Living Bayonets: A Record of the Last Push

by Coningsby Dawson

LXXVI

Prince of Wales Hospital, London, September 6, 1918

Here I am once again in a clean white bed with the discreet feet of nurses, like those of nuns, making hardly any sound as they pass up and down the corridor. There's just one other officer in my room. His leg is full of machine-gun bullets, and, like myself, he's just arrived from France. I've not got used to this new security yet, this right to live, this ordered decency—all of which seems to be summed up in the presence of women. Less than three days ago I saw two of my gun-teams scuppered by shellfire and the horses rolling among the wounded men. I can't get the sight out of my mind. To be alive seems an unfair advantage I have taken.—And all the time I want to be back in the thick of it. It was so glorious—such a bon little war, as we say out there, while it lasted.

You'll want to know what happened. On 2nd September at dawn we set out as the point of the attacking wedge to hammer our way to Cambrai. You will have read this, and more than this, already in your papers. After we had fired on the barrage for several hours, and our infantry had advanced, we began to move our battery forward by sections. The major was away on leave to Blighty, so the captain was acting O.C. He went forward to observe and reconnoitre; I was left to move up the battery. My own section was the last to move. On the road I was met by a mounted orderly who handed me a written order to join another battery which was doing forward work on opportunity targets. I reported to this battery and had brought my two guns into position on their right flank, when the first shell burst. The gun-teams had not unhooked; it burst directly under the centre team and scuppered the lot, wounding all the drivers and killing one of the gunners. We had got the guns into action, when another shell burst beside the left-hand gun, near which I was standing, wounding all the gun-crew except one man. I myself got a piece in the head, between the ear and the left temple. It was a lucky chance that I wasn't killed outright. The fragment of shell struck upwards and under my steel helmet, cutting the chin-strap and the brass link which holds the strap to the helmet. It was diverted by a rivet in the strap, so instead of going straight into my head, it glanced along the skull. I was X-rayed in France and was to have been operated on, but there was no time with so many casualties coming down, so I was sent to England for the operation. I was in luck to escape so lightly. I was so grateful to my helmet that I hid it in my trench coat and smuggled it back to England with me as a curiosity—which is not allowed.

But to return to my story. After the second shell had caught us and others were popping all about us, I made up my mind that the enemy had a direct line on us. I have since been told that he put on a strong counter-attack and bent our line back for a time, so that our artillery were very near up and it's likely that he could observe us. I sent back for my teams after we had carried out our wounded, intending to drag the guns out farther to the right flank. Another gun-team was scuppered and all my gunners were knocked out but three men. The enemy now started to pay attention to my ammunition wagons, putting one shell straight in among the lot of them, so I had to leave the guns for the moment and get my wagons away. I then rode forward to where the other guns of my battery were in action and found that they had escaped casualties, so arranged to bring my guns in beside them. About an hour and a half after I was hit I went to an advance aid-post to have my head dressed. It was just a pile of stretchers and bandages in a ditch—the living under cover in the ditch, the dead lying out on top; here a doctor and four Red Cross orderlies were working in silence. I was ordered to report at the next post back for an anti-tetanus injection, so I got on my horse and rode. At the next post they had no anti-tetanus, so I was put on a lorry and driven back to Arras. From there I went to the Casualty Clearing Station, where I was dressed and got two hours' sleep—from there I travelled on the Red Cross train to the Base, arriving at 6 a.m., only eighteen hours from the time that I was in the fighting. The hospital I went to was the Number 20 General—the same one that I was in last year. That same morning I was X-rayed and starved all day in preparation for an operation which did not happen. In the evening I was warned for Blighty, but it was the midday of 4th September before I got on the train for the port of embarkation. The journey was rather long, for I did not reach Liverpool Street till two in the morning. Yesterday, as soon as I woke up, I sent you a cable. In the afternoon Mr. W. came to see me and is coming again to-day. I left the Front without a bit of kit, so my first S.O.S. was for a pair of pyjamas. Having studied the colour of my eyes and consulted with his lady-clerks, W. sent me a suit of baby blue silk ones with thin white stripes in them—so now I am ready to receive ladies.

3 p.m. I was X-rayed, and there is a splinter between the scalp and skull. Whether the skull is fractured I don't know; I think not, however, as I feel too well. What a contrast lying here in the quiet after so many night marches, so much secrecy, such tiger pounces forward in the dawn, such agony and courage and death. There were wounded men hobbling seven miles from the Drocourt-Quéant line where I was hit, to the hospital at Arras. The roads were packed with transports—ammunition, pontoons, rations—streaming forward, gunners and infantry marching up to the carnage with eager faces, passing the back-going traffic which was a scarlet tide of blood. It was worth living for—worth doing—that busting of the Hindenburg Line. I hope to be patched up in two months, so that I may be in on the final rush to the Rhine. I've only been out of the fighting three days and I want to be in it again.

Don't worry about me at all. I'm all right and brown and strong. Thank God I'm not dead yet and shall be able to fight again.

Note.—Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded on 2nd September in the attack on the Quéant-Drocourt Line, when the magnificent fighting of the Canadians broke the Hindenburg Line. The above letter describes that attack and the manner in which he got his wound.