OUT OF IT
Every man who goes into the active service of the present war knows that someday, somehow, somewhere, he is going to get plugged. We have expressions of our own as to wounds. If a chap loses a leg or an arm or both, he'll say, "I lost mine," but when there is a wound, no matter how serious, yet which does not entail the loss of a visible part of the body, we say, "I got mine."
So it was as time wore on, I "got mine" in the right shoulder and right lung. A German explosive bullet caught me while I was in a lying position. It was at Ypres; we all get it at Ypres.
The thing happened under peculiar circumstances. It was the second time in my army career that I volunteered for anything. The first time was the night I went on listening post; the second time I got plugged, and plugged for good.
We had repulsed the enemy several times. We were running short of ammunition and our position was enfiladed. It was absolutely necessary, if all of us were not to lose our lives, that some one should bring up ammunition.
The ammunition dump lay about a mile back of our line. An officer called for volunteers to creep back for a supply. It was broad daylight, but twenty-eight other lads and myself stepped forward willing to attempt the task.
The men who remained behind had a command to keep up a rapid fire over the enemy trenches which would lend us some cover. No matter how perfect this covering may be, it is never completely effective in silencing the enemy fire. Quite a number of bullets scattered about us as we clambered along the short communication trench, and up into the open. This was my first experience in running away from bullets, and I proved in the first five seconds of that journey that a man, no matter what his propensities for winning medals may be, can run much faster from bullets than he can toward them.
Among us were boys of several other companies, and on the way out three of the twenty-nine got hit. I did not know whom. We kept on, breathless and gasping, running as we were under the weight of full equipment and dodging bullets as we went. Shells were falling round us too, now. We were not happy.
At last we got to our destination and picked up the boxes. A box of ammunition weighs a hundred or more pounds, so we decided that three of us should carry two boxes. The boxes are fitted with handles on each end.
We started off running at top speed, then dropping flat on our stomachs to fetch our breath and rest our aching arms. The enemy was rapidly getting thicker. We rose and rushed forward another stretch. At three hundred yards from the trench, the greater number of our crowd had fallen. We dropped. Then our hearts stood still, for from our trench there came a silence we could feel.
We knew what it meant. There was no need for the enemy to increase the rapidity of his fire over us and over the boys in the trench to let us know what was up. Our ammunition had already given out, and we had to face the last few hundred yards without protection, meager though it had been throughout. We knew there was not a man in that trench who had a bullet left. We knew that as far as we were concerned, we were done. We metaphorically shook hands with ourselves and wished friend self a long good-by. We looked at the sun and said "Tra-la-la" to it, and we wondered in a flash of thought what the old world would be like without us. We wondered where we would "light up."
All this passed in a moment of time, and then we decided that it would be better if we paired up, two men taking one box of ammunition. This offered a smaller target for the busy enemy, and also made for increased speed in covering the remaining ground.
We sprang up once more and dodged and doubled as we leaped through the rain of bullets, machine gun and rifle. How we lived I don't know. I was sharing a box with a lad whom I heard the fellows call Bob. He was no more than a boy, but we were much of a size and ran light. We were the only two of the twenty-nine left on our feet. To-day I am one of five of that bunch left alive.
About fifty yards from the trench we dropped for a last rest before the final spurt which would decide the whole course of events in the next ten minutes. Would we reach that trench and turn in our box of ammunition, or would we "get ours" and would the boys so eagerly waiting for us be surrounded and captured? Or would many of them do what they had threatened? "If it comes to surrendering," several had said in my hearing, "I will run a bayonet into myself rather than be taken."
When a man is lying close to the ground there is not so very great a chance of his being hit by bullets. They pass overhead as a rule. It is when a man is kneeling or standing, or between the two positions that the great danger lies. The lad Bob and I were just in the act of rising when mine came along. I felt no more than a stinging blow in the right shoulder, a searing cut and a thud of pain as the bullet exploded in leaving my body. I fell on my face and blood gushed from my shoulder.
"Hit hard or soft?" queried my companion, as he threw himself down beside me.
"Don't know," I gasped.
"You're hit in the mouth," he said, as the blood poured from between my lips.
"No, by gum, you're hit in the back!"
I gasped, nearly choked, and spluttered out: "You're a liar; I'm not hit in the back." But there was a gash in the back where the exploding missile had torn away and carried out portions of my lung and bits of bone and flesh.
I closed my eyes. Then from a distance I heard Bob speak.
"I'm going to fix you," he said, and knelt beside me. He got into such a position that his own body shielded me from any of the enemy bullets. It was a marvelous piece of bravery; less has earned a Victoria Cross.
He turned me round so that my head was toward our reserves and my feet were toward the Germans. In almost all cases when a man is hit he falls forward with his face to the enemy. In all probability he will become unconscious. When he awakes he remembers that he fell forward. A blind instinct works within him and makes him strive to turn around. He knows danger lies ahead, but friend and safety are back of him.
Bob shifted me round. "Remember," he whispered, "that if you should faint, when you come to you are placed right. You are in the right direction—don't turn round."
A wonderful motto for a man to carry through life. Bob had no thought of future or fame. In keen solicitude for a fallen comrade he uttered words which mean more in these days of war and blood than do the words of poets.
"You're in the right direction—don't turn round!"
Then the lad got up to go on. He struggled to lift the box of ammunition.
I whispered to him hoarsely: "You're not going on—you will never get there. It is certain death."
"Good-by, old boy," was his answer. "You don't think because the rest of you have gone down that I am going to be a piker. Say 'Hello!' to Mother for me should you see her before I do."
I have never seen his mother. I do not know her. If she lives she has the memory of a son who, though a boy in years, was a soldier and a very gallant gentleman. Bob tried to reach the trench, but a rain of bullets got him and he fell dead only a little way from me.
I lay where I had fallen for some time. I don't know how long, but long enough to see our boys captured by the enemy. And in so dreadful a plight as I was I had to smile. Those men who had boasted they would kill themselves, surrendered with the rest. Life is very sweet. There is always a chance of living, and always a chance of escape no matter how brutal the system in German prison camps.
Every man in that trench surrendered honorably. Not a man had a bullet left. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and it is hard to die when there is youth and love and strength.
As evening wore on I feared that I too might be captured, and I commenced a weary struggle to crawl back across the field. It was while I was resting after such an effort that a wonderful moment came to me. I saw the Lord Jesus upon His cross, and the compassion upon His face was marvelous to see. He appeared to speak to me.
"I am dying," I muttered, and then thought, "Shall I pray?"
Of outward praying I had done none. I thought about it and wondered. To pray now—no, that was being a piker. I had not prayed openly before, now when I was nearing death it was no time for a hurried repentance and a stammered prayer. I watched the vision as it slowly faded, and a great comfort surrounded me. I was happy.
I crawled on and reached a shell hole. It must have been an hour later that a despatch rider came to me. His motorcycle had been shot from under him, and he was striving to reach his destination on foot. He spoke to me, and then placed me in a blanket, which he took from a dead soldier. In this he dragged me to the shelter of an old tumbledown house. It had been riddled with shot and shell, but the greater part of the outer walls were standing, and it was shelter.
I begged the despatch rider to give me his name. I begged him to take some small things of mine to keep as a token for what he had done for me. But he would have nothing. He hurried away with the intention of sending help to me, and as he went I begged his name once more. "Oh! Johnnie Canuck!" said he. And there it remains. I do not know the name of the man who dragged me to comparative safety at such terrible risk to himself.
Behind the old house where I lay there was a battery of British guns, 4.7's. After a while the enemy found the range, and their shells commenced bursting round me. God in Heaven! I died a hundred deaths in that old ruin. Once a shell hit what roof there was and a score of bricks came crashing about me. Not one touched. I seemed charmed. I could hear the shells screeching through the air a second before they burst near where I lay. Of bodily pain I had little. The discomfort was great; the thirst was appalling. I thought I should bleed to death before help reached me. But there was nothing to compare with the mental strain of waiting—waiting—waiting for a shell to burst. Where would it drop? Would the next get me?
I hoped and longed and waited, but help did not come. I never lost consciousness. Darkness came and dawn. Another day went by and the shelling went on as before. Another night, another dawn and then two Highland stretcher-bearers came in. They raised me gently. The bleeding had stopped, but that journey on the stretcher was too much. I had been found and I let myself drift into the land of unknown things.
I woke before we reached a dugout dressing station. Here I was given a first-aid dressing and immediately after carried away to an old-fashioned village behind the lines. At this point there was a rough field hospital, an old barn probably. There were eighty or ninety wounded there when I arrived. Among the many French and British were some Germans. The very next stretcher to me was occupied by one of the enemy.
The Red Cross floated over the building, but that emblem of mercy made no difference to the Hun. The shells commenced to find range, and in a short time the roof was lifted off. A wounded man died close to me. I can only remember the purr of a motor as an ambulance rushed up. Then I saw four stretcher-bearers; two grabbed the German, and two caught hold of me. We were rushed to the ambulance and driven at maddening speed through the shell-ridden town.
Though I was barely conscious, though I believed that I was nearing my last moments, I remember how it struck me vividly,—the contrast in the methods of fighting. German shells were blasting to pieces the shelter of wounded men and nurses. German wounded were being cared for by those whom their comrades sought to kill. The Hun might have killed his own. It did not matter. What is a life here or there to a Hohenzollern? And the Allies—here were two British stretcher-bearers bent under the burden of an enemy patient. They were striving to save his life from the fire of his own people.
I do not remember any more after I was put in the ambulance. I came to myself in a base hospital in France. I was strapped to a water bed. Everything round me was soft and fresh and clean, and smelled deliciously. There was a patient, sweet-smiling woman in nurse's costume who came and went to the beck and call of every man of us. We were whimpering and peevish; we were wracked with pain and weary of mind, but that nurse never failed to smile. Call a hundred times, call her once, she was always there to soothe, to help, to sympathize, and always smiling. Her heart must have been breaking at times, but her serene face never showed her sorrow or her weariness.
Often and often I am asked, "Why didn't you die when you were lying out there on the battle-field?" Why didn't I die? I could have, several times, but I didn't want to die, and I knew that if I were found I need not die. We raw soldiers when we go to France are interested in the possibilities of being wounded. We know we've more or less got it coming to us, and we begin quietly to make inquiries. We notice all those men who wear the gold honor-bars on their sleeves. Yes; for every wound we get we have the right to wear a narrow strip of gold braid on the tunic sleeve.
We talk to the man with the honor-bar. We ask him how he was treated in the hospital. He may be doing the dirtiest fatigue duty round trench or camp, he may be smoking or writing a letter, but the minute be hears the word "hospital" he drops everything. If he be a Cockney soldier he will repeat the word: "'Orspital, mate—lor' luv ye, wish I wuz back!"
That is the feeling. Talk to a thousand men after this war; ask them their experiences and they will tell you a thousand different stories. Ask them how they were treated in the hospital and there is but one reply: "Treated in hospital? Excellent!"
There is only one word. The great Red Cross—Royal Army Medical Corps—is practically one hundred per cent. efficient. The veterans will tell the youngsters, "If you're wounded and have to lie out—then, lie out—don't be foolish enough to die while you are lying out—because you can't die once they find you."
YOU CAN'T DIE.
We remember that. We remember facts, too, that we hear from time to time. We remember that out of all the casualties on the western front, only two and a half per cent. have died of wounds. We remember that we have a ninety-seven and a half fighting chance out of a hundred, and we are willing to take it. Some of us have read of other wars and we know, for instance, that in the American Civil War, from the best available statistics, over twenty-two per cent. died of wounds—and the reason? No efficient medical corps—no Red Cross—no neutral flag of red on white.
I was taken over to London as soon as I could be moved. I was in the Royal Herbert Hospital at Woolwich. It is not possible to describe in detail the treatment. The doctors were untiring. Hour after hour and day after day they worked without ceasing. The nurses were unremitting. No eight-hour day for them!
And here again I saw the treatment of the German wounded. They were in wards as gay with flowers, as cool, as clean, as delightful as ours. They had German newspapers to read, and certain days of the week brought a German band, drawn from among fit prisoners, to play German airs for the benefit of the sick prisoners. We think of this, and then we meet a British or French soldier who has been exchanged or who has escaped from a German hospital prison! It is hard to think of it calmly. The first impulse is to follow the law, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But that is not the way to-day of the square fighter.
At this hospital I was operated on and it was shown that it was an explosive bullet that hit me. Several pieces were taken out of me, and these I keep as grim souvenirs. Several other pieces are still in my body, and not infrequently by certain twinges I am made aware of their presence.
I have never seen an explosive bullet, and few of the Allied soldiers believe that many of us have felt them. Should one of the Allies be found making an explosive or Dum-Dum bullet, he is liable to be court-martialed and shot. There are those of us who would like to use them, but it is not what we like, it is what we may or may not do. It is discipline, and discipline forbids a brutal warfare. Thank God that we are fighting this war on the square, that our leaders are making us fight it on the square. Thank God that no attempt has ever been made to brutalize the troops of the Allies.
Part of the four months I was incapacitated was spent at Dobson Volunteer Red Cross Hospital, and here I was again struck with the marvelous devotion of the women. Day after day many of the leading women would come in, duchesses and others of title, and seek for Canadian lads to whom they could show kindnesses. Luxurious cars waited to drive us out for the air; flowers, fruits and books reached us, and quantities of cigarettes.
When the boys of the U.S.A. reach British hospitals in England, as no doubt they shall, they will find the same enthusiasm, the same attention bestowed upon them from the first ladies of the land and from the humblest who may only be able to give a smile, a cheery word or maybe a bunch of fragrant violets.
Two weeks before I was wounded I was recommended for a commission by my former colonel, Maynard Rogers, and the official document came to me while I was in the English hospital suffering from my wounds. It was a great source of pride and satisfaction that my commission, which I prize so highly to-day, was signed by the late Sir Charles Tupper, father of the Canadian Confederation and one of the Dominion's greatest statesmen.
But my fighting days are over. I am "out of it," but out with memories of good fellowship, real comrades, kindness, sympathy and friendships that dim the recollection of death, of destruction, of blood, of outrage, of murder and brutality.