Wounded and a Prisoner of War, by an Exchanged Officer

by Malcolm V. Hay

During the early days there was a long waiting list for the operating-room, as there was scarcely time even to deal with those who were in immediate danger of death.

In the majority of the cases brought in the wounds had not been dressed for several days. Men had remained three or four days at the place where they had been struck down. Others were put into farmhouses with broken legs or arms, and left unattended for a fortnight. Others again—and they were very numerous—had been brought into Cambrai by the Germans and deposited in some temporary ambulance-shed, and left with scarcely any medical attention, their wounds dressed perhaps once a week. When such poor sufferers as these arrived at last at the hospital, it was as a rule too late for anything but amputation, and often too late even for that.

One evening, about the 10th of September, a German officer arrived at the hospital with an order that all wounded Germans should be at once taken to the station. There was at this time, in one of the rooms adjoining mine, a German officer who had been shot in the bladder. Mlle. Waxin had charge of the case, and, thanks to her careful nursing, there seemed to be some chance of his recovery. When the order came to move all Germans, Mlle. Waxin protested that if this officer were moved he would die. But the Germans refused to listen to her, and took their officer off to the station. That same evening the poor fellow was taken back from the station, and died in the hospital within an hour of his return. Next day a large number of French and British wounded were taken away to Germany.

The vacant beds were at once filled with cases brought in for operation from the various temporary hospitals. Among the new arrivals were several British officers, two of whom, Irvine in the King's Own and Halls in the Hampshire Regiment, were put in the room opposite mine. Halls had been shot through both ankles, but after a few days managed to hobble across the corridor to pay me a visit. A French officer, wounded in the knee, used sometimes to come and see me, but I have forgotten his name.

It was on a Sunday that the sad announcement was made that my two newly-found friends were to be taken away to Germany. Halls said it was such bad luck to be carried away just as the French were about to enter the town!

The French soldier-orderlies all left the hospital at the same time as Halls and Irvine, and the duty of looking after my room fell to an individual named François. Cheerfulness was his only virtue; laziness and dirt were his principal and more obvious vices. François was a young fellow of nineteen, formerly a bargee working on a neighbouring canal. Owing to an accident which happened about a year before war broke out, his leg had to be taken off, and he was afterwards kept on in the hospital to act as handyman. In spite of his wooden leg he was wonderfully active, and when aroused was capable of doing a lot of work. François invariably wore a very large and very dirty cap, tilted right on to the back of his thick, black, curly hair. The cap and the fag-end of a cigarette sticking to his under lip were permanent fixtures. His breath smelt of garlic and sour wine. The only person in the hospital to whose orders he paid the least attention was Mlle. Waxin, and it was only under her severe eye that François made any use of broom or duster.

On fine afternoons during the last week of September I was taken out on to the Terrace on a stretcher. Irvine was also lifted out in a chair, and looked very thin and pale. Like most of us in the hospital, he had been wounded on the 26th August; the wound was a very severe one, the bullet having actually hit the edge of his identity disc. Two other subalterns in the Manchester Regiment were both lying out on stretchers, and we had a talk with Captain Beresford of the Worcesters, who was already so far recovered from a bullet in the lung that he was able to walk. Several wounded French and British soldiers were also taken out to enjoy the sun.

One of the Frenchmen I at once recognised to be a Curé. His figure was more suited to the soutane than to the uniform of a Pioupiou, and a very pronounced accent betrayed the fact that he belonged to the Auvergne country. His comrades were evidently in the way of teasing him about his accent, and a great discussion was going on (with much winking at me by the other soldiers). In what part of France was the best French spoken? M. le Curé addressed me as an impartial witness: "N'est pas, mon capitaine, nous autres dans le midi de la France nous parlons plus grrammaticalemaing que les habitans du Nord—nous avons un peu d'assent mais nous parlons grrammaticalemaing." My verdict being in M. le Curé's favour, he entered into animated conversation, delighted, he said, to meet "enfaing" some one who could explain to him a question in which he was much interested but of which he understood nothing: "Qu'est que ce que le 'homme-roulle'?" It was time to go in, so we parted, and my inability to answer his question remained undiscovered. I never saw the Curé again, and was told he had been taken off to Germany.

Among the lesser discomforts of the early days in the Civil Hospital was the ordeal of being washed, which I only went through twice in the first three weeks. The nurses could not think of washing patients, as they had not time to dress all the wounds that required urgent attention, and therefore the washing was done by François, and it was a sort of job to which he was evidently quite unaccustomed.

The impossibility of getting any sleep, the pain from lying in one position, and the irritation of repeated mustard plasters (which were brought up and applied by François), soon became relatively unimportant in the presence of a new trouble. One evening something in my head began to throb. It felt like the steady regular beat of a pulse deep inside. When Mlle. Waxin came to see me that night I told her about it. Of course, as all good nurses do, she said it was nothing, but she would speak to the surgeon. Next morning Dr Debu, after examination, declared that an abscess had formed in the wound owing to the presence of a bone splinter. This would necessitate a small operation.