In the Line of Battle

In the beginning, too, any number of men were lost from typhoid fever, but now typhoid is getting so rare that if a case occurs anywhere on the front it is known the same night at the French General Headquarters. That remark applies to the whole of our armies, and so rigid is the control which is kept over these matters that, on the day following the report, a searching local inquiry is held as to the cause of the disease.

At the front I saw men who came from all parts of the country where I have been working for the past twenty-five years – Canadians, Americans, and so on. And in passing just let me say that in connection with this war we are misjudging America because of the attitude which the President has taken. I have stayed with Mr. Wilson and with Mr. Roosevelt, and I know that the spirit of America is with us. It is because the whole spirit of the American people is with us that thirty-three doctors and thirty-six nurses – most of them giving up splendid practices – went out from America to the front, as the Harvard Unit, to help us. Just so the Chicago Unit, and many more Americans fighting in the ranks.

I have seen at the front men of all ages and of every rank in life – veterans who were a long way over the army age, and immature youths of sixteen or seventeen. The spirit of loyalty and the determination to do their bit made them go. Often enough a boyish patient would smile when I looked at the chart and asked him how old he really was. “Oh, that’s my Army age,” he would say, and go on smiling.

I was right round the trenches two weeks ago, and as that was early in March and the winter has been exceptionally bad, the conditions were intolerable. There is no anxiety, because everybody is sure that the line is strong; but the wet, mud and exposure make you think that the men will get pneumonia and bronchitis; yet what mostly happens is trench-foot. I have seen a lot of that in Labrador, where we call it frost-bite. It is not, however, the same, though it appears to be. I have travelled many times in Labrador in winter, when the thermometer has been twenty and thirty degrees below zero, and I have never had frost-bite except once in my life. That was when I was driving my dog-team over the ice. The ice broke and my dogs went into the sea. They shared a floe with me throughout an awful night, and my life was saved at the sacrifice of theirs. I have told that story in detail elsewhere, so I need not tell it now.

I saw 150 men from a Highland regiment with frost-bite, but that was quite exceptional, and was due to the phenomenal weather and the impossibility of relieving the men when their relief was due, because they were fighting continuously for over forty-eight hours.

There is another direction in which immense strides have been made, and that is with respect to vermin. At one time, at the beginning of the war, there were as many as 4000 men who had scabies, or itch, and were out of action for the time being; but you hardly see such a case now, because of the wonderful measures which are taken to keep the troops perfectly clean and fit.

Close behind the trenches immense vats have been placed to serve as baths for the men, and the happiest fellows I saw were those who were rolling and splashing in these hot baths, while their uniforms and clothing were being thoroughly cleansed in super-heated steam-chests and finished off with heavy hot irons.

Just as we got into one of these cleaning depots a Jack Johnson burst very near us, but nobody took the slightest notice of it, so accustomed does one become to the happenings of war. Five or six men were in each hot bath, and something like 2000 baths a day are given. The men become thoroughly clean personally, and their clothing also is perfectly freed from vermin and filth, and the troops look as happy as possible.

I was greatly struck by the coolness and courage of all who worked in these laundries, women as well as men, and I could not help thinking that if I stood one week of it I should be entitled to the D.S.O. Endless thousands of uniforms, socks and articles of underclothing are constantly dealt with in the manner I have described, and many of the workers are under artillery fire all the time.

In the treatment of bad wounds, too, there has been a very great advance, and for such cases as broken femurs such an ingenious device has been hit upon that you might well say that instead of putting a man into bed you put the bed on to the man. The R.A.M.C. is really doing its very best, and I shall go back to America feeling perfectly satisfied that the British soldier is getting all the attention that I could wish to have myself.

When the war began the surgeons did not know where to put the wounded, because of the varying fortunes of the fighting. Even Boulogne, Calais and Havre were not certain of safety, so that attending to the wounded and accommodating them was a precarious thing; but the temporary hospitals have been gradually replaced by stationary hospitals, the mobile makeshift has been succeeded by the permanent institution, and so splendid and complete are our resources now that in one day the enormous total of 100,000 casualties could be dealt with by the R.A.M.C.

Casualty clearing-stations, field ambulances, advanced dressing-posts and fixed hospitals are about as perfect as they can be made; and so admirable are the arrangements that I saw one man who had been shot through the abdomen and was in hospital in less than an hour from the time he was wounded – which is almost quicker than you would do it in London.

A great many of the less seriously sick and wounded do not have to go to the base at all; at times one rest-camp was sending 80 per cent, straight back to the line, entirely new men; and, as they say in America, it would “tickle you to death” to see how these things are done.

If you count up the men who have been wounded and invalided from all causes you will find that there are still twice as many sick people as there are wounded; and the strange thing is that as there are more wounds there is less sickness, because directly a “push” comes the men don’t think nearly as much about sickness as when there is nothing doing.

If you take 1000 persons in ordinary civil life you will find that there will always be 3·3 sick per 1000; but at the front the rate is not quite half as many – only 1·8 per 1000 men. It is a very strange thing, but I have met with a number of men who were always more or less sick in civil life, yet who got quite well again at the front. The trenches are the place for a change of air!

I am sure that after this war a very great many men will never go back to the civil life they were in before. They must have more life in the open air; and there can be no finer field for them than that glorious Canada which I know so well, with its boundless possibilities of harvests and material development.

One is impressed at the front with the apparent valuelessness of human life, and deeply impressed by the lavishness with which that life has been laid down by all ranks for King and country. This remark applies to every rank of life without exception, to the highest of the aristocracy as well as to the humblest private. And very remarkable, too, is the zeal and willingness to serve in quite subordinate positions of men who have had every advantage in life, particularly the University type.

I remember at one place, when we were sitting in the mess, a sergeant brought in a paper, which he handed to the colonel to read. It was a most elaborate scientific treatise on the body vermin that so greatly trouble our troops, and it was beautifully illustrated. In addition to that the paper showed the willing endurance of personal suffering for practical purposes that I for one should not have cared to undergo, for the sergeant had made himself thoroughly well acquainted with the effects of the visitation of the pests he described.

I was so much impressed by the performance that I said to the colonel, “Who is your sergeant?” and he replied, “Oh, he’s the Professor of Entomology in the University of – !”

As I talk my mind takes me back to Labrador and its ice-bound coast, and I recall that when working through the ice-fields in our little mission ship, the Strathcona, or travelling in lonely regions with my dog-teams, I saw so many evidences of the eagerness of men out there to do their bit in this tremendous war. Almost to a man, when they heard that we were fighting, they wanted to come over. But at first in Labrador we got very little news, and when news did come it was not credited. “Oh,” said the men, “don’t you believe it. They’ve always got some scare on. They’re going to put the price of fish up!” Fish, you know, is the greatest of all material things out in that vast and lonely land. But what happened when they knew that it was not a scare, but real war, and a fight for liberty and justice? Why, 1500 men of Labrador and Newfoundland went into the Navy alone, and these brave and splendid fellows crowded into the Army too. A thousand of them were in Gallipoli. And wherever they were they found their hard experience of the utmost worth. Our trappers soon learn the knack of getting a seal with the gun, though the seal only just pops his head through an ice-hole and the tiny target is the hardest of all things to see. But the trapper gets him – he seldom misses; and whenever a German puts his head out – well, he gets it too.

I have been in Labrador twenty-five years, and I am proud of the way in which my friends out there have done their duty at the front.

My own view of life is that one has to do one’s duty in any place where one happens to be; and I know from what I have seen that our splendid fellows at the front have the same outlook. There are many, many soldiers out there who, with practically nothing to look forward to when the war is over, are sustained by one great thing, and that is the knowledge that they are doing their best.

I have mentioned Canada as a great place for receiving men who will be set free when the war is over. I have just seen the statement that Canada has gone prohibition from end to end, and that pleases me very much. I have spent thirty years amongst deep-sea fishermen and sailors as a medical missionary and a master mariner, and I have shared many dangers with them in the North Sea, out on the Labrador coast and elsewhere, but I have seen more sorrow and misery in the homes of our seafaring men through drink than I ever found in even small craft at sea.

All these things that I have spoken of come under the heading of practical religion and real Christianity, and rightly so. I do not believe in the Christian religion being negative; it is essential that you make it positive.

notes

1

The mate of the Provident was lost, in another vessel, about a year later, in a heavy Channel gale.

2

This award was gazetted at the same time as the announcement of the D.C.M. for Private Edwards. It was “For conspicuous gallantry from September 25th to 29th, near Hulloch. Although severely wounded on the head in the early part of the operations, Company-Sergeant-Major Ford continued to advance and give encouragement to his men until he fell. His example and devotion to duty were of the highest possible value to all ranks. He had already been recommended for his gallant conduct at Festubert.”

3

H. is the writer’s elder brother, a motor dispatch-rider, who has been at the front since the war began, and has done some fine, hard work.