A surgeon in khaki

At the end of November our ambulance was ordered to St. Jans Capelle. We were not sorry to leave our house, with its evil pond and manure heap, and the voice of Madame.

Madame, by the way, was very amiable when we told her that we were to leave. She did not say that she was sorry, but she no longer screeched at our cooks or railed at our men for eating her straw. Just as our ambulance was about to move off, and Madame stood at the door with the first approach to a frosty smile that we had ever seen on her face, a French sergeant and ten men of a balloon section arrived. The sergeant had a lump of chalk in his hand and scrawled on the door, “Ballon. 3 sous Officiers. Hommes x.” He brusquely informed Madame that the quarters just vacated by us were to be at once taken by his balloon section. Madame raged and raved, but the sergeant was imperturbable, and suddenly quietened Madame by saying that if she objected very much he would begin to think that she was a German spy. The sergeant told us that as a matter of fact they were not satisfied about Madame’s husband’s patriotism. We knew that Madame and her sulky husband would now have a much worse time than when we occupied the house, for at least we tried to give little trouble, and lavishly paid for any vegetables, milk, or food that we got from the farmer. The French insist on the “articles of war,” and when they occupy a house they really do occupy it and make themselves very much at home.

This mention of Madame’s husband being of doubtful honesty, reminded us of a curious incident that occurred early in our stay at this place. There was another farm close to the one we occupied, and this farm was owned by a man who, we were told, was a cousin of “Monsieur our farmer.” At this house a man was stopping who said that he was a refugee from Ypres. He told us that he was a baker from Boston, United States of America, and that he and his wife, who were Belgians, had been visiting their native country when war broke out. He said that his wife and two children were in Brussels when the Germans occupied the city, and that he himself was stopping with a friend in Ypres when the Germans first bombarded it; he then left Ypres and came to stop at this farmer’s house. This man used to walk every day along a road which passed behind some French batteries of 75 mm., but one day he did not come back. We asked his farmer friend what had become of him, and he said that he had left to go to America. We thought the circumstance odd at the time, and when our sergeant told us about Madame’s husband being under suspicion we asked him if he knew anything about this other man, the Boston baker. He said that he did, for he had seen the fellow arrested and sent back to be tried for spying. That perhaps explained why Madame did not like us, and why her vituperation and objections were suddenly silenced when the French balloon sergeant talked about German spies.

After leaving the inhospitable cottage-headquarters, our ambulance had a long day’s trek over the Belgian frontier to St. Jans Capelle. This place was close to Bailleul. We put our men into billets near at hand and got quarters for ourselves in the Convent, where the sisters gave us a big dormitory full of clean white beds with blankets and sheets. This was indeed luxury after all our roughing times from the Marne till now. We were always perfectly willing to undergo inconvenience and hardships, but none of us ever missed an opportunity of availing himself of the luxuries and amenities of civilisation whenever they presented themselves. We had the fine front room of the Convent for a dining- and sitting-room, and, greatest boon of all, a fire to sit round. The cold was intense at this time, and the whole country was frozen hard in snow and ice. This was the period when frostbite was so terrible to our men in the trenches, and the Clearing Hospitals and Ambulance Stations were so busy treating the frozen men.

It was found necessary to relieve frequently the freezing soldiers in the advanced trenches, and every three days they were allowed out from the terrible mud ditches, with death on the parapet and frostbite at the bottom.

Braziers of burning charcoal were put into the trenches, but were found to be ineffective and harmful to the feet. The people of England did magnificent work in sending out gum boots, skin overcoats, and protectives of all sort, but in spite of all that was done the frostbite incapacitated many men. The recoveries were always slow, and could not be effected at the front, so all these limping men were sent back to England for rest and change. Many methods of treatment were tried for the frostbite, but time alone seemed to be the chief curative factor. In some cases the feet were swollen, and small bloody exudates could be seen under the big toe and the outer side of the foot where the boot pressed. Sometimes the skin was broken and ulcers formed at the site. In other cases toes became completely gangrenous or dead. The feet were rubbed and massaged with various oils and swathed in cotton wool, but wrapping in wool aggravated the suffering, and the men felt much more relief when the feet were left exposed. The worst time for the cold-feet men was from one o’clock to three in the morning. They would often go off to sleep peacefully, but would wake up at these hours suffering excruciating pain in their feet and calves and up the spine. Nothing would relieve this pain but hypodermic injections of morphia. One officer described his state to me, and said that he had been standing in a trench in mud over his boot-tops. At first his feet felt very cold, and he tried to warm them by stamping, but this method of exercise was too sloppy. Then sensation seemed to go and he felt quite comfortable, because although his feet felt very heavy they did not feel cold, only dead. On the fifth day he could hardly walk and had to be helped out of the trenches. He was unable to walk to the ambulance, a short way back, and the feet were found to be so swollen in hospital that the boots had to be cut off. Then the worst time of all came on, for as the circulation gradually returned he suffered diabolical pain in his feet and calves, and this pain was always worst in the early mornings. Eight weeks after having been lifted out of the trench he was still limping about with two sticks, and was making a normal but very slow recovery.

This officer told me that one night the men in his trenches were ordered out to make a bayonet attack, but half of them were in such a condition that they could not crawl out of the trench. Fortunately the Germans were pushed back by those who could, otherwise the poor devils left behind would have been captured or killed.

The Indians round the Bethune district suffered very severely from the frostbite, and these poor men deserved our greatest sympathy during this period, trying and terrible enough to men reared in a fairly rigorous climate like that of England or Scotland. The misery of the life to men who had never lived out of tropical India was enough to wear down any but the stoutest hearts. History will give due credit and praise to these Indians, that they rose superior to their environment and soon proved what sterling good soldiers they are. I visited at an Indian Clearing Hospital the first lot of casualties from the M—— Division. This Clearing Hospital took over the École Jules Ferry at Bethune, and occupied it for a few weeks after our Clearing Hospital had vacated it. The doctors belonged to the Indian Medical Service, and the native Indian doctors belonging to the subordinate medical service acted under the white doctors. Some temporary lieutenants of the Royal Army Medical Corps were also on the staff.

The dusky warriors were arriving in scores, brought in on motor ambulances, and very woeful they looked, covered with mud and bloody bandages. They had not been long at the front, and their first experience of modern war was a very desperate ordeal.

The night was dark and gloomy and a heavy rain was soaking the countryside. The mud-splashed cars dashed into the dripping courtyard, fitfully lit up by the sombre gleams of smoky lanterns tied to posts. Round about were the dark-faced bearers ready to help out the wounded. Those who could walk got out of the ambulances themselves and the stretcher cases were taken out by the bearers. The scene on this night impressed one with the far-reaching character of this war, for here were men from the central plains of India, the far-off frontiers and the slopes of the Himalayas, gathered together in a muddy, marshy region of France, and wounded in trying to hold a line of ditches against the most determined and scientific fighting men of Europe.

One swarthy Sikh with a fine beard was asked what he thought of the war.

“Sahib, it is a very good war. It is a man’s war. The old men, the women, and the children are in the villages. The warriors are out fighting. It is very good.” This optimist had got through with a slight wound of the right hand, and perhaps that accounted for his cheery outlook. Most of the wounded on that night looked as if they would have been better pleased to be with “the old men, the women, and the children in the villages.”

There is no doubt that the Indians are pleased to be fighting alongside us in this “good war,” but they have a respect for the German because he is a fierce fighter, and perhaps also because of his ruthlessness, an attitude which appeals to the Oriental mind.

The Gurkha is a funny little man and a swashbuckler. His small sturdy frame, his slanting, watchful eyes with the glint of the devil in them, his bandolier, rifle, and deadly kukri, with its broad razor-edged blade, make up a picture of force and fighting cunning.

Plaster this man with thick mud, put a bloody bandage round his head, and place him in a dimly lit corner of a dripping court on a dark, rainy night, then indeed he looks a breathing symbol of murder and imminent destruction. When the Gurkha is out “on the job” at night, prowling far from his trenches and within the enemy lines, with no weapon but his broad, sharp knife and with a mind intent on slaying, he is a formidable and fearsome adversary.

At first our Indian troops found it difficult to accustom themselves to the novel form of war in wet, cold trenches, a bad climate, and with every surrounding strange and inhospitable. The loss of their British officers and native non-commissioned officers was at first very heavy, and this discouraged the men, who look so much to their officers who know their language and understand them. But these brave fellows soon “found themselves,” and have since those dark October days proved again and again that when the call comes they can be relied upon to fight with as much determination as ever they have done in the past. An experienced British officer of a native regiment told me that what the Indians missed very much in France was opium. He said that the Indian had always been accustomed to his opium in India, that he did not take much, but really was the better for a little. He took it in small quantity as a soporific stimulant, just as our grandfathers took snuff, and he assured me that when the Indians had to meet the hellish conditions of modern war at the front last winter a little opium to each man would have meant a great deal. In this I cordially agree with him, for the medicinal and stimulant effects of small doses of opium are undoubted.

The question of feeding our Indian soldiers was a difficult one, and required very careful handling. An old Sikh was wounded near Bethune and was taken to the British Clearing Hospital. He refused to take anything but biscuits and water. Fortunately we were able to remove the old ritualist to the native Clearing Hospital, otherwise we would have been at an impasse.

Amongst both Hindoos and Mohammedans the caste prejudices and ritualistic ceremonies must be remembered and observed in the providing and killing of animals for consumption. The French also have native troops with them and have the same difficulties to overcome, and this helps us considerably in arranging a joint commissariat scheme. A Sikh soldier will not eat a sheep killed in the Mohammedan method by cutting its throat, and the Mohammedan soldier will not eat a sheep killed in the Sikh method by a slashing stroke on the back of the neck. So there you are. These things do not seem to be very important, but they are important all the same. Ask the Jew who refuses the unclean pork, and the good Churchman who refuses meat on Fridays.

The following story, which I heard at the front, illustrates the accommodating nature of the Gurkha. When his regiments were embarking on the transports at an Indian port, the point arose whether he would eat frozen mutton. The British officers agreed to let the matter be solved by the men. So they called up the Subadar, who, after a little wrinkling of the eyebrow, said, “I think, Sahib, the regiment will be willing to eat the iced sheep provided one of them is always present to see the animal frozen to death.”

In Rouen there is an encampment for goats for the Indians, and we were told that these goats were good mountain fellows from the Pyrenees. Four Indians, under the charge of an old, venerable, long-bearded native, used to drive them from their encampment to the Indian convalescent dépôt about two miles outside the city.

The goats, in spite of the shouting and rushing about of the drivers, would not keep their ranks and dress by the right in marching through Normandy’s capital city. The delight of the French people, who always turned up in crowds to see the goats march past, passed all bounds when one would make a wild dash up a side street, hotly pursued by an irate turbaned Indian. Another source of great joy was to see the goats march slowly along the train line and hold up the train traffic.

The Indians were always of absorbing interest to the French, and crowds of men and women would walk on a fine afternoon from the city to the Indian dépôt camp for convalescents to see our brown-faced fighting men.

On one winter day in Rouen, just after a heavy fall of snow, a company of French soldiers under a non-commissioned officer was marching past the Indian encampment. The Indians lined up the fence alongside the road and bombarded the French with a rapid fire of snowballs. The French looked surprised, and, forgetting discipline but still keeping their ranks, poured a heavy fusillade of snowballs on the men of India. The incident is illustrative of the good feeling that exists between the French and their Indian allies.

The Abbé Bouchon d’Homme of our hospital at Bethune told me with great glee one morning that the Mayor of the town had had a “poser” put to him by the Indians. One of these had just died from wounds, and he had evidently been a fire-worshipper. The dead man’s comrades asked the Mayor of Bethune to provide them with timber, as they wished to burn the deceased in the cemetery of the city. The Mayor was staggered at the request, and although he had, so the Abbé said, some curiosity to see the ceremony of fire carried out, he had to “turn down” the proposition. So the man was buried in the usual way.

Good-bye to the Front.

The Army Headquarters, now that our line had been firmly established and locked firmly on our right with the French and on our left with the Belgians and French, decided to allow a short leave, at intervals, and in rotation, to officers and as many men as possible. The leave was specially designed for those who had been through the retreat, the Marne, and the Aisne. New troops were arriving at the front and gradually taking the place of the veterans temporarily retired to recuperate.

The 5th Division had been amongst the hard knocks from the beginning and we got off early.

I left the front by a motor bus, which conveyed a group of seven officers from Bailleul to Boulogne, and from thence we reached England by the ferry steamer.

It felt uncanny to be away from the sound of the guns. Ever since August our lives had been punctuated with incessant gun-fire; we had roused each morning to the sound of heavy artillery, we had gone to sleep with cannonades for a lullaby, and during the long day had listened to the Devil’s Orchestra of lyddite, melinite, shrapnel, and rifle fire; and now away from it all we seemed to live in a curiously still and silent world.

London was a very inviting place to return to. The hot bath, the good bed, the morning newspaper at breakfast had never been so much appreciated before. The rough knocking about and the strain had left its effects on the health of many of us, and these four days’ rest and recuperation, mental and physical, were a godsend.

At the end of the holiday I was appointed Surgical Specialist to a Base Hospital in Rouen, and for a time my lines were cast in quieter waters. But the allurement of the front—the call of the wild with its excitements and uncertainties—lasted for some time longer. It is a curious fact, but true, that the men at the front would like to get to the Base, and when they get there they want to return to the front. “Those behind say forward, and those in front say back.”

The memories of days spent at the front can never be quite forgotten. Time may blunt the clearness of outline of some of the incidents in a hazy mist, but there are others that will stand out clear and undimmed to the last.

The surgeon sees the very seamy side of war. He comes close to the men stricken down in the field, helpless and bleeding and in pain. He stands by them in their dark hours in hospital and by their bedsides when they die.

While the world is hearing the earthquake voice of Victory, he is perhaps kneeling on the straw easing the path to death of a dying man, one of the victors in the fight, or perhaps operating in a mean cottage, surrounded by wounded men waiting their turn on the table.

The gallant charge, the brave defence, the storming of the enemy’s position are heralded in dispatches and in song and story, but translated into the notebook of the “Surgeon in Khaki” they represent many dead, many wounded, much crippling and mutilation, tears, distress, and broken hearts.

I have seen brave men die the death in battle—changed in a second of time from forceful, vital, volcanic energy to still, inanimate rest. I have seen mortally wounded men pass uncomplainingly and composedly to the valley of the shadow, and I have seen faces become anxious and troubled at the thought of those dear and loving ones left behind and of the aching hearts and tears.

I have written letters of farewell from dying men and officers to wives and sweethearts and children, and have felt the horror and misery of it all. It is a sad and mournful sight to see brave young men die.

Yet, though the life of the “Surgeon in Khaki” is amidst this aftermath of battle, he has the infinite satisfaction of knowing that he can, and does, hold out a hand of help to the hurt and maimed soldier crawling out of the welter of blood and destruction, and that he is doing the work of the Compassionate and Pitying One.

This war has brought out many faults in our national life, but it has also brought out many shining virtues, and to the Faith and Hope of the people in the prowess of the soldiers, we must add the Charity shown by the people of this Empire to our sick and wounded. By subscriptions to ambulance funds, Red Cross funds, and hospitals, and by doing all that was humanly possible to help those hurt in battle, the people of to-day have made a name that posterity will honour and strive in vain to equal. They have also helped the Belgian and Serbian Red Cross movements and have shown that

which is always so admirable a trait.

Our fighting men are magnificent, and the hardihood and patient endurance of our wounded are beyond all praise. I have seen our men in actual fight, I have watched the French gunners at work and seen the French infantry charge with the bayonet and throw back a German rush, and I feel a complete confidence of the ultimate final success of the Allied arms—for to such men is given the Victory.

THE END.

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