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We saw the dressing-station and a few wounded waiting there, and all on such a breeze of talk and eloquent explanation that you might have thought you had stepped back into a century when suspicion and worry and nerves were unknown. The Hungarians are like that along with their indolence and romantic melancholy lively and hospitable and credulous with strangers.
The Germans were flinging heavy shells at our silent artillery, but we got past all right and we stumbled on till we came to our camp at Neuville St. Vaast. One or two had been gassed a little and had to go to a dressing-station, but the rest of us had a good feed and we went right to sleep we sure were "all in."
If an infantryman be plugged he knows he has probably received "a Blighty one," and as he is taken to the dressing-station he dreams of spending next week-end in England. A wounded pilot dare think of nothing but to get back to safety with his machine, and possibly an observer. He may lose blood and be attacked by a paralysing faintness.
At Zyradow these cannon sounded distant, but as we neared Radzivilow the guns were crashing away as they did at Lodz, and we prepared for a hot time. The station had been entirely wrecked and was simply in ruins, but the station-master's house near by was still intact, and we had orders to rig up a temporary dressing-station there.
Finally he was sent to the dressing-station with only his shirt on. We stayed about sixteen days in the line, and during the last five or six days I retired to P.C. Buelow to assist in the Intelligence Work. This part of the line was quiet and our stay uneventful; but two things of interest might be noted.
Then Cecil took us to the little blue-and-white café for tea. She did play the piano, but two subalterns of the less combatant type came in and put us to flight. A corporal is sometimes at such a disadvantage. We rode along the canal bank to Beuvry Station, and found that our filthy old quarters had been cleaned up and turned into an Indian dressing-station.
McMurchie was there in his glory. "Let the devils come," said he, "I'll chase them back with me entrinchin' tool handle." The wounded were lying around everywhere, and Tommy Lowe, Danny Dugan and I carried them up that road to the dressing-station. All forenoon the German snipers were on our track, and we had to hug the bank all the way up.
A special dugout had been prepared as a bomb store near the Chalk Quarry at Bazentin-le-Petit, but almost at the last moment the R.A.M.C. commandeered the place for their forward dressing-station. So the boxes of grenades had to lie in the open in large shell-holes, covered with German greatcoats, mackintosh sheets, or anything else we could get hold of.
This litter is designed to enable two men, hospital attendants or band men, to pick up a wounded soldier weighing some 160 or 180 pounds and carry him from fifty yards to a mile if necessary, to a dressing-station or hospital shack. The medical field-case No. 1 weighs about sixty pounds filled, and field-case No. 2 weighs about forty pounds.
When at last my turn came at this dressing-station they just gave me an injection to prevent poisoning and sent me on. After much jolting in a motor ambulance I arrived at a big clearing-station and had my leg properly dressed. Then they put me aboard a Red Cross train, and I was lying there feeling pretty tough when a sweet voice said, "Would you like a cigarette?"
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