A surgeon in khaki

At 7 a.m. our Field Ambulance was ready to march. Breakfast was over, and we stood by awaiting orders. While waiting, some of us strolled back towards the bridge which we had crossed the previous night. It was now empty of men and vehicles. The ashes of the bivouac fires and the lopped branches of trees were all the tokens left of the passage of a German and a British Army Corps. The Marne is a deep stream with a slow current, and is a popular boating river. Two or three boating-club sheds lay pleasantly situated on the banks of the stream, bowered in foliage and trees. Up and down the river the scene was exceedingly beautiful. It was curious, when standing on the bridge, to think that in the previous forty-eight hours the tide of war had rolled over this lovely valley; that artillery had plastered the landscape with shrapnel and high explosives, and that riflemen had lined the banks where to stand exposed for one minute meant instant death; that many hundreds of men had died and many hundreds had been wounded and crippled for life. The ambulance lorries climbing out of the valley to the rear with the loads of wounded men were the aftermath of the glitter and panoply of war, and of the deadly struggle in the now peaceful valley.

At eight o’clock we received our orders to follow on. So “Field Ambulance, fall in!” and away we went on the great walk to the Aisne. At this time I did not have a horse. Every ambulance medical officer is provided with a horse; but horses were scarce just then, and with three other doctors I “foot-slogged” the way. It was a beautiful morning. The night’s rain had settled the dust on the roads, the sun was shining pleasantly, but drifting rain-clouds threatened a change. Major B—— and myself marched at the head of the column on foot. Behind marched the men of A Company—the stretcher-bearers and orderlies, followed by the six ambulance waggons of A Company. Then the men and the waggons of B Company, followed by the men and waggons of C Company. Water carts, kit waggons, supply and equipment carts, brought up the rear. Our personnel was about 250 men, and these with the waggons, carts, and horses made a fairly long column. Our road led in a snake-like way through the gradually rising uplands beyond the Marne on to the plain beyond. The countryside was typically French: clumps of forest were on our right, villages were dotted about everywhere, and there were many isolated farmhouses surrounded by belts of trees and orchards. The countryside was agricultural. The wheat and oats had been cut and newly-made stacks were standing in the stubble fields, and some of the fields still held the “stooks” of grain. About nine o’clock we came on the grim evidences of war. Our road led right through a country over which the Germans were retreating and we were pursuing. Two large motor-cars, broken down, were lying in a ditch beside the road. These were German staff cars. One had a badly burst tyre and that seemed to be all that was the matter with it. Farther on was a smashed French ambulance waggon, with a broken axle, and full of equipment and stores, abandoned by the Germans. This car had evidently been captured from the French during the German advance. Four German soldiers of the Mecklenburg Corps were lying together in a ditch. All had been killed by shrapnel wounds in chest and head. It seemed as if the four men had sat down exhausted in the ditch by the roadside and that one of our shrapnel shells had burst right over them, killing them all outright. We removed their identification discs in order that they could be sent to Germany later on. Close by was another dead German lying face downwards on the earth and with both hands extended above his head. Shrapnel had caught him full in the back of the neck. In a small clump of trees to the left of the road were two more dead Germans. One was lying on his back with his left hand over a wound in the chest. The other soldier had evidently been trying to assist him, for he had been kneeling on the right side of the wounded man when he too received a mortal hurt and fell dead across his dying comrade. His head was lying in a deep puddle of coagulated blood. The rifle of one lay some distance off, evidently violently thrown away by the first man when he received his chest wound. The rifle of the other soldier had been laid carefully against a tree within reach. The poor fellow did not reach out for it again. Two young Germans were found lying close together in a clump of vegetation. They had been sorely wounded and had crawled off the roadside into the friendly shelter of the trees. Left behind by their countrymen, grievously wounded and in dire distress, they had curled up together in the damp grass and died during the night. One had died from hæmorrhage and one from a brain injury. Another group of four soldiers had crawled into a ditch and were lying close together in their last long sleep—killed by one of our heavy shells.

A small footpath at one place ran from the side of the road towards the gate of an orchard of apple trees. Two German soldiers were lying here dead, and with their rifles alongside them. One had just reached the gate and the other was close on his heels when a burst of British shrapnel stopped their further progress. Stragglers from the retreating army, they were making for the orchard to hide when death came suddenly upon them. So the grim picture went on. The German dead dotted the roadside, the clumps of trees, and the fields on either side. Thirty Germans were found killed on a small ridge to our right. Another one was found alive, but dying. His wounds were carefully dressed and we carried him into a neighbouring cottage to die. Our artillery at the Marne did deadly execution and our shrapnel must have made of that roadside and the fields alongside a perfect hell.

Our gunners had got the range of the road and plastered it and the adjoining land with a murdering hail of lead and iron. It was curious to note how badly wounded men seemed to try to escape from the open and crawl into the shelter of a ditch or a clump of trees.

A man wounded in the field would do as a wounded stag or rabbit would,—try for cover. Some men died after crawling away a few yards. Some got some distance away into the ditches and died there, a bloody trail marking their last painful journey.

The expressions on the faces of the men were on the whole peaceful. Some had a look of wild surprise in their upward, staring eyes. Some looked as if a great fear and terror had possessed them at the last awful moment. The expression on the face of one finely built German officer, with a clean-cut intellectual face and firm jaw, was that of a sublime contempt. His eyes and nose and the curl on his lips betokened a contemptuous regard that was curious to see in a dead man.

One burly young man killed by a shell wound in the abdomen had lived some time after having received his mortal hurt, for he had plucked some straw from the wheat stack near which he lay and made a pillow of it. On this he had rested his head. His military cloak lay over him, pulled tightly round his neck. There he lay with one hand under his head and resting on his pillow of crumpled straw, and the other hand pressed on his wounded abdomen as if to give it some support. He looked like a man sleeping the peaceful sleep of utter fatigue, and when painlessly asleep his heart had ceased to beat. In his haversack there was a hard sausage and a piece of hard white bread. His water-bottle was empty and the cork had not been replaced, nor had the bottle been hooked on to his belt. Wounded, bleeding, thirsty, and exhausted, he had slowly crept off that awful field into the friendly shelter of the haystack.

The dead Germans were young sturdy men, strong-jawed and wiry. This was no canaille whom we were fighting, but a trained, determined soldiery who would fight hard and die gamely.

Our route for the remainder of this day lay through such scenes of blood and devastation. We passed abandoned ammunition trains, field guns, saddlery, field kitchens, and war equipment of all sorts. There could be no doubt about the precipitate retreat of the Germans, nor of the tenacious and pressing character of the pursuit. Large numbers of dead horses littered the roadsides and fields. Some had been wounded or killed by our fire. Some lay with outstretched necks and open mouths, dead from exhaustion, and some had evidently been shot as temporarily useless by the Germans themselves who did not wish them to remain alive for the enemy. One sorely wounded horse as we passed tried painfully to get up. We gave him the merciful dispatch with a revolver shot.

Rain fell heavily during the afternoon for about an hour and then the sky cleared again. Continuous heavy fighting was going on all day on our front and flanks, and muffled waves of artillery bursts could be heard from the far distance. The whole French and British Army was advancing in one wide semi-circle, endeavouring to “roll up” two German Army Corps.

After a hard, gruelling march of twenty-two miles we reached Chiezy. It was then pitch dark and we were all exhausted, for we had been on our feet for over twenty hours, part of the time marching, and part of the time standing by waiting to go forward. When a column is marching along a road, pursuing an enemy who is every now and again making a temporary stand to get a brigade or a battalion out of a tight corner, the going is necessarily slow and there are many waits—sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for an hour or more. The waits on the roadside are really more tiring than the steady marching. When one is “soft” and not accustomed to long walking, a day’s march like this proves a torture. If such a “tenderfoot” sat down by the wayside for a few minutes, it was almost impossible to get the cramped body into the erect attitude again. Towards the end of the long, long day, and in the darkness of the night, with feet swollen and sore, brain and body numbed with fatigue, one did not march, but only stumbled and lurched along the never-ending road like a drunken man. A tired brain induces muscular fatigue, and physical exhaustion causes mental torpor. When our ambulances pulled into the stubble field at Chiezy, we had lost all interest in the war, and in everything else on this earth except a cup of tea and a long sleep.

However, certain duties had to be attended to before one turned in. The horses were looked after, the ambulances parked, and rations served out to the men. We had about twenty patients, all of them British soldiers with sore feet—men who had fallen out of the regiments on the march and had waited by the roadside for the ambulance waggons. We always ordered these poor devils to jump into the waggons and take off their boots and socks. This gave instant relief. The sores on the heels and across the instep were painted with iodine. In a few days the men were generally well and fit to rejoin their regiments.

On bivouacking this night we got all these “foot birds” to wash their feet. This was a novel experience to men who had marched from Mons without a wash or change of socks. The officers’ cooks soon had coffee and stew ready, and our servants had spread straw on the ground, on which our valises were unrolled. The night was beautiful; about two miles away the guns were booming and the bright flashes of the bursting shells reminded us that war was close beside us. Without even taking off our boots we lay down on our valises and were asleep as soon as our bodies assumed the horizontal.

At four o’clock next morning we were roused by the penetrating voice of the O.C., Major X——. “Turn out, turn out!” There was no escaping that voice or the caustic remarks that would be sure to come if one did not “turn out.” We all got buckets of water, and stripping in the open had a good morning bath in the buckets. It was cold, but bracing. Breakfast of coffee, bread, jam, and fried bacon. Day broke shortly afterwards and we found that we had camped on the scene of a struggle of the previous afternoon. Close by were a number of dead horses with their saddlery still on. Some newly-made graves were distinguished about 500 yards from our sleeping quarters. A German cavalry patrol had been bivouacked near a wood hard by our camping-place, and had evidently been very badly handled, judging by the signs of confusion, the litter left behind, the dead horses, the recent graves. In a small hollow I picked up a very fine German saddle and bit, and a good waterproof sheet. A bundle of letters was lying near in a small leather satchel, and on the cover of the satchel was stitched the photograph of a very pretty woman’s face. Our O.C. had been educated in Germany, and being a good German scholar read the letters. They were of no military importance, and had been sent by the lady of the photograph to the owner of the satchel—evidently an officer. There were congratulations about his “promotion,” and an earnest, loving message for his safe return.

Poor devil! We surmise that he must have been a young cavalry officer in command of the patrol. His “promotion” was short-lived, for he lay under one of the new mounds of clay, and the poor lady with the charming face would have some very sad hours when she learned from the German casualty lists that “Ober Lieutenant X—— was missing.” One of our men picked up here a very fine pair of new German boots. As his own were a little the worse for wear he put on the German ones, and said that they were much more comfortable than the British military boot. I believe that his observation was quite correct. Amongst other souvenirs picked up at this interesting corner were a pair of field-glasses, a revolver, a good set of razors and mirrors, an ivory-backed hair-brush—all made in Germany.

Our greatest find was yet to come. As our ambulance was getting under way one of our R.A.M.C. corporals hove in sight marching proudly at the head of eleven fully-armed German prisoners. The corporal’s tale was full of interest. He was searching in the wood for more “souvenirs” when he came suddenly upon the eleven soldiers lying together in a small clearing. The corporal thought that his last hour had come. All the tales of German atrocities he had heard unfolded rapidly in his mind, and when the German non-commissioned officer got up and approached him, speaking German, which our corporal did not understand, he thought that his death-sentence was being pronounced. By signs, to the utter amazement of the corporal, he grasped the fact that the Germans wished to surrender. He beckoned the enemy to follow him, and the eleven hungry, tired, and very dirty-looking Mecklenburghers came docilely into camp. Our O.C. approached them, took their rifles, and ordered them coffee, bully beef, and biscuits. The prisoners set to without delay, and ate as only hungry Germans can eat. Three of them had badly blistered feet, and when we marched off these were accommodated in the ambulance waggons. The remainder marched behind the waggons of A Company, under charge of the corporal who “captured” them. Later in the day we handed them over to the Norfolk Regiment, as it was clearly against the etiquette of war for a Field Ambulance to have prisoners of war. We hadn’t a gun amongst us.

The capture of eleven prisoners of war by our Field Ambulance was the occasion for much joy to our men, and the corporal was a very proud man. I don’t know what the Germans thought when they discovered that they had surrendered to an unarmed party. The 15th Field Ambulance is so far the only ambulance which has taken prisoners of war, and I hope that the R.A.M.C. messes at Aldershot and Netley will duly treasure the fact in the archives.

Rain fell heavily when we left Chiezy, and we were soon soaked to the skin. The roads were quagmires of greasy and sticky mud, heavy lowering clouds made everything sombre and grey, and the countryside looked mournful and cheerless. Mile after mile we trudged in the pitiless rain. I shall always remember the march from the Marne to the Aisne, for its wet and mud. Shortly after leaving Chiezy we came upon some gruesome evidences of German savagery. Near a stable built on to a farmhouse we saw a Frenchman lying dead across a manure heap. The top of his head had been blown off, and his brains were plastered over his face. The man, evidently the proprietor, had been shot the previous day by a German officer. There was an old woman at the farm, and she told us this, and that she had seen him fall. What was the reason for the brutal murder she did not know. She said that the officer and the farmer seemed to be in conversation near the stable, and the farmer appeared to be protesting at something. Suddenly the officer placed the muzzle of his revolver close to the farmer’s forehead and shot him. The wound had been inflicted at close range, and we were filled with disgust at such a callous murder. About a mile farther on, we met another poor devil who had been done to death. A middle-aged man with a bald head, bare-footed, and dressed in an old pair of blue pants and a cotton shirt, was lying near a plough close to the road. His head had been battered in, probably with the butt-end of a rifle, and he had been dead for about twenty-four hours. Why the poor wretched man had been killed we did not know. The third instance of this fiendish villainy I saw later on in the day at Billy. This time it was a young man, a mere youth, and he lay face downwards at the door of a cowhouse, dead from a bullet wound in the chest. I examined the wound with some care, and would be quite prepared to swear in any court of law that the man who shot him had pressed the revolver against the dead man’s chest when he pulled the trigger. This is the German way. These examples of nauseous and disgusting frightfulness amazed me. I had never before come up against such tragedies, and I felt an unholy pleasure that our big guns farther along the road were pouring shrapnel and shell amongst the living devils who did such things.

At Billy our Brigadier-General, Count Gleichen, ordered us to bivouac for the night. Major B—— and I billeted in a small cottage abutting on a very smelly cowshed. At the cottage fire we dried our soaking uniforms, and dug dry underclothing out of our valises, which we spread on the kitchen floor and lay upon. Madame of the cottage was full of the latest war news. She was très intelligente and very satisfied with the progress of the war. She told us that our advanced guard had entered the village only six hours behind the retreating Germans; that the Germans were in a great hurry and were too tired almost to march; that their officers were angry and cursed and struck the men who lagged behind. She also assured us that some Uhlans had ridden through, and that they were very drunk and had bottles of champagne suspended in festoons round their necks. While making some tea, and boiling eggs, she cheered us up with the assurance that the war would soon be over, for Monsieur le Curé had told her so himself, bless his heart.

The Curé opened his church and allowed our men to carry in straw and sleep there for the night. This was a godsend to our men during that night of pouring rain, and the Curé got many a rough blessing for his kind act. The villagers at Billy were much heartened at seeing the British so close on the German heels, and one old fellow—he must have been a centenarian—got very drunk on the strength of it all, and assured us that he was a veteran of the soixante-dix and had killed many Germans at that time. He was too drunk to remember the exact number.

During the night I was awakened by a tremendous artillery fire. The batteries beyond the village had got the range of something and were giving them hot potatoes. Madame of the cottage was very alarmed, and thought that the Germans were coming back. Her confidence in the British was not as firm as she had led us to believe the previous evening.

We were all out and ready to march at five o’clock next morning, but did not move off till seven o’clock. Rain still continued to pour down and we were all miserably muddy and damp. Whenever a big artillery duel took place heavy rain was sure to follow. This was so on the Marne and on the Aisne, and some one with a meteorological bent had made the same observations during the Peninsular War. All day long we marched or waited on the muddy, sopping pavé with waterproof sheets tucked round our necks and shoulders, off which the water streamed. The advance now was very slow, and we were told that our men ahead were meeting with a more organised and steady resistance. We no longer met evidences of a precipitate retreat. There were no more German dead or abandoned material by the roadsides.

At 9 p.m. in the dark we entered the doleful village of Chacrise. For sixteen hours we had been on our feet and had only covered about eight or nine miles. The soft roads, ground down by our heavy waggons and guns, were in a bad state, and we walked through ankle-deep mud and slush. When we entered Chacrise we were told that all the billets had been taken up. The church, the Mairie, the shops, and houses were all occupied by our soldiers. It looked as if we should have to sit all night on the cobble-stones of the street, and what with the darkness, the incessant pouring rain, and the fatigue, we were all very sorry that we had come to France to fight Germans. But every cloud has its silver lining. We found an unoccupied house down a dark alley. The windows were firmly shuttered and the door securely locked. The occupants had locked up their house and bolted when the Germans were known to be about. By a little skilful burglary with a jemmy we opened a window. One of us got in and opened the front door from the inside: very soon our cook had a fire lighted and a hot supper ready. We got all our men and horses under good cover, and our night at Chacrise, which promised so badly, turned out very happily. We were all given an issue of rum this night. Rum is an oily, nauseous drink, but given certain surroundings and a certain physical state it has a most excellent flavour. On the night at Chacrise everything conspired to make the rum very palatable.

At 4 a.m. next day our never-sleepy O.C. disturbed our dreams with his “Turn out, turn out!” and out we turned. We had no choice when he was stalking round. Again we stepped out on muddy roads, and under a heavy downpour of soaking rain, and marching and stopping, reached the village of Serches on the Aisne at eleven o’clock in the morning. The rain then ceased and a glorious, welcome sun appeared. The whole countryside was bathed in a delightful warmth, and we felt glad to be alive.

We were ordered to bivouac our ambulances in a field behind the village, and were told that the German rearguard was holding up our advance most determinedly along the Aisne banks, and that the enemy artillery was in great strength.

Our march from the Marne to the Aisne was accomplished, and we now entered upon a new and different phase of the great war game. Our Brigade was in action on the Aisne banks, and we had to take up a position behind it and be prepared to receive its wounded and sick.

The Field Ambulance with a marching army takes its number from the Brigade which it serves. The 15th Field Ambulance followed the 15th Brigade; the 13th Field Ambulance, the 13th Brigade, and so on. Four regiments or battalions form a Brigade, and all the other units attached to the Brigade, such as cavalry or ammunition columns, are also medically attended by the Field Ambulance attached to their Brigade.

Our Brigade consisted of the Norfolks, Cheshires, Bedfords, and Dorsets, and the Brigadier was Major-General Count Gleichen, now a General of Division.

It was from these regiments that we received most of our casualties on the Marne, on the Aisne, and later at La Bassée, and, as the following few notes will show, we were serving with regiments who had proved themselves doughty warriors in the past.

The Norfolk Regiment was created in 1685 in the time of the Stuarts to help suppress the rebellion of Monmouth. Their badge is the figure of Britannia, well won, in 1707, for their gallant bearing at Almanza. This great regiment has done sterling service in many lands, and has as battle honours, Roleia, Corunna, Peninsula, Sevastopol, Afghanistan, and South Africa. Their nicknames are three, “The Holy Boys,” “The Fighting Ninth” (they were formerly called the 9th Regiment of Foot), and the “Norfolk Howards.”

The Bedfordshire Regiment, with its badge of the united red and white rose, and its battle honours with the proud names, Blenheim, Ramillies, Chitral, was a magnificent unit in France when we joined it. The regiment had been raised in the last years of James II. in 1688, and from 1809 to 1881 was known as the 16th Regiment of Foot. The nicknames of the regiment are “The Peacemakers,” “The Featherbeds,” “The Bloodless Lambs.” This regiment lost heavily at Missy on the Aisne, and at Ypres later on in the war it had over 650 casualties.

The Cheshires, with a united red and white rose for a badge like the Bedfords, were raised in 1689, and were in old days the 22nd Regiment of Foot. Their war record includes Martinique, Hyderabad, Scinde, and South Africa, and their nicknames are “The Two Twos,” “The Red Knights,” and “The Lightning Conductors”—when marching in Ireland about fifteen years ago the regiment was struck by lightning. The Cheshires have suffered terribly during this war, and at Missy we had a number of their casualties to treat, and many were buried near the old village on the Aisne.

The Dorsetshire Regiment has a proud motto, “Primus in Indis,” commemorating its great services in India, and the fact that it stands first in order of precedence amongst British regiments that have seen war there. The drum-major of this regiment still carries the staff of the Nawab’s herald on parade. It was captured at Plassey, where the regiment was in action under Clive.

Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, Commander of the 5th Division, “particularly mentioned the fine fighting of the Dorsets. They suffered no less than 400 casualties. Their Commanding Officer, Major Roper, was killed, but all day they maintained their hold on Pont Fixe.” Their battle story is a great one, and includes Plassey, Albuera, Vittoria, Sevastopol, and Relief of Ladysmith. The 1st Battalion was raised in 1702. The “Green Linnets” is their nickname.