Combed Out

by F. A. Voigt

The operating theatre was alive with figures clothed in white, blood-stained garments, bustling up and down, or standing in groups around the other tables. At the far end of the theatre someone was blubbering like a little child.

"Here, come on—hold this man's leg up. What d'you think you're here for?" It was the surgeon at the next table who was speaking to me.

I grasped the leg by the foot—it was quite cold—while the orderly removed a bandage from the thigh. The bone had been shattered. A bullet had also entered the man's chest, making a small round puncture. A shell fragment had struck his upper lip, leaving a jagged triangular hole below the nose. Several teeth had been knocked out. The upper palate had been gashed and partly separated from the bone. It hung inside the half-open mouth like a shrivelled flap. He breathed feebly and irregularly. The surgeon bent over him and asked him if he had been wounded long. He answered in low, hoarse whispers that he had been lying in the mud and rain for several days. Then he turned his eyes up so that only the whites were visible. They remained rigidly fixed in that position. He received a dorsal injection, being too weak for chloroform. The shattered thigh was painted with picric acid and the tourniquet tightened above the injury. The surgeon cut through the leg with a circular sweep of the knife, the splintered bone offering no resistance. The limb came off in my hands. I held it for a moment, being awed by it. It seemed very heavy. Then I dropped it into the pail below. When the surgeon had dressed the stump, he made a slight incision in the forearm in order to inject a saline solution. The man, who had not uttered a sound hitherto, winced and gave a faint cry.

"Come along—hold this leg up!"

I darted to the next table and seized another foot and ankle. There was a greenish festering hole so high up the leg that it was impossible to use a tourniquet. So the surgeon laid bare the main artery by a longitudinal incision and tied it up with catgut to prevent excessive loss of blood. With a rapid stroke of his knife he then made a shallow cut right round the limb above the injured spot, and depressing the blade cut deeply down to the bone. The blood gushed up suddenly, formed a pool on the towels and sheet underneath, overflowed the edge of the table, and splashed down on to the floor in a cascade. The operator paused a moment and then, while the blood continued to stream from the wound, he cut round the bone until flesh was entirely severed from flesh. The upper periosteum was pushed back and held by means of a metal plate. The bone was sawn through—the saw grated and jerked and jarred in a horrible manner. The leg came off and I dropped it into the white enamelled pail. The toe-nails clicked against the enamel, and the thigh, bumping against the rim, overturned it and flopped into the pool of blood under the table.

"Come on—look sharp—never mind that leg—give a help here and remove this man's bandages."

I was looking at a head that resembled a huge football made of soiled linen. In place of the mouth there was a small, dirty hole through which the fetid breath came and went. Above the hole was a big red patch. I unwound the bandages one by one. Gradually the face was revealed. Between the mouth with black, swollen lips and the bruised eyes, closed by grey greenish lids, there was, where the nose should have been, a red hole big enough to contain a human fist.

The wounded came and went in an unbroken stream. The tables were always occupied. I went from one to another, unwound bandages, held up limbs for amputation, fetched splints, padding, gauze, or new bandages. I was too busy to think or to feel any horror. I was vaguely conscious of nausea and of a hot, stifling atmosphere heavy with the fumes of chloroform and ether.

Some of the wounded had arms that hung by shreds of muscle and sinew. Others had feet that were nothing but masses of clotted blood, lumps of torn flesh, and bits of bone tied up in blood-sodden linen parcels. Some had deep holes in their backs, others had gashes in their heads from which soft, pink matter oozed.

Before me lay a man with a blackened face, a shattered knee, and festering holes all over his body. Gas-gangrene had set in and the stench was almost unendurable. The surgeon gently felt the injured leg, but the man gave such long-drawn piercing shrieks that he had to be left alone. He was sent to the resuscitation ward to recover strength a little, for he was very weak through loss of blood. In the evening he began to rave—he asked for whisky in a boisterously jovial voice, and then he yelled and cried: "Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant, you've ruined my career." In the night he died.