A surgeon in khaki

Our Field Ambulance headquarters at the Château-farm of Mont de Soissons was occupied by us till October. During this time our army was fighting hard. Most of the days were rainy, and the trenches on the other side of the river suffered from this. To our right was Braisne on the river, and to our far right was Reims. To our left was Soissons—about eight miles away. We were about fifty-eight miles from Paris.

Our billet was a good one. Imagine a huge hollow square surrounded by stone buildings, and the square itself filled with an enormous manure heap. One side of the square was taken up by the two-storied old stone building containing kitchen, hall, sleeping-rooms, and offices. Stables for sheep, cows, and horses formed two sides. The fourth side was a truly beautiful and artistic one. It was formed by a wonderful old chapel, and remains of what was part of the refectory and cellars of a monastery. These buildings were in a splendid state of preservation, and were now used to hold straw and cattle fodder. The chapel had been built by the Knights Templars, and was in its day a place of renown. It is indeed a pity that such historic buildings are so neglected and forgotten. In the lofts of the dwelling-house and in a shed outside we put our sick and wounded men. In a bedroom downstairs we put the wounded officers. We were principally concerned at this time in the transportation of sick and wounded to railhead. Although we were at headquarters of an ambulance, no preparation or effort was made for any special treatment. Very few of our cases remained more than twelve to twenty-four hours. Motor lorries arrived at Mont de Soissons every morning, and on these our men piled straw and placed the men, covering all with a huge tarpaulin cover raised tent fashion on upright sticks. This method of transporting wounded was crude and brutal. There were no motor ambulances at this time. The first motor ambulance arrived after we had been ten days at Mont de Soissons. Why motor ambulances were not with us from the beginning of the war is a question which the Army Medical Department will have to answer when the war is over, and the necessary public washing-day arrives.

Several wounded men and officers died at Mont de Soissons and were buried in the garden alongside a stone wall. Wooden crosses mark each grave-head, and two of them have stone crosses erected and engraved by one of our orderlies. And the women of the house and neighbourhood attend to the graves, and place flowers on them. It is beautiful to see how reverently the French women look after our soldiers’ graves. The old lady—the owner of this farm-château—has the names and dates of burial of all officers and men interred in this garden, and the relatives of these dead heroes will be able one day to visit this quiet corner of a garden in France and will see how beautifully the graves have been tended by the simple, kindly French peasant women.

Our life at this place was full of interest. In front of us were our own batteries, behind the ridge; then beyond was the river, and beyond that our advanced troops in the trenches. To our left, the French occupied Soissons. The French artillery was continually in action, pounding on every day sans cesse and generally also through the night, and it was excellent and well served; but our guns were silent most of the day. At eleven o’clock in the morning they would open up and leisurely plunge their shot across the valley at Fort Condé for half an hour; then remain silent till four or five in the evening, when another bombardment would commence and continue till dark.

Occasionally they seemed to wake up and become very angry, and on these occasions would bark and roar and screech for a couple of hours. The Germans never refused an artillery duel, and when our batteries seemed to wake up the Germans did too, and hurtled across their shot at a tremendous pace. The Germans at this time wasted an enormous lot of ammunition, but they nevertheless were extraordinarily formidable and effective with this arm. There was a small embankment outside our farmhouse, and this was a box seat de luxe every afternoon from four till half-past six o’clock. On our right, stretching on to Reims, and on our left towards Soissons, the artillery, German, French, and British, was then at its best. Sometimes the sound would be deafening all along the line, sometimes it would concentrate itself in our particular corner. Directly opposite us, on the far side of the river at Fort Condé, the Germans had a very strong artillery position. Their guns there outranged ours at first, and used on fine evenings, at the usual concert hour, to give us some splendid exhibitions. First would come one shot to the right, and then one to the left. Then four flashes of yellow flame followed by huge cascades of earth would appear to strike the same spot, and a few seconds after the dub-dub-dub-dub of the explosions would reverberate and re-echo across the hills and valleys. They would sometimes pick out one particular area of ground on our front and simply cover every yard of it with bursting shells. At other times they would plant a line of shells right across a particular place. Again they seemed sometimes to go “shell mad,” and would wildly send shells to all points of the compass. In the darkness of an autumn night the bursting of the shells was a terribly magnificent sight. We could see our shells, and especially the French shells, burst over the German positions. The French artillery always excited our admiration. The great guns, the men, the rapidity of fire, the noise, and the terrible bursting charges were all wonderful. No wonder France is proud of her big guns and her splendid gunners.

About ten o’clock in the mornings we frequently were surveyed by Taubes. Many of them were most daring. They were always pursued by our men and the French; and wonderful pursuits and flights were witnessed. Two of our aeroplanes often started together after a Taube. One would fly directly for the enemy craft, and one would circle into the upper blue and try to get above it. We were told that they used to fire at one another with carbines, but we never could hear the shots or see any smoke. The Taube always made off. Sometimes a Taube would be up alone, and after hovering and circling over our gun positions would make a sudden dash to directly above a battery, drop a smoke signal, and fly away; this signal would be rapidly followed by some German shelling. The greatest spectacular effect of all was to watch the German shots from their anti-aircraft guns bursting round our aeroplanes. It was like pelting a butterfly with snowballs. We could see the burst and flash long before the sound reached us. The bursts produced white and black smoke balls, the black one appearing a little higher and later than the white. The white smoke balls unrolled themselves into a curious shape, very like a big German pipe. There was a huge bulb and a long, curling, thick stem. We stood often with “our hearts in our mouths” expecting that one of our daring flyers had been hit. Smoke-bursts would appear below, above, and round the craft, and then one shot would seem to actually hit it. But no; a minute afterwards we could make out the little machine flying higher or emerging swaggeringly from the midst. We watched our own bursts round a Taube with a different spirit, waiting eagerly for the coup de grâce, and having no humane thoughts for the daring pilot. One afternoon we were certain that a Taube had been struck, for one burst appeared to be right on, but when the smoke cleared away the Taube was still going merrily. Then it began to slowly descend, then ascend again, and then suddenly plane away to our right. From the last shot she really had “got it in the neck,” as Tommy Atkins puts it, and the machine plunged down behind the French lines. The pilot was killed, the observer got a fractured spine, and was dragged out of the wreckage—paralysed.

On the 19th September, orders from General French were read out congratulating the British troops upon their valour and tenacity at the Marne, and commending their courage on the Aisne. We were assured that by holding on to our present positions the enemy would be forced to retire.

On one Sunday, service was conducted by Monsignor, our Catholic chaplain, for Catholic soldiers, in one of the stable lofts at the farm. The preacher and the men had to climb up a ladder placed on the outside of the building, and get into the loft through a small door. The ladder was a crazy affair, but Monsignor tested it by going up first. He was a light-weight and very active, but a burly Falstaffian sergeant looked very hesitatingly at it, and it certainly creaked and bent considerably as he slowly mounted. The loft was packed with men, and we heard afterwards that the floor was not meant for a heavy weight. We were relieved to learn that there were no casualties at the service, and that Monsignor and his flock had not gone through the floor and startled the horses underneath.

I spent one forenoon in an advanced artillery observation post, and tried to make out the German positions through a telescope. We could make out some white waggons moving on a road far off, but they were out of range. The observation officer got to his post by walking up a cutting and then crawling into a hole, and there he stood for hour after hour patiently watching the other lines, while his sergeant sat close by, well concealed, and with a telephone receiver over his head. Any observations of importance were ’phoned back to the battery. These observation posts were dangerous “spots,” for they were well within the reach of enemy shells and afforded very little cover. The observation officer here was an enthusiast, and I think he was familiar with the outline of every tree and rock on the other side. It requires some practice to be really expert with a telescope. General officers occasionally came up to talk to our observer and peer at the opposite ridge. I met this artillery observation officer later on in the north of France, and this time he was a patient in hospital with a scalp wound. He had been in a house well in advance of our own advanced line, and had made a small hole in the roof through which he obtained a good view of the enemy dispositions, and directed the fire of his battery. The German is a wily man, and evidently did not like the position of this house, for he shelled it out of existence. I was glad that the major got out with nothing more than a scalp wound, for good artillerists are worth much to our army to-day. Our artillery officers seem to enjoy war more than any other branch of the service. This major told me that one day his own and a French battery got fairly on to a German battery that had done considerable damage. The Allied guns destroyed the Germans, and the French were frantically delighted, their colonel coming over and warmly embracing Major X—— and kissing him on both cheeks. We told the major that he was a certain starter for the Legion of Honour. The major was a happy man when he was standing in a hole, or peering round a piece of rock, telescope to eye, and a sergeant lying near him with a telephone receiver strapped on his head.

One afternoon on the Aisne we heard that the Norfolks, who were in the trenches on our front, were hugely delighted. They had just killed a sniper. This particular sniper had become notorious, for he was a dead shot and had hit many of the Norfolk boys. Owing to the vigilance of this particular sniper they could not get hot tea into the trenches, and several of the Norfolk “Bisleys” were keenly anxious to bag him. One day a tree was observed to rustle after a sniping shot, and at once the Norfolks sent a hail of bullets into that particular tree. This brought the man down, for winged by Norfolk bullets the arboreal Prussian fell out of the branches like a ripe acorn, amidst the cheers of the men in the trenches.

It was said that these snipers on the Aisne belonged to the Forest Guards, who were rangers in the Imperial forests of Eastern Prussia, and were dead shots, accustomed all their lives to shoot wild pigs and wolves. They were highly unpopular amongst our men.

Sniping is quite in accordance with the rules of war, but the soldiers feel that sniping as the Germans play it is not “cricket.” They naturally feel very angry with a sniper who gets up a haystack with some provisions and ammunition, and after having eaten all his food and fired off all his cartridges calmly emerges and surrenders.

Our men are extraordinarily good to wounded Germans and to prisoners, but these sniping sneaks stir their venom and ire. I saw one of these surrendered uninjured snipers at Ypres meet with savage scowls and epithets from some men of a company whose officer had been killed by him that morning.

About the last week of September I brought over some motor ambulances full of sick men to Braisne. This charming little town, situated on the Aisne and on the Marne Canal, was full of ambulances and clearing hospitals. Every house almost had a red-cross flag up, for the place was crammed with sick and wounded, and the clearing hospitals had been very busy with the big casualties. Three doctors had been killed a few days previously at Vailly when in action with their regiments, and another doctor had died the next day after having had his leg amputated for a bad shell wound. He was awarded the V.C., but did not live to enjoy that signal honour and distinction.

The clearing hospitals and ambulances were sending large numbers of sick soldiers down to the base en route for England—mostly cases of dysentery, lumbago, and rheumatism. Many of these men looked bad wrecks, and no wonder, when one remembers the rapid, arduous retreat from Mons and Le Cateau in the broiling summer heat, followed by the hard fighting and marching in the rain from the Marne to the Aisne, and how this was succeeded by the hardships, miseries, and discomforts in the wet sodden trenches at a time when it was impossible to give them hot cooked food and sufficient warmth. More men were wanted, and until they arrived the few had to do the work of many. The 5th Division had been promised a rest in reserve to recuperate, but not a man could be spared from the line we were so hardly holding, and so they simply had to “plug on,” and, as cheerfully as they could, sing “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary”; but they did not sing much at this time.

While we were at Mont de Soissons and a week after the arrival of our first red-cross motor ambulances, we were given instructions to look out for a mysterious red-cross motor-car driven by an officer in khaki who had a beard and wore a red-cross brassard on his arm. This car seemed to be very busy and was constantly travelling up and down the roads and always at high speed—too high a speed to be challenged. Sitting at the front of the car and next the driver was a nurse, dressed in nurse’s uniform, wearing a white cap, and also with a red-cross brassard on the left arm. We smelt something fishy about it all. Firstly, none of our medical officers wore beards; secondly, medical officers did not drive motor ambulances about; thirdly, there were no nurses with us. Nurses are not allowed in the fighting line. We watched for this car always, and always wondered what we would do if we did sight it, for none of us had arms, and this villain with the beard would be sure to have a loaded six-shooter near at hand. Two days after our warning the car was spotted by a sentry, who challenged, but the driver went furiously past him. He was not out of the bush though, for a barricade had been erected half-way across the road at a very sharp turn, and to get round this the car had to slow down to “dead slow.” A British sentry was here, and other soldiers were standing not far away. The bearded driver was ordered to stop and get out under cover of the sentry’s rifle. The guard came up and the two motorists were arrested.

The man with the beard was a German spy right through, and he was handed over to the French, who shot him at daybreak next day. They say he died very gamely.

The “nurse” who sat beside him was not shot. We were told that “she” was really a man, a dapper little German waiter who had been on the staff of a leading hotel in Paris for some years. I saw the man with the beard shortly after he was arrested. He looked quiet and scholarly and somewhat meek, but “still waters run deep.”

At 4 a.m. on the 27th of September we were all “turned out” by our O.C., who had just received urgent orders to be prepared to leave Mont de Soissons as the Germans “were over the river.” After standing by for two hours we got word that it was a false alarm. Something had been irritating the Germans this morning, for at daybreak they opened a furious fire on our positions. As far as we knew it wasn’t the Kaiser’s birthday or the anniversary of any prehistoric German victory, so we put it down to nerves. Their gunners made a dead set on a field in our front just behind the ridge along the Aisne. Hundreds of Black Marias and shrapnel were sent on to that unlucky piece of ground, and it was wonderful to see the shot-ridden earth sent up in huge volcanic bursts. The enemy thought that we had a battery there, but we hadn’t one nearer than half a mile, hence our enjoyment of the spectacle.

On the afternoon of this day we heard that Mr. Winston Churchill was with us and was dining with the Scots Greys. At least that was the rumour, but we hardly believed anything we heard out here. He was reported to have said that the war would last another eighteen months. This piece of information, following on an early morning’s alarm and in cold wet weather, was distinctly cheering! However, as a kind of set-off, in the late afternoon we heard that the Crown Prince had been buried again, this time in the Argonne, and that it had been authentically established that he was quite dead before having been buried. We were glad to know this, because on the other occasions when he had been buried, he had not really been quite dead.

We were at this period suffering from the effects of a dislocated postal system. I had not yet received any letters from England, and did not know if mine had reached there. We were all anxious to get the London papers to “see how we were getting on at the front.” We knew what was going on around us, but knew nothing more. One medical officer returned from Braisne, told us that he had heard a great rumour there. We were all agog to hear it. After whetting our appetites he gravely told us that a Padre had informed him that, “All Europe was in the melting pot and the devil was stirring the broth.” This officer was duly punished by having his rum ration cut off.

One day on the Aisne I was an interested listener to a discussion between two British officers and three French officers on national characteristics, and this led up to a review of the way that the British, French, and German charge with the bayonet.

The French charge magnificently with the bayonet, but they charge in a state of tremendous excitement. When rushing across an open space to the enemy they shout and scream with excitement, “France!” “A bas les Boches!” “En avant!” They are uplifted with the wild ecstasy of the onfall. Men fall in the mad rush never to rise again. N’importe—all is unnoticed, on they go, an impetuous and irresistible avalanche of steel, yelling, stabbing, slaying, overwhelming. They are superb, these Frenchmen. I have seen them charge, and know from what I saw the splendid fellows they are. In the Argonne, on the Aisne, and in Flanders, the French soldier has carried out as resolute and daring bayonet charges as ever his fathers did under Napoleon, when they stormed the bridge at Lodi, swept over the field of Marengo, and hacked their bloody path at Austerlitz.

The British charge stoically and more grimly. They do not shout. I have heard them cursing. The British line advances as a sinister cold line of steel, in a sort of jog-trot. It is a line of cool-brained gladiators, alert of eye and thoroughly bent on slaughter. Our Briton sees his foe, and smites savagely with the calculating judgment of a good Rugby forward and with the bound of a wild cat. The disciplined valour and the savage relentlessness of the British bayonet attack has been heralded in story from Malplaquet to Waterloo, from Badajos to Inkermann, and historians will chronicle the undying glory of the 7th Division at Ypres when with rifle and bayonet it held the gate to Calais.

The German, in spite of what is often said to the contrary, is a brave and determined man with the bayonet. The German discipline is undoubted. It is a part of the people. It is the fibre of the nation. Discipline, subjection to authority, has not to be taught to this people; it is absorbed into their very being. The discipline of mind and body as we understand it is not the discipline of the German, for his is an obedience to authority only,—a “go” when ordered to “go,” a “come” when ordered to “come.” But it is also a DIE when ordered to face certain death. Men with whom this discipline is a message may not make saints or pleasant companions, but do make sturdy foes and stubborn fighters.

They charge well, advancing with a stooping, jerky trot, uttering hoarse guttural cries and “Hurrahs.” On they come, in solid masses shoulder to shoulder, hoping by the weight and speed of the dense columns to get a momentum that nothing can withstand. When in a solid compact phalanx this German charge is very dangerous and formidable, and has been able, although at a frightful cost, to brush aside and overwhelm veteran British and French troops.

But if this compact line and solid column is broken, as it so often is to-day by shrapnel, rifle, or machine-gun fire, the sense of cohesion or “shoulder to shoulder” support is lost, and the heavy column is then no match for the lightning bayonet onfall of the French infantry or the weighty heave forward of a British regiment. The German infantryman is not an “individual” fighter, but he is nevertheless a brave soldier, and knows how to meet death. All three peoples have a great respect for each other when it comes to close quarters and take no chances.

A curious feature of French bayonet charges was told me by a French officer. He said that if the daily dispatches were read carefully it would be noticed that the Germans, when they attacked the French, generally made them vacate the first trench, but that the French always counter-attacked, retook their own, and carried the charge on into the German lines. He said that the Frenchmen are very easily surprised and are only at their best when they know what they are up against and what they have to do. They also require at times to be worked up to the “fire” of the business, and that this was specially true of younger troops. The officers know this, and when their men fall back from the front trench, they get them together, tell them that they must go forward again,—that France is watching them, that the cursed German has his foot in beautiful France, that the sons of the men of Jena and Wagram must still show their metal; then drawing his sword, and with “En avant, mes enfants,” the officer leads forward, followed by his cheering men, and they are at these times irresistible.

There is a story told at the front of a famous Scottish regiment whose deeds have won admiration in nearly every battle in English history, which occupied some advanced trenches. The Germans rushed them in overwhelming numbers and drove them out with the bayonet. Another regiment, composed almost entirely of little Cockneys, was called up in support, and gallantly rushing forward drove out the Germans and took many prisoners. They then told the brawny Scotchmen that they could go back to their trenches again and if they felt anxious at any time the M—— boys from London would be only too pleased to come back and comfort them. Some weeks afterwards the Kilties helped the Cockneys out of a hot corner, so the odds are now even.

Talking of bayonet charges leads up to bayonet wounds. It is a curious fact, well noted amongst surgeons at the front, that there are very few bayonet wounds to treat. Yet bayonet charges are constantly taking place, and very bloody mêlées they are.

Where are these men who have been speared by the bayonet? The majority are dead, for the bayonet when it gets home is a lethal weapon. When it pierces the chest or abdomen it, as a rule, reaches a big artery; a rapid hæmorrhage follows, and death comes speedily.

The majority of bayonet wounds are in the chest and abdomen, and ghastly terrible wounds they are. After the Bavarians and Prussians were hurled back at Ypres and La Bassée there were comparatively few bayonet wounds. Amongst the vast number of wounded men in the Clearing Hospital at Bethune I had personally to treat only one or two cases of bayonet wounds. These were, as a rule, simple flesh wounds, and were the lucky exceptions amongst the bayonet victims.

This feature about bayonet wounds was also noted by Larrey, the surgeon-in-chief to Napoleon during the great Continental wars, by M’Grigor, surgeon-in-chief to Wellington in the Peninsula, and by surgical observers at a later period during the Crimean War. A war correspondent in the Crimea wrote that a man who has been bayoneted dies in great pain, that his body and limbs are twisted and contorted by the last agonised movements preceding death. This belief is fallacious. Men who die speedily from a sudden loss of blood die easily and quietly. They go to sleep.

The German bayonet is longer, broader, and heavier than that of the Allies. The French bayonet is not a blade, but is shaped like a spear or stiletto. The British bayonet is a blade, short and light. It is not, however, the blade or the stiletto, it is the man behind that counts.

I mentioned before that our sick and wounded were housed in a loft of the farm-château of Mont de Soissons and in a shed outside. This shed or lean-to was a most uninviting place for the sick. One side was formed by a stone wall, from the top of that a roof projected, and this roof was held up by wooden pillars. There was no floor and there were no other walls. It was quite open to every wind that blew, except for the protection of the stone wall and the roof. Straw was laid on the ground of this lean-to and this straw, owing to the constant rain and the very muddy, filthy state of the roads and yards round about, got very sodden at times. New straw was then put on top of this old straw—that was all. It wasn’t very much, truly. Yet badly wounded men were brought in in large numbers from the trenches and kept lying on this sodden straw for hours, and in some cases for a whole day and night. If the wounded man arrived after eleven o’clock in the morning he had to put up with a night on the straw in this lean-to. If the man was sick from one of the usual diseases prevalent at this time—lumbago, rheumatism, and sciatica—he was led up to the loft in the main house. If he had a slight wound he was also led up to this place, but if he had a compound fracture or an abdominal injury it was necessary to carry him up on a stretcher, and the stair up to the loft was so narrow that the task was an extremely difficult one, and full of pain and misery to the patient. The loft was a draughty hole and not fit to accommodate a sick mountain goat. But it was a Buckingham Palace to the Whitechapel lean-to on the stone wall outside. Yet on this dirty sodden straw I have dressed foul, septic compound fractures, have elevated a fragment of loose bone pressing on a man’s brain, and have stood by men dying from gas gangrene, and from pneumonia due to exposure from lying out in the rain and cold after having been wounded. And every time I saw men lying out in that open shed I have asked, “Why have we not motor ambulances at the front?” Every morning empty lorries returning from distributing their supplies at the front called in at Mont de Soissons and took our wounded down to railhead; and this method of transportation of the wounded was one of the horrors of war. Our wounded and sick did not arrive according to any time-table, and if they arrived at midday or in the afternoon or evening, they had, willy-nilly, to be accommodated at the château-farm, and the only accommodation we could offer was the windy, inhospitable loft or the straw-covered lean-to outside. If we had had motor ambulances all of this would have been avoided. Then the patients would not have had to be sent to our headquarters at all, but could have been carried to railhead at once. Why did we not have motor ambulances at the outset of war? God knows. Had anyone asked me five years ago what was the best way of transporting a wounded or sick man with an army in the field, I would have answered at once, “By motor ambulance, of course.”

If a man is wounded in the streets of London or any other city in the civilised world he is conveyed to the nearest hospital by an ambulance motor-car. When the Army Service Corps had to arrange its transport for this war, they naturally thought of nothing else than motor traction. Yet in spite of the lessons of army manœuvres in this country, and of the dictates of reason, our Army Medical Department sent Field Ambulances to the front with the old horse-ambulance of the days of Napoleon and Wellington, and did not have a solitary motor ambulance where they were so vitally necessary. The position was so odd and incomprehensible that I wrote about it to Lord ——, who, I knew, would look at the matter from the view-point of common sense and humanity. Lord —— has a great name in the Empire, and has been one of the best and ablest of governors of one of our Dominions beyond the seas. I knew that if I wrote to him, and he chose to act as I was sure he would, something would occur. I did not, owing to army postal delays, get his answer till long after, and it was worded as follows (allowing for considerable deletions of some parts of it, and for names):

“My Dear Martin,—I received your letter in London on Wednesday night. Within half an hour of its arrival I hunted up Mr. ——. I found him in a state of great indignation because of the obstacles put in the way of —— giving the assistance they desire to the wounded at the Front. I understand, however, that sixty motor ambulances will be ready on Wednesday next, and that further ambulances will be provided later. Your letter has been read by Lord Kitchener. It arrived at an opportune moment, when the great want of motor ambulances at the Front was being realised here. I hope that even before you receive this letter the scandal which makes you so righteously indignant may have been removed and that proper arrangements are now in successful operation for the treatment of the wounded.

“Please let me hear from you from time to time how things are going, and always remember that I shall be more than pleased if I can give you the slightest assistance in getting those things done which you may think necessary.—Believe me, yours sincerely,

“——.”

Shortly after this, motor ambulances appeared, and the position eased, to the infinite and lasting benefit of our wounded officers and men. I still, however, often wonder why motor ambulances were not landed in France with the other motor vehicles when our Expeditionary Army disembarked. Many lives would have been saved, and much suffering would have been avoided.