It can be readily understood that in dealing with large bodies of men, such as ours, a considerable degree of organization is necessary, in order to keep an account, not only of the man, but of the nature of his injury (or illness, as the case may be) and of his destination. Without method chaos would soon reign. As each casualty came in he was examined, and dressed or operated upon as the necessity arose. Sergeant Baxter then got orders from the officer as to where the case was to be sent. A ticket was made out, containing the man's name, his regimental number, the nature of his complaint, whether morphia had been administered and the quantity, and finally his destination. All this was also recorded in our books, and returns made weekly, both to headquarters and to the base. Cases likely to recover in a fortnight's time were sent by fleet-sweeper to Mudros; the others were embarked on the hospital ship. They were placed in barges, and towed out by a pinnace to a trawler, and by that to the hospital ship, where the cases were sorted out. When once they had left the beach, our knowledge of them ceased, and of course our responsibility. One man arriving at the hospital ship was describing, with the usual picturesque invective, how the bullet had got into his shoulder. One of the officers, who apparently was unacquainted with the Australian vocabulary, said: "What was that you said, my man?" The reply came, "A blightah ovah theah put a bullet in heah."
At a later period a new gun had come into action on our left, which the men christened "Windy Annie." Beachy Bill occupied the olive grove, and was on our right. Annie was getting the range of our dressing station pretty accurately, and requisition on the Engineers evoked the information that sandbags were not available. However, the Army Service came to our rescue with some old friends, the "forty-niners." Three tiers of these in their boxes defied the shells just as they defied our teeth.
As the sickness began to be more manifest, it became necessary to enlarge the accommodation in our gully. The hill was dug out, and the soil placed in bags with which a wall was built, the intervening portion being filled up with the remainder of the hill. By this means we were able to pitch a second tent and house more of those who were slightly ill. It was in connection with this engineering scheme that I found the value of W.O. Cosgrove. He was possessed of a good deal of the suaviter in modo, and it was owing to his dextrous handling of Ordnance that we got such a fine supply of bags. This necessitated a redistribution of dug-outs, and a line of them was constructed sufficient to take a section of bearers. The men christened this "Shrapnel Avenue." They called my dug-out "The Nut," because it held the "Kernel." I offer this with every apology. It's not my joke.
The new dug-outs were not too safe. Murphy was killed there one afternoon, and Claude Grime badly wounded later on. Claude caused a good deal of amusement. He had a rooted objection to putting on clothes and wore only a hat, pants, boots and his smile. Consequently his body became quite mahogany-coloured. When he was wounded he was put under an anæsthetic so that I could search for the bullet. As the anæsthetic began to take effect, Claude talked the usual unintelligible gibberish. Now, we happened to have a Turkish prisoner at the time, and in the midst of Claude's struggles and shouts in rushed an interpreter. He looked round, and promptly came over to Claude, uttering words which I suppose were calculated to soothe a wounded Turk; and we had some difficulty in assuring him that the other man, not Claude, was the Turk he was in quest of.
4th Field Ambulance in Head Quarters Gully.
4th Field Ambulance Dressing Station on the beach.
My Dug-out.