The first formality in a shrapnel case is the administration of an anti-tetanus inoculation, and, when it is done, you realize that they are sure trying to save your life. The doctor uses a horse-syringe, and the injection leaves a lump on your chest as big as a base ball which stays there for forty-eight hours. After the injection a nurse fills out a diagnosis blank with a description of your wounds and a record of your name, age, regiment, regimental number, religion, parentage, and previous history as far as she can discover it without asking questions which would be positively indelicate. After all of that, my wounds were given their first real dressing.
Immediately after this was done, I was bundled into another ambulance—this time a Cadillac—and driven to Contay where the C. C. S. (casualty clearing station) and railhead were located. In the ambulance with me went three other soldiers, an artillery officer and two privates of infantry. We were all ticketed off as shrapnel cases, and probable recoveries, which latter detail is remarkable, since the most slightly injured in the four had twelve wounds, and there were sixty odd shell fragments or shrapnel balls collectively imbedded in us. The head nurse told me that I had about twenty wounds. Afterward her count proved conservative. More accurate and later returns showed twenty-two bullets and shell fragments in my leg.
We were fairly comfortable in the ambulance, and I, especially, had great relief from the fact that the nurse had strapped my leg in a sling attached to the top of the vehicle. We smoked cigarettes and chatted cheerfully, exchanging congratulations on having got “clean ones,” that is, wounds probably not fatal. The artillery officer told me he had been supporting our battalion, that morning, with one of the “sacrifice batteries.” A sacrifice battery, I might explain, is one composed of field pieces which are emplaced between the front and support lines, and which, in case of an attack or counter attack, are fired at pointblank range. They call them sacrifice batteries because some of them are wiped out every day. This officer said our battalion, that morning, had been supported by an entire division of artillery, and that on our front of four hundred yards the eighteen pounders, alone, in a curtain fire which lasted thirty-two minutes, had discharged fifteen thousand rounds of high-explosive shells.
I was impressed by his statement, of course, but I told him that while this was an astonishing lot of ammunition, it was even more surprising to have noticed at close range, as I did, the number of Germans they missed. Toward the end of our trip to Contay, we were much exhausted and pretty badly shaken up. We were beginning also to realize that we were by no means out of the woods, surgically. Our wounds had merely been dressed. Each of us faced an extensive and serious operation. We arrived at Contay, silent and pretty much depressed. For twenty-four hours in the Contay casualty clearing station, they did little except feed us and take our temperatures hourly. Then we were put into a hospital train for Rouen.
Right here, I would like to tell a little story about a hospital train leaving Contay for Rouen—not the one we were on, but one which had left a few days before. The train, when it was just ready to depart with a full quota of wounded men, was attacked by German aeroplanes from which bombs were dropped upon it. There is nothing, apparently, that makes the Germans so fearless and ferocious as the Red Cross emblem. On the top of each of the cars in this train there was a Red Cross big enough to be seen from miles in the air. The German aviators accepted them merely as excellent targets. Their bombs quickly knocked three or four cars from the rails and killed several of the helpless wounded men. The rest of the patients, weak and nervous from recent shock and injury, some of them half delirious, and nearly all of them in pain, were thrown into near-panic. Two of the nursing sisters in charge of the train were the coolest individuals present. They walked calmly up and down its length, urging the patients to remain quiet, directing the male attendants how to remove the wounded men safely from the wrecked cars, and paying no attention whatever to the bombs which were still exploding near the train. I did not have the privilege of witnessing this scene myself, but I know that I have accurately described it for the details were told in an official report when the King decorated the two sisters with the Royal Red Cross, for valor in the face of the enemy.
The trip from Contay to Rouen was a nightmare—twenty-six hours travelling one hundred and fifty miles on a train, which was forever stopping and starting, its jerky and uncertain progress meaning to us just hours and hours of suffering. I do not know whether this part of the system for the removal of the wounded has been improved now. Then, its inconveniences and imperfections must have been inevitable, for, in every way afterward, the most thoughtful and tender care was shown us. In the long row of huts which compose the British General Hospital at Rouen, we found ourselves in what seemed like Paradise.
In the hut, which constituted the special ward for leg wounds, I was lifted from the stretcher on which I had travelled all the way from Poizers into a comfortable bed with fresh, clean sheets, and instantly I found myself surrounded with quiet, trained, efficient care. I forgot the pain of my wounds and the dread of the coming operation when a tray of delicious food was placed beside my bed and a nurse prepared me for the enjoyment of it by bathing my face and hands with scented water.
On the following morning my leg was X-rayed and photographed. I told the surgeon I thought the business of operating could very well be put off until I had had about three more square meals, but he couldn’t see it that way. In the afternoon, I got my first sickening dose of ether, and they took the first lot of iron out of me. I suppose these were just the surface deposits, for they only got five or six pieces. However, they continued systematically. I had five more operations, and every time I came out of the ether; the row of bullets and shell scraps at the foot of my bed was a little longer. After the number had reached twenty-two, they told me that perhaps there were a few more in there, but they thought they’d better let them stay. My wounds had become septic, and it was necessary to give all attention to drainage and cure. It was about this time that everything, for a while, seemed to become hazy, and my memories got all queerly mixed up and confused. I recollect I conceived a violent dislike for a black dog that appeared from nowhere, now and then, and began chewing at my leg, and I believe I gave the nurse a severe talking to because she insisted on going to look on at the ball game when she ought to be sitting by to chase that dog away. And I was perfectly certain about her being at the ball game, because I saw her there when I was playing third base.
It was at this time (on November 28, 1916, ten days after I had been wounded) that my father, in Lexington, received the following cablegram from the officer in charge of the Canadian records, in England:
“Sincerely regret to inform you that Sergeant Alexander McClintock is officially reported dangerously ill in No. 5 General Hospital, from gunshot wound in left thigh. Further particulars supplied when received.”