A surgeon in khaki

Coulommiers at this time looked a little bit dégagé. It had been occupied by the Germans some days previously, and now the British had it. The French inhabitants were in Paris. The narrow old streets looked very cheerful and inviting when I passed through, for our Army Service men had several fires merrily blazing at the side of the pavé, and the smell of frying bacon and roasting coffee beans was inviting and appetising. Signs of the German occupation were everywhere apparent. Round the ashes of their fires in the side streets and square were the charred remains of old and valuable furniture—a carved leg of an old chair, a piece of the frame of a big mirror, a bit of a door, and so on. I think the German soldier enjoyed the novel sensation of cooking his food over burning cabinets and tables and chairs made in the times of the Louis’ of France. Our men were extremely careful to avoid damage to French property and made their fires of chopped wood logs. Tommy has good feelings and is always a gentleman, and he genuinely pitied the French in their despoiled towns.

My orders were to report to the Principal Medical Officer of the 5th Division of the 2nd Army. I could not find out where the 5th Division headquarters was, but ascertained that the 2nd Army headquarters was at the small hamlet of Doui, three miles away. My next problem was how to get there with my kit. Luckily, I found a motor-car driver about to start for the headquarters and he offered me a lift. This driver was one of the many gentlemen of leisure who had volunteered for service at the beginning of the war. He took out his own car at first and it broke down during the retreat, so he abandoned it by the roadside and got another car, the driver of which had been killed. We set off from Coulommiers at a rattling pace and passed part of the 3rd Division on the way. The headquarters of General Smith-Dorrien, the Commander of the 2nd Army, was a little cluster of houses by the roadside, and when we arrived the whole staff were standing by the road, while the grooms stood near holding their horses. Smith-Dorrien with another staff officer was poring over a map and indicating some spot on it with his finger. The Principal Medical Officer, Colonel Porter of the Army Medical Staff, now Surgeon-General Porter, was just coming out of a cottage, and I walked up, saluted, and reported my arrival. The Colonel gave me a cheery greeting, asked if I had breakfasted, and noticing the South African War ribbon on my tunic, said that as I had seen service before I would soon be quite at home. He asked me where I came from, and when told that it was New Zealand, inquired if the trout-fishing was still good. New Zealand seems to be principally known in England for its excellent trout streams.

I was then told to report to the officer commanding a section of the 15th Field Ambulance, which was lying about 500 yards farther down the road. I reported to Major O—— of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who told me that he was waiting to evacuate some wounded to Coulommiers before moving up to rejoin the headquarters of the ambulance which was advancing with the 15th Infantry Brigade. There were sixteen wounded British in a small farmhouse beside the road. They were lying on straw on the floor and the wounds of all of them had been dressed. When I entered they were drinking milk supplied by the old farmer and his wife. This old farmhouse had been occupied by the Germans two days previously, and the old farmer brought me through the house to show what the Huns had done. His two wooden bedsteads had been smashed. All his wife’s clothes had been taken out of a chest of drawers and torn up, and the chest had been battered badly with an axe. The windows were broken and two legs of the kitchen table had been chopped off. An old family clock lay battered in a corner, and an ancient sporting gun was broken in two. The farmer showed me one of his wife’s old bonnets which had been thrown into the fire by these lovely Germans and partially burned. Fancy burning an old woman’s bonnet! All the fowls and chickens had been killed. Two German soldiers got into the fowlyard and struck all the birds down with their bayonets. A fine Normandy dog lay dead at the garden gate, shot by a German non-commissioned officer because the poor beast barked at him.

The old-fashioned furniture and adornments of the house had been destroyed. All of the pictures were broken except two—one of these was a framed picture of Pope Leo XIII., and the other was one representing the Crucifixion. We guessed that the German troops must have been Bavarians, who are mostly Catholic.

I have described this wrecked home as it was typical of hundreds of others that I have seen in France. It all seemed so stupid, so senseless, so paltry, and mean. Conceive the frightfulness of burning an old lady’s bonnet and smashing an old clock that had been in the family’s possession for three generations, and had ticked the minutes to the farmer’s folk and whose face had been looked at by those long since dead. The old farmer was in tears and very miserable. He said that the German soldiers were very drunk and had brought a lot of bottles of champagne with them, round which they spent a very hilarious night. One of the men had a very fine voice and sang a German drinking song, whilst the others hiccuped the chorus. There were certainly a lot of empty champagne bottles lying about, and I don’t think that the old farmer’s beverage ever soared above vin rouge, so the bottles must have been German loot.

About eleven o’clock, while we were still waiting for returning empty supply waggons to take off our wounded, we heard that some German prisoners were being marched in. This caused some excitement, and, speaking for myself, I was consumed with curiosity to see some specimens of this great German army and observe what manner of men they were. Under a strong guard of cavalry three hundred prisoners with about ten officers were marched into a field close to our farmhouse. It was laughable to see our old farmer. He rushed frantically up the road, his eyes blazing with excitement and joy, and stood gazing at his country’s enemies with an expression of malicious joy and delight.

I was struck with the appearance of these prisoners. They were very tired, absolutely done in, and marched along the road with a most bedraggled and weary step. Were these the men who had goose-stepped through Belgium’s stately capital and had pushed the united armies of France and England before them in one of the most rapid marches in history? They were utterly broken down with fatigue, and their famished expression and wolfish eyes betokened the hardships they had recently undergone. When they were halted in the field they simply rolled on to the ground from sheer exhaustion. On looking closer, however, one could see that they were fine soldiers, athletic, well-built, lean, wiry fellows, with shaven heads and prominent features, slim-waisted and broad-shouldered, clothed in smart, well-fitting, bluish-grey uniforms, well-shod with good serviceable boots, each with a light water-bottle clipped to his belt and a haversack over the shoulder; certainly no fault could be found with them as specimens of muscular and active soldiery.

The officers, disdaining to show fatigue, sat by themselves in a group apart and smoked pipes and cigarettes. The famished men were supplied with British bully beef and biscuits, and buckets of water were brought to them for drink. They at once threw off their exhaustion and simply rushed the food. We realised that they had been marched to a stop, and that the commissariat of that particular Army Corps must have broken down. The augury was a good one. Amongst them were some slightly wounded men—principally hand, scalp, and face wounds. These we dressed, and the men seemed very grateful to the medical officers for what was done. One of my men, with a slight shrapnel wound of the wrist, after I had dressed and bandaged it, seized my hand and kissed it. That is the German way, perhaps, but un-British, and I do not love things German or un-British to-day. One of the men had a slight wound, but a very painful one owing to a small shell splinter sticking on to a nerve. Lieut. M’C—— administered a few whiffs of chloroform while I extracted the fragment of iron. Poor M’C—— remarked to me that this was the first anæsthetic that he had administered during the war, although he had been through the whole retreat from Mons, and that it was for a German. I say poor M’C——; this splendid young doctor was killed later on in Flanders while gallantly attending wounded in the trenches under a hellish shrapnel fire. This group of prisoners belonged to the Jägers of the Prussian Guard, one of the best infantry units in the German Army. We were all very pleased that they had been bagged, and I don’t think that they worried much about it themselves. The officers, however, seemed very sullen—that also pleased us.

Shortly after the arrival of the Guard Jägers some empty motor supply waggons, returning from the front, were stopped. We packed plenty of straw on them and put our wounded British and Germans comfortably on top, and sent them all off to the hospital train at Coulommiers. Then our commanding officer, Major O——, gave the order to our ambulance drivers to harness up the horses and prepare to trek. We knew that our army was making a stand at last, and that the long retreat from Belgium was over.

All the morning heavy firing was heard on our front towards the river Marne, and we were not sure what was happening. We knew that our cavalry was at work somewhere, for the Guard Jägers had been bagged by our horsemen, but more than that we did not know. However, we were soon on the road, and following Napoleon’s maxim to his Generals—always to march on the firing. The roads were terribly dusty, the day was hot and sultry, and a blazing sun beat mercilessly down upon us. We all cursed our caps, and certainly the present khaki cap supplied to our officers and men deserves a curse. It gives no protection to the head or neck in summer, and in rainy weather it is soon soaked.

Marching on foot behind lumbering ambulance waggons on a dusty road, and under a hot sun, is no picnic. Eyes get full of dust, throat gets parched, feet get hot, and the khaki uniform wraps round one like a sticky blanket. So for many miles we marched, and all the time the sound of the guns became more and more distinct and intense. We passed St. Ouen and by St. Cyr, and at 4.30 o’clock we seemed to be in the centre of the artillery thunder area. Great guns were screeching and roaring all round us, and some of the enemy’s shells were bursting to our left front near the road along which we were moving. We were then ordered to pull our waggons off the road and bivouac them under a clump of trees near at hand in order to conceal them from enemy aeroplanes, which were hovering high up in the blue. The reason for at times concealing a Field Ambulance is that when a column is on the march the Field Ambulance has a definite position in the column; generally it is behind the ammunition column. The ambulance waggons, with their big white tented covers and conspicuous red crosses, are often the most prominent features on the road. The enemy flying-man when he sees a Field Ambulance knows that there is at least a brigade consisting of four battalions and an ammunition column in front of it, and he can then direct his gunners to plant their shells in front of the ambulance and so get the ammunition column and the brigade. Hence the necessity for sometimes hiding the whereabouts of a Field Ambulance.

After we had bivouacked, our section cook managed to light a fire in a hollow in a clump of trees, and soon brought us a much-desired mess of fried mutton, good bread and marmalade, and a can of tea. We rushed this as badly as the German prisoners did the bully beef earlier in the day.

It was an odd meal, as we sat by the roadside viewing a desperate artillery duel, and between sips of tea snatching up field-glasses to gaze at the bursting shells on the ridges held by the angry Germans.