Behind the old house where I lay there was a battery of British guns, 4.7's. After a while the enemy found the range, and their shells commenced bursting round me. God in Heaven! I died a hundred deaths in that old ruin. Once a shell hit what roof there was and a score of bricks came crashing about me. Not one touched. I seemed charmed. I could hear the shells screeching through the air a second before they burst near where I lay. Of bodily pain I had little. The discomfort was great; the thirst was appalling. I thought I should bleed to death before help reached me. But there was nothing to compare with the mental strain of waiting—waiting—waiting for a shell to burst. Where would it drop? Would the next get me?
I hoped and longed and waited, but help did not come. I never lost consciousness. Darkness came and dawn. Another day went by and the shelling went on as before. Another night, another dawn and then two Highland stretcher-bearers came in. They raised me gently. The bleeding had stopped, but that journey on the stretcher was too much. I had been found and I let myself drift into the land of unknown things.
I woke before we reached a dugout dressing station. Here I was given a first-aid dressing and immediately after carried away to an old-fashioned village behind the lines. At this point there was a rough field hospital, an old barn probably. There were eighty or ninety wounded there when I arrived. Among the many French and British were some Germans. The very next stretcher to me was occupied by one of the enemy.
The Red Cross floated over the building, but that emblem of mercy made no difference to the Hun. The shells commenced to find range, and in a short time the roof was lifted off. A wounded man died close to me. I can only remember the purr of a motor as an ambulance rushed up. Then I saw four stretcher-bearers; two grabbed the German, and two caught hold of me. We were rushed to the ambulance and driven at maddening speed through the shell-ridden town.
Though I was barely conscious, though I believed that I was nearing my last moments, I remember how it struck me vividly,—the contrast in the methods of fighting. German shells were blasting to pieces the shelter of wounded men and nurses. German wounded were being cared for by those whom their comrades sought to kill. The Hun might have killed his own. It did not matter. What is a life here or there to a Hohenzollern? And the Allies—here were two British stretcher-bearers bent under the burden of an enemy patient. They were striving to save his life from the fire of his own people.
I do not remember any more after I was put in the ambulance. I came to myself in a base hospital in France. I was strapped to a water bed. Everything round me was soft and fresh and clean, and smelled deliciously. There was a patient, sweet-smiling woman in nurse's costume who came and went to the beck and call of every man of us. We were whimpering and peevish; we were wracked with pain and weary of mind, but that nurse never failed to smile. Call a hundred times, call her once, she was always there to soothe, to help, to sympathize, and always smiling. Her heart must have been breaking at times, but her serene face never showed her sorrow or her weariness.
Often and often I am asked, "Why didn't you die when you were lying out there on the battle-field?" Why didn't I die? I could have, several times, but I didn't want to die, and I knew that if I were found I need not die. We raw soldiers when we go to France are interested in the possibilities of being wounded. We know we've more or less got it coming to us, and we begin quietly to make inquiries. We notice all those men who wear the gold honor-bars on their sleeves. Yes; for every wound we get we have the right to wear a narrow strip of gold braid on the tunic sleeve.
We talk to the man with the honor-bar. We ask him how he was treated in the hospital. He may be doing the dirtiest fatigue duty round trench or camp, he may be smoking or writing a letter, but the minute be hears the word "hospital" he drops everything. If he be a Cockney soldier he will repeat the word: "'Orspital, mate—lor' luv ye, wish I wuz back!"
That is the feeling. Talk to a thousand men after this war; ask them their experiences and they will tell you a thousand different stories. Ask them how they were treated in the hospital and there is but one reply: "Treated in hospital? Excellent!"
There is only one word. The great Red Cross—Royal Army Medical Corps—is practically one hundred per cent. efficient. The veterans will tell the youngsters, "If you're wounded and have to lie out—then, lie out—don't be foolish enough to die while you are lying out—because you can't die once they find you."