Everybody is getting very restless and unless something happens to break the calm tranquillity of the daily routine, something is going to blow up. Saturday the officers played the Johns Hopkins unit at Bazoirs and, although they were beaten, they came back full of enthusiasm over the good times they had and the hospitality shown them.
Last night a telegram saying, "War Department offers you commission gastro-enterologist, rank Captain, base hospital here. Only thirty-two appointments. Will you accept if transfer possible. Cable immediately." I answered, "Prefer France."
I do not want to leave now because, in spite of the awful waste in time and money, the game is just beginning, and I want to see it through.
There is a rumor that Brewer will be here for lunch. I hope so, as it means a little news of what is going on around us. Steiner and I are planning to go to Troyes for Saturday night for a bit of a change.
September 25th. Brewer arrived about noon and after lunch recounted his adventures at the front. They were exciting and they all had narrow squeaks. He was on the British lines East of Ypres and while he was there the Evacuation Hospital was bombed three times.
Darrach was asked to join in a poker game one night. He said he was tired and did not want to play as he had been operating all day, but they kept urging him and as he was ahead of the game he finally consented. They had not been playing fifteen minutes when there was a terrific crash. Darrach went out to see what had happened and found a bomb had fallen squarely on his tent. Nothing remained but a few fragments of his overcoat; there was a hole six feet deep and about ten feet in diameter.
A few moments later, when Brewer was in bed, a second crash followed by a shower of fragments. He rushed out and was told some of his nurses were hurt. A bomb had fallen right in front of the kitchen, blowing it to splinters. A fragment had struck Miss McDonald, his former operating nurse, just below the right eye, and fragments of shell wounded two others. There were seventy people wounded that night.
He then went on to recount many little instances of life in an Evacuation Hospital. How the officers finally dug themselves in. They did not like to do it at first, as they were all new at the game and no one wanted to show that he was nervous. They heard Boche avions passing overhead frequently, and at those times they would climb in the dugouts. O—— had a narrow escape. They heard bombs in the neighborhood. He rushed in his tent for his helmet. His servant was there and as soon as they found it they both rushed out. As they ran along, the servant about twenty feet in advance, crash—and the servant was wafted off the face of the earth.
All day and all night shells were passing over them. Also he told us an authentic story of one of his patients who was wounded in a charge, the wound proving to be a compound fracture of the thigh. He crawled into a shell-hole where he met another man with a compound fracture of the arm. They remained there using their rations and water. Then the man with the arm crawled out and brought in food and water from the dead that were lying about them. And so they existed until the forty-ninth day. On that night the arm man failed to return and was never seen again. So the leg man waited two more days, catching some water in his helmet, and then realized he must get out or starve. So starting in the direction in which he knew the British lines to be, he crawled across no-man's-land when, to his surprise, he came up to a trench and found it filled with Germans. He then realized that this trench had been built while he was lying out there and to get home he must cross it. So he waited for a time, until a moment when there were no Germans near him, and jumped it landing on his good leg. Crawling further he at last arrived in front of his own trench where he was seen and a big fusillade opened. He escaped this and finally by yelling in English they realized it was one of their own men and he was taken in. This was after fifty days. Brewer states the story has been corroborated in all details and is true.