XII Recessional
I
Two steamers lie at opposite sides of the dock. One is painted a most austere and unobtrusive grey; she is obviously a vessel with no desire to advertise her presence on the high seas. In other words, a transport. The other is dazzling white, ornamented with a good deal of green, supplemented by red. She makes an attractive picture in the early morning sun. Even by night you could not miss her, for she goes about her business with her entire hull outlined in red lights, regatta fashion, with a great luminous Red Cross blazing on either counter. Not even the Commander of a U-boat could mistake her for anything but what she is—a hospital ship.
First, let us walk round to where the grey ship is discharging her cargo. The said cargo consists of about a thousand unwounded German prisoners.
With every desire to be generous to a fallen foe, it is quite impossible to describe them as a prepossessing lot. Not one man walks like a soldier; they shamble. Naturally, they are dirty and unshaven. So are the wounded men on the white ship: but their outstanding characteristic is an invincible humanity. Beneath the mud and blood they are men—white men. But this strange throng are grey—like their ship. With their shifty eyes and curiously shaped heads, they look like nothing human. They move like overdriven beasts. We realise now why it is that the German Army has to attack in mass.
They pass down the gangway, and are shepherded into form in the dock shed by the Embarkation Staff, with exactly the same silent briskness that characterises the R.A.M.C., over the way. Their guard, with fixed bayonets, exhibit no more or no less concern over them than over half-a-dozen Monday morning malefactors paraded for Orderly Room. Presently they will move off, possibly through the streets of the town; probably they will pass by folk against whose kith and kin they have employed every dirty trick possible in warfare. But there will be no demonstration: there never has been. As a nation we possess a certain number of faults, on which we like to dwell. But we have one virtue at least—we possess a certain sense of proportion; and we are not disposed to make subordinates suffer because we cannot, as yet, get at the principals.
They make a good haul. Fifteen German regiments are here represented—possibly more, for some have torn off their shoulder-straps to avoid identification. Some of the units are thinly represented; others more generously. One famous Prussian regiment appears to have thrown its hand in to the extent of about five hundred.
Still, as they stand there, filthy, forlorn, and dazed, one suddenly realises the extreme appropriateness of a certain reference in the Litany to All Prisoners and Captives.
II
We turn to the hospital ship.
Two great ‘brows,’ or covered gangways, connect her with her native land. Down these the stretchers are beginning to pass, having been raised from below decks by cunning mechanical devices which cause no jar; and are being conveyed into the cool shade of the dock-shed. Here they are laid in neat rows upon the platform, ready for transfer to the waiting hospital train. Everything is a miracle of quietness and order. The curious public are afar off, held aloof by dock-gates. (They are there in force to-day, partly to cheer the hospital trains as they pass out, partly for reasons connected with the grey-painted ship.) In the dock-shed, organisation and method reign supreme. The work has been going on without intermission for several days and nights; and still the great ships come. The Austurias is outside, waiting for a place at the dock. The Lanfranc is half-way across the English Channel; and there are rumours that the mighty Britannic1 has selected this, the busiest moment in the opening fortnight of the Somme Battle, to arrive with a miscellaneous and irrelevant cargo of sick and wounded from the Mediterranean. But there is no fuss. The R.A.M.C. Staff Officers, unruffled and cheery, control everything, apparently by a crook of the finger. The stretcher-bearers do their work with silent aplomb.
The occupants of the stretchers possess the almost universal feature of a six days’ beard—always excepting those who are of an age which is not troubled by such manly accretions. They lie very still—not with the stillness of exhaustion or dejection, but with the comfortable resignation of men who have made good and have suffered in the process; but who now, with their troubles well behind them, are enduring present discomfort under the sustaining prospect of clean beds, chicken diet, and ultimate tea-parties. Such as possess them are wearing Woodbine stumps upon the lower lip.
They are quite ready to compare notes. Let us approach, and listen, to a heavily bandaged gentleman who—so the label attached to him informs us—is Private Blank, of the Manchesters, suffering from three “G.S.” machine-gun bullet wounds.
“Did the Fritzes run? Yes—they run all right! The last lot saved us trouble by running towards us—with their ’ands up! But their machine-guns—they gave us fair ‘Amlet till we got across No Man’s Land. After that we used the baynit, and they didn’t give us no more vexatiousness. Where did we go in? Oh, near Albert. Our objective was Mary’s Court, or some such place.” (It is evident that the Battle of the Somme is going to add some fresh household words to our war vocabulary. ‘Wipers’ is a veteran by this time: ‘Plugstreet,’ ‘Booloo,’ and ‘Armintears’ are old friends. We must now make room for ‘Monty Ban,’ ‘La Bustle,’ ‘Mucky Farm,’ ‘Lousy Wood,’ and ‘Martinpush.’)
“What were your prisoners like?”
“’Alf clemmed,” said the man from Manchester.
“No rations for three days,” explained a Northumberland Fusilier close by. One of his arms was strapped to his side, but the other still clasped to his bosom a German helmet. A British Tommy will cheerfully shed a limb or two in the execution of his duty, but not all the might and majesty of the Royal Army Medical Corps can force him to relinquish a fairly earned ‘souvenir.’ In fact, owing to certain unworthy suspicions as to the true significance of the initials, “R.A.M.C.,” he has been known to refuse chloroform.
“They couldn’t get nothing up to them for four days, on account of our artillery fire,” he added contentedly.
“‘Barrage,’ my lad!” amended a rather superior person with a lance-corporal’s stripe and a bandaged foot.
Indeed, all are unanimous in affirming that our artillery preparation was a tremendous affair. Listen to this group of officers sunning themselves upon the upper deck. They are ‘walking cases,’ and must remain on board, with what patience they may, until all the’stretcher cases’ have been evacuated.
“Loos was child’s play to it,” says one—a member of a certain immortal, or at least irrepressible Division which has taken part in every outburst of international unpleasantness since the Marne. “The final hour was absolute pandemonium. And when our new trench-mortar batteries got to work too,—at sixteen to the dozen,—well, it was bad enough for us; but what it must have been like at the business end of things, Lord knows! For a few minutes I was almost a pro-Boche!”
Other items of intelligence are gleaned. The weather was ‘rotten’: mud-caked garments corroborate this statement. The wire, on the whole, was well and truly cut to pieces everywhere; though there were spots at which the enemy contrived to repair it. Finally, ninety per cent. of the casualties during the assault were due to machine-gun fire.
But the fact most clearly elicited by casual conversation is this—that the more closely you engage in a battle, the less you know about its progress. This ship is full of officers and men who were in the thick of things for perhaps forty-eight hours on end, but who are quite likely to be utterly ignorant of what was going on round the next traverse in the trench which they had occupied. The wounded Gunners are able to give them a good deal of information. One F.O.O. saw the French advance.
“It was wonderful to see them go in,” he said. “Our Batteries were on the extreme right of the British line, so we were actually touching the French left flank. I had met hundreds of poilus back in billets, in cafés, and the like. To look at them strolling down a village street in their baggy uniforms, with their hands in their pockets, laughing and chatting to the children, you would never have thought they were such tigers. I remember one big fellow a few weeks ago, home on leave—permission—who used to frisk about with a big umbrella under his arm! I suppose that was to keep the rain off his tin hat. But when they went for Maricourt the other day, there weren’t many umbrellas about—only bayonets! I tell you, they were marvels!”
It would be interesting to hear the poilu on his Allies.
The first train moves off, and another takes its place. The long lines of stretchers are thinning out now. There are perhaps a hundred left. They contain men of all units—English, Scottish, and Irish. There are Gunners, Sappers, and Infantry. Here and there among them you may note bloodstained men in dirty grey uniforms—men with dull, expressionless faces and closely cropped heads. They are tended with exactly the same care as the others. Where wounded men are concerned, the British Medical Service is strictly neutral.
A wounded Corporal of the R.A.M.C. turns his head and gazes thoughtfully at one of those grey men.
“You understand English, Fritz?” he enquires.
Apparently not. Fritz continues to stare woodenly at the roof of the dock-shed.
“I should like to tell ’im a story, Jock,” says the Corporal to his other neighbour. “My job is on a hospital train. ’Alf-a-dozen ‘Un aeroplanes made a raid behind our lines; and seeing a beautiful Red Cross train—it was a new London and North Western train, chocolate and white, with red crosses as plain as could be—well, they simply couldn’t resist such a target as that! One of their machines swooped low down and dropped his bombs on us. Luckily he only got the rear coach; but I happened to be in it! D’ yer ’ear that, Fritz?”
“I doot he canna unnerstand onything,” remarked the Highlander. “He’s fair demoralised, like the rest. D’ ye ken what happened tae me? I was gaun’ back wounded, with this—” he indicates an arm strapped close to his side—“and there was six Fritzes came crawlin’ oot o’ a dug-oot, and gave themselves up tae me—me, that was gaun’ back wounded, withoot so much as my jack-knife! Demorralised—that’s it!”
“Did you ’ear,” enquired a Cockney who came next in the line, “that all wounded are going to ’ave a nice little gold stripe to wear—a stripe for every wound?”
There was much interest at this.
“That’ll be fine,” observed a man of Kent, who had been out since Mons, and been wounded three times. “Folks’ll know now that I’m not a Derby recruit.”
“Where will us wear it?” enquired a gigantic Yorkshireman, from the next stretcher.
“Wherever you was ’it, lad!” replied the Cockney humourist.
“At that rate,” comes the rueful reply, “I shall ’ave to stand oop to show mine!”
III
But now R.A.M.C. orderlies are at hand, and the symposium comes to an end. The stretchers are conveyed one by one into the long open coaches of the train, and each patient is slipped sideways, with gentleness and dispatch, into his appointed cot.
One saloon is entirely filled with officers—the severe cases in the cots, the rest sitting where they can. A newspaper is passed round. There are delighted exclamations, especially from a second lieutenant whose features appear to be held together entirely by strips of plaster. Such parts of the countenance as can be discerned are smiling broadly.
“I knew we were doing well,” says the bandaged one, devouring the headlines; “but I never knew we were doing as well as this. Official, too! Somme Battle—what? Sorry! I apologise!” as a groan ran round the saloon.
“Never mind,” said an unshaven officer, with a twinkling eye, and a major’s tunic wrapped loosely around him. “I expect that jest will be overworked by more people than you for the next few weeks. Does anybody happen to know where this train is going to?”
“West of England, somewhere, I believe,” replied a voice.
There was an indignant groan from various north countrymen.
“I suppose it is quite impossible to sort us all out at a time like this,” remarked a plaintive Caledonian in an upper cot; “but I fail to see why the R.A.M.C. authorities should go through the mockery of asking every man in the train where he wants to be taken, when the train can obviously only go to one place—or perhaps two. I was asked. I said ‘Edinburgh’; and the medical wallah said, ‘Righto! We’ll send you to Bath!’”
“I think I can explain,” remarked the wounded major. “These trains usually go to two places—one half to Bath, the other, say, to Exeter. Bath is nearer to Edinburgh than Exeter, so they send you there. It is kindly meant, but—”
“I say,” croaked a voice from another cot,—its owner was a young officer who must just have escaped being left behind at a Base hospital as too dangerously wounded to move,—“is that a newspaper down there? Would some one have a look, and tell me if we have got Longueval all right? Longueval? Long—I got pipped, and don’t quite—”
The wounded major turned his head quickly.
“Hallo, Bobby!” he observed cheerfully. “That you? I didn’t notice you before.”
Bobby Little’s hot eyes turned slowly on Wagstaffe, and he exclaimed feverishly:—
“Hallo, Major! Cheeroh! Did we stick to Longueval all right? I’ve been dreaming about it a bit, and—”
“We did,” replied Wagstaffe—“thanks to ‘A’ Company.”
Bobby Little’s head fell back on the pillow, and he remarked contentedly:—
“Thanks awfully. I think I can sleep a bit now. So long! See you later!”
His eyes closed, and he sighed happily, as the long train slid out from the platform.
Notes
1 These three hospital ships were all subsequently sunk by
German submarines.