Combed Out Part 7

Hyndman could still hear him, so he walked up to him and shouted, 'What the b.l.o.o.d.y 'ell's the matter wi' yer?' As cool as you like old Peter replied, '_Cacoethes loquendi_.' Of course Hyndman hadn't the remotest idea what that meant and said, 'None o' yer bleed'n' impudence, else I'll land yer inter trouble.' He didn't run him though.

"I tell you, I'm jolly glad to be away from headquarters. We've got old Rusty in charge of us. He's been a bit of a worry-guts about having cleaned boots and b.u.t.tons ever since he got his second pip, but he's quite a decent old stick taking him all round. He gets drunk every evening, so that he's generally too far gone to trouble about lights out. He doesn't make a fuss over our letters either--I believe he can only read a very plain hand and has to skip the longer words. A good job, too, for that's one thing I absolutely cannot stick, the way all our letters are read....

"I hear you've had some excitement? It put my wind up a bit when I heard about it. Still, I'm glad in a way--the monotony of our lives was becoming unbearable. I'd rather have sh.e.l.l-bursts than blasts of the S.M.'s whistle. Have many been dropping in the town recently?"

"A good few--I daresay you'll have some to-night if you're lucky. Yes, the S.M.'s whistle got on my nerves too. I was longing for a change and frightfully keen on seeing a bit of the war. I confess I wasn't particularly scared by the sh.e.l.ls we had--of course, none of them came very near. But I don't want to have any more, not after seeing those wounded carried along on stretchers to-day. You're right in the town here and it's quite likely that you'll make a closer acquaintance with high-explosive sh.e.l.ls than I've been able to make...."

I had hardly spoken when there was a faint m.u.f.fled boom in the distance and a long, deepening howl, and then a loud explosion that shook the building.

A few minutes after a second sh.e.l.l pa.s.sed overhead and exploded somewhere in the town.

Then, without the usual warning, there was a roar that seemed to split our heads and an impact that sent us reeling backwards against the wall.

The room was filled with dense, pungent smoke and dust that choked and blinded us. Above the violent droning in our ears we could hear the clatter of falling bits of plaster and masonry. A whistle blew and there was a shout of "Clear Billet." We thronged the doorway and poured down the stairs, panic stricken, but before we had left the building there was another reverberating crash and once again we were enveloped by smoke and dust while the bits of plaster showered down upon us from the ceiling. I bowed my head and held my arm up to protect my face.

Something whizzed closely by, and a man dropped heavily with a groan in front of me. He lay on his face with one arm doubled up underneath, quite motionless. Two men went up to him and crossed their hands under his chest to raise him. His blood was gushing out and forming a pool on the floor. As we dashed out into the road I saw an artilleryman standing alone on the cobbles and looking around in a scared fashion. There was another deafening explosion and dense clouds of smoke issued from a building forty or fifty yards away. Suddenly the artilleryman clutched his face with his hand. The blood began to stream through his fingers and down his wrist into his sleeve. He hurried away with staggering steps.

We left the town behind us and waited near a barn in the open fields. We were joined by the two men who had remained behind to help our wounded fellow soldier.

"Is it serious?" we asked.

"Serious?--He's done for, poor chap! A big bit of sh.e.l.l caught him right in the chest--it didn't half make a hole. We carried him away from the billet and sat him up against a wall. We couldn't stop the blood from flowing. He came to for a few seconds though, and moaned, 'O my poor mother! O my poor mother!' enough to break your heart. And then he seemed to lose consciousness again. The ambulance arrived and we laid him on a stretcher. I expect he died before he got to the hospital."

"Anybody else hit?"

"Two of our fellows--one of them pretty seriously. They could both walk though. A lot of men from other units have been killed. The last sh.e.l.l dropped into a mess-room and laid out a dozen or more, and just as we were coming along we saw an artilleryman lying in the road with a big hole right in the middle of his face. He was still warm but his heart had stopped beating. It's a b.l.o.o.d.y awful feeling to lose one of your mates, though."

"I can't make it out, some'ow. 'E was talkin' an' jokin' to me only a few minutes back, an' now 'e's dead. The way 'e said 'O me poor mother!'

nearly set me cryin'. Poor old chap, 'e was one o' the best--it's allus the best as gets killed an' the rotters left alive."

No more sh.e.l.ls dropped into the town that day, but instead of going back to the billet, the men made their beds in the barn at nightfall. I returned to camp, thinking of the man who was dead and wondering whose turn would come next.

IV

THE CASUALTY CLEARING STATION

"For who feels the horrors of war more than those who are responsible for its conduct? On whom does the burden of blood and treasure weigh most heavily? How can it weigh more heavily on any man or set of men than those on this bench?"

MR. BALFOUR (House of Commons, June 20th, 1918.)

The rain came swishing down. Water gathered on the canvas above, and heavy drops fell splashing on to the floor with monotonous regularity.

Somebody was muttering curses in his sleep. Others were snoring loudly.

I lay awake for a long time, staring into the black darkness of the marquee. Suddenly--it must have been two or three o'clock in the morning--the familiar rumbling noise broke out in the distance. It seemed to spread along the whole horizon. The "stunt" had begun.

A drowsy voice growled: "They're at it again--why can't they stop it once and for all." Another groaned deeply and muttered: "Awful--awful slaughter--blackguards, blackguards."

The uproar increased. I was filled with a terrible dejection, but I went to sleep in the end.

It was broad daylight when I woke up to the sound of innumerable motor-cars coming and going out on the road. The wounded were streaming in.

The operating theatre was alive with figures clothed in white, blood-stained garments, bustling up and down, or standing in groups around the other tables. At the far end of the theatre someone was blubbering like a little child.

"Here, come on--hold this man's leg up. What d'you think you're here for?" It was the surgeon at the next table who was speaking to me.

I grasped the leg by the foot--it was quite cold--while the orderly removed a bandage from the thigh. The bone had been shattered. A bullet had also entered the man's chest, making a small round puncture. A sh.e.l.l fragment had struck his upper lip, leaving a jagged triangular hole below the nose. Several teeth had been knocked out. The upper palate had been gashed and partly separated from the bone. It hung inside the half-open mouth like a shrivelled flap. He breathed feebly and irregularly. The surgeon bent over him and asked him if he had been wounded long. He answered in low, hoa.r.s.e whispers that he had been lying in the mud and rain for several days. Then he turned his eyes up so that only the whites were visible. They remained rigidly fixed in that position. He received a dorsal injection, being too weak for chloroform.

The shattered thigh was painted with picric acid and the tourniquet tightened above the injury. The surgeon cut through the leg with a circular sweep of the knife, the splintered bone offering no resistance.

The limb came off in my hands. I held it for a moment, being awed by it.

It seemed very heavy. Then I dropped it into the pail below. When the surgeon had dressed the stump, he made a slight incision in the forearm in order to inject a saline solution. The man, who had not uttered a sound hitherto, winced and gave a faint cry.

"Come along--hold this leg up!"

I darted to the next table and seized another foot and ankle. There was a greenish festering hole so high up the leg that it was impossible to use a tourniquet. So the surgeon laid bare the main artery by a longitudinal incision and tied it up with catgut to prevent excessive loss of blood. With a rapid stroke of his knife he then made a shallow cut right round the limb above the injured spot, and depressing the blade cut deeply down to the bone. The blood gushed up suddenly, formed a pool on the towels and sheet underneath, overflowed the edge of the table, and splashed down on to the floor in a cascade. The operator paused a moment and then, while the blood continued to stream from the wound, he cut round the bone until flesh was entirely severed from flesh. The upper periosteum was pushed back and held by means of a metal plate. The bone was sawn through--the saw grated and jerked and jarred in a horrible manner. The leg came off and I dropped it into the white enamelled pail. The toe-nails clicked against the enamel, and the thigh, b.u.mping against the rim, overturned it and flopped into the pool of blood under the table.

"Come on--look sharp--never mind that leg--give a help here and remove this man's bandages."

I was looking at a head that resembled a huge football made of soiled linen. In place of the mouth there was a small, dirty hole through which the fetid breath came and went. Above the hole was a big red patch. I unwound the bandages one by one. Gradually the face was revealed.

Between the mouth with black, swollen lips and the bruised eyes, closed by grey greenish lids, there was, where the nose should have been, a red hole big enough to contain a human fist.

The wounded came and went in an unbroken stream. The tables were always occupied. I went from one to another, unwound bandages, held up limbs for amputation, fetched splints, padding, gauze, or new bandages. I was too busy to think or to feel any horror. I was vaguely conscious of nausea and of a hot, stifling atmosphere heavy with the fumes of chloroform and ether.

Some of the wounded had arms that hung by shreds of muscle and sinew.

Others had feet that were nothing but ma.s.ses of clotted blood, lumps of torn flesh, and bits of bone tied up in blood-sodden linen parcels. Some had deep holes in their backs, others had gashes in their heads from which soft, pink matter oozed.

Before me lay a man with a blackened face, a shattered knee, and festering holes all over his body. Gas-gangrene had set in and the stench was almost unendurable. The surgeon gently felt the injured leg, but the man gave such long-drawn piercing shrieks that he had to be left alone. He was sent to the resuscitation ward to recover strength a little, for he was very weak through loss of blood. In the evening he began to rave--he asked for whisky in a boisterously jovial voice, and then he yelled and cried: "Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant, you've ruined my career." In the night he died.

The wounded were often perfectly silent. But more often they would groan or wail or shout. Sometimes they would all howl in chorus like cats on a roof. Indeed the weird and terrible howling of wounded men is more like the howling of cats than any other sound I know.

Men regaining consciousness after an operation would sometimes laugh uproariously or cackle fiendishly. Or they would break into torrents of filthy language. One man yelled in a crazy voice that England was the most glorious country on earth and that he had done his best to be a good soldier. Then he was seized by a fit of violent weeping, while someone at the other end of the theatre was shouting with intense fury: "If I had Lloyd George here, I'd shoot the blighter," and another man was carried out with his head lolling from side to side and saying in mad, amiable tones: "Zig-zag, zagazig, zig-zag," and so on without a break.

A man who had undergone an operation some days previously was brought in to have his wound redressed--a deep laceration, that reached from knee to hip and exposed the thigh-bone. The padding was removed, but as soon as the raw flesh was touched he threw back his head, bared his teeth, and uttered shrill, piercing cries in sudden blasts, and nothing could be done to comfort him.

Near by a wounded man had been lying quietly on a table when all at once he gave a yell and, before we could rush to the spot, he plunged head foremost and crashed down on to the floor. We picked him up, but his mind seemed too confused to realize what had happened. He did not struggle any more, but gibbered and whimpered piteously.

If the chloroform and ether were not administered with great care and skill, the patients would choke and kick and make furious efforts to tear the mask from their faces. And so great was the number of wounded and so rapidly was it necessary to perform each operation, that it was not humanly possible to devote sufficient time to each individual case.

Gas was the most merciful anodyne, but it could only be used for brief operations. Under its influence men became unconscious quickly and without a struggle, and they recovered consciousness without the fearful retching and vomiting that always followed the use of chloroform or ether. And yet, even with gas, haste and carelessness and defective apparatus added suffering to suffering.

On the table lay a man with a shattered gangrenous knee. He received gas and became unconscious, but, just as the bone was being sawn through, he regained his senses. His face was ashen pale and the sweat ran down it in big drops. He was too weak to struggle, but his eyes were staring in a way that was terrible to see. I held the foot and an orderly held the stump while the saw grated harshly as it cut through the bone, and the man moaned in piteous drawling tones: "Jesus Christ have mercy upon me, G.o.d Almighty have mercy upon me, and forgive me _all_ my sins." When the operation was over, he was carried out, making unintelligible sounds.

He was followed by a man from whose chest I removed a filthy, blood-sodden ma.s.s of padding. I observed that his breathing was becoming weaker and weaker. The anaesthetist shouted:

"Fetch the oxygen--look sharp!"

An orderly brought a long black cylinder along, but the rubber tubing was knotted in a bundle and several seconds pa.s.sed before it could be disentangled. At last the end of the tube was pushed into the mouth of the dying man. The tap of the cylinder was turned on, but there was no sound of gas running through. The anaesthetist glared angrily around and shouted: "Corporal Chamberlain!"

The Corporal came and the anaesthetist thundered:

"Go and get a new cylinder--this one's empty--your d.a.m.ned carelessness again--look sharp about it."