Attack: An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 Part 3

The orderly held me under the arms till I was put on a wheeled stretcher and hurried along, past the "boulevard pool" with its surrounding elms and willows, and, at the end of the "boulevard," up a street to the left. A short way up this street on the right stood the Advanced Dressing Station--a well-sandbagged house reached through the usual archway and courtyard. A dug-out, supplied with electric light and with an entrance of remarkable sandbag construction, had been tunnelled out beneath the courtyard. This was being used for operations.

In front of the archway and in the road stood two "padres" directing the continuous flow of stretchers and walking wounded. They appeared to be doing all the work of organisation, while the R.A.M.C. doctors and surgeons had their hands full with dressings and operations.

These were the kind of directions:

"Wounded Sergeant? Right. Abdominal wound? All right. Lift him off--gently now. Take him through the archway into the dug-out."

"Dead? Yes! Poor fellow, take him down to the Cemetery."

"German? Dug-out No. 2, at the end of the road on the right."

Under the superintendence of the R.C. "padre," a man whose sympathy and kindness I shall never forget, my stretcher was lifted off the carrier and I was placed in the archway. The "padre" loosened my bandage and looked at the wound, when he drew in his breath and asked if I was in much pain.

"Not an enormous amount," I answered, but asked for something to drink.

"Are you quite sure it hasn't touched the stomach?" he questioned, looking shrewdly at me.

I emphatically denied that it had, and he brought a blood-stained mug with a little tea at the bottom of it. I can honestly say that I never enjoyed a drink so much as that one.

Sh.e.l.ls, high explosives and shrapnel, were coming over every now and then. I kept my helmet well over my head. This also served as a shade from the sun, for it was now about ten o'clock and a sultry day. I was able to obtain a view of events round about fairly easily. From time to time orderlies tramped through the archway, bearing stretcher-cases to the dug-out. Another officer had been brought in and placed on the opposite side of the archway. The poor fellow, about nineteen, was more or less unconscious. His head and both hands were covered in bandages crimson with blood. So coated was he with mud and gore that I did not at first recognise him as an officer. At the farther end of the arch a young private of about eighteen was lying on his side, groaning in the agony of a stomach wound and crying "Mother." The sympathetic "padre" did the best he could to comfort him. Out in the road the R.A.M.C. were dressing and bandaging the ever-increasing flow of wounded. Amongst them a captive German R.A.M.C. man, in green uniform, with a Red Cross round his sleeve, was visible, hard at work. Everything seemed so different from the deadly strife a thousand or so yards away. There, foe was inflicting wounds on foe; here were our men attending to the German wounded and the Germans attending to ours. Both sides were working so hard now to save life.

There was a human touch about that scene in the ruined village street which filled one with a sense of mingled sadness and pleasure. Here were both sides united in a common attempt to repair the ravages of war. Humanity had at last a.s.serted itself.

It was about eleven o'clock, I suppose, when the "padre" came up again to my stretcher and asked me if I should like to get on, as there was a berth vacant in an ambulance. The stretcher was hoisted up and slid into the bottom berth of the car. The berth above was occupied by an unconscious man. On the other side of the ambulance were four sitting cases--a private, a sergeant, a corporal, and a rifleman, the last almost unconscious. Those of us who could talk were very pleased with life, and I remember saying: "Thank G.o.d, we're out of that h.e.l.l, boys!"

"What's wrong with him?" I asked the corporal, signifying the unconscious man.

"Hit in the lungs, sir. They've set him up on purpose."

The corporal, pulling out his cigarette case, offered cigarettes all round, and we started to smoke. The last scene that I saw in Hebuterne was that of three men dressing a tall badly wounded Prussian officer lying on the side of the road. The ambulance turned the corner out of the village. There followed three "crashes" and dust flew on to the floor of the car.

"Whizz-bangs," was the corporal's laconical remark.

We had pa.s.sed the German road barrage, and were on our way to peace and safety.

CHAPTER IV

TOLL OF ATTACK

We climbed the little white road which led through the battery positions now almost silent, topped the crest, and dipped into Sailly-au-Bois. The village had been very little sh.e.l.led since the night before, and appeared the same as ever, except that the intense traffic, which had flowed into it for the past month, had ceased.

Limbers and lorries had done their work, and the only objects which filled the sh.e.l.l-scarred streets were slow-moving ambulances, little blood-stained groups of "walking wounded," and the troops of a new division moving up into the line.

Though we were all in some pain as the ambulance jolted along through the ruts in the side of the road, we felt rather sorry for those poor chaps as they peered inside the car. Our fate was decided, theirs still hung in the balance. How often on the march one had looked back oneself into a pa.s.sing ambulance and wished, rather shamefully, for a "Blighty" one. Sunburnt and healthy they looked as they shouted after us: "Good luck, boys, give our love to Blighty."

At the end of the village the ambulance swung off on a road leading to the left. It must have crossed the track by which my platoon and I had gone up the night before. About 11.30 A.M. we arrived at Couin, the headquarters of the First Field Ambulance.

A hum of conversation and joking arose from every side, and, with some exceptions, you could not have found such a cheery gathering anywhere.

The immediate strain of battle had pa.s.sed, and friends meeting friends compared notes of their experiences in the "show." Here a man with a bandaged arm was talking affectionately to a less fortunate "pal" on a stretcher, and asking him if he could do anything for him; it is extraordinary how suffering knits men together, and how much sympathy is brought out in a man at the sight of a badly wounded comrade: yonder by the huts an orderly a.s.sisted a "walking case," shot through the lungs and vomiting blood freely.

Near by I recognised E----'s servant of the L---- S----. When he had finished giving some tea or water to a friend, I hailed him and asked him if Mr. E---- was. .h.i.t. Mr. E----, he told me, had been laid up for some days past, and had not taken part in the attack. He was, however, going round and writing letters for the men. Would I like to see him?

We were fairly good acquaintances, so I said that I should. Presently he arrived.

"Bad luck, old chap. Where have you caught it?" he asked.

"In the thigh," I replied.

He wrote two post-cards home for me, one home and another to relatives, and I did my best to sign them. I remember that on one of them was inscribed: "This is to let you know that E---- has been caught bending," and wondering what my grandfather, a doctor, would make out of that!

The sun was beating down on us now, and since, after I had been duly labelled "G.S.W. (gun-shot wound) Back," a Medical Staff Officer advised that I should be transferred into the officers' hut, I entered its cooler shades with much gladness.

Captain W----t came in soon afterwards. In the second line German trench he had looked over the parados to see if any opposition was coming up from the third line trench, and had been hit by a machine-gun bullet in the shoulder. In making his way home he had been hit twice again in the shoulder. H---- also put in an appearance with a bullet wound in the arm. He had taken a party of "walking wounded"

up to Sailly-au-Bois, and got a car on. A doctor brought round the familiar old beverage of tea, which in large quant.i.ties, and in company with whisky, had helped us through many an unpleasant day in the trenches. Captain W----t refused it, and insisted on having some bread and jam. I took both with much relish, and, having appeased an unusually large appet.i.te, got an orderly to wash my face and hands, which were coated with blood.

"I dare say you feel as you was gettin' back to civilisation again, sir," he said. Much refreshed, and quietly looking at a new number of _The Tatler_, I certainly felt as if I was, though, in spite of an air ring, the wound was feeling rather uncomfortable. At the end of the hut two or three poor fellows were dying of stomach wounds. It was a peculiar contrast to hear two or three men chatting gaily just outside my end of the hut. I could only catch fragments of the conversation, which I give here.

"When Mr. A---- gave the order to advance, I went over like a bird."

"The effect of the rum, laddie!"

"Mr A---- was going strong too."

"What's happened to Mr. A----, do you know?"

"Don't know. I didn't see 'im after that."

"'E's all right. Saw him just now. Got a wound in the arm."

"Good. Isn't the sun fine here? Couldn't want a better morning for an attack, could you?"

The hut was filling rapidly, and the three stomach cases being quite hopeless were removed outside. A doctor brought in an officer of the K----'s. He was quite dazed, and sank full length on a bed, pa.s.sing his hand across his face and moaning. He was not wounded, but had been blown up whilst engaged in cutting a communication trench across No Man's Land, they told me. It was not long, however, before he recovered his senses sufficiently enough to walk with help to an ambulance. A "padre" entered, supporting a young officer of the ----, a far worse case of sh.e.l.l shock, and laid him out on the bed. He had no control over himself, and was weeping hysterically.

"For G.o.d's sake don't let me go back, don't send me back!" he cried.

The "padre" tried to comfort him.

"You'll soon be in a nice hospital at the Base, old chap, or probably in England."

He looked at the padre blankly, not understanding a word that he was saying.

A more extraordinary case of sh.e.l.l shock was that of an officer lying about three beds down from me. In the usual course of events an R.A.M.C. corporal asked him his name.

"F----," he replied in a vague tone.

The corporal thought that he had better make certain, so with as polite a manner as possible looked at his identification disc.

"It puts Lt. B---- here," he said.