THE COST

'_The cost in casualties cannot be considered heavy in view of the

success gained._'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

Outside there were blazing sunshine and heat, a haze of smoke and dust, a

nostril-stinging reek of cordite and explosive, and a never-ceasing

tumult of noises. Inside was gloom, but a closer, heavier heat, a

drug-shop smell, and all the noises of outside, little subdued, and

mingled with other lesser but closer sounds. Outside a bitterly fought

trench battle was raging; here, inside, the wreckage of battle was being

swiftly but skilfully sorted out, classified, bound up, and despatched

again into the outer world. For this was one of the field dressing

stations scattered behind the fringe of the fighting line, and through

one or other of these were passing the casualties as quickly as they

could be collected and brought back. The station had been a field

labourer's cottage, and had been roughly adapted to its present use. The

interior was in semi-darkness, because the windows were completely

blocked up with sandbags. The door, which faced towards the enemy's

lines, was also sandbagged up, and a new door had been made by knocking

out an opening through the mud-brick wall. There were two rooms

connected by a door, enlarged again by the tearing down of the

lath-and-plaster partition. The only light in the inner room filtered

through the broken and displaced tiles of the roof. On the floor, laid

out in rows so close packed that there was barely room for an orderly to

move, were queer shapeless bundles that at first glance could hardly be

recognised as men. They lay huddled on blankets or on the bare floor in

dim shadowy lines that were splashed along their length with irregularly

placed gleaming white patches. They were puzzling, these patches,

shining like snow left in the hollows of a mountain seen far off and in

the dusk. A closer look revealed them as the bandages of the first field

dressing that every man carries stitched in his uniform against the day

he or the stretcher-bearers may rip open the packet to use it. A few of

the men moved restlessly, but most lay very still. A few talked, and one

or two even laughed; and another moaned slowly and at even unbroken

intervals. Two or three lighted cigarettes pin-pricked the gloom in

specks of orange light that rose and fell, glowing and sparkling and

lighting a faint outline of nose and lip and cheeks, sinking again to

dull red. A voice called, feebly at first, and then, as no one answered,

more strongly and insistently, for water. When at last it was brought,

every other man there demanded or pleaded for a drink.

In the other room a clean-edged circle of light blazed in the centre from

an acetylene lamp, leaving the walls and corners in a shadow deep by

contrast to blackness. Half the length of a rough deal table jutted out

of the darkness into the circle of light, and beneath it its black shadow

lay solid half-way across the light ring on the floor.

And into this light passed a constant procession of wounded, some halting

for no more than the brief seconds necessary for a glance at the placing

of a bandage and an injection of an anti-tetanus serum, some waiting for

long pain-laden minutes while a bandage was stripped off, an examination

made, in certain cases a rapid play made with cruel-looking scissors and

knives. Sometimes a man would walk to the table and stoop a bandaged

head or thrust a bandaged hand or arm into the light. Or a stretcher

would appear from the darkness and be laid under the light, while the

doctors' hands busied themselves about the khaki form that lay there.

Some of the wounds were slight, some were awful and unpleasant beyond

telling. The doctors worked in a high pressure of haste, but the

procession never halted for an instant; one patient was hardly clear of

the light-circle before another appeared in it. There were two doctors

there--one a young man with a lieutenant's stars on his sleeve; the

other, apparently a man of about thirty, in bare arms with rolled-up

shirt-sleeves. His jacket, hooked on the back of a broken chair, bore

the badges of a captain's rank. The faces of both as they caught the

light were pale and glistening with sweat. The hands of both as they

flitted and darted about bandages or torn flesh were swift moving, but

steady and unshaking as steel pieces of machinery. Words that passed

between the two were brief to curtness, technical to the last syllable.

About them the dust motes danced in the light, the air hung heavy and

stagnant, smelling of chemicals, the thick sickly scent of blood, the

sharper reek of sweat. And everything about them, the roof over their

heads, the walls around, the table under their hands, the floor beneath

their feet, shook and trembled and quivered without cessation. And also

without pause the uproar of battle bellowed and shrieked and pounded in

their ears. Shells were streaming overhead, the closer ones with a rush

and a whoop, the higher and heavier ones with long whistling sighs and

screams. Shells exploding near them crashed thunderously and set the

whole building rocking more violently than ever. The rifle and

machine-gun fire never ceased, but rose and fell, sinking at times to a

rapid spluttering crackle, rising again to a booming drum-like roll. The

banging reports of bombs and grenades punctuated sharply the running roar

of gun and rifle fire.

Through all the whirlwind of noise the doctors worked steadily.

Unheeding the noise, the dust, the heat, the trembling of the crazy

building, they worked from dawn to noon, and from noon on again to dusk,

only pausing for a few minutes at mid-day to swallow beef-tea and a

biscuit, and in the afternoon to drink tepid tea. Early in the afternoon

a light shell struck a corner of the roof, making a clean hole on entry

and blowing out the other side in a clattering gust of flame and smoke,

broken tiles and splintering wood. The room filled with choking smoke

and dust and bitter blinding fumes, and a shower of dirt and fragments

rained down on the floor and table, on the doctors, and on the men lying

round the walls. At the first crash and clatter some of the wounded

cried out sharply, but one amongst them chided the others, asking had

they never heard a Fizz-Bang before, and what would the Doctor be

thinking of them squealing there like a lot of schoolgirls at a mouse in

the room? But later in the day there was a worse outcry and a worse

reason for it. The second room was being emptied, the wounded being

carried out to the ambulances that awaited them close by outside. There

came suddenly out of the surrounding din of battle four quick car-filling

rushes of sound--sh-sh-sh-shoosh--ba-ba-ba-bang! The shells had passed

over no more than clear of the cottage, and burst in the air just beyond,

and for an instant the stretcher-bearers halted hesitatingly and the

wounded shrank on their stretchers. But next instant the work was

resumed, and was in full swing when a minute later there came again the

four wind-rushes, followed this time by four shattering crashes, an

appalling clatter of whirling tiles and brick-work. The cottage

disappeared in swirling clouds of smoke and brick-dust, and out of the

turmoil came shrieks and cries and groans. When the dust had cleared it

showed one end of the cottage completely wrecked, the roof gone, the

walls gaping in ragged rents, the end wall collapsed in jumbled ruins.

Inside the room was no more than a shambles. There were twenty odd men

in it when the shells struck. Seven were carried out alive, and four of

these died in the moving. In the other room, where the two doctors

worked, no damage was done beyond the breakdown of a portion of the

partition wall, and there was only one further casualty--a man who was

actually having a slight hand-wound examined at the moment. He was

killed instantly by a shell fragment which whizzed through the door-way.

The two doctors, after a first hasty examination of the new casualties,

held a hurried consultation. The obvious thing to do was to move, but

the question was, Where to? One place after another was suggested, only

for the suggestion to be dismissed for some good and adequate reason. In

the middle of the discussion a fresh torrent of casualties began to pour

in. Some plainly required immediate attention, and the doctors fell to

work again. By the time the rush was cleared the question of changing

position had been forgotten, or, at any rate, was dropped. The wounded

continued to arrive, and the doctors continued to work.

By now, late afternoon, the fortunes of the fight were plainly turning in

favour of the British. It was extraordinary the difference it made in

the whole atmosphere--to the doctors, the orderlies, the

stretcher-bearers, and even--or, rather, most of all--to the wounded who

were coming in. In the morning the British attack had been stubbornly

withstood, and thousands of men had fallen in the first rushes to gain a

footing in the trenches opposite. The wounded who were first brought in

were the men who had fallen in these rushes, in the forward trench, in

the communication trenches on their way up from the support trench, and

from the shell fire on the support trenches. Because they themselves had

made no advance, or had seen no advance made, they believed the attack

was a failure, that thousands of men had fallen and no ground had been

gained. The stretcher-bearers who brought them in had a similar tale to

tell, and everyone looked glum and pulled a long face. About noon,

although the advance on that particular portion was still hung up, a

report ran that success had been attained elsewhere along the line. In

the early afternoon the guns behind burst out in a fresh paroxysm of

fury, and the shells poured streaming overhead and drenched the enemy

trenches ahead with a new and greater deluge of fire. The rifle fire and

the bursting reports of bombs swelled suddenly to the fullest note yet

attained. All these things were hardly noted, or at most were heeded

with a half-attention, back in the dressing station, but it was not long

before the fruits of the renewed activity began to filter and then to

flood back to the doctor's hands. But now a new and more encouraging

tale came with them. We were winning . . . we were advancing . . . we

were into their trenches all along the line. The casualties bore their

wounds to the station with absolute cheerfulness. This one had 'got it'

in the second line of trenches; that one had seen the attack launched on

the third trench; another had heard we had taken the third in our stride

and were pushing on hard. The regiment had had a hammering, but they

were going good; the battalion had lost the O.C. and a heap of officers,

but they were 'in wi' the bayonet' at last. So the story ran for a full

two hours. It was borne back by men with limbs and bodies hacked and

broken and battered, but with lips smiling and babbling words of triumph.

There were some who would never walk, would never stand upright again,

who had nothing before them but the grim life of a helpless cripple.

There were others who could hardly hope to see the morrow's sun rise, and

others again grey-faced with pain and with white-knuckled hands clenched

to the stretcher-edges. But all, slightly wounded, or 'serious,' or

'dangerous,' seemed to have forgotten their own bitter lot, to have no

thought but to bear back the good word that 'we're winning.'

Late in the afternoon the weary doctors sensed a slackening in the

flowing tide of casualties. They were still coming in, being attended to

and passed out in a steady stream, but somehow there seemed less rush,

less urgency, less haste on the part of the bearers to be back for a

fresh load. And--ominous sign--there were many more of the bearers

themselves coming back as casualties. The reason for these things took

little finding. The fighting line was now well advanced, and every yard

of advance meant additional time and risk in the bearing back of the

wounded.

One of the regimental stretcher-bearers put the facts bluntly and briefly

to the doctors: 'The open ground an' the communication trenches is fair

hummin' wi' shells an' bullets. We're just about losin' two bearers for

every one casualty we bring out. Now we're leavin' 'em lie there snug as

we can till dark.'

A chaplain came in and asked permission to stay there. 'One of my

regiments has gone up, he said, 'and they'll bring the casualties in

here. I won't get in your way, and I may be able to help a little. Here

is one of my men now.'

A stretcher was carried in and laid with its burden under the doctor's

hands. The man was covered with wounds from head to foot. He lay still

while the doctors cut the clothing off him and adjusted bandages, but

just before they gave him morphia he spoke. 'Don't let me die, doctor,'

he said; 'for Christ's sake, don't let me die. Don't say I'm going to

die.' His eye met the chaplain's, and the grey head stooped near to the

young one. 'I'm the only one left, padre,' he said. 'My old

mother. . . . Don't let me die, padre. You know how--it is, back home.

Don't--let me--die--too.'

But the lad was past saving. He died there on the table under their

hands.

'God help his mother!' said the chaplain softly. 'It was her the boy was

thinking of--not himself. His father was killed yesterday--old Jim

Doherty, twenty-three years' service; batman to the O.C.; would come out

again with young Jim and Walt. Been with the Regiment all his life; and

the Regiment has taken him and his two boys, and left the mother to her

old age without husband or chick or child.'

The two doctors were lighting cigarettes and inhaling the smoke deeply,

with the enjoyment that comes after hours without tobacco.

Another man was borne in. He was grimed with dust and dirt, and smeared

with blood. The sweats of agony beaded his forehead, but he grinned a

twisted grin at the doctors and chaplain. 'An' 'ere we are again, as the

song says,' he said, as the stretcher was laid down. 'This makes the

third time wounded in this war--twice 'ome an' out again. But this is

like to be the last trip I'm thinkin'. Wot about it, sir? Will I be

losin' 'em both?' And he looked down at his smashed legs. 'Ah, I

thought so,' he went on. 'I'm a market gardener, but I dunno 'ow I'm

goin' to market-garden without legs. Four kids too, the eldest six

years, an' an ailin' wife. But she'll 'ave me, or wot's left o' me; an'

that's more'n a many'll 'ave.'

'That'll be all right, my lad,' said the chaplain. 'You'll have a

pension. The country will look after you.'

'Ah, padre--I didn't see you, sir. The country? Arst my brother Joe

about the country. Wounded in South Africa 'e was, an' never done a

day's work since. An' the pension 'as been barely enough to starve on

decently. It'll be the same again arter all this is over I don't doubt.

Any'ow that's 'ow we all feels about it. No, sir, I don't feel no great

pain to speak of. Sort of numb-like below there just.'

He went on talking quite rationally and composedly until he was taken

away.

After that there was another pause, and the ambulances, for the first

time that day, were able to get the station cleared before a fresh lot

came in. The dusk was closing in, but there was still no abatement of

the sounds of battle.

'There must be crowds of men lying out in front there wanting attention,'

said the captain, reaching for his coat and putting it on quietly. 'You

might stay here, Dewar, and I'll have a look out and see if there's a

chance of getting forward to give a hand.'

The other doctor offered to go if the other would wait, but his offer was

quietly put aside. 'I'll get back in an hour or two,' the captain said,

and went off. Dewar and the chaplain stood in the door and watched him

go. A couple of heavy shells crashed down on the parapet of the

communication trench he was moving towards, and for a minute his figure

was hidden by the swirling black smoke and yellow dust. But they saw him

a moment later as he reached the trench, turned and waved a hand to them,

and disappeared.

'His name's Macgillivray,' said the doctor, in answer to a question from

the chaplain. 'One of the finest fellows I've ever met, and one of the

cleverest surgeons in Great Britain. He is recognised as one of the best

already, and he's only beginning. Did you notice him at work? The most

perfect hands, and an eye as quick and keen as an eagle's. He misses

nothing--sees little things in a flash where twenty men might pass them.

He's a wonder.'

And Macgillivray was moving slowly along the communication trench that

led to the forward fire trench. It was a dangerous passage, because the

enemy's guns had the position and range exactly and were keeping a

constant fire on the trench, knowing the probability of the supports

using it. In fact the supports moving up had actually abandoned the use

of the approach trenches and were hurrying across the open for the most

part. Macgillivray, reluctant at first to abandon the cover of the

trench, was driven at last to doing so by a fact forced upon him at every

step that the place was a regular shell-trap. Sections of it were blown

to shapeless ruins, and pits and mounds of earth and the deep

shell-craters gaped in it and to either side for all its length. Even

where the high-explosive shells had not fallen the shrapnel had swept and

the clouds of flies that swarmed at every step told of the blood-soaked

ground, even where the torn fragments of limbs and bodies had not been

left, as they were in many places.

So Macgillivray left the trench and scurried across the open with bullets

hissing and buzzing about his ears and shells roaring overhead. He

reached the forward fire trench at last and halted there to recover his

breath. The battered trench was filled with the men who had been moved

up in support, and there were many wounded amongst them. He busied

himself for half an hour amongst them, and then prepared to move on

across the open to what had been the enemy's front-line trench. It was

dusk now and shadowy figures could be seen coming back towards the

British lines. At one point, a dip in the ground and an old ditch gave

some cover from the flying bullets. Towards this point along what had

been the face and was now the back of the enemy front trench, and then in

along the line of the hollow, a constant procession of wounded moved

slowly. It was easy to distinguish them, and even to pick out in most

cases where they were wounded, because in the dusk the bandages of the

first field dressing showed up startlingly white and clear on the shadowy

forms against the shadowy background. Some, with the white patches on

heads, arms, hands, and upper bodies, were walking; others, with the

white on feet and legs, limped and hobbled painfully, leaning on the

parapet or using their rifles crutch-wise; and others lay on the

stretchers that moved with desperate slowness towards safety. The line

appeared unending; the dim figures could be seen trickling along the

parapets as far as the eye could distinguish them; the white dots of the

bandages were visible moving as far along the parapet as the sight could

could reach.

Macgillivray moved out from the broken trench and hurried across the

open. There were not more than fifty yards to cross, but in that narrow

space the bodies lay huddled singly and heaped in little clumps. They

reminded one exactly of the loafers who sprawl asleep and sunning

themselves in the Park on a Sunday afternoon. Only the dead lay in that

narrow strip; the living had been moved or had moved themselves long

since. Macgillivray pushed on into the trench, along it to a

communication trench, and up and down one alley after another, until he

reached the most advanced trench which the British held. Here a

pandemonium of fighting was still in progress, but to this Macgillivray

after the first couple of minutes paid no heed. A private with a bullet

through his throat staggered back from his loophole and collapsed in the

doctor's arms and after that Macgillivray had his hands too full with

casualties to concern himself with the fighting. Several dug-outs had

been filled with wounded, and the doctor crawled about amongst these and

along the trench, applying dressings and bandages as fast as he could

work, seeing the men placed on stretchers or sent back as quickly as

possible towards the rear. He stayed there until a message reached him

by one of the stretcher-bearers who had been back to the dressing station

that he was badly needed there, and that Mr. Dewar hoped he would get

back soon to help them.

Certainly the dressing station was having a busy time. The darkness had

made it possible to get back hundreds of casualties from places whence

they dare not be moved by day. They were pouring into the station

through the doctors' hands--three of them were hard at work there by this

time--and out again to the ambulances as rapidly as they could be

handled. Despite the open, shell-wrecked end and the broken roof, the

cottage was stiflingly close and sultry, the heavy scent of blood hung

sickeningly in the stagnant air, and the whole place swarmed with

pestering flies. There was no time to do much for the patients. All had

been more or less efficiently bandaged by the regimental

stretcher-bearers who picked them up. The doctors did little more than

examine the bandagings, loosening these and tightening those, making

injections to ward off tetanus, performing an operation or an amputation

now and again in urgent cases, sorting out occasionally a hopeless

casualty where a wound was plainly mortal, and setting him aside to leave

room in the ambulances for those the hospitals below might yet save.

One of these mortal cases was a young lieutenant. He knew himself that

there was little or no hope for him, but he smoked a cigarette and spoke

with composure, or simulated composure, to the doctor and the chaplain.

'Hello, padre,' he said, 'looks like a wash-out for me this time. You'll

have to break it to the pater, you know. Afraid he'll take it rather

hard too. Rough luck, isn't it, doc.? But then . . .' His face

twitched with pain, but he covered the break in his voice by blowing a

long cloud of smoke. '. . . After all, it's all in the game, y' know.'

'All in the game,' the chaplain said when he had gone; 'a cruel game, but

gallantly played out. And he's the fourth son to go in this war--and the

last male of his line except his father, the old earl. A family that has

made its mark on a good few history pages--and this is the end of it.

You think it's quite hopeless for him, doctor?'

The doctor looked up in surprise from the fresh slightly wounded case he

was overhauling. 'Hopeless? Why, it's not even---- Oh! him? Yes, I'm

afraid so. . . . I wish Macgillivray would come back,' he went on

irritably. 'He's worth the three of us here put together. Where we have

to fiddle and probe and peer he would just look--just half-shut those

hawk eyes of his and look, and he'd know exactly what to do and what not

to do. . . . That'll do, sergeant; take him off. . . . Where's that

bottle of mine? What's this? Hand? Bandage not hurting you? All

right. Pass him over there for the anti-tetanus. Now, then! . . .'

A burly private, with the flesh of his thigh showing clear white where

the grimy khaki had been cut clear and hung flapping, limped in and

pushed forward a neatly bandaged limb for inspection. 'A doctor did that

up in the trenches,' he remarked. 'Said to tell you 'e did it an' it was

all right, an' I only needed the anti-tempus an' a ticket for 'ome.'

'That's Macgillivray, I'll bet,' said young Dewar. 'Where was this?'

'Fourth German trench, sir,' said the man cheerfully. 'You know we got

four? Four trenches took! We're winnin' this time orright. Fairly got

'em goin', I b'lieve. It'll be Glorious Vict'ry in the 'eadlines

to-morrow.'

'Things like this, you know, must be,' quoted the chaplain softly, as

another badly wounded man was brought in. 'I wonder what the victory is

costing us?'

'Never mind. It's costing t'other side more, sir,' said the casualty

grimly, and then shut lips and teeth tight on the agony that followed.

'I wish Macgillivray would come,' said Dewar when that was finished. 'He

could have done it so much better. It's just the sort of case he's at

his best on--and his best is something the medical journals write columns

about. I wish he'd come.'

And then, soon after, he did come--came on a stretcher with a bandage

about his head and over his eyes. 'Macgillivray!' cried the young

doctor, and stood a moment staring, with his jaw dropped.

'Yes,' said Macgillivray with lips tight drawn. 'It's me. That's Dewar,

isn't it? No need to undo the bandage, Dewar. It's my eyes--both

gone--a bullet through them both. And I'll never hold a scalpel again.

You can give me some morphia, Dewar--and send me on to the ambulance out

of the way. I'm no good here now--or anywhere else, now or ever. I

won't die, I know, but----'

They gave him the morphia, and before he slid off into unconsciousness he

spoke a last word to the chaplain: 'You were right, padre. You

remember . . . it's the women pay the hardest. . . . I'm thinking . . .

of . . . my wife.'

The chaplain's thoughts went back to the wife and mother of the Dohertys,

to the legless market-gardener and his ailing wife, to the boy lieutenant

who was the last of his line, and a score more he knew, and his eyes

followed as the stretcher bore out the hulk that had been a man who had

done much to relieve pain and might have done so much more.

The voice of another new-arriving casualty broke his thoughts. 'We're

winnin', doctor,' it was saying exultantly. 'All along the line we're

winnin' this time. The Jocks has got right away for'ard, an' the

Ghurkies is in wid their killin' knives on our left. An' the Irish is in

front av all. Glory be! 'Tis a big foight this time, an' it's winnin'

we are. Me good arm's gone I know, but I'd rather be here wid wan arm

than annywhere else wid two. An' what's an arm or a man more or less in

the world? We're winnin', I tell ye--we're winnin'!'