Told in gallant deeds

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

“It was a sad but glorious moment for us to stand and hear the padre tell us that they had not shrunk from duty, and had fallen for the sake of comrades. The next day I found some Scotch thistle growing close by. I plucked the blooms, and formed a cross over our chieftain’s grave.”

In a letter to Miss Rose-Innes, of Jedburgh, Colonel Richardson-Drummond-Hay, writing from the regimental quarters of the Coldstream Guards at the Battle of the Aisne, paid a splendid tribute to a Scots surgeon, named Dr. Huggan. It told how two days before the young man was killed he was recommended for the Victoria Cross for organising and leading a party of volunteers to remove a number of wounded from a barn that had been set alight by the German shells. The work was carried out under very heavy fire, and all the wounded were saved.

Dr. Huggan, who was killed at the Battle of the Aisne on September 16, was a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, attached to the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards. He was a native of Jedburgh, and played Rugby with the Jedforest Club for some years.

The doctors on both sides have taken a splendid part in this great war.

Let me tell you here of an exceptionally kind and delicate-minded action on the part of a German doctor.

In a French town temporarily captured by the Germans, a certain French gentleman lay very ill. He was an old man, too old for fighting, and just now too ill to be moved away by his friends. There were no French doctors left in the town. Hearing of this case, one of the German doctors took off his uniform, put on an overall, and pretended to be a captured English doctor, in order to go and see the sick man. He took all this trouble because he thought the excitement (hatred of the Germans by his patient) would be bad for the old gentleman. This was all the kinder, inasmuch as, being an Army doctor, he was, of course, under no obligation to treat people in the town.

I am sorry that I cannot tell you the name of one of the bravest men mentioned in this book. There is, however, one fact about him which can be stated. He is a private in the West Yorkshire Regiment.

This soldier was in the trenches when suddenly he saw that close to the German lines a number of his comrades had been struck down while in the act of charging the enemy. He took off his coat and equipment, and walked over to where they lay under a perfect hail of bullets. Beginning with the adjutant, he made altogether eleven journeys, bringing in also his colonel and nine men. Small wonder that he is said to have been recommended for the Victoria Cross.

During the first two months of the war, the British Veterinary Corps, which, by the way, was first formed after the South African War, had 30,000 horse patients through its hands. Horses, in spite of motor transport, have already played an important part in this great war, and it does not require much thought to know that their supply in almost every country is limited. Russia alone seems to have an inexhaustible number—in fact, it has been asserted that there are no fewer than thirty million horses at the disposal of the Tsar.

Our horses are better looked after than any others in the field. The wounded ones are cared for most tenderly, and are often cured of quite serious wounds. Not only have they their comfortable hospitals, but there have actually been set apart for them splendid convalescent homes. Some of these consist of the fine racing stables belonging to well-known Frenchmen whose colours are often seen on English racecourses.