The Tale of a Trooper

by Clutha N. Mackenzie

The evening of the day he came on board they left Anzac and for some hours the engines rumbled away, when again there was silence. Mac was told they were at Mudros alongside the Aquitania putting all light and medium cases on board that vessel. Then for an indefinite space of time he again felt the vibration of the engines, and he thought they must be bound for Alexandria. When the vessel stopped, without having the vaguest notion how long she had been steaming, he took it for granted they were at Alexandria, and was rejoicing inwardly. He was deeply disappointed to hear they were again off Anzac.

During the day the Turks shelled the vessel, and turned machine-guns on her. The shells, which Mac could hear bursting as he lay in his bunk, did no damage, but the machine-gun fire caught one wounded man lying on deck, made several chips in the deck and holes through the operating theatre, narrowly missing a medical officer at work on a case and rattled against the steel sides. The ship moved out to a safer anchorage. Mac heard in later days that a destroyer had been carelessly firing from under the lee of the hospital ship. They took on board that day another thousand cases, again transferred the less seriously wounded to the Aquitania, and returned once more to Anzac. They left Anzac finally on Friday, called again at Mudros to discharge the light cases, and set a course for Alexandria, much to Mac's relief.

One day he was taken on a stretcher to the operating theatre, where he drifted strangely away from earthly things, and woke again in his bunk. Once he had a glorious sleep, after an injection of morphia, but usually he lay awake, tired and restless. There was no one to talk to, except on those rare but pleasant moments when the good padre and the ever-cheering sister found a few spare minutes. All those near him were badly wounded and far too ill to speak. Some died, and, wrapped in a blanket, disappeared from the ward to join the line of corpses on an upper deck, waiting the dawning hour and the parting words of the padre to plunge with firebars at their feet into the blue Mediterranean. Of what had finally happened on those Gallipoli heights no one could say definitely, and there were disappointing and unsatisfactory rumours. About noon one day the vessel passed much wreckage of shattered boats, oars, sun helmets, lifebelts and so on, and cruised about for some time looking for survivors, but found none. It was the scene of the foundering a few hours earlier of the Royal Edward with many hundred fine fellows. The padre brought what news he could to Mac, and was seldom unaccompanied by something tempting in the way of sweets or fruit.

On Monday about the middle of the morning the vessel tied up at Alexandria. The heat was almost unbearable, for no breeze stirred in the hot confines of the dock to send a cooling breath into the stuffy depths of the ship. Mac had a wild longing to get off the ship, and he must have become light-headed. He had been told he would be sent ashore before evening, but it seemed to him hour after hour had passed and he knew it must be ten o'clock at night. He gave up hope, and said to the sister when she came near him that he supposed no one would be sent ashore now until morning.

"But it's only midday. You'll all go ashore this afternoon."

"Midday on Monday or Tuesday?" Mac inquired.

"Monday, of course, you silly old boy."

Days seemed to pass before the stretcher-bearers commenced removing the wounded from his ward, but it was only four in the afternoon when he was put on a stretcher, taken up in a lift and carried down the gangway across the pier to an ambulance. For those fifty yards through the fierce sun, an English woman walked beside him holding a parasol over his head, and he was deeply touched by so thoughtful a kindness. From what he had seen of the English ladies of Egypt during the terrible shortage of trained hospital workers, he knew that no words could describe the magnificence of their actions. The ambulance rattled away, and he heard again the many noises of an Egyptian street. It was a dreary journey of nearly an hour, for the springs of the car had long abandoned their functions, and the jolting over the cobbled roads was agony to his wounded head.

He was taken to the 17th General Hospital at Ramleh, and was placed on a low basket arrangement in a big marquee, with its sides rolled up so that the least hot of any stray breeze might find its way in. The floor was the desert sand. It was in these days that the shamefully inadequate preparations for the wounded were most felt, yet the sufferers themselves did not complain, and the hospital staffs and the civilian population of Egypt went to work in that scorching heat to make the best use of their strength and of the short supply of material available. So the wounded, knowing that all there were doing their best uncomplainingly accepted going without dressings when they would have brought great relief; accepted bad food sometimes, the discomfort of the wicket beds in the stifling heat of the marquees; and, armed each with a fly whisk, they made the best of a bad job. The sisters were magnificent, and, indeed, everybody was. The lightly wounded, too, did all in their power for those who could not walk.

Several hours after Mac arrived, he was handed a bowl of rice mixed with condensed milk, and though it had been made some time, and had fermented, he was hungry and ate it eagerly. Then a sister dressed his wound, and soon the marquee was left to itself for the night. For the first time in several days, in spite of the fact that his head felt very bad, he went to sleep, and his waking was full of strange, unutterable horror. He found himself crawling with his hands and knees on the sand. He was awake, but why was it he could not see? He crawled round and round, but could find nothing but sand, sand everywhere, nothing but sand. He felt terribly alone, and he could not recall the reason of it all, or why he could not see. He called out in his terror—again—and again—what, he did not know. Then an old sister seized him. "You poor old boy. What have you crawled out of the tent for?" And he remembered again where he was. She took him back to his bed, soothed him as a mother would calm a terrified child. Mac was trembling like a leaf.