So it is that the brave spirit of our soldiers enables them to joke even at serious wounds. A hand of a Royal Irish Rifleman was shot off at the battle of Mons. For some time after being admitted to hospital he was very despondent about his future. How could he earn his living? One day, however, he broke out with a laugh. "If all else fails. I'll get a job as a shorthand writer."
Another Highlander, with arm terribly shattered by a shell, said: "I will be first-rate for opening taxi doors in the Strand; lucky it was my left arm."
A soldier told a reporter this about a wounded Highlander. When brought to hospital he began to swear, and those who had picked him up at great risk told him that this was a strange sort of gratitude to men who had most likely saved his life. "Maybe you have, and maybe you haven't saved my life," he said in his dogged, dour way. "A'm no saying onnything aboot that; but what A want to hear is what did ye dae wi' me wee cap. It's loast, it is, an' A'll hae tee pay for anither oot o' me ain pocket."
At all times a good soldier dislikes to go to hospital; but especially so on active service. He wants to do all he can for his country and he dreads to be suspected of "skrimshanking." The reluctance of Colonel Loring, who commanded the second Battalion of the Royal Warwickshires, to go to hospital caused his death, which was a great loss to the Army. Wounded in a foot by a shrapnel bullet he refused to go to hospital, had his foot bound up in a puttee when unable to wear a boot and led his men on horseback. This made him a conspicuous mark for sharpshooters, and after two chargers had been killed under him he was himself shot dead.
Great courage is shown by orderlies and ambulance men connected with a military hospital. There is the danger of catching infectious diseases and the danger of collecting the wounded during and after a battle. For ambulance men there is no excitement, or the stimulus of "hitting back;" yet they often get hit themselves.
[CHAPTER XXII]
Ready to Return