B00D2VJZ4G EBOK (37 page)

That evening we took in nearly 200 Australians who had been caught by gas shells without their masks on. Entirely whitened with dust, every man was temporarily blinded and in agony with the difficulty of breathing from the mucous fluid in the lungs. It was a weird sight to see them led away through the camp in the moonlight, in long single files, holding on to each other and guided by an orderly as leader.

As the days wore on, I began to feel my self-confidence returning, and that I should be able to face another ordeal with more equanimity. The friendliness and camaraderie of our little mess was an immense help: I was popular and enjoyed it like a schoolboy. I think they looked on me as an ‘old sport,’ and I had to live up to it.

It was not long before I was again put to the test. Our C.C.S. was ordered to take up quarters with two others in a huge deserted asylum close to Amiens, in expectation of the grand attack of the IV Army around Villers-Bretonneux, and for lack of transport we had not been able to complete our preparations before the attack began on the day after our arrival; nor had visiting teams, coming to our aid, yet arrived. On that evening our barrage opened – a continuous roar of heavy guns which shook the ground, and trembled the walls of our building, and the sky and fields were lit up with the flashes and explosions of dumps and star shells. In the early hours of the morning came the ambulances in a continuous stream. Quickly we took in our quota of 200 cases, and the ‘take-in’ was ‘shunted’ to the adjoining C.C.S. located in the same building, and within two hours to our third sister station. And then our turn began again, long before we had made any impression on the first lot.

The stretchers filled the numberless rooms, and then flowed out into the corridors, which became blocked except for a narrow passage. Every unit, except those engaged with the nine operating surgeons, was occupied in sorting, dressing, and doing what was possible for the masses of wounded, but the numbers were too great and many had to lie for hours without help, or die unattended. A quick surgeon might get through from fifteen to twenty cases in a spell of twelve hours. I certainly could not do more than ten or twelve.

Among so many cases it was a sickening thing to have to make a choice for operation. We were dealing with a mass, not individuals, and if selection had to be made, it must be made in favour of those who by operation had a chance of being made fit again to return to the Front sooner or later, to keep up our man power and afford fresh fodder for the guns.

In such circumstances, nothing seemed to matter. It had to be got through somehow. Action, doing one’s best, rightly or wrongly, mistakes or no mistakes, precluded all thought of self, and drove out fear and anxiety, and so I gained confidence as I tackled whatever came, along on the table, or went down the ‘pre-op’ rooms and chose out my cases – learning much from what I saw others were doing.

All that night and the following day, when the visiting teams began to arrive, we worked; night shifts took our places, and on the following morning, I went round the vast building to see what was happening. The wounded, including many Germans, had now overflowed from the rooms and corridors and were lying on stretchers in the open squares of the asylum. Through the night, with dimmed lanterns, doctors and orderlies went down the rows doing what they could, but we were snowed under – and we could neither operate on nor evacuate cases fast enough to make much impression on the heaps. Many of the Germans evidently dreaded they would meet with but rough treatment, and, unable to make themselves understood, clasped our hands and with imploring looks and despairing gestures tried to convey their meaning. Except for precedence in operation it is perhaps needless to say they were treated with the same care as our own men.

Entering an outbuilding, I found it strewn with rows of corpses – a human
battue
– and in another, a piled-up heap of arms and legs, freshly amputated. I write of these horrors, not for the sake of sensation, but to bring home the realities of war as I saw it, and the work and scenes in the three C.C.S.s behind the fighting. It took nearly a week before we had cleared up and evacuated the cases, and everyone was exhausted. It was clear that insufficient time had been given to the medical side to organize for the number of casualties that might be expected in a battle of this magnitude, and the exigencies of the fighting must have the first call on transport. It was probably unavoidable, but, the pity of it; and, after all, as old Caspar said, ‘It was a famous victory.’

A lull the fighting for a few days on our immediate front now ensued, and we had some rest, and I even went butterfly hunting, and on another day went up to the Front, and saw our guns firing, and heard the German shells coming over and bursting. I remember, too, one night we had to spend operating on a number of men, brought in dressed up for theatricals, some of them as girls in ballet costume. A German aeroplane had dropped a bomb through the tent on to the stage, and the tent had collapsed on top of the crowded audience and the dead and wounded.

It was these violent contrasts that, to me, make up the vivid memories of my days in France. Outside, the sun and the larks, the birds, butterflies, and flowers; inside the tents, Nature violated, outraged – and alternating with the dread and anxiety and physical and mental exhaustion was the happy mess and bridge, picnics, and concerts. It seemed hardly real at the time. It is fast becoming a dream, and, though I had many other experiences, as our C.C.S. followed the advance, at Albert and Brie and Peronne, Roiselle, and Bellenglise, none remain in my memory like those of my first ‘blooding’ at Cronay and Amiens, where I came so near to collapse and disaster.

John A. Hayward, M.D., F.R.C.S. 1914–1915, Assistant Surgeon (rank, Captain) British Red Cross Hospital, Netley. 1915–1917, Medical Officer, Queen Alexandra Hospital, Roehampton. April to November 1918, Temporary Captain R.A.M.C., B.E.F
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It was our third day ‘in.’ The front line was no longer well-made trenches – or trenches at all, in fact – but merely small ‘posts’ a few yards distant from each other, each holding about half a dozen men.

These ‘posts’ were actually strips of trench with a rather high parapet – open at the rear; made up with very little sand-bagging, protected in front with the usual rows of barbed-wire. The defences here had been made hurriedly: this, the region of the Lys Canal, had been the latest scene of German thrust. Thus we were on ground that had but lately been in civilian occupation, and still retained much of its peaceful country atmosphere, even trees were still standing.

I found myself in charge of a ‘post,’ some distance to the right of where the main road ran from St. Floris, Immediately behind our position was some rough ground, showing where, at later seasons, a little stream evidently ran, but which was now apparently only a ditch. All movement on this sector was impossible by day. ‘Jerry’ held slightly higher ground, but even he seemed content to rest after daybreak, for with the exception of his artillery at intermittent intervals and a very occasional burst of some machine gun, daylight to dusk was a period of peacefulness.

Just now we were very glad that the weather was in our favour. Some of us at least (though the battalion was mostly young kiddies, newly out from home) knew what it meant to carry on war in pouring rain and always mud – interminable mud.

Now after some weeks of hot, dry weather it was dust we were struggling with – at all costs, to keep it out of the rifle, even if it was impossible to keep it out of one’s mouth. Dust and grit had replaced slush! There always seemed to be one amongst us, at all times and all places even, who could give expression to our troubles, whatever they might be, and at the Front they were certainly pretty numerous. Surely we must have thrived on troubles! Such a fellow at this time was Bert. Bert had come to us from the Liverpool Scottish, I think it was. Anyway, he was anything but a dour Scot, and always reminded one of East London. Language was always unparliamentary with us. ‘Gor’ blimey’ was Bert’s preliminary, and its force had to be heard to be realized. That expressive opening always seemed to call for some attention.

‘Gor’ blimey,’ he would say. ‘Wonder what the ’ell they’d say to this lot at home. Blast, it’s dust all the bloody time. If you get a bit of ‘rooti’ to eat, it’s all dust while you eat it. When the stew comes up, it’s got a layer of blasted dust on it thicker than drippin’!’ Another voice broke in: ‘Yes, and how many times have we chivvied the ol ‘wife about a speck of something in the Sunday dinner.’ ‘Here, who’s that talking about Sunday dinners?’

‘Gor’ blimey! put a sock in it,’ was Bert’s reply of course.

What happened in this post on our third morning in was the prelude to the experience I shall relate here. We had seen dawn gradually break through – and yet no sign of the ration-men, who must be up before daybreak, in order to reach us safely. Someone said, ‘That’s b – it now! They’ll never get across that road once it gets light.’ Feeling that to be true, all eyes watch alternately the streaks of daylight above, and behind us the faint line of that strip of road that connects us with the supports. Uncovered road (and the only place with a movable ‘spider’ in the barbed wire that permits getting through) every inch of it ‘marked’ by a German gun, which opens at the slightest movement after daybreak. It is a bad spot, evidently covered by some ‘observation post’ on Jerry’s side. ‘Here they come, look!’ hushed voices – words almost unsaid. Inwardly one cheers up. Thank goodness the rations are coming up! Heads first appear indistinctly, then slightly clearer outlines: one carrying something that makes him appear dwarf-like in that half-light; the other, more upright, has something beside him. They seem to hesitate; they must be through the wire; they separate. Then the first one moves forward quicker, followed on his right by the dixie carrier. ‘Gor’ blimey! They’ll never get up here. Them bloody Jerries have got eyes like – ’awks on that roadway.’ Bert is always a fatalist, but we realize the truth in his expression. ‘Wonder what it is this morning?’ someone asks. ‘Stew – ’corse it is. We had ‘char’ last time up’ – the words are said briefly by men inwardly cold and hungry, yet tense with quiet excitement for the safety of the men carrying those rations, as well as concern for the anticipated meal.

‘Those blarsted cooks again, you can bet – keeping the carriers too late, or they’d have been here by now,’ and Bert spat vigorously. Evidently his mind was working savagely about cooks and field-kitchens. ‘Blimey! They’re moving, anyway. Jerry ain’t spotted them yet.’ Only one man ventured that remark; fear kept others silent – double fear – for pals and for rations, and yet we must stand here helpless and watch. Why were they so late – we wondered!

Only for a second did it seem that Jerry hadn’t seen them. ‘Zim-Boom,’ and a shell has burst only a few yards from the two figures, now being watched – watched more keenly than ever two runners on a sports-ground, or even two horses on a course. Two men burdened with our rations, yet even for sake of their own lives racing with time and death to reach the nearest post! They are our pals, too, and those damned cooks must have made them late getting away. Curse these wallahs behind the line; we forget that they are necessary to feed us; only now they are thought of as the cause of the danger in which our mates and our grub seemed doomed! We stand and watch – helpless to render any aid to those figures struggling over that ground about twenty yards away. And they cannot race for it – a dixie full of stew is, I suppose, the most awkward thing imaginable – certainly impossible to run with. They are quite clear now. Surely it’s got broad daylight in the last few seconds; yet, really its only half-light, but enough for some Jerry’s glasses to spot a movement on that road. Someone overstrung with the tense excitement of all of us who watch shouts, almost yells: ‘Run, Jock, run for Christ’s sake!’ just as one supposes he had yelled to some player on a football ground: ‘Go on, shoot! Shoot! Now!’ Then ‘Oh-h-h!’ in a cry of dismay from the crowd that the ball had gone wide perhaps – that is the sound now from us, as a second shell, ranged with greater precision, bursts almost in front of those two!

The platoon officer’s shouted order to us to ‘Keep down there!’ was half lost at that moment. The explosion cleared. There was only one man now, dragging a sack, he could be seen to rise from the ground. The other is gone, but that looks like a dixie there in the road – on its side! And how cold it is at dawn too! – we shiver and almost turn away in silence. There goes all hopes of ‘something hot,’ anyway, and we don’t speak about the carrier – yet. The voice of Bert, that had merely swore about cooks and those behind the line, broke the silence again and cursed now. ‘Bloody – cooks and all the – rest, what do they care? Wait till I – well, get out of this.’ It’s a decent mouthful, but we know Bert’s sentiments are right, and if we don’t all use those words we agree, and under those conditions out there we all become ‘Berts’ now and then. It did ease things a bit to have a good ‘blind’ about somebody.

‘Look! That’s ‘Chunky’!’ and we turn to see someone climb out from the post on our left and race madly towards the man with the sack coming on, but slowly. Another shell bursts, full in the road again, but just a little too far back. Involuntarily some of us have ducked – it became sheer habit out there. When we look up again, ‘Chunky’ has reached the other and together they are covering the last few yards like mad, carrying the sack between them. Yes, they’re there. We only see two bodies disappear unto the nearest post, and someone voices ‘Good old Chunky.’

We learnt afterwards why the ration carriers were late starting back out there. One of them has doubtless ‘Gone West,’ the other slightly wounded in the leg. It is lighter now. There’s something lying doubled up in the road, and the stew dixie is quite clear – mocking us as it lays empty on its side. The ration sack ‘caught’ a lump of shrapnel, and two loaves are now lying out there somewhere too – so near – yet not one of us dare risk life to get them until dark! For twelve hours at least, more probably eighteen, we must ‘carry on’ with what has reached us, bully, some cheese (mostly broken), jam, biscuits, and a loaf between six of us. Nothing hot! – nothing to drink at all, and yet they tell us how they had to wait in Blighty for hours, perhaps, to get their rations of butter or meat! And the bread was half-black they say! So we must carry on another day, and only hope that the carriers are sent off early enough to reach us safely next time.