Some of the barbed wire entanglements near Seddel Bahr are still in position[ToList]
"Picking up rubbish on top of the parapet."
He disappeared around the curve of the trench, delightedly spreading the news that he had stopped a cushy one in the leg. I kept on back to my own traverse, and showed the diagram I had made the night before to Art Pratt. Mr. Nunns had granted us leave to go out that day to try to get the sniper in the tree. Art was delighted at the chance of some variety. While Art and I were making out a list of things we wanted at the canteen, a man in my section came down the trench.
"Corporal Gallishaw," he said, "the Brigade Major passed through the lines a few minutes ago, and he's raising hell at the state of the lines; you've got to go out with five men, picking up rubbish on top of the parapet."
Instantly there came before my eyes the vision of the strangely limp form I had met only a few minutes before that had been hit in the head "picking up rubbish on top of the parapet." But in the army one cannot stop to think of such things long; orders have to be obeyed. Since coming into the trench we had constructed a dump, but the former occupants of the trench had thrown their refuse on top of the parapet. My job with the five men was to collect this rubbish and put it in our dump. At nine o'clock in the morning we mounted the parapet and began digging. There was no cover for men standing; the low bushes hid men sitting or lying. Every few minutes I gave the men a rest, making them sit in the shelter of the underbrush. The sun was shining brightly; and after the wet spell we had just passed through, the warmth was peculiarly grateful. The news that the canteen had been opened on the beach made most of the men optimistic. With good things to eat in sight life immediately became more bearable. Never since the first day they landed had the men seemed so cheerful. Up there where we were the sun was very welcome, and we took our time over the job. One chap had that morning been given fourteen days' field punishment, because he had left his post for a few seconds the night before. He wanted to get a pipe from his coat pocket, and did not think it worth while to ask any one to relieve him. It was just those few seconds that one of the brigade officers selected to visit our trench. When he saw the post vacant, he waited until the man returned, asked his name, then reported him. Field punishment meant that in addition to his regular duties the man would have to work in every digging party or fatigue detail. I asked him why he had not sent for me, and he told me that it had happened while I was out in the listening patrol. He was not worrying about the punishment, but feared that his parents might hear of it through some one writing home. But after a little while even he caught the spirit of cheerfulness that had spread amongst us at the news of the new canteen. To the average person meals are like the small white spaces in a book that divide the paragraphs; to us they had assumed the proportions of the paragraph themselves. The man who had just got field punishment told me the things he had ordered at the canteen, and we compared notes and made suggestions. The ubiquitous Hayes, working like a beaver with his entrenching tool, threw remarks over his shoulder anent the man who had delayed the information that the canteen had been established, and offered some original and unique suggestions for that individual's punishment. When we had the rubbish all scraped up in a pile, we took it on shovels to the dump we had dug. To do this we had to walk upright. We had almost finished when the snipers on Caribou Ridge began to bang at us. I jumped to a small depression, and yelled to the men to take cover. They were ahead of me, taking the last shovelful of rubbish to the trench. At the warning to take cover, they separated and dived for the bushes on either side. That is, they all did except Hayes, who either did not hear me or did not know just where to go. I stepped up out of the depression and pointed with outstretched arm to a cluster of underbrush. "Get in there, Hayes!" I yelled. Just then I felt a dull thud in my left shoulder blade, and a sharp pain in the region of my heart. At first I thought that in running for cover one of the men had thrown a pick-ax that hit me. Until I felt the blood trickling down my back like warm water, it did not occur to me that I had been hit. Then came a drowsy, languid sensation, the most enjoyable and pleasant I have ever experienced. It seemed to me that my backbone became like pulp, and I closed up like a concertina. Gradually I felt my knees giving way under me, then my head dropped over on my chest, and down I went. In Egypt I had seen Mohammedans praying with their faces toward Mecca, and as I collapsed I thought that I must look exactly as they did when they bent over and touched their heads to the ground, worshiping the Prophet. Connecting the pain in my chest with the blow in my back, I decided that the bullet had gone in my shoulder, through my left lung, and out through my heart, and I concluded I was done for. I can distinctly remember thinking of myself as some one else. I recollect saying, half regretfully, "Poor old Gal is out of luck this morning," then adding philosophically, "Well, he had a good time while he was alive, anyway." By now things had grown very dim, and I felt everything slipping away from me. I was myself again, but I said to that other self who was lying there, as I thought, dying, "Buck up, old Gal, and die like a sport." Just then I tried to say, "I'm hit." It sounded as if somewhere miles away a faint echo mocked me. I must have succeeded in making myself heard, because immediately I could hear Hayes yell with a frenzied oath, "The Corporal's struck. Can't you see the Corporal's struck?" and heard him curse the Turk who had fired the shot. Almost instantly Hayes was kneeling beside me, trying to find the wound. He was much more excited over it than I.
"Don't you try to bandage it here," I said; "yell for stretcher bearers."
Hayes jumped up, shouting lustily, "Stretcher bearers at the double, stretcher bearers at the double!" then added as an after-thought, "Tell Art Pratt the Corporal's struck."
I was now quite clear headed again and told Hayes to shout for "B Company stretcher bearers." On the Peninsula messages were sent along the trench from man to man. Sometimes when a traverse separated two men, the one receiving the message did not bother to step around, but just shouted the message over. Often it was not heard, and the message stopped right there. One message there was though, that never miscarried, the one that came most frequently, "Stretcher bearers at the double." Unless the bearers from some particular company were specified, all who received the message responded. It was to avoid this that I told Hayes to yell for B Company stretcher bearers. Apparently some one had heard Hayes yell, "Tell Art Pratt the Corporal's struck," because in a few minutes Art was bending over me, talking to me gently. Three other men whom I could not see had come with him; they had risked their lives to come for me under fire. "We must get him out of this," I heard Art say. In that moment of danger his thought was not for himself, but for me. I was able to tell them how to lift me. No women could have been more gentle or tender than those men, in carrying me back to the trench. Although bullets were pattering around, they walked at a snail's pace lest the least hurried movement might jar me and add to my pain. The stretcher bearers had arrived by the time we reached the trench, and were unrolling bandages and getting iodine ready. At first there was some difficulty in getting at the wound. It had bled so freely that the entire back of my coat was a mass of blood. The men who had carried me looked as if they had been wounded, so covered with blood were they. The stretcher bearer's scissors would not work, and Art angrily demanded a sharp knife, which some one produced. The stretcher bearer ripped up my clothing, exposing my shoulder, then began patching up my right shoulder. I cursed him in fraternal trench fashion and told him he was working on the wrong shoulder; I knew I had been hit in the left shoulder and tried to explain that I had been turned over since I was hit. The stretcher bearer thought I was delirious and continued working away. I thought he was crazy, and told him so. At last Art interrupted to say, "Just look at the other shoulder to satisfy him." They looked, and, as I knew they would, found the hole the bullet had entered. To get at it they turned me over, and I saw that a crowd had gathered around to watch the dressing and make remarks about the amount of blood. I became quite angry at this, and I asked them if they thought it was a nickel show. This caused them all to laugh so heartily that even I joined in. This was when I felt almost certain that I was dying. I can't remember even feeling relieved when they told me that the bullet had not gone through my heart. The pain I felt there when I was first hit was caused by the tearing of the nerves which centered in my heart when the bullet tore across my back from shoulder to shoulder. Never as long as I live shall I forget the solicitude of my comrades that morning. The stretcher bearers found that the roughly constructed trench was too narrow to allow the stretcher to turn, so they put me in a blanket and started away. Meanwhile the word had run along the trench that "Gal had copped it." Idid not know until that morning that I had so many friends. A little way down the trench I met Sergeant Manson. He was carrying some sticks of chocolate for distribution among the men. I asked him for a piece. To do so on the Peninsula was like asking for gold, but he put it in my mouth with a smile. Hoddinott and Pike, the stretcher bearers, stopped just where the communication trench began. The doctor had come up. He asked me where I was hit, and I told him. He examined the bandages, and told the stretcher bearers to take me along to the dressing station. Captain Alexander, my company commander, came along, smiled at me, and wished me good-by. Hoddinott asked me if I wanted a cigarette, and when I said, "Yes," placed one in my month and lit it for me. I had never realized until then just how difficult it is to smoke a cigarette without removing it from your mouth. Poor Stenlake, who by this time was worn to a shadow, was in the support trench, waiting with some other sick men, to go to hospital. He came along and said good-by. A Red Cross man gave me a postcard to be sent to some organization that would supply me with comforts while I was in hospital. "You'll eat your Christmas dinner in London, old chap," he said.
