Leaves from a Field Note-Book Part 4

"The sahib is very kind."

"So will I do, and, perhaps, prepare thy people for thy homecoming. I will tell them that thou hast lost thy feet with the frostbite, but art otherwise well."

"Nay, sahib, tell them everything but that, for if my people hear that they will neither eat nor drink--nay, nor sleep, for sorrow."

"Then will I not. But I will tell them that thou art a brave man."

The Mahratta smiles mournfully.

"And have you heard from your folk at home?" I ask of the others, leaving Smith and the Mahratta together.

"Yea, sahib, the exalted Government is very good to us. We get letters often." It is a sepoy in the 107th who speaks. "My brother writes even thus," and he reads with tears in his eyes: "'We miss you terribly, but such is the will of G.o.d. I have been daily to Haji Baba Ziarat' (it is a famous shrine in India), 'and day and night I pray for you, and am very distressed. I am writing to tell you to have no anxiety about us at home, but do your duty cheerfully and say your prayers. Repeat the beginning with the word "Kor" and breathe forty times on your body.

Your father is well, but is very anxious for you, and weeps day and night.'"

"I also have received a letter." The speaker is a Bengali, and, though a surgeon and non-combatant, must have his say. "My brother writes that I am to enlight the names of my ancestors, who were tiger-like warriors, and were called Bahadurs, by performing my duties to utmost satisfaction." This is truly Babu English.

"And you will do the same?"

"Yea, I must do likewise. My brother writes to me, 'If you want to face this side again, face as Bahadur.' And he saith, 'Long live King George, and may he rule on the whole world.' And so say we all, sahib."

"And you?" This to a Shia Mahomedan whose right hand is bandaged.

"Ah, sahib, my people can write to me, but write to them I cannot. Will the honourable sahib send a word for me who am thus crippled?"

"Yea, gladly; what shall the words be?"

"Say, then, oh sahib, these words: 'Your servant is well and happy here.

You should pray the G.o.d of Mercy that the victory may be to our King, Jarj Panjam. And to my lady mother and my lady the sister of my father, and to my brother, and to my dear ones the greetings of peace and prayer. And the sum of fifty rupees which I arranged for my family' (his wife) 'will be paid to you every month.' The sahib is very kind."

"The sahib would like to hear a story?" The speaker is a jemadar of the 59th. "So be it. Know then, sahib, that I and twelve men of my company were cut off by the _German-log_, and I, even I only, am left. It was in this wise. My comrades advanced too far beyond the trenches, and we lost our way. And the _German-log_ make signs to us to surrender, but it is not our way and we still advance. And they open fire with a machine-gun--so!" The speaker makes sounds as a man who stutters. "And we are all hit--killed and wounded, and fall like ripe corn to the sickle. And I am wounded in the leg and I fall. And the German officer, he come up and hitted me in the b.u.t.tock to see if I were dead. But I lay exceeding still and hold my breath. And they pull me by the leg" (can it be that the jemadar is pulling mine?), "a long way they pull me but still I am as one dead. And so I escaped." He looks round for approval.

"That was well done, jemadar." His l.u.s.trous eyes flash with pleasure.

"And how is it with your food?"

"Good" ("_Bahout accha_"), comes a chorus of voices. "The exalted Government has done great things. We have _ghee_"--a clarified b.u.t.ter made of buffalo or cow's milk--"and _goor_"--unrefined sugar. "And we have spices for our _dhal_--ginger and garlic and chilli and turmeric.

Yea, and fruits also--apricots, date-palms, and sultanas. What more can man want?"

"It is well." But it is time for me to go. Smith is still talking to the Mahratta, whose eyes never leave his face. "Come on, old man," I say, "it is time to go." Smith turns reluctantly away. As I looked over my shoulder the Mahratta was weeping softly.

VI

THE TROOP TRAIN

We were standing in the lounge of the Hotel M---- at the Base. "I'll introduce you to young C---- of the Guards when he comes in," the Major was saying to me. "He is going up to the Front with me to-night by the troop train. You don't mind if I rag a bit, do you, old chap? You see he's only just gazetted from Sandhurst, a mere infant, in fact, and he's a bit in the blues, I fancy, at having to say good-bye to his mother.

He's her only child, and she's a widow. The father was an old friend of mine. Hulloa, C----, my boy. Allow me to introduce you."

A youth with the milk and roses complexion of a girl, blue eyes, and fair hair, well-built, but somewhat under the middle height--such was C----, and he was good to look upon.

Introductions being made, we filed into the _salle a manger_.

"Chambertin, Julie, s'il vous plait," said the Major. "There's nothing like a good burgundy to warm the c.o.c.kles of your heart." He had the radiant eye of an Irishman, and smiled on Julie as he gave the order.

"So you're leaving your hospital to go up and join a Field Ambulance?" I said.

"That's so, old man. There was a chance of my being made A.D.M.S. at the Base some day if I'd stayed on, but I wanted to get up to the Front, and I've worked it at last. Besides I'm not too fond of playing Bo-peep with my pals in the R.A.M.C. Beastly job, always worrying the O.C.'s. Talking about A.D.M.S.'s, did I ever tell you the story of how I pulled the leg of old Maca.s.sey in South Africa?"

"No," I said, although B---- had a way of telling the same stories twice over occasionally. The one story he never told, not even once, was how he got the D.S.O. at Spion Kop. I had heard it often enough from other men in the service, and could never hear it too often. And let me tell you that to know B---- and have the privilege of his friendship, is to be admitted to the largest freemasonry of officers in the British Army.

"Well, it was like this," continued B----. "The A.D.M.S. was a thorn in the side of every O.C. at the Base, walking up and down like the very devil, seeking whose reputation he might devour, and ordering every O.C. to turn his hospital upside down. He took a positive delight in breaking men. You know the type, the kind of man who breaks his wife's heart not because he's bad, but because he's querulous. The nagging type. Nothing could please him. So one day he came to Simpson's show, where I was second in command. "How many patients have you got accommodation for here?" he asked me, Simpson being laid up with a recurrence of his malaria. "Four hundred and fifty, sir," I said. "Very good, have accommodation for a thousand to-morrow night," said Maca.s.sey with a c.o.c.k of his eye that I knew only too well. We were not full up, as it was, although pretty hard-worked, being short-handed and with a devil of a lot of enteric, and there wasn't the remotest likelihood of any more patients arriving, as they were switching them off to Durban.

However, it was no use grousing, that only made old Maca.s.sey more wicked than ever, but I thought I'd have it in black and white; so I saluted and said, 'Bad memory, sir, my old wound in India, d'you mind writing the order down?'"

"My dear B----," I interrupted, "you know you've the memory of a Recording Angel."

"So I do, my son, and so I did. Also I knew that Maca.s.sey's memory, like that of most fussy men, was as bad as mine was good. I thought I'd catch him out sooner or later. He and I went round the camp, and, after about half-an-hour of the most putrid crabbing, he suddenly caught sight of some double-roofed Indian tents that Simpson had got together with great difficulty for the worst cases. You see we'd mostly tin huts, and in the African heat they're beastly. 'Ah, I see,' said Maca.s.sey wickedly. 'I see you have some good double-roofed tents here; let me have eight of them sent to me to-morrow night.' That left us with four, and how we were to shift the patients was a problem. 'Very good, sir,' I said, 'but I may forget the number. D'you mind?' And I held out my Field Note-book, having turned over the page." (There are not many people who can say 'No' to B----.) "He didn't mind, So he wrote it down. Naturally I took care of those pages. Next day old Maca.s.sey must have remembered that he had issued two contradictory orders in the same day. Ordered me to expand and contract at the same time, like the third ventricle. And he knew that I had first-cla.s.s doc.u.mentary evidence, and that I guarded his autographs as though I were going to put 'em up for sale at Sotheby's. He never troubled us any more."

"That was unkind of you, Major," I said insincerely.

"Not so, my son. You see, I knew he'd been worrying old Simpson, and he wasn't fit to undo the latchet of Simpson's shoes. Why! have you never heard the story of Simpson and the giddy goat?"

"The goat?" said the sub.

"Yes, the goat. Useful animal the goat, if a trifle capricious. It was like this. Old Simpson, who's got a head on his shoulders big enough to do all the thinking for the Royal College of Physicians, and ditto of Surgeons, with a good few ideas left over for the R.A.M.C., determined to get to the bottom of Mediterranean Fever--a nasty complaint, which had worried the Malta garrison considerably. Now the first thing to do when you are on the track of a fever is, as they say in the children's picture-books, 'Puzzle: Find the Microbe.' It occurred to Simpson to suspect the goat. Why? Well, because he'd noticed that goat's milk was drunk in Malta and Egypt. So he began to study the geographical distribution of the goat with the zeal of an anthropologist localising dolicocephalic and brachycephalic races. He found eventually that wherever you could 'place' a goat you would find the fever. Wherefore he took some goat's milk and cultivated it a.s.siduously in an alluring medium of Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus."

"Dot and carry one. Please repeat," I interjected.

"Glucose-nutrose-peptone-litmus," repeated the Major.

"Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief," soliloquised the subaltern, who was brightening up.

"Quite so," said the Major with a benignant glance. "Well, he then got a culture."

"A what?"

"Culture. Poisonous growth; hence German 'Kultur,'" said the Major etymologically. "To proceed. He then inoculated some guinea-pigs. No! I don't mean directors in the City, though he might have done worse. And lo! and behold! he found the fever. You know the four canons of the bacteriologist? One, 'get'; two, 'cultivate'; three, 'inoculate'; four, 'recover.'"

"Well done, Simpson," I said.

"You may say that, my friend. And now there's old Simpson down at the Base in charge of No. 12 General saving lives by hundreds and thousands.

You know while the bullet slew its thousands, septicaemia has slain its tens of thousands. How did he stop it? Why, by doing the obvious, which, you may have observed, no one ever does till a wise man comes along. He got wounds to heal themselves. He promoted a lymphatic flow from the rest of the body by putting suppositories of chloride of sodium inside drainage-tubes in the wound. The heat of the body melts them, you see.

There are three great medical heroes of this war--Almroth Wright, Martin-Leake, and Simpson."

I could have named a fourth, but I held my tongue.

"Time to get on our hind legs," the Major now said monitorily. "Julie, _l'addition_ s'il vous plait."