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Updated: June 7, 2025
Moreover, to get back from the dressing-station to the collecting point in rear of the lines, the ambulances had to traverse a white road over a ridge full in view of the enemy. The Huns kept guns trained on this road and opened fire at the least sign of traffic.
A second row of ambulance waggons is loaded from the dressing-station each waggon holds nine and goes lumbering off to the field hospital. Here the men are laid on the ground with perhaps a waterproof sheet under them and a blanket over them. The R.A.M.C. officers come round, select certain cases for operation, and see to the bandaging and dressing of the others.
And so the less seriously wounded made their way painfully but cheerfully along the trench, on their way to the field dressing-station, the motor ambulance, the hospital ship, and home! while their unwounded comrades gave them words of encouragement and good cheer. "Good luck to you, Sammy boy! If you sees my missus, tell 'er I'm as right as rain!" "Sammy, you lucky blighter!
They reached the dressing-station, where, from the sounds which reached his ears, it seemed to him many men were lying, and a crowd passed constantly to and fro. A medical officer took Mac in hand, dressed his wound as well as might be for there was no water for such purposes and gave him a drink.
A guerilla in a tree above us shot one of the Rough Riders in the breast while I was helping him carry Captain Morton Henry to the dressing-station, the ball passing down through him, and a second shot, from the same tree, barely missed Henry as he lay on the ground where we had dropped him. He was already twice wounded and so covered with blood that no one could have mistaken his condition.
But these were men who could think, reason, feel, and express themselves as animals cannot. Their patience and their quiet trustfulness moved me so that it was hard not to weep. By twos and threes the men were called from the group outside and passed through the door of the dressing-station. The doctors waited for them in the surgery. The label on each man was read, his wound examined.
An officer was directing one of our snipers stooping down just behind him, when a Hun got him right in the eyes. I was down at the dressing-station visiting one of our men who had been knocked over and I saw him led in. He was quite blind, and as calm as anything telling people what to do, and dictating a post card to the padre, who was much more cut up than he was.
On went our masks, but hardly in time we got a couple of whiffs. Two of the boys had to go back to the dressing-station, but the rest of us had to go on. We were feeling mighty sick but when we got to where the air was clear, we took off our gas helmets and we felt a little better.
They did not hit many, but, as bad luck would have it, they got our adjutant, Captain W.D. Brown, as game a fellow as ever walked, and he was carried off evidently very badly hit, and died that night in the dressing-station. We were not at the time in touch with Brigade, but the brigade-major was over on the ridge with us, so we had to get out orders for the further advance.
The battery on the east side of the wood, belonging to the 41st Division, came in for some very severe shelling, but the gunners never ceased to fire or to carry ammunition forward to the guns in full view of the enemy. As things had become rather hot around our tin hut, H.Q. were moved to a cellar, used as a dressing-station, where the doctor, Capt. C.F. Lidderdale, made room for us.
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