SAVING THE SOLDIER: DR. GRENFELL’S EXPERIENCE
[Leaving his great work in Labrador and Newfoundland, so that he might
visit the front as a member of the Harvard Surgical Unit, Dr. Wilfred
T. Grenfell spent three months in France as an army surgeon, and during
a short stay in London related some of his experiences and indicated
the marvellous advance that has been made in over-coming disease and
saving our soldiers’ lives. Not long ago in public, Field-Marshal Lord
Grenfell said that when he and Dr. Grenfell went into large communities
people did not say to Dr. Grenfell “Are you a cousin of Lord Grenfell?”
They said to him (Lord Grenfell) “Are you a cousin of Dr. Wilfred
Grenfell?” And he was very proud indeed to be able to say yes. Dr.
Grenfell’s two cousins, the twin brothers who were both captains in the
9th (Queen’s Royal) Lancers, were killed in action, one of them, Capt.
F. O. Grenfell, being the first of the recipients of the Victoria Cross
granted for the present war. Two other cousins, the brothers Capt. the
Hon. Julian Grenfell and Sec.-Lt. the Hon. G. W. Grenfell, sons of Lord
Desborough, have also fallen in the war.]
I am on my way from France to Labrador, and I am really sorry to be out
of khaki, though I never was in it before.
While I was in the thick of my work on the other side of the Atlantic
I was invited to join the Harvard Surgical Unit at the front. I found
it possible to do so, because I knew that in my temporary absence my
work in Labrador and Newfoundland would be faithfully carried on by my
friends and devoted helpers. So I came over and was attached to the
Harvard Unit with the rank of major, and the experiences I have gained
as an Army surgeon will remain amongst the greatest and proudest of my
life.
I have had the opportunity of seeing what the British Army is doing in
many ways in this terrible war. I have been at many places, including
the base at Boulogne, and many great battle-centres, such as Ypres,
Bethune and Armentières. And I have been in the trenches, so that I
have had full chances of seeing what is really going on. It is hard,
almost impossible, to find words in which to express admiration of the
courage, endurance and humanity of the British troops in this terrible
conflict.
All my life has been a roving one, ever since I took my degree as a
doctor exactly thirty years ago. When I really began life I decided
to look for some field of work where I could be useful. I went into
the London Hospital, and very soon became intensely interested in the
Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. In those days the fishing
vessels were all sail, and when a man was seriously injured he had to
be transferred to some vessel that was carrying fish to Billingsgate,
and then he was taken to the London Hospital. This state of things on
the North Sea brought home to one the possibility of Christian men
preaching the gospel of love and help; and men went out and largely
brought about that wonderful revolution which we see to-day amongst
North Sea fishermen.
I cannot help feeling that in the trenches, right along the line
where the surgical men are working, there is just the same problem
to deal with as we encountered in those early days of mission effort
in the trawling fleets. Very great difficulties had to be overcome
in performing operations in tiny mission hospital smacks on the open
sea far from land; just as unusual obstacles have to be surmounted in
treating wounded fighting men at the front to-day. The problem in the
North Sea was to heal men’s bodies, as well as to help them to take a
higher view of life; and it seems to me that the problem at the front
is just the same.
In dealing with the body there have been preventive developments which
are little short of marvellous. The history of war is not the history
of wounds, as a rule it has been the history of disease; and speaking
as an unbiassed person I think that in this connection we are doing a
perfectly magnificent work.
First of all, the troubles of the trench fighting have been the gas
bacillus, which is an animal bacillus, and the tetanus bacillus. Both
began operations in this war with terrible results, but now they have
scarcely any effect.
It must be remembered that the soil in France and Flanders, where so
much of the fighting has taken place, is highly cultivated, and is
therefore splendid breeding-ground for these deadly bacilli. So much is
this the case with tetanus that in the early stages of the war bits of
uniform which have been driven into the body, however slightly, were
infinitely more dangerous than serious wounds caused by clean shrapnel,
for the cloth, by contact with the soil, had become infected with the
bacillus. I have seen men with pieces of shrapnel left in their wounds
and doing well, but a piece of uniform, sodden with the rich soil, was
a very different thing. But so wonderful has been the advance in the
method of treating tetanus that to-day, if taken in time, such a thing
as a fatal result is extremely improbable. Every soldier is so quickly
and skilfully treated that danger practically does not exist.
The very terrible gas bacillus caused another very common disease,
for the gas produced a kind of gangrene; yet now there is very little
mortality indeed from this cause.
In the beginning, too, any number of men were lost from typhoid
fever, but now typhoid is getting so rare that if a case occurs
anywhere on the front it is known the same night at the French General
Headquarters. That remark applies to the whole of our armies, and so
rigid is the control which is kept over these matters that, on the day
following the report, a searching local inquiry is held as to the cause
of the disease.
At the front I saw men who came from all parts of the country where I
have been working for the past twenty-five years--Canadians, Americans,
and so on. And in passing just let me say that in connection with
this war we are misjudging America because of the attitude which
the President has taken. I have stayed with Mr. Wilson and with Mr.
Roosevelt, and I know that the spirit of America is with us. It is
because the whole spirit of the American people is with us that
thirty-three doctors and thirty-six nurses--most of them giving up
splendid practices--went out from America to the front, as the Harvard
Unit, to help us. Just so the Chicago Unit, and many more Americans
fighting in the ranks.
I have seen at the front men of all ages and of every rank in
life--veterans who were a long way over the army age, and immature
youths of sixteen or seventeen. The spirit of loyalty and the
determination to do their bit made them go. Often enough a boyish
patient would smile when I looked at the chart and asked him how old he
really was. “Oh, that’s my Army age,” he would say, and go on smiling.
I was right round the trenches two weeks ago, and as that was early
in March and the winter has been exceptionally bad, the conditions
were intolerable. There is no anxiety, because everybody is sure that
the line is strong; but the wet, mud and exposure make you think that
the men will get pneumonia and bronchitis; yet what mostly happens is
trench-foot. I have seen a lot of that in Labrador, where we call it
frost-bite. It is not, however, the same, though it appears to be. I
have travelled many times in Labrador in winter, when the thermometer
has been twenty and thirty degrees below zero, and I have never had
frost-bite except once in my life. That was when I was driving my
dog-team over the ice. The ice broke and my dogs went into the sea.
They shared a floe with me throughout an awful night, and my life was
saved at the sacrifice of theirs. I have told that story in detail
elsewhere, so I need not tell it now.
I saw 150 men from a Highland regiment with frost-bite, but that was
quite exceptional, and was due to the phenomenal weather and the
impossibility of relieving the men when their relief was due, because
they were fighting continuously for over forty-eight hours.
[Illustration:
_To face p. 234._
BACK TO PRIMEVAL LIFE. AT THE END OF A TRENCH, SHOWING A FIRE WHICH
COOKS AND GIVES WARMTH.]
There is another direction in which immense strides have been made, and
that is with respect to vermin. At one time, at the beginning of the
war, there were as many as 4000 men who had scabies, or itch, and were
out of action for the time being; but you hardly see such a case now,
because of the wonderful measures which are taken to keep the troops
perfectly clean and fit.
Close behind the trenches immense vats have been placed to serve as
baths for the men, and the happiest fellows I saw were those who were
rolling and splashing in these hot baths, while their uniforms and
clothing were being thoroughly cleansed in super-heated steam-chests
and finished off with heavy hot irons.
Just as we got into one of these cleaning depots a Jack Johnson burst
very near us, but nobody took the slightest notice of it, so accustomed
does one become to the happenings of war. Five or six men were in each
hot bath, and something like 2000 baths a day are given. The men become
thoroughly clean personally, and their clothing also is perfectly freed
from vermin and filth, and the troops look as happy as possible.
I was greatly struck by the coolness and courage of all who worked in
these laundries, women as well as men, and I could not help thinking
that if I stood one week of it I should be entitled to the D.S.O.
Endless thousands of uniforms, socks and articles of underclothing are
constantly dealt with in the manner I have described, and many of the
workers are under artillery fire all the time.
In the treatment of bad wounds, too, there has been a very great
advance, and for such cases as broken femurs such an ingenious device
has been hit upon that you might well say that instead of putting a
man into bed you put the bed on to the man. The R.A.M.C. is really
doing its very best, and I shall go back to America feeling perfectly
satisfied that the British soldier is getting all the attention that I
could wish to have myself.
When the war began the surgeons did not know where to put the wounded,
because of the varying fortunes of the fighting. Even Boulogne, Calais
and Havre were not certain of safety, so that attending to the wounded
and accommodating them was a precarious thing; but the temporary
hospitals have been gradually replaced by stationary hospitals, the
mobile makeshift has been succeeded by the permanent institution, and
so splendid and complete are our resources now that in one day the
enormous total of 100,000 casualties could be dealt with by the R.A.M.C.
Casualty clearing-stations, field ambulances, advanced dressing-posts
and fixed hospitals are about as perfect as they can be made; and so
admirable are the arrangements that I saw one man who had been shot
through the abdomen and was in hospital in less than an hour from the
time he was wounded--which is almost quicker than you would do it in
London.
A great many of the less seriously sick and wounded do not have to go
to the base at all; at times one rest-camp was sending 80 per cent,
straight back to the line, entirely new men; and, as they say in
America, it would “tickle you to death” to see how these things are
done.
If you count up the men who have been wounded and invalided from all
causes you will find that there are still twice as many sick people as
there are wounded; and the strange thing is that as there are more
wounds there is less sickness, because directly a “push” comes the men
don’t think nearly as much about sickness as when there is nothing
doing.
If you take 1000 persons in ordinary civil life you will find that
there will always be 3·3 sick per 1000; but at the front the rate is
not quite half as many--only 1·8 per 1000 men. It is a very strange
thing, but I have met with a number of men who were always more or less
sick in civil life, yet who got quite well again at the front. The
trenches are the place for a change of air!
I am sure that after this war a very great many men will never go back
to the civil life they were in before. They must have more life in the
open air; and there can be no finer field for them than that glorious
Canada which I know so well, with its boundless possibilities of
harvests and material development.
One is impressed at the front with the apparent valuelessness of human
life, and deeply impressed by the lavishness with which that life
has been laid down by all ranks for King and country. This remark
applies to every rank of life without exception, to the highest of the
aristocracy as well as to the humblest private. And very remarkable,
too, is the zeal and willingness to serve in quite subordinate
positions of men who have had every advantage in life, particularly the
University type.
I remember at one place, when we were sitting in the mess, a sergeant
brought in a paper, which he handed to the colonel to read. It was a
most elaborate scientific treatise on the body vermin that so greatly
trouble our troops, and it was beautifully illustrated. In addition to
that the paper showed the willing endurance of personal suffering for
practical purposes that I for one should not have cared to undergo,
for the sergeant had made himself thoroughly well acquainted with the
effects of the visitation of the pests he described.
I was so much impressed by the performance that I said to the colonel,
“Who is your sergeant?” and he replied, “Oh, he’s the Professor of
Entomology in the University of ----!”
As I talk my mind takes me back to Labrador and its ice-bound coast,
and I recall that when working through the ice-fields in our little
mission ship, the _Strathcona_, or travelling in lonely regions with my
dog-teams, I saw so many evidences of the eagerness of men out there
to do their bit in this tremendous war. Almost to a man, when they
heard that we were fighting, they wanted to come over. But at first in
Labrador we got very little news, and when news did come it was not
credited. “Oh,” said the men, “don’t you believe it. They’ve always
got some scare on. They’re going to put the price of fish up!” Fish,
you know, is the greatest of all material things out in that vast and
lonely land. But what happened when they knew that it was not a scare,
but real war, and a fight for liberty and justice? Why, 1500 men of
Labrador and Newfoundland went into the Navy alone, and these brave and
splendid fellows crowded into the Army too. A thousand of them were
in Gallipoli. And wherever they were they found their hard experience
of the utmost worth. Our trappers soon learn the knack of getting a
seal with the gun, though the seal only just pops his head through an
ice-hole and the tiny target is the hardest of all things to see. But
the trapper gets him--he seldom misses; and whenever a German puts his
head out--well, he gets it too.
I have been in Labrador twenty-five years, and I am proud of the way in
which my friends out there have done their duty at the front.
My own view of life is that one has to do one’s duty in any place where
one happens to be; and I know from what I have seen that our splendid
fellows at the front have the same outlook. There are many, many
soldiers out there who, with practically nothing to look forward to
when the war is over, are sustained by one great thing, and that is the
knowledge that they are doing their best.
I have mentioned Canada as a great place for receiving men who will
be set free when the war is over. I have just seen the statement that
Canada has gone prohibition from end to end, and that pleases me very
much. I have spent thirty years amongst deep-sea fishermen and sailors
as a medical missionary and a master mariner, and I have shared many
dangers with them in the North Sea, out on the Labrador coast and
elsewhere, but I have seen more sorrow and misery in the homes of our
seafaring men through drink than I ever found in even small craft at
sea.
All these things that I have spoken of come under the heading of
practical religion and real Christianity, and rightly so. I do not
believe in the Christian religion being negative; it is essential that
you make it positive.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] The mate of the _Provident_ was lost, in another vessel, about a
year later, in a heavy Channel gale.
[2] This award was gazetted at the same time as the announcement of
the D.C.M. for Private Edwards. It was “For conspicuous gallantry from
September 25th to 29th, near Hulloch. Although severely wounded on the
head in the early part of the operations, Company-Sergeant-Major Ford
continued to advance and give encouragement to his men until he fell.
His example and devotion to duty were of the highest possible value to
all ranks. He had already been recommended for his gallant conduct at
Festubert.”
[3] H. is the writer’s elder brother, a motor dispatch-rider, who has
been at the front since the war began, and has done some fine, hard
work.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Obvious errors were corrected.