib, it is a very good war. It is a man’s war. The old men, the women,
and the children are in the villages. The warriors are out fighting.
It is very good.” This optimist had got through with a slight wound of
the right hand, and perhaps that accounted for his cheery outlook. Most
of the wounded on that night looked as if they would have been better
pleased to be with “the old men, the women, and the children in the
villages.”
There is no doubt that the Indians are pleased to be fighting alongside
us in this “good war,” but they have a respect for the German because he
is a fierce fighter, and perhaps also because of his ruthlessness, an
attitude which appeals to the Oriental mind.
The Gurkha is a funny little man and a swashbuckler. His small sturdy
frame, his slanting, watchful eyes with the glint of the devil in them,
his bandolier, rifle, and deadly kukri, with its broad razor-edged blade,
make up a picture of force and fighting cunning.
Plaster this man with thick mud, put a bloody bandage round his head,
and place him in a dimly lit corner of a dripping court on a dark, rainy
night, then indeed he looks a breathing symbol of murder and imminent
destruction. When the Gurkha is out “on the job” at night, prowling far
from his trenches and within the enemy lines, with no weapon but his
broad, sharp knife and with a mind intent on slaying, he is a formidable
and fearsome adversary.
At first our Indian troops found it difficult to accustom themselves to
the novel form of war in wet, cold trenches, a bad climate, and with
every surrounding strange and inhospitable. The loss of their British
officers and native non-commissioned officers was at first very heavy,
and this discouraged the men, who look so much to their officers who
know their language and understand them. But these brave fellows soon
“found themselves,” and have since those dark October days proved again
and again that when the call comes they can be relied upon to fight with
as much determination as ever they have done in the past. An experienced
British officer of a native regiment told me that what the Indians missed
very much in France was opium. He said that the Indian had always been
accustomed to his opium in India, that he did not take much, but really
was the better for a little. He took it in small quantity as a soporific
stimulant, just as our grandfathers took snuff, and he assured me that
when the Indians had to meet the hellish conditions of modern war at the
front last winter a little opium to each man would have meant a great
deal. In this I cordially agree with him, for the medicinal and stimulant
effects of small doses of opium are undoubted.
The question of feeding our Indian soldiers was a difficult one, and
required very careful handling. An old Sikh was wounded near Bethune and
was taken to the British Clearing Hospital. He refused to take anything
but biscuits and water. Fortunately we were able to remove the old
ritualist to the native Clearing Hospital, otherwise we would have been
at an _impasse_.
Amongst both Hindoos and Mohammedans the caste prejudices and ritualistic
ceremonies must be remembered and observed in the providing and killing
of animals for consumption. The French also have native troops with
them and have the same difficulties to overcome, and this helps us
considerably in arranging a joint commissariat scheme. A Sikh soldier
will not eat a sheep killed in the Mohammedan method by cutting its
throat, and the Mohammedan soldier will not eat a sheep killed in the
Sikh method by a slashing stroke on the back of the neck. So there
you are. These things do not seem to be very important, but they are
important all the same. Ask the Jew who refuses the unclean pork, and the
good Churchman who refuses meat on Fridays.
The following story, which I heard at the front, illustrates the
accommodating nature of the Gurkha. When his regiments were embarking on
the transports at an Indian port, the point arose whether he would eat
frozen mutton. The British officers agreed to let the matter be solved by
the men. So they called up the Subadar, who, after a little wrinkling of
the eyebrow, said, “I think, Sahib, the regiment will be willing to eat
the iced sheep provided one of them is always present to see the animal
frozen to death.”
In Rouen there is an encampment for goats for the Indians, and we were
told that these goats were good mountain fellows from the Pyrenees. Four
Indians, under the charge of an old, venerable, long-bearded native, used
to drive them from their encampment to the Indian convalescent dépôt
about two miles outside the city.
The goats, in spite of the shouting and rushing about of the drivers,
would not keep their ranks and dress by the right in marching through
Normandy’s capital city. The delight of the French people, who always
turned up in crowds to see the goats march past, passed all bounds when
one would make a wild dash up a side street, hotly pursued by an irate
turbaned Indian. Another source of great joy was to see the goats march
slowly along the train line and hold up the train traffic.
The Indians were always of absorbing interest to the French, and crowds
of men and women would walk on a fine afternoon from the city to the
Indian dépôt camp for convalescents to see our brown-faced fighting men.
On one winter day in Rouen, just after a heavy fall of snow, a company of
French soldiers under a non-commissioned officer was marching past the
Indian encampment. The Indians lined up the fence alongside the road and
bombarded the French with a rapid fire of snowballs. The French looked
surprised, and, forgetting discipline but still keeping their ranks,
poured a heavy fusillade of snowballs on the men of India. The incident
is illustrative of the good feeling that exists between the French and
their Indian allies.
The Abbé Bouchon d’Homme of our hospital at Bethune told me with great
glee one morning that the Mayor of the town had had a “poser” put to
him by the Indians. One of these had just died from wounds, and he had
evidently been a fire-worshipper. The dead man’s comrades asked the
Mayor of Bethune to provide them with timber, as they wished to burn the
deceased in the cemetery of the city. The Mayor was staggered at the
request, and although he had, so the Abbé said, some curiosity to see the
ceremony of fire carried out, he had to “turn down” the proposition. So
the man was buried in the usual way.
GOOD-BYE TO THE FRONT.
The Army Headquarters, now that our line had been firmly established
and locked firmly on our right with the French and on our left with the
Belgians and French, decided to allow a short leave, at intervals, and
in rotation, to officers and as many men as possible. The leave was
specially designed for those who had been through the retreat, the Marne,
and the Aisne. New troops were arriving at the front and gradually taking
the place of the veterans temporarily retired to recuperate.
The 5th Division had been amongst the hard knocks from the beginning and
we got off early.
I left the front by a motor bus, which conveyed a group of seven officers
from Bailleul to Boulogne, and from thence we reached England by the
ferry steamer.
It felt uncanny to be away from the sound of the guns. Ever since August
our lives had been punctuated with incessant gun-fire; we had roused
each morning to the sound of heavy artillery, we had gone to sleep with
cannonades for a lullaby, and during the long day had listened to the
Devil’s Orchestra of lyddite, melinite, shrapnel, and rifle fire; and now
away from it all we seemed to live in a curiously still and silent world.
London was a very inviting place to return to. The hot bath, the
good bed, the morning newspaper at breakfast had never been so much
appreciated before. The rough knocking about and the strain had left
its effects on the health of many of us, and these four days’ rest and
recuperation, mental and physical, were a godsend.
At the end of the holiday I was appointed Surgical Specialist to a Base
Hospital in Rouen, and for a time my lines were cast in quieter waters.
But the allurement of the front—the call of the wild with its excitements
and uncertainties—lasted for some time longer. It is a curious fact,
but true, that the men at the front would like to get to the Base, and
when they get there they want to return to the front. “Those behind say
forward, and those in front say back.”
The memories of days spent at the front can never be quite forgotten.
Time may blunt the clearness of outline of some of the incidents in a
hazy mist, but there are others that will stand out clear and undimmed to
the last.
The surgeon sees the very seamy side of war. He comes close to the men
stricken down in the field, helpless and bleeding and in pain. He stands
by them in their dark hours in hospital and by their bedsides when they
die.
While the world is hearing the earthquake voice of Victory, he is perhaps
kneeling on the straw easing the path to death of a dying man, one of the
victors in the fight, or perhaps operating in a mean cottage, surrounded
by wounded men waiting their turn on the table.
The gallant charge, the brave defence, the storming of the enemy’s
position are heralded in dispatches and in song and story, but translated
into the notebook of the “Surgeon in Khaki” they represent many dead,
many wounded, much crippling and mutilation, tears, distress, and broken
hearts.
I have seen brave men die the death in battle—changed in a second of time
from forceful, vital, volcanic energy to still, inanimate rest. I have
seen mortally wounded men pass uncomplainingly and composedly to the
valley of the shadow, and I have seen faces become anxious and troubled
at the thought of those dear and loving ones left behind and of the
aching hearts and tears.
I have written letters of farewell from dying men and officers to wives
and sweethearts and children, and have felt the horror and misery of it
all. It is a sad and mournful sight to see brave young men die.
Yet, though the life of the “Surgeon in Khaki” is amidst this aftermath
of battle, he has the infinite satisfaction of knowing that he can, and
does, hold out a hand of help to the hurt and maimed soldier crawling out
of the welter of blood and destruction, and that he is doing the work of
the Compassionate and Pitying One.
“Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress,
A brother to relieve! How exquisite the Bliss.”
This war has brought out many faults in our national life, but it has
also brought out many shining virtues, and to the Faith and Hope of the
people in the prowess of the soldiers, we must add the Charity shown by
the people of this Empire to our sick and wounded. By subscriptions to
ambulance funds, Red Cross funds, and hospitals, and by doing all that
was humanly possible to help those hurt in battle, the people of to-day
have made a name that posterity will honour and strive in vain to equal.
They have also helped the Belgian and Serbian Red Cross movements and
have shown that
“Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own,”
which is always so admirable a trait.
Our fighting men are magnificent, and the hardihood and patient endurance
of our wounded are beyond all praise. I have seen our men in actual
fight, I have watched the French gunners at work and seen the French
infantry charge with the bayonet and throw back a German rush, and I
feel a complete confidence of the ultimate final success of the Allied
arms—for to such men is given the Victory.
THE END.
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MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED
_Edinburgh_