So does the Regimental Aid Post doctor give his life for his country.
The Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins (Wesleyan) gives us another picture of a Regimental Aid Post.
"Near the trenches in a deserted farm by the roadside is the Regimental Aid Post which last I visited. Two regimental doctors have made it their headquarters—Captain Brown and Lieutenant Eccles—and thither are gathered the sick and wounded belonging to the Manchester Regiment and the East Surreys. I had been sent for to bury the dead. As usual on such occasions, I went out with the bearers and ambulance waggons after dark, and when I arrived I found three men waiting burial. Two as they stood side by side had been killed by the same bullet, the other had been shot whilst issuing rations to his comrades in the trenches.
"'You've timed your visit well, Padre,' said Captain Brown. 'There's been a bit of an attack on. Enemy evidently got the wind up badly, and have been loosing off wildly in the air. Bullets have been falling around the house like hail; half an hour ago you couldn't have got to us. One comfort is that if the bullets were falling here, they must have been going high over the heads of our fellows.'
"'Yes, we're ready for you as soon as ever the waggons are loaded, but Eccles has a man of the East Surreys; perhaps the grave had better be made bigger, and then you can make one job of it.'
"A few minutes later we were passing through the farm-yard at the back of the house, mud over our boot tops, into a field, in the corner of which a little cemetery had sprung up. 'Twenty officers and men, most of them Manchesters,' Brown said in an undertone. 'Winnifrith buried three here last night, and two the night before. No, you need not be afraid to use a light to-night. The weather is too thick for it to be seen by the enemy, and in any case they're busy, for our fellows are attacking. Listen.' Again the angry voice of the machine-gun, the noise of rifle fire, so heavy that it sounded like the bubbling of water boiling in some gigantic cauldron."
2. We pass now to the Field Dressing Stations. It appears to be only when the fighting is severe that these are needed in addition to the Regimental Aid Posts. Sometimes the wounded are taken direct to the clearing hospital from the Regimental Aid Posts; but when the wounded crowd in upon the latter, they can only receive rough first aid treatment there, and are passed back as quickly as possible to the Dressing Station.
This is carefully explained in a letter by Staff-Sergeant Barlow, R.A.M.C., to the Vicar of Prestwich. "Perhaps it would be well to explain where our work as a field ambulance comes in. We are not in the sense of the word a hospital. In the first place a regiment is in the trenches, and in close proximity to the trenches, the regimental bearers carry their wounded to some place of cover or comparative safety, such as a barn or farm-house, or in the case of a town being shelled, cellars are used. These are called Regimental Aid Posts.
"As a Field Ambulance we follow from one to two miles in the rear of the firing line and form dressing stations, using schools or barns for the purpose. Our ambulance waggons and stretcher-bearers go out under cover of darkness to collect from the Aid Posts the wounded soldiers, the waggons halting perhaps half a mile away, while the bearers cross fields and roads to the Aid Posts where the wounded soldiers are.
"This is very dangerous and requires much caution; lights are prohibited, as even the flare of a cigarette becomes a good mark for the enemy's snipers, of whom they appear to have many.