Read Ebook: Our Casualty and Other Stories 1918 by Birmingham George A

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Ebook has 1241 lines and 60902 words, and 25 pages

"Rot," said Janet "We can't possibly go out on a night like this."

"C.O.'s orders," I said.

"The stretchers will be utterly ruined," she said, "not to mention our hats."

"C.O.'s orders," I said severely.

"If we must go," said Janet, "we'll take the ambulance waggon.

"No, you won't," I said. "You'll take your stretchers and carry them. Yours not to reason why, Janet And in any case you can't take the ambulance waggon, because we're marching along the beach, and you know perfectly well that the strand is simply scored with trenches. We can't have the ambulance waggon smashed up. It's the only one we have. If a few girls break their legs it doesn't much matter. There are too many girls about the place."

Platoons Numbers 1 and 2 marched off at 10.30 p.m. in a blinding downpour of rain. We watched them go from the porch of the golf pavilion, and promised to relieve them as quickly as we could. We paraded, according to orders, at 11 sharp, and I was glad to see that Janet and the other girls were wet and draggled long before we started.

Haines made us a short speech. He had to shout at the top of his voice because the storm was making a dreadful noise. But we heard what he said. The business of relieving trenches, he told us, would be carried out under strictly war conditions, precisely as if enemy submarines were shelling us from the sea. There would necessarily, supposing the submarines to be actually there, be casualties in our force. Haines told off four men to act as casualties. The first on the list--this was the way Tompkins' plan worked out--was Corporal Cotter.

"Corporal Cotter," said Haines, "will drop out of the ranks as the column passes the third bathing-box, numbering from the south end of the beach, Mrs. Tompkins' bathing-box, which is painted bright green."

Haines was, very properly, most particular about defining the bathing-box exactly.

"Corporal Cotter and the other casualties," said Haines, "will take waterproof ground-sheets with them--two waterproof ground-sheets each--and keep as dry as possible. The stretcher bearers will follow the column at a distance of two hundred paces to pick up the casualties, affording first-aid on the spot, and, on reaching the field hospital, will apply restoratives under the directions of the Company's Medical Officer. For the purposes of these manouvres. Corporal Cotter's house will be regarded as the Field Hospital."

The other three casualties, all elderly and rather delicate men, were ordered to drop out of the ranks at places further along the beach. If it was Janet's luck to reach the furthest casualty she would walk, carrying a stretcher, about a mile and a half altogether. When she got home she would be less inclined to sneer at people who catch cold in the service of their country.

The night was extremely dark. I do not think I have ever experienced a darker night. We could hear the sea roaring on our left, and could see, when we looked back, a dim glow here and there from the windows of our houses; but it was quite impossible to see anything on the beach.

I missed Cotter when we had been stumbling along for about a quarter of an hour, and felt glad that he had done his share. In a minute or so, I hoped, he would be safe on a stretcher, and half an hour later would be drinking whisky and water, hot That, so Tompkins told me, was the restorative which was to be administered to all the casualties.

We got through the business of relieving the trenches in the end, though we had a tough struggle. The great difficulty was to find them. If Platoons Numbers 1 and 2 could have shouted to us or flashed their electric torches we should have got them much sooner than we did. But noise and light were strictly forbidden. They would, so Haines said, attract the enemy's fire, and result in our being wiped out by shrapnel.

I got separated at one time from the rest of my platoon, and walked into the sea twice. Afterwards I fell over the Company Sergeant-Major, who was sitting in a pool beside a rock. He said he had sprained his ankle. But that turned out not to be true. He had only twisted it a little, and was able to limp home. In civil life our Company Sergeant-Major is one of the directors of the Corporate Banking Company Ltd., and drives into town in his own motor.

Then I came on Haines, wandering by himself on a sandhill. He was swearing viciously. It was, indeed, the sound of his oaths which led me to him. They were not loud, but they were uttered with an intensity which gave them the power of piercing through the tumult of the storm. He and I and the Company Sergeant-Major stuck together, and at 1 a.m.--we took the time from Haines' luminous-faced wrist watch--we suddenly tumbled into the trench.

We found the whole four platoons waiting for us; but they would not have waited much longer. The senior Second Lieutenant--a very well-known solicitor--had taken command of the company, assuming, as he said, that Haines had become a casualty accidentally. His idea was to march the men home, and then send the Ambulance Brigade to search for Haines, the Company Sergeant-Major, and me.

"That's the sort of thing," he said, "an ambulance is for. The men in the fighting line can't be expected to do it."

We marched home in pretty good order, considering that we were all very wet, greatly exhausted, and many of us bruised in various parts of our bodies. Our spirit was quite unbroken, and Haines, writing up the official diary afterwards, said that our moral was excellent. He did us no more than bare justice. There was not a man among us--except perhaps the Company Sergeant-Major, whose ankle was swelling up--who would not have welcomed a German attack.

We got back to the golf pavilion, and found the whole place in an uproar. Women, all of them very wet, were rushing about. Tompkins was giving confused and contradictory orders to the twelve stretcher bearers, who looked cowed and miserable. Mrs. Cotter was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room crying bitterly. We got the explanation out of Tompkins at last.

Three of the casualties had, it appeared, been successfully picked up and carried home. The stretcher bearers had somehow missed Cotter. Search parties had been sent out Tompkins himself had felt his way round each of the fifteen bathing-boxes. The nursing section of the Ambulance Brigade had waved electric torches and stable lanterns up and down the beach from the edge of the sea to the sandhills. The stretcher bearers, scourged by the remarks Tompkins made about their incompetence, had gone shouting through the storm until they were hoarse and utterly exhausted. Nothing had been seen or heard of Cotter.

Haines took charge of the situation at once. He formed up the four platoons, and marched us all back to the beach. There we assumed open order, and skirmished in a northerly direction. We were told to keep in touch with each other, and to leave no square yard of the sand unexamined. We were to go on skirmishing until we found Cotter, dead or alive. My own idea was that if we found anything it would be his corpse.

I did my best to obey orders, but I almost immediately lost touch with everybody else. The other men, so I learnt afterwards, had the same experience. However, I had the good luck to find Cotter. He came towards me, indeed he ran into me before I saw him. He was in charge of a policeman, who held him firmly but kindly by the arm. The moment Cotter saw me he burst out:

"Tell this infernal fool that I'm not drunk," he said.

"If you're acquainted with the gentleman," said the policeman, "it would be well for you to take him home to his bed. He's not in a fit state to be out by himself."

I drove off the policeman with some difficulty, making myself personally responsible for Cotter's safety. Then I questioned the old gentleman.

"What have you been doing?" I said.

"Waiting for the ambulance. I'd be waiting still if that ass of a policeman hadn't insisted that I was drunk and dragged me away."

"Good Lord!" I said, "and they've been looking for you for hours."

"I know that," said Cotter. "I saw their lights all over the place and heard them shouting."

"Then why on earth didn't you shout back and let them know where you were?"

"Casualties don't shout," said Cotter. "They can't They're too weak. I groaned occasionally; but I suppose they didn't hear me."

"And how long did you mean to lie out in this storm?" I said.

"Till the stretcher bearers found me," said Cotter. "Those were the C.O.'s orders."

I do not know whether any medals will be given to volunteers after the war. Cotter certainly deserves one. I have never heard a finer story of devotion to duty than his. When I had got rid of the policeman he actually wanted to go back and lie down again.

GETTING EVEN

The battalion awaited its orders to embark for France. A feeling of expectation, a certain nervousness, a half-pleasurable excitement, prevailed in the officers' mess and among the men. No one thought of service in France as a picnic, or anticipated a good time in the trenches. But there was a general sense of relief that the period of training--a long, tiresome, very dull business--was over at last over or almost over. For the Colonel and certain remote authorities behind the Colonel believed in working the battalion hard up to the last moment. Therefore day after day there were "stunts" and "shows," field exercises of every conceivable kind. The weather was hot, as hot as weather ought to be in the first week of August Long marches became dusty horrors to the men. Manouvres meant hours of desperate toil. Officers thought longingly of bygone summers, of the cool shade of trees, of tennis played in white flannels, of luscious plates of strawberries and cream. The Colonel, an old soldier, went on inventing new "stunts" and more of them. He had laboured at the training of his battalion, hammering raw boys into disciplined men, inspiring subalterns with something of his own spirit.

On the whole he had been successful. The men sweated, but grumbled very little. The officers kept up a gallant pretence at keenness. Slackness was regarded as bad form, and only one member of the mess made no secret of his opinion that the Colonel was overdoing the "spit and polish" business. This was McMahon, the medical officer; and he did not, properly speaking, belong to the battalion at all. Men and officers alike were drawn for the most part from the English midlands. McMahon was an Irishman. They were born with a sense of discipline and the Colonel worked on material responsive to his methods. McMahon, like most Irishmen, was by temperament a rebel. Yet there was no more popular officer than the Irish doctor. His frank good humour, his ready wit, his unfailing kindliness, won him affection. Even the Colonel liked him, and bore from McMahon behaviour which would have led to the sharp snubbing of anyone else.

There came a day--the 6th of August--for which the Colonel, or some higher authority, devised a "stunt" of the most intense and laborious kind. A very great and remote man, the General in command of the whole district, promised to be present and to witness the performance. Orders were issued in minute detail, and every officer was expected to be familiar with them. Maps were studied conscientiously. Field glasses were polished. Rations were served out Kits were inspected. The affair was an attack upon a hill supposed to be strongly held by an enemy well provided with machine-guns.

A genuine excitement possessed the battalion. This, so it was felt, was very like the real thing. Just so, some day in France, would an advance be made and great glory won. McMahon alone remained cheerfully indifferent to the energetic fussiness which prevailed.

The day dawned cloudless with promise of intense heat. Very early, after a hurried and insufficient breakfast, B Company marched out It was the business of B Company to take up a position south of the enemy's hill, to harass the foe with flanking fire and at the proper moment to rush certain machine-gun posts. B Company had some ten miles to march before reaching its appointed place. McMahon gave it as his opinion that B Company would be incapable of rushing anything when it had marched ten miles in blistering heat and had lain flat for an hour or two in a shadeless field. A party of cooks, with a travelling kitchen, followed B Company. McMahon said that if the cooks were sensible men they would lose their way and come to a halt in a wood, not far from a stream. He added that he was himself very sensible and had already fixed on the wood, about a mile from the scene of the attack, where he intended to spend the day, with a novel.

The other three companies, the Lewis gunners, and a battery of Stokes gun men, attached to the battalion for the attack, marched out later, under the command of the Colonel himself. Cyclist scouts scoured the roads ahead of the advance. McMahon, accompanied by an orderly, marched in the rear and complained greatly of the dust. A Brigadier appeared in a motor and cast a critical eye on the men. Two officers in staff caps, understood to be umpires, rode by.

At noon, the heat being then very great, a motor cyclist dashed up, his machine snorting horribly, the man himself plastered with dust, sweat and oil. He announced that the battalion was under heavy fire from the enemy artillery and that men were falling fast The Brigadier had sent an urgent message to that effect. The Colonel, who rather expected that something of the sort would occur, gave the orders necessary in such a situation. The men opened out into artillery formation and advanced, by a series of short rushes, to take cover in some trenches, supposed to have been abandoned, very conveniently, by the enemy the day before. The Brigadier, seated in his motor-car in a wood on a neighbouring hill, watched the operation through his field glasses, munched a sandwich, and enjoyed a glass of sherry from his flask. McMahon, for whom short rushes in artillery formation had no attractions at all, slipped through a hedge, skirted a field of ripening oats, and settled himself very comfortably under a beech tree on the edge of a small wood. His orderly followed him and laid down a large package on the grass beside the doctor. The Colonel, an enthusiastic realist, had insisted that McMahon should bring with him a supply of surgical instruments, dressings and other things necessary for dealing with wounds. McMahon opened the package. He took out a novel, a tin of tobacco, a great many packages of cigarettes, two bottles of soda water, two lemons and several parcels of food.

"This," he said to the orderly, "is the advanced dressing station. When the casualties begin to arrive, we shall be ready for them."

The Brigadier sent another motor cyclist to say that the battalion would be wiped out if it stayed where it was. He suggested a move to the right and an attempt to get into touch with B Company.

The Brigadier, though he drove in a motor-car, was feeling the heat. If a direct advance had been made on the hill from where the battalion lay he would have been obliged to drive out of his wood in order to keep the battle in view. A move to the right could be watched comfortably from where he sat The Colonel explained the situation, not the Brigadier's feelings, to his officers, exposing himself with reckless gallantry as he passed from company to company. He said that he himself would survey the ground to the right and would try to discover the exact position of B Company.

"I shall," he said to the Adjutant, "climb a tree so as to get a good view."

The Adjutant remonstrated. He thought the Colonel was too old a man for climbing trees. He recommended that a subaltern, a Second Lieutenant whom nobody would miss much if he fell, should be sent up the tree. The suggestion, as the Adjutant might have guessed, made the Colonel more determined and slightly exasperated him.

He gave orders that the Stokes gunners should shell the enemy while he climbed the tree. The Stokes gunners did not want to shell anyone. Their weapons are awkward to handle and their ammunition very heavy. They were already as hot as any men ought to be. But they were well trained and highly disciplined. They attacked the enemy with small dummy shells, which rose gently into the air, made a half-circle, and fell about fifteen yards from the muzzles of their guns.

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