THE WAR
In the fall of 1915, I was urged by the Harvard Surgical Unit to make
one of their number for their proposed term of service that winter at
a base hospital in France. Having discussed the matter with my
directors, we decided that it was justifiable to postpone the lecture
tour which had been arranged for me, in view of this new need.
We sailed for England on the Dutch liner New Amsterdam and landed at
Falmouth, passing through a cordon of mine-sweepers and small patrols
as we neared the English shores. My wife's offer to work in France not
being accepted, since I held the rank of Major, we ran down to my old
home, where she decided to spend most of her time. My uniform and kit
were ready in a few days; and in spite of the multitudinous calls on
the War Office officials, I can say in defence of red tape that my
papers were made out very quickly. I was thus able to leave promptly
for Boulogne, near which I joined the other members of my Unit, who
had preceded me by a fortnight.
It was Christmas and the snow was on the ground when I arrived in
France. There was much talk of trench feet and the cold. Our life in
the North had afforded experiences more like those at the front than
most people's. We are forced to try and obtain warmth and mobility
combined with economy, especially in food and clothing. At the request
of the editor, I therefore sent to the "British Medical Journal" a
summary of deductions from our Northern experiences. Clothes only keep
heat in and damp out. Thickness, not even fur, will warm a statue, and
our ideal has been to obtain light, wind-and water-proof material,
and a pattern that prevents leakage of the body's heat from the neck,
wrists, waist, knees, and ankles. Our skin boots, by being soft,
water-tight, and roomy, remove the causes of trench feet. Later when I
returned to England I was invited to the War Office to talk over the
matter. The defects, either in wet and cold or in hot weather, of
woolen khaki cloth are obvious, and when subsequently I visited the
naval authorities in Washington about the same subject, I was
delighted to be assured that on all small naval craft our patterns
were being exclusively used. Who introduced them did not matter.
I had also advocated a removable insert of sheet steel in a pocket on
the breast of the tunic, this plate to be kept in the trenches and
inserted on advancing; and a lobster-tail steel knee-piece in the
knickers. Of this latter Sir Robert Jones, the British orthopedic
chief, appreciated the value, knowing how many splendid men are put
_hors de combat_ by tiny pieces of shell splinters infecting that
joint. But the "Journal" censored all these references to armour. A
wounded Frenchman at Berck presented me with a helmet heavily dented
by shrapnel, and told me that he owed his life to it. Later at General
Headquarters, General Sir Arthur Sloggett showed me a collection of a
dozen experimental helmets, each of which stood for a saved life.
One of the soldiers who came under my care had a bullet wound through
the palm of his hand. I happened to ask him where his hand had been
when hit. He said, "On my hip. We were mending a break in our barbed
wire at night, and a fixed rifle got me, exactly where it got my chum
just afterwards, but it went through him."
"Where did your bullet go?"
"I don't know," he answered.
An examination of his trousers showed the bullet in his pocket. It
was embedded in three pennies and two francs which he happened to be
carrying there, and which his wounded hand had prevented his feeling
for afterwards.
Pathos and humour, like genius and madness, are close akin. One of the
boys told me of a chum who was very "churchy," and always carried an
Episcopal Prayer Book in his pocket--for which he was not a little
chaffed. For a joke one day he was presented with a second that a
messmate had received, but for which he had no use. His scruples about
"wasting it" made him put it in his pocket with the other. Soon after
this, in an advance, he was shot in the chest. The bullet passed right
through the first Prayer Book and lodged in the second, where it was
found on his arrival at hospital for another slight wound. He at least
will long continue to swear by the Book of Common Prayer.
One day, walking with other officers in the country, we stumbled
across a tiny isolated farm. As usual the voice of the inevitable
Tommy could be heard from within. They were tending cavalry horses,
which filled every available nook and corner behind the lines at a
period when cavalry was considered useless in action. Having learned
that one of these men had been body servant to a cousin of mine, who
was a V.C. at the time that he was killed, I asked him for the details
of his death. The Germans had broken through on the left of his
command, and it was instantly imperative to hold the morale while help
from the right was summoned. Jumping on the parapet, my cousin had
stood there encouraging the line amid volleys of bullets. At the same
time he ordered his servant to carry word to the right at once.
Suddenly a bullet passed through his body and he fell into the trench.
Protesting that he was all right, he declared that he could hold out
till the man should come back. On his return he found that my cousin
was dead. But help came, the line held, and the German attack was a
costly failure. His servant had collected and turned in all the little
personal possessions of any value which he had found on the body.
"I think that you should have got a Military Cross," I said.
"I did get an M.C.," he answered.
"I congratulate you," I replied.
"It was a confinement to barracks. A bullet had smashed to pieces a
little wrist watch which the captain always carried. It was quite
valueless, and I had kept the remnants as a memento of a man whom
every one loved. But a comrade got back at me by reporting it to
headquarters, and they had to punish me, they said."
It is true, "strafing" was at a low ebb at the time that I arrived in
France; but even I was not a bit prepared for the amount of leisure
time that our duties allowed us. There were in France hundreds of sick
and wounded for every one in the lonely North; but in Labrador you are
always on the go, being often the only available doctor. Our Unit had
at the time only some five hundred beds and a very strong staff, both
of doctors and nurses. In spite of lending one of our colonels and
several of our staff to other hospitals, we still had not enough beds
to keep us fully occupied. It gave me ample time to help out
occasionally in Y.M.C.A. activities, and to do some visiting among the
poor French families and refugees in Boulogne, close to which city our
hospital was located. I could also visit other Units, and give lantern
shows, which had, I thought, special value when psychic treatment was
badly needed. Shell-shock was but very imperfectly understood at the
beginning of the war. The football matches and athletic sports did not
need the asset of being an antidote to shell-shock to attract my
patronage. Never in my life had I realized quite so keenly what a
saving trait the sporting instinct is in the Anglo-Saxon--a strain of
it in the Teuton might have even averted this war.
My stay in France enabled me to enjoy that which life on the Labrador
largely denies one--the contact with many educated minds. It was the
custom, if an officer needed a lift along the road, to hail any
passing motor. While walking one day, I took advantage of this
privilege, and found myself driving with Sir Bertrand Dawson, the
King's physician, with whom I thus renewed a most valued
acquaintanceship. On another occasion our host or guest might be Sir
Almroth Wright, the famous pathologist, or Sir Robert Jones would pay
us a visit, or Sir Frederick Treves. In fact, we had chances to meet
many of the great leaders of our profession. Sir Arthur Lawley, the
head of our Red Cross in France, gave me some delightful evenings.
Unquestionably there is an intense pleasure in hearing and seeing
personally the men who are doing things.
Food grew perceptibly scarcer in Boulogne even during my stay. The
_petits gateaux_ got smaller, the hours during which officers might
enter restaurants for afternoon tea became painfully shorter. But they
were not a whit less enjoyable, reminding one as they did of the dear
old days, long before the war was thought of, and before the war of
life had taken me to Labrador. If one had hoped that a life in the
wilds had succeeded in eradicating natural desires, those relapses in
the midst of war-time completely destroyed any such delusion. Every
day was full of excitement. Bombs fell on the city only twice while I
was there, and, moreover, we were bitterly disappointed that we did
not know it till we read the news in the morning paper. But every day
flying machines of all sorts sailed overhead. My interest never
failed to respond to the buzzing of some hurrying airship, or the
sight of a seaplane dropping out of heaven into the water and swimming
calmly ashore, waddling up the beach into its pen exactly like a great
duck.
One day it was the excitement of watching trawlers from the cliffs
firing-up mines; another, hunting along the beach among the silent
evidences of some tragedy at sea, or riding convalescent horses that
needed exercise, flying along the sands to see some special sight,
such as the carcass of a leviathan wrecked by butting into
mine-fields.
Close to us was a large Canadian Unit. They were changing their
location, and for three months had been in the sorry company of those
who have no work to do. The matron, however, told me that she found
plenty to occupy her time--in such a beehive of officers, with
seventy-five nurses to look after.
When at the close of the period for which I had volunteered I had to
decide whether to sign on again, my whole inclination was to stay just
another term; but as my commandant, Colonel David Cheever, informed me
that he and a number of the busier men felt that duty called them
home, and that there were plenty of volunteers to take our places, my
judgment convinced me that I was more needed in Labrador.
I shall not say much of the Y.M.C.A. They need no encomium of mine,
but I am prepared to stand by them to the last ditch. They were doing,
not talking, and were wise enough to use even those agents whom they
knew to be imperfect, as God Himself does when He uses us. The folly
of judging for all cases by one standard is common and human, but it
is not God's way. This conviction was brought home to me in a very odd
manner. I had gone to lecture at an English Y.M.C.A. hut at the
invitation of the efficient director, who knew me only for a "medical
missionary." On my arrival he most hospitably took me to the cupboard
which he called "his rooms." It was a raw, cold night, and among other
efforts to show his gratitude for my help, to my amazement he offered
me "a drop of Scotch." Astonishment so outran good-breeding that I
unwittingly let him perceive it. "I am not a regular 'Y' man, Major,"
he explained. "I'm an Australian, and was living on my little pile
when the war began. They turned me down each place I volunteered on
account of my age. But I was crazy to do my bit, and I offered to work
with the Y.M.C.A. as a stopgap. The War Office has commandeered so
many of their men that they had to take me to 'carry on.' I'm afraid
I'm a poor apology, but I'm doing my best."
The freedom from convention lent another peculiar charm to the life in
France. The mess sergeant of a headquarters where I was dining one
night, close behind the lines, presented the colonel with a
beautifully illustrated monograph on a certain unmentionable and
unwelcome member of war camps and trench life. The beautiful work and
the evidences of scientific training led me to ask who the mess
sergeant might have been in civil life. "Professor of Biology at the
University of ----," was the reply.
The most inspiring fact about the Channel ports at that time was the
regularity with which steamers arrived, crowded with soldiers, and
returned with wounded. We could see England on clear days from our
quarters, and could follow the boats almost across. The number of
trawlers at work all the year round, even in heavy gales that almost
blew us off the cliffs, was enough to tell how vigilant a watch was
being kept all the while. One morning only we woke to find a large
stray steamer, that had entered the roads overnight, sunk across the
harbour mouth, her decks awash at low water--torpedoed, we supposed.
Another day a small patrol, literally cut in half by a mine, was towed
in. But though both in the air and under the sea all the ingenuity of
the enemy from as near by as Ostend was unceasingly directed against
that living stream, not one single disaster happened the whole winter
that I was out. Our mine-fields were constantly being changed. The
different courses the traffic took from day to day suggested that. But
who did it, and when, no one ever knew. The noise of occasional
bomb-firing, once a mine rolling up on the shore, exploding and
throwing some incredibly big fragments onto the golf links, the
incessant tramp of endless soldiers in the street, the ever-present
but silent motors hurrying to and fro, and the nightly arrival of
convoys of wounded, were all that reminded us that any war was in
progress. Had it been permitted, the beach would have been crowded as
usual with invalids, nursemaids, and perambulators.
The second marvel was that in spite of the enormous numbers of people
coming and going, no secrets leaked out. We gave up looking for news
almost as completely as in winter in Labrador. We seemed to be shut
off entirely in an eddy of the stream, as we are in our Northern
wastes.
The spirit of humour in the wounded Briton was as invaluable as the
love of sport when he is well. On one occasion a small party were
going to relieve a section of the line. The Boches had the range of a
piece of the road over which they had to pass, and the men made dashes
singly or in small numbers across it. A lad, a well-known athlete, was
caught by a shell and blown over a hedge into a field. When they
reached him, his leg was gone and one arm badly smashed. He was
sitting up smoking a cigarette, and all he said was, "Well, I fancy
that's the end of my football days." One very undeveloped man, who had
somehow leaked into Kitchener's Army, told me, "Well, you see, Major,
I was a bit too weak for a labouring man, so I joined the army. I
thought it might do my 'ealth good!" One of the English papers
reported that when a small Gospel was sent by post to a prisoner in
Germany the Teuton official stamped every page, "Passed by the
Censor."
The practice of listening to the yarns of the wounded was much
discouraged, chiefly for one's own sake, for their knowledge was less
accurate than our own, while shell-shock led them to imagine more. The
censor had always good yarns to tell. The men showed generally much
good-humour and a universal light-heartedness. Our wounded hardly ever
"groused." They hid their troubles and cheered their families, seldom
or never by pious sentiments. One man writing from a regimental camp
close to Boulogne, after a painfully uneventful Channel crossing,
announced, "Here we are in the enemies' country right under the
muzzles of the guns. We got over quite safely, though three submarines
chased us and shelled us all the way. Food here is very short. I
haven't looked at a bun for weeks. A bit more of that cake of yours
would do nicely, not to talk o' smokes. Your loving husband." Another
letter was quoted in the "Daily Mail." It ran: "Dear Mother--This
comes hoping that it may find you as it leaves me at present. I have a
broken leg, and a bullet in my left lung. Your affectionate son."
Yet the men were far from fatalists, and the psychic stimulus of being
able to tell your patient that he was ordered to "Blighty" was
demonstrable on his history chart. One poor fellow whose right arm was
infected with gas bacillus was so anxious to save it that we left it
on too long and general blood poisoning set in. He was on the dying
list. The Government under these circumstances would pay the expenses
of a wife or mother to come over and say the last good-bye. After the
message went, it seemed that our friend could not last till their
arrival, and the colonel decided as a last chance to try intra-venous
injections of Eusol, the powerful antiseptic in use at that time in
all the hospitals. On entering the ward the next morning the nurse
told me with a smiling face, "B. is ever so much better. I think that
he will pull through all right." "Then the Eusol injection has done
good, I suppose?" "His wife and mother came last night and sat up with
him"--and I saw a twinkle in the corner of her eye. Eusol injections
are now considered inert.
With so many patients who only remained so short a time, there was an
inevitable tendency to relapse into treating men as "cases," not as
brothers. To get through their exterior needed tact and experience.
But if love is a force stronger than bayonets and guns, it certainly
has its place in modern--and all time--surgery. I have a shrewd
suspicion that it is better worth exhibiting than quite a number of
the drugs still on the world's pharmacopoeias. Many of the nurses kept
visitors' books, and in these their patients were asked to write their
names or anything they liked. The little fact made them feel more at
home, as if some person really cared for them. One could not help
noticing how many of them broke out into verse, though most of them
were labouring men at home. Although some was not original, it showed
that they liked poetry. Some was extempore, as the following:
"Good-bye, dear mother, sister, brother,
Drive away those bitter tears.
For England's in no danger
While there are bomb throwers in the Tenth Royal Fusiliers."
The following effusion I think was doubtless evolved gradually. It
runs:
"There's a little dug-out in a trench,
Which the rainstorms continually drench.
With the sky overhead, and a stone for a bed,
And another that acts for a bench.
"It's hard bread and cold bully we chew;
It is months since we've tasted a stew;
And the Jack Johnsons flare through the cold wintry air,
O'er my little wet home in the trench.
"So hurrah for the mud and the clay,
Which leads to 'der Tag,' that's the day
When we enter Berlin, that city of sin,
And make the fat Berliners pay."
I have never been in any sense what is generally understood by the
term "faith healer," but I am certain that you can make a new man out
of an old one, can save a man who is losing ground, and turn the
balance and help him to win out through psychic agencies when all our
chemical stimulants are only doing harm. That seemed especially true
in those put _hors de combat_ by the almost superhuman horrors of this
war. It seemed to me to pay especially to get the confidence of one's
patients. Thus one man would be drawn out by the gift of a few
flowers, a little fruit, cigarettes, as so many of the kindly visitors
discovered. One man with shrapnel splinters in his abdomen expressed a
craving for Worcester sauce. It appeared to him so unobtainable in a
hospital in France. From the point of view of his recovery I am
convinced that the bottle which we procured in Boulogne was a good
investment.
We eagerly awaited the illustrated papers each week for the same
reason. But personal interest shown in themselves, by the time spared
for chatting, was far the most appreciated. We had been very rightly
warned against listening to the wounded men. It was with them in the
base hospitals that the story of the angels of Mons originated. I
never met any one personally who saw anything nearer the supernatural
than that marvellous fight itself--the pluck and endurance of our
"contemptible little army." But some claimed to have seen a spirit but
visible army, such as Elijah at Dothan showed to his servant, or
Castor and Pollux at Lake Regillus, fighting in front of our lines. A
Canadian in command of the C.A.M.C. contingent, who treated thousands
of the wounded as they came back from the front, told me that early in
the day he heard the rumour, and ordered his men to ask as many as
possible if they had seen any such phenomenon. Not one claimed to have
done so. Yet a few days later from the base he heard a great many of
these same men had declared that they had seen the "angels." He
considered that the whole matter arose originally through some
hysterical woman, and then was augmented by the suggestion of the
question which he himself had put to them, made to men shell-shocked
and in abnormal mental conditions.
Among other deductions from voluminous notes I judged that the Saxons
really did not want to fight, the impression coming from so many
different sources. Some said that they let us know, shouting across
"No Man's Land," that they did not wish to fight, that they were
Christians, had wives and children of their own, that they did not
want to kill any one, and would fire in the air when forced to fire,
were keen to renew the Christmas "pour-parlers." Our men claimed that
it was comparative peace when the Saxons were in the trenches
opposite, and they made friendly overtures as often as they dared.
They were capable of attributing honour to others, and those who came
over into our lines asserted that hundreds were anxious to do so, only
they were so watched from behind. Moreover, the outrages committed by
the Prussians under flags of truce had made it impossible for our men
to allow any one to approach. To sit opposite a Saxon regiment for a
month and not exchange shots appeared to be not uncommon. One man told
me that they poked up a notice on their bayonets saying, "We are not
going to fight"; and another said that once when "strafing" somehow
commenced, they shouted from the opposite trenches: "Save your
bullets. You'll need them to-night when the Prussian Guard relieves
us"--which proved perfectly true. One day an elderly man crawled out
of their trench, came to our barbed wire, and called out for bread. We
threw him a loaf. He wrapped up something in his cap and threw it
over. We tossed it back with more bread, but when he went back he left
the watch behind.
After an especially brutal piece of treachery, our men were too
maddened to give quarter, and one said, "A Saxon might have had a
chance with us even then, but a Prussian would have had about as
little as a beetle at a woodpecker's prayer meeting!" The Saxons, on
the other hand, displayed the individual courage of the Anglo-Saxon
that helped to lessen our losses by enabling us to attack in open
formation. Every animal will fight when forced to do so. The cowardly
wolf will attack only in packs; and one of the main reasons for the
wholesale holocausts of mass attacks seems to have been that same lack
of real courage in the boastful and militarist element. He dare not
advance alone.
A colonel in command at the first battle of the Aisne described to me
an incident that I at least did not hear elsewhere. He said that the
Germans opposite him came on sixteen abreast, arm in arm, rifles at
the trail or held anyhow. They were singing wildly, and literally
jumping up and down, as if dancing. Fire was reserved till they came
within a few hundred yards, when machine guns started to mow them
down. Hay-pooks, or rather man-pooks, were immediately formed, and the
advancing column, instead of coming straight on, went round and round
the ever-increasing stacks. He believed that they had been filled with
too much dope or too much doctored grog of some kind.
It was my great desire before returning from France to see the
conditions at the front. I was told that members of American Units
were discouraged from visiting the trenches. Dr. Carrel had twice most
kindly invited me to Compiegne to see his new work on wounds, but
permission to accept had been denied me. Being a British subject and
wearing a British decoration on an American uniform only seemed to
worry the authorities. I had almost abandoned hope, when one day an
automobile stopped at our headquarters, just at the close of my term
of service, and a colonel, a distinguished scientist, jumped out. He
told me if I could get to Medical Headquarters, then at St. Omer, he
could arrange for me to visit each of the four armies I wished to see.
I had no permission to leave the base, though my term of service
expired the next day. I had no passes, and our British commandant
would not on his own responsibility either give me leave or lend me
the necessary outfit. He would only agree to look the other way if I
went.
Passing the sentries was not difficult, but once arrived in St. Omer,
it was essential to have permission from Headquarters before one could
enter any house or hotel. I was accordingly dumped in the dark streets
of a strange town and told to be at that exact spot again in two
hours, waiting my sponsor's return. Nor did he say where he was going,
in case we failed to meet, for no one was allowed to mention the
whereabouts of the G.H.Q. After two hours were over, I was at the
appointed spot with that pleasurable sense of excitement that seldom
comes after one has settled down in life. I could then understand
better how a spy must feel. The town naturally was unlit for fear of
aircraft, and yet there was a queer feeling that every one was looking
at you as you walked up and down in the dark. My colonel friend was at
the rendezvous with all the precision of a soldier, not only with the
necessary papers and arrangements for the tour of inspection, but also
a genial invitation to dine at Headquarters. General Sir Arthur
Sloggett and his exceedingly able staff opened my eyes very
considerably before the evening was out as to the methods of the
R.A.M.C. in war-time. It was such a revelation to me that I felt it
would be an infinite comfort to those with loved ones in the trenches
to realize how marvellously efficient the provision for the care of
the soldier's health had become. The main impression on my mind was
the extraordinary developments since the days of the Lady of the Lamp.
Formerly, so long as he was fit to fight, the soldier was always
looked after. Now the soldier unfit to fight had exactly the same
rights, just as after the war let us trust that the broken soldier
will be "seen through" back into civil life. I was honestly surprised
that he no longer depended on voluntary gifts to a charitable society
for a bandage when he lay wounded or for a nurse if sickness overtook
him. The marvellous system of the medical intelligence department,
even the separate medical secret service, worked so efficiently that
in spite of the awful conditions the health of the men in the line was
twice as good as that when at home in civil life. Even disease
approaching from the enemy's side was "spied," and as far as possible
forestalled. All sanitary arrangements, all water supplies, and all
public health matters from the North Sea to the Swiss border were
handled by regular army officers. For the first time in history the
medicals were considered so intimate a part of the fighting force that
doctors held the same rank as executive officers. I was a major--no
longer a surgeon major or just a sanitary official. Those in command
were even trusted in advance with information as to what would likely
be required of them on any part of the front by some manoeuvre or
attack, though I do not think that even the general of the R.A.M.C.
was admitted to the council of war.
The chart-room of the G.H.Q. was another revelation. The walls from
ceiling to floor were occupied with the usual large-scale maps, with
flags on pins; while long, weird, crooked lines of all colours made
elaborate tracings over the charts, like those used in hospitals.
These flags and lines indicated the surgical and medical front, where
battles with typhoid, trench feet, and wounds were being waged by the
immense army of workers under General Sloggett's direction.
Laboratories in motor cars, special surgeons and ambulances were
racing here and there, new hospitals for emergencies were being pushed
in different directions, so that though within range of the enemies'
guns, men wounded in the chest or abdomen could be treated in time to
give them a chance for their lives. Typhoid recurring in any section
of the line might mean the reprimand of the medical officer there;
trench feet became a misdemeanour, so excellent were the precautions
devised and carried out by the N.C.O.'s.
I ventured at table to say quite truthfully that I, a surgeon from a
base hospital, where we saw endless Red Cross motor ambulances, and
received so many kindnesses in supplies, and especially luxuries for
our wounded from the Red Cross officials, had been under the
impression that the R.A.M.C. was a sort of small tail to a very large
Red Cross kite, owing to our little army and general unpreparedness
when the war broke out. I could see that to my surprised hosts I
appeared to be mentally deficient, but I was able to assure them that
there were tens of thousands who knew even less than that, and thought
that the chances still were that if their loved ones were hurt, they
might be left to die because some one had not given their annual
contribution to a society. It seemed a very serious omission that the
public had not the information that would carry so much consolation
with it. The British Red Cross has every one's love and support, but
its function in war, as one officer said, must increasingly become, in
relation to the R.A.M.C., that of a Sunday-school treat to the staff
of the school.
The officialdom of Germany and even of France had always contrasted
very unfavourably in my mind with our English methods. I was surprised
in America that so many hospitals were Government institutions, and
yet worked so well.
At Melville we turned aside to inspect what was apparently a second
Valley of Hinnom. It was a series of furnaces, built out of clay and
old cans, efficiently disposing of the garbage of a town and a large
section of the line. At West Outre an officer found time to show us
his ingenious improvised laundry. His share was to fight the enemy by
keeping our boys decently clean; and for this purpose he collected
their dirty linen into huge piles. He had diverted the only available
brook so as to put a portable building over it. His battalion
consisted of the whole female strength of the country-side, and had
to be prepared to advance or retire _pari passu_ with the other
fighters. The chattering, shouting crowd, almost invisible in the fog
of steam as we walked through, made me realize how difficult a command
this regiment of washerwomen constituted. The triumph was that they
all appeared to be contented and fraternal.
As every one knows one of the worst problems of the trenches was
vermin. We entered a huge building used in peace-time for the purposes
of dyeing. A Jack Johnson had only just exploded in the moat that
brought the water to the tanks, but provision was made for trifles of
this kind. When we peered over the edge of a steaming vat, it was to
discover a platoon of Tommies enjoying the "time of their lives,"
before they joined the line of naked beings, each scrubbing the now
happy man ahead. An endless stream of garments advanced through
electric superheaters in parallel columns. There seemed as much
excitement about the chance of every man getting his own clothing back
as there is in the bran pie at a children's Christmas party.
While visiting the mud and squalor of a front trench in Flanders, only
a few yards from the enemy's lines, the cheery occupants offered to
brew some tea, exactly as we "boil our kettle" and have a good time in
the safety of our Northern backwoods. One day I picked up some bright
blue crystals. They proved to be "blue-stone," or sulphate of copper.
When my pilot noticed that its presence puzzled me, he remarked
casually, "There was a regimental dressing-station there a day or so
ago. Probably that is the remains of it."
On a siding at Calais station a veritable pyramid of filth met my
eyes. On inspection it proved to be odd old boots dug from the mud of
the battle-fields, and, sorted out from the other endless piles of
debris, brought back as salvage. To attack one pair of such boots is
depressing. Melancholia alone befitted the pile. Yet I saw close at
hand, through a series of sheds, this polluted current entering and
coming out at the other end new boots, at the rate of a thousand pairs
a day--the talisman not being a Henry Ford of boot-making, but just a
smiling English colonel in the sporting trousers of a mounted officer.
The ground was still under snow, and we drove over much ice and
through much slush as we returned to our base at Boulogne. My
colleagues had gone back to America and it was a terribly lonely
journey to London, though both steamer and train were crowded. The war
was not yet won, and I could not help feeling an intense desire to
remain and see it through with the brave, generous-hearted men who
were giving their lives for our sakes. Loneliness scarcely describes
my sensations; it felt more like desertion. One road to despair would
be the awful realization that one is not wanted. The work looming
ahead was the only comforting element, with the knowledge that the
best of wives and partners was waiting in London to help me out.