"Over There" with the Australians

by R. Hugh Knyvett

We were planning to take a portion of the trench opposite to straighten our line, and I had scouted down a hundred yards of it from behind, and got a good idea of the strength with which it was held, taking bearings of its position. The next night, as the attack was to take place at daybreak, I thought I had better go over and make sure that I had made no mistakes. I crossed over the first trench without any difficulty. There did not seem to be any one on guard. I then went toward their support lines where there seemed to be more men, mostly working parties. I passed these and with unpardonable carelessness stood up to have a look round, thinking that it was too dark for me to be seen. But I got a shock to find there was a sentry almost beside me—though he was, if anything, more scared than myself. He pulled the trigger without taking aim and naturally missed me, but if he had been wide-awake he could with ease have punctured me with his bayonet. I did not stop to pass the time of day with him, for the place seemed suddenly alive with Huns as he called "Heinz, Heinz!"—probably the name of his corporal—but I dived into a shell-hole and flattened myself as much as possible. As I was lost to sight and to memory too dear to be allowed to escape they began to cover the ground with bombs. These all went well beyond me, and had it not been for "Butter-fingers" I might have escaped. But a bomb slipped from his hand, rolling into the hole in front of him. He jumped back into the safety of the trench, and did not know that the bomb had fallen on me as it exploded. But I knew it—my left leg was broken in three places, twelve wounds in my right, and others on my back, twenty that afterward had to be dressed, not counting some other scratches. Then they came out to look for me, my "friend" almost stepping on me, but after half an hour's fruitless search they gave up. About two hours later I started home on my long, painful crawl. It took me about twenty minutes to pass the sentry near where I was lying, but after that there was no danger of discovery—the front line still appearing almost unoccupied; but I was getting dizzy and not sure of my direction. I knew, however, where there was a derelict aeroplane in No Man's Land, and made toward it. When I sighted this I was overcome with relief, and laid my face in the mud for a while to recover. I had now crawled about six hundred yards dragging my useless legs. And my elbows were skinned through, being used as grapples that I dug in the ground ahead, in that way dragging myself a few inches at a time. I knew our trenches were still about two hundred yards away, and the sweat of fear broke out on me as I remembered the two machine-guns in front of me that would fire on anything seen moving out there, no one expecting me to return that way. So I crawled higher up the line, where it was safer to enter, and a few yards from our trenches gave our scouting call. Several of my boys came running out and tenderly picked me up. I was all in and could not move a muscle. My own boys would not allow the stretcher-bearers to touch me, but six of them put me on a stretcher and carried me over the top just as day was breaking. They would not go down into the communication-trench or shell-holes because they thought it would be too rough on me, and so carried me over the exposed ground; and when they got me to the dressing-station they said: "You will come back to us, sir, won't you?" I said: "Yes, boys, you bet I will!" And you may bet that I shall, as soon as ever I am passed as fit again.

The pain of my wounds was soon altogether forgotten, for each medical officer that examined me finished up with the liquid melody of the phrase: "Blighty for you!" My leave was long past due, and the very next day I was to report for transfer to the Australian wing of the Royal Flying Corps, which would have meant several weeks' training in England, but "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley!"—and there's a science shapes our ends, rough-hack them though Huns may!

PART V
HOSPITAL LIFE

CHAPTER XXVII

IN FRANCE

My hospital experiences in France were a procession of five nights with intermissions of days spent in travel. From the advance dressing-station I was slid over the mud for three miles in a sledge drawn by the Methuselah of horses borrowed from some French farmhouse. His antiquarian gait suited me, and this was the smoothest of the many torturous forms of travel I endured before I was able once again to move up-rightly on my feet as a man should.

At Trones Wood I was swung into a horse ambulance and thereafter swung and swayed for a couple of hours until, closing my eyes, I could fancy I was once again at sea. This was rougher than the sledge, but endurable and certainly the most comfortable of all the wheeled vehicles in which I travelled. I bless the inventor of the springs that kept it swaying gently on a road all ruts and holes.

I was deposited on the table of the operating-theatre in the field-ambulance, while a surgeon overhauled me to see if there was any injury necessitating an immediate operation. Satisfied that I was merely broken and punctured, I was transferred to a cot and so began my first hospital night. I was known personally to all the doctors in our field-ambulance. I had on several occasions messed with them, and they were always very keenly interested in my yarns of No Man's Land, so when the news spread that I had been brought in wounded I soon had a group round my bed, some of them in pyjamas being roused from their sleep to hear the news. One of them very gleefully said: "Hullo, Knyvett, old man—I've just won five pounds on you. We had a bet that you would not last out another month. You know you've had a pretty good innings and mighty lucky only to get wounded." But at that moment I was not in the mood to appreciate this form of humor, until one of them, seeing I was pretty uncomfortable, gave me an injection of morphia. But I was very glad to be resting there and felt I could hardly have endured a longer journey without a spell. I was given here the first good hot meal I had had for weeks, though I had been given a drink of steaming-hot coffee in the ambulance. There was not much sleep to be got, as a constant stream of men were being brought in and taken away, and now and again shells would fall quite close, but the ground thereabouts was very soft, and I counted fifteen shells that fell close by with a wouf and a squelch, but did not explode. This hospital was all under canvas, just three or four big marquees and a score or so of tents for the medical officers and orderlies, and any inclination that I had to complain was taken away by the sight of "walking cases" strolling in with an arm gone, or a hole in the cheek, or their jaw smashed, many far worse than I was, who would sit there waiting their turn to be examined, and then walk out again to the ambulance that carried them on to the next hospital.

Next morning I was carried out to a motor-ambulance and started on the most painful trip of my life. The driver took reasonable care, but could not go too slow, for another load was waiting for him as soon as he could return, but I am sure that I felt every stone in that road. I got the attendant to wedge me in with pillows, but only by holding myself off from the wall with both my hands could I ease the bump, and then I would wait with dread for the next one. I don't know if the other three fellows lying in the ambulance with me were as sore as I was, but I picture to-day the hours that those ambulances travel with wounded men as being added together and totalling a century of pain. Perhaps after the war is ended, when it is too late, some one may invent a motor ambulance on easy springs that will not multiply unnecessarily the pain of torn flesh and the grating edges of bones.