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Updated: June 22, 2025
Then would follow a silence or a whispering of stretcher-bearers, telling their adventures to a girl in khaki breeches, standing with one hand in her jacket pocket, and with the little flare of a cigarette glowing upon her cheek and hair. "All safe? ... That was luck!" "O mon Dieu! O, cre nom! It was a man's voice crying in agony, rising to a shuddering, blood- curdling scream: "O Jesus!
Time after time the Canadians attacked and retook the craters, only to be literally blown out of them by the ensuing hurricane of shells. The task of getting out the wounded was heart-breaking. Our own stretcher-bearers worked night and day, but they had suffered many casualties and were unequal to the task.
On the 8th an ambulance train emptied the field hospitals at Frere, and that same evening there arrived seven hundred civilian stretcher-bearers brave men who had volunteered to carry wounded under fire, and whom the army somewhat ungratefully nicknames the 'Body-snatchers. Nor were these grim preparations the only indications of approaching activity.
We could see occasional figures strolling about the old German trenches probably from posts established here or there behind the line of battle. All day long odd men wandered up or down some part of the hill-side a guard with a German prisoner coming down, a messenger or stretcher-bearers going up.
Gossips of battle the water men, they and the stretcher-bearers both non-combatants going and coming under the shells up to the battle line, but particularly so the water men, who passed the time of day with every branch, each working in its own compartment. When the weather was bad the water man's business became slack and the lot of the stretcher-bearer grew worse in the mud.
But all entertainments and games in that camp were liable to untimely interruption. Messages used to come through from some remote authority demanding stretcher-bearers. Then, though it were in the midst of a game of whist, every man present had to get up and go away. There was one occasion on which such a summons arrived just as the men had assembled to welcome a concert party.
"They shall be called the brothers and the sisters of the Lord," he had said. "Mademoiselle is brave for her Brothers' sake." He was a priest. There were many priests among the stretcher-bearers. Crouching close to the ground, behind the spreading roots of a giant oak, she raised her eyes. Before her lay a sea of smooth, soft mud nearly a mile wide.
Every now and then a man fell, and the stretcher-bearers pounced on him, tied him up in bandages, and carried him away to the field dressing-station, whistling as they went, "We won't go home till morning," in a most heroic way... The battle lasted twenty minutes, at the end of which time the colonel announced to his visitors: "The attack is repulsed, and you, gentlemen, have nothing more to fear."
It was not until many hours later that she stopped working, for more wounded were being brought in every few minutes by the other stretcher-bearers, and there was much to do. But at last there was a lull, and Lucia ran through the long corridor and down to the door. She opened it a crack and looked out.
Naval surgeons at each railroad station watch the work of the stretcher-bearers to be sure that every cot has the gentlest possible handling when being carried from the train to the ambulance which is to take the patient to the local hospital.
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