About fifteen or twenty of us were lying on the floor of a cottage.
Outside, four or five hundred yards up the street, a lively fight was
in progress for the possession of the village. After the firing-line
the cottage seemed a haven of peace and safety.
"Hullo, they've got you."
"Morning, Doctor."
A young fellow, fresh from his training at a hospital, was standing
beside me. He was our regimental doctor, and I'd always thought of him
as a lucky fellow who rode on a horse when we were on the march, and
got his rations regularly at all times, and during a scrap enjoyed the
security of the extra few hundred yards which he was supposed to have
between his dressing-station and the firing-line. Well, here he was to
look after me, anyhow.
"Got a bit of work to do to-day, Doctor," I said as he bound me up.
"Yes," he answered, adjusting a blanket as a pad under me, "there, just
keep in that position and the bleeding will soon stop." He turned to
the man next me.
"I've got some across the way, too," he said, as the orderly handed him
fresh bandages. "They've been shelling the poor beggars, knocking all
the slates off the roof."
As he spoke some shrapnel crashed against the roof of our cottage,
sending a few tiles rattling to the ground. The doctor looked up.
"I think we're all right here," he said. "We've got a double roof. I
always try to pick a cottage with a double roof. But those poor devils
over the way are getting awful scared; I think I'll slip across to
them."
The bit of road he had to "slip across" was catching most of the shells
which the cottage did not, and was also the channel for a steady stream
of rifle and machine-gun fire. I began to see there wasn't much in it,
whether one was a doctor or a platoon commander.
More especially did I realize a doctor's difficulties when, later in
the day, just as our doctor had finished looking at my dressings, a
message came that the field-dressing station belonging to the regiment
on our left had been set alight by a shell. He hastily organized a
party of stretcher-bearers and orderlies and went off at once. Later
he came back. He said it had been terrible to see the wounded lying
helpless in the barn waiting for the flames, but somehow they had
managed to rescue all and move them to a safer place, though the whole
operation had to be carried out under rifle and shell fire. Each time a
regiment is seriously engaged with the enemy at least 100 men are hit,
often four times the number. The regimental doctor is supposed to bind
up each one of these, and often when times are slack and a stray man
here or there gets hit he will be sent for to come up to the trenches.
"'Allo, Jock," loud greetings were shouted by every one in the room to
a little man standing in the doorway with a bandolier across his chest
and rifle with bayonet still fixed. He was a grubby little fellow, with
blood and mud caked all down his cheek, ragged clothes, and--as I had
seen as he came up the cottage steps--a pronounced limp. It was Private
Mutton, scallawag, humorist, and well-known character in the regiment.
"Yus, they got me," he said in answer to inquiries, "fro' me calf," he
pointed to his leg, "and right acrost the top of me 'ead"--he raised
his cap and showed where a bullet had parted his hair, grazing the
scalp. "But I give the bloke somethink what did it." Private Mutton
grinned at his bayonet. "Got 'im fair, right fro' 'is stomick."
I could not help feeling delighted, for I recognized in the muddy,
gory, highly-pleased-with-himself little man the original of Thomas
Atkins, of whose doings along the Indian frontier I had read thrilling
accounts by Mr. Kipling, and whose quaint mannerisms I had often
laughed at as represented on the stage of music-halls at home....
At 9 P.M. the ambulances came up.
The doctor went round quickly attending to each man. He bound up my
wounds afresh and had me carried into an inner room. I lay there all
day, and never shall I forget the experience. I could see nothing
except a bit of the wall on the opposite side of the street. But I
could hear. Just after I had been brought in fresh firing broke out.
Rifle fire this time, sharp and insistent. Then there was a sound of
stamping feet, and I heard an officer rallying the men at the corner of
the street. The firing continued all day and sometimes seemed to rage
almost at the door of the cottage. I gathered that the Germans were
attacking the village in masses, and that it was touch-and-go whether
we could hold out. Sometimes there would be a rush of men outside the
window, and I would look to see if the pale grey uniform was there or
if khaki still held the place. Every now and then a shower of shrapnel
struck the roof of the cottage, and tiles went rattling to the road.
All the while a section of our artillery fired incessantly. How gallant
those guns of ours sound--Boom-boom-boom. They were fighting to their
last shell. If the village went, they went with it. No horses could
be brought up to draw them away in such an inferno. The doctor worked
on quietly. His work extended now to houses on the left and right. He
said it was terrible to see the fear of death on the faces of men shot
through the stomach. He found time once to have a cup of tea with me
and smoke a cigarette. Night began to fall and the room grew dark. I
was glad of his company for five minutes. We were in the same boat, he
told me--if the Germans got the village he was going to stay behind
with the wounded.
At half-past five Evans came in with a smashed arm.
"Goyle has gone," he said. "He was hit twice before during the day.
He was holding out with a few men there and got a third through the
chest which did him. Edwards was shot through the knee, and we had
to leave him. All the company officers are down. A company has been
surrounded and cut off. Whew! you can't live out there." As he spoke
the firing swelled to a din unequalled through the day. We heard shouts
and curses. The Germans were making a final tremendous effort to break
through.
"Our boys may do it," said Evans, "but there are not many left." I
lay back against the wall, pulled out a cigarette, and threw one to
Evans. We could only wait. Suddenly outside we heard a stamp of feet,
a hoarsely yelled order, "Fix bayonets!" another word of command, and
a mass of men rushed past the window up the street, cheering madly.
"That's the ----s," cried a stretcher-bearer, who came in excitedly.
"They have been sent up from the reserve."
The doctor came in. "We've got two more regiments up; we shall be all
right now," he said.
For a moment the firing continued, then died down. Night came and found
us still holding the village, and at ten o'clock the ambulance took us
away.