Between the Lines

by Boyd Cable

We 'ave one foe, an' one alone—England!

bellowed the Towers, and out of the pause that came so effectively before the last word of the verse rose a triumphant squeal from the mouth-organ, and the appealing voice of Private 'Enery Irving—'Naw then, put a bit of 'ate into it.' But even that artist of the emotions had to admit his critical sense of the dramatic fully satisfied by the tone of vociferous wrath and hatred flung into the Towers' answering roar of '. . . . England!'

'What an extraordinary people!' said the French staff officer, eyeing the brigadier shaking with laughter on his prancing charger. And he could only heave his shoulders up in an ear-embracing shrug of non-comprehension when the laughing brigadier tried to explain to him (as I explained to you in the beginning):

'And the best bit of the whole joke is that this particular regiment is
English to the backbone.'

THE COST

'The cost in casualties cannot be considered heavy in view of the success gained.'—EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

Outside there were blazing sunshine and heat, a haze of smoke and dust, a nostril-stinging reek of cordite and explosive, and a never-ceasing tumult of noises. Inside was gloom, but a closer, heavier heat, a drug-shop smell, and all the noises of outside, little subdued, and mingled with other lesser but closer sounds. Outside a bitterly fought trench battle was raging; here, inside, the wreckage of battle was being swiftly but skilfully sorted out, classified, bound up, and despatched again into the outer world. For this was one of the field dressing stations scattered behind the fringe of the fighting line, and through one or other of these were passing the casualties as quickly as they could be collected and brought back. The station had been a field labourer's cottage, and had been roughly adapted to its present use. The interior was in semi-darkness, because the windows were completely blocked up with sandbags. The door, which faced towards the enemy's lines, was also sandbagged up, and a new door had been made by knocking out an opening through the mud-brick wall. There were two rooms connected by a door, enlarged again by the tearing down of the lath-and-plaster partition. The only light in the inner room filtered through the broken and displaced tiles of the roof. On the floor, laid out in rows so close packed that there was barely room for an orderly to move, were queer shapeless bundles that at first glance could hardly be recognised as men. They lay huddled on blankets or on the bare floor in dim shadowy lines that were splashed along their length with irregularly placed gleaming white patches. They were puzzling, these patches, shining like snow left in the hollows of a mountain seen far off and in the dusk. A closer look revealed them as the bandages of the first field dressing that every man carries stitched in his uniform against the day he or the stretcher-bearers may rip open the packet to use it. A few of the men moved restlessly, but most lay very still. A few talked, and one or two even laughed; and another moaned slowly and at even unbroken intervals. Two or three lighted cigarettes pin-pricked the gloom in specks of orange light that rose and fell, glowing and sparkling and lighting a faint outline of nose and lip and cheeks, sinking again to dull red. A voice called, feebly at first, and then, as no one answered, more strongly and insistently, for water. When at last it was brought, every other man there demanded or pleaded for a drink.

In the other room a clean-edged circle of light blazed in the centre from an acetylene lamp, leaving the walls and corners in a shadow deep by contrast to blackness. Half the length of a rough deal table jutted out of the darkness into the circle of light, and beneath it its black shadow lay solid half-way across the light ring on the floor.

And into this light passed a constant procession of wounded, some halting for no more than the brief seconds necessary for a glance at the placing of a bandage and an injection of an anti-tetanus serum, some waiting for long pain-laden minutes while a bandage was stripped off, an examination made, in certain cases a rapid play made with cruel-looking scissors and knives. Sometimes a man would walk to the table and stoop a bandaged head or thrust a bandaged hand or arm into the light. Or a stretcher would appear from the darkness and be laid under the light, while the doctors' hands busied themselves about the khaki form that lay there. Some of the wounds were slight, some were awful and unpleasant beyond telling. The doctors worked in a high pressure of haste, but the procession never halted for an instant; one patient was hardly clear of the light-circle before another appeared in it. There were two doctors there—one a young man with a lieutenant's stars on his sleeve; the other, apparently a man of about thirty, in bare arms with rolled-up shirt-sleeves. His jacket, hooked on the back of a broken chair, bore the badges of a captain's rank. The faces of both as they caught the light were pale and glistening with sweat. The hands of both as they flitted and darted about bandages or torn flesh were swift moving, but steady and unshaking as steel pieces of machinery. Words that passed between the two were brief to curtness, technical to the last syllable. About them the dust motes danced in the light, the air hung heavy and stagnant, smelling of chemicals, the thick sickly scent of blood, the sharper reek of sweat. And everything about them, the roof over their heads, the walls around, the table under their hands, the floor beneath their feet, shook and trembled and quivered without cessation. And also without pause the uproar of battle bellowed and shrieked and pounded in their ears. Shells were streaming overhead, the closer ones with a rush and a whoop, the higher and heavier ones with long whistling sighs and screams. Shells exploding near them crashed thunderously and set the whole building rocking more violently than ever. The rifle and machine-gun fire never ceased, but rose and fell, sinking at times to a rapid spluttering crackle, rising again to a booming drum-like roll. The banging reports of bombs and grenades punctuated sharply the running roar of gun and rifle fire.

Through all the whirlwind of noise the doctors worked steadily. Unheeding the noise, the dust, the heat, the trembling of the crazy building, they worked from dawn to noon, and from noon on again to dusk, only pausing for a few minutes at mid-day to swallow beef-tea and a biscuit, and in the afternoon to drink tepid tea. Early in the afternoon a light shell struck a corner of the roof, making a clean hole on entry and blowing out the other side in a clattering gust of flame and smoke, broken tiles and splintering wood. The room filled with choking smoke and dust and bitter blinding fumes, and a shower of dirt and fragments rained down on the floor and table, on the doctors, and on the men lying round the walls. At the first crash and clatter some of the wounded cried out sharply, but one amongst them chided the others, asking had they never heard a Fizz-Bang before, and what would the Doctor be thinking of them squealing there like a lot of schoolgirls at a mouse in the room? But later in the day there was a worse outcry and a worse reason for it. The second room was being emptied, the wounded being carried out to the ambulances that awaited them close by outside. There came suddenly out of the surrounding din of battle four quick car-filling rushes of sound—sh-sh-sh-shoosh—ba-ba-ba-bang! The shells had passed over no more than clear of the cottage, and burst in the air just beyond, and for an instant the stretcher-bearers halted hesitatingly and the wounded shrank on their stretchers. But next instant the work was resumed, and was in full swing when a minute later there came again the four wind-rushes, followed this time by four shattering crashes, an appalling clatter of whirling tiles and brick-work. The cottage disappeared in swirling clouds of smoke and brick-dust, and out of the turmoil came shrieks and cries and groans. When the dust had cleared it showed one end of the cottage completely wrecked, the roof gone, the walls gaping in ragged rents, the end wall collapsed in jumbled ruins. Inside the room was no more than a shambles. There were twenty odd men in it when the shells struck. Seven were carried out alive, and four of these died in the moving. In the other room, where the two doctors worked, no damage was done beyond the breakdown of a portion of the partition wall, and there was only one further casualty—a man who was actually having a slight hand-wound examined at the moment. He was killed instantly by a shell fragment which whizzed through the door-way. The two doctors, after a first hasty examination of the new casualties, held a hurried consultation. The obvious thing to do was to move, but the question was, Where to? One place after another was suggested, only for the suggestion to be dismissed for some good and adequate reason. In the middle of the discussion a fresh torrent of casualties began to pour in. Some plainly required immediate attention, and the doctors fell to work again. By the time the rush was cleared the question of changing position had been forgotten, or, at any rate, was dropped. The wounded continued to arrive, and the doctors continued to work.