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A lieutenant commanded the ambulances of a division, and a second lieutenant those of a brigade. To each ambulance was assigned a driver, and two stretcher-bearers; and to three ambulances a sergeant, mounted.
I was ever so faintly surprised by their candid and enthusiastic appreciation of the heroism of the auxiliary services. They were lyrical about engine-drivers, telephone- repairers, stretcher-bearers, and so on. When a bullet hit him, he cried, "Vive la France!" When he was missed he kept silent. He was hit again and again, and at each wound he cried, "Vive la France!" He could not be killed.
The men behind those who had fallen jumped across the bodies of their comrades lying prone, and joined in immediately behind those in the forward rows. The dead and wounded lay stretched where they had fallen. Coming behind us were the stretcher-bearers and the hospital corps. We knew our comrades would have attention. This was a grim business. We pressed on.
They could see, too, the heaped dead between the lines, and in their own thinned ranks make some reckoning of the cost of their attempt. The attempt was over. There were a few score dead lying in ones and twos and little clumped heaps in the black mud; the disputed trench was a reeking shambles of dead and wounded; the turn of the stretcher-bearers and the Red Cross workers had come.
Empty trains were pulled out of the way, to be succeeded by more trains full of wounded, and again more. Doctors and nurses were attentive and always busy, and the stretcher-bearers moved back and forth until their faces grew red with exertion. But it was the visages of the men on the stretchers that riveted my attention. I never saw so many men so completely exhausted.
Then I got up and climbed out of the incline into the open trench. I worked my way towards the firing trench; bullets from Bosche machine-guns and snipers were flattening themselves against the parapet. Several times I had to squeeze myself close to the muddy sides to allow stretcher-bearers to pass with their grim burdens; some for the corner of the Quarry, some for good old "Blighty."
The apparently moribund corporal, seeing this, instantly recovered, and leaping briskly to his feet told them to countermand the stretcher-bearers and pressed forward to the attack with renewed vigour. Just as we left De Aar a train full of Queensland Mounted Infantry was entering the station en route for the front. The occupants were in the highest spirits and cheered loudly.
Thus had the battalion stretcher-bearers found him the day before. . . . The man became irritable. "Go away at once! Can't you see I'm with a lady. Molly, dear, where are you? What is this dirty-looking fellow doing here at all?" But Molly for the moment seemed aloof. He saw her there, standing in the path in front of him so close and yet somehow so curiously far away.
Then he made them carry him up to the bay's head, and gently took hold of the tuft of hair on his forehead, caressing him. Turk raised himself with difficulty, and rubbed his nose against his driver's leg. Then the bombardier turned himself impatiently on to the other side, and cried to the stretcher-bearers to make haste. "Now get me away quickly!"
The cry for stretcher-bearers was passed hurriedly up the line again. Followed "crash" after "crash," and the pinging of shrapnel which flicked into the top of the trench, the purring noise of flying nose-caps and soft thudding sounds as they fell into the parapet. It was difficult to hear one another talking. Sergeant S l was still full of the "get at 'em" spirit. So were we all.
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