A Medico's Luck in the War
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The Stretcher-bearer at Work. A MEDICO’S LUCK IN THE WAR BEING REMINISCENCES OF R.A.M.C. WORK WITH THE 51st (HIGHLAND) DIVISION BY DAVID RORIE, D.S O., T.D., M.D., D.P.H. Colonel late R.A.M.C., T.A. (Ret.); Officer of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem ; Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur; formerly O.C. i/2nd Highland Field Ambulance, and later A.D.M.S. 51st (Highland) Division, B.E.F. ABERDEEN MILNE & HUTCHISON 1929 DEDICATION. To you who deadly days have spent While cursing in the Salient, Ur crouched in holes to dodge the bomb And shell-burst of the strenuous Somine Or the sharp crash upon the Square At Arras or Armentieres; You who have seen the bullets spray The troubled waves of Suvla Bay, And led a life of melancholy While righting Turks at Gally-polly; You, who beneath Italian skies Ate macaroni mixed with, flies; You who in darkest Africa Fought Bill and eke Bilharzia ; You who have tried on ocean blue To keep what you’d put into you; You who have learnt to love the Greek In dear salubrious Salonique What time the troops, in language vulgar, Heaped wrath upon the ruddy Bulgar ; You who have found a tedious lot Was cast for years in old Mess-pot; You who have trudged o’er leagues of sand In what was once the Holy Land, Or, half-baked, saw elusive winks Flash from the eyes of noseless Sphinx; You who, in Nissen or in shack In dug-out, tent, or bivouac From Wypers to Jerusalem■ Just stuck it out and played the game Of picking up and patching ’em : M.O.s, Non-Coms and Other Ranks, To you this book: fill in the blanks! v VI DEDICATION. So it befell! Ill days? And yet The bond’s the thing we can’t forget, Nor need we argue why we should Betray this old blood-brotherhood., And flout the days when, one and all, The Army held us in its thrall. Curse it you may, as curse you did, When some new fad put on the lid, And, in your mess, you poked derision At your A.D.M.S., Division, Or else (perchance A.D.M.S.) You damn’d the grousers of each mess, And told some sympathetic Johnnie “Ah! Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner!’ While he (like eighty-five per cent) Did not know really what was meant, But (seeing you were a senior bloke) Smiled blandly lest it were a joke! 1 grant you there were interludes When life had somewhat cheerier moods, And memory calls up nights of song And wine in merry Amiong, Where, o’er a bottle of Pommard, We swapped choice lies about the war; Some night, mayhap, we’d chanced to drop Into the famous oyster-shop, Kept by that lass, on profits keen, The dear tempestuous Josephine; Or else, when on another track, We supped with Marguerite at Acq, Where, in old billet thirty-seven, We gloried in a transient heaven Of omelettes and good pommes frites With drinks that warmed our hearts—and feet Or, harking up the trail again, Our hostess next was Lucienne, That maiden famed of Armenteers Who did us all so well. (Loud cheers.) DEDICATION. vii As Father Time still marches on, Gone are those days—for ever gone! And now in peace we sit aloof From shells that tumble on the roof, But link’d by bonds we can’t deny— What soulless wretch would care to try? AUTHOR’S AC K NO'W LE DG M E N TS. I have to express my indebtedness to the Controller of His Majesty’s Stationery Office for allowing the reproduction of such of the snapshots herein as have already appeared in “The Official History of the War (Medical Services)’’; to the Imperial War Museum for the use of three photographs; to Major John Stirling, author of “The Territorial Divisions,” for his kind permission to make various extracts from his work ; and to Mr. A. B. McLeod, a former member of my unit, for typewriting my MS. But 1 have to thank more than any¬ one my old friend, Captain Robert Tennant Bruce, London, for the great care and trouble he has taken in drawing the maps and diagrams in this book: for freely permitting me to use his photographs (all, except the three acknowledged above and including these from “The Official History,” are his) ; and especially for his kind¬ ness in writing Chapter VIII. D. R. ix CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Introductory ------ i II. Estaires—Givenchy, 1915 - - - - 29 III. The Labyrinth, 1915 ----- 59 IV. The Somme, 1916 ----- 82 V. Beaumont Hamel, 1916 - - - - 104 VI. The Battle of Arras, 1917 - - - - 117 VII. The Battles of the Pilkem and Menin Road Ridges, 1917.135 VIII. Battle of Cambrai, 1917 - - - 157 IX. The German Offensive, 1918 - - - 179 X. The Battle of the Lys, 1918 - - - 202 XI. The Second Battle of the Marne, 1918 - 211 XII. The Battle of the Scarpe, 1918- - - 233 XIII. The Battle of Cambrai, 1918 - - - 241 xi ILLUSTRATIONS. The Stretcher-bearer at Work - Frontispiece FACING PAGE Diagram illustrating evacuation of Sick and Wounded from Fighting Area to United Kingdom - 5 On Trek—Summer - - - - - - - - 23 On Trek—Winter -------- 26 Sketch Map of Festubert Area, 1915 - - - - 47 Aux Rietz Advanced Dressing Station, 1916 - - - 78 Field Ambulance and Regimental Posts— Somme Valley, July, 1916 ----- 89 Beaumont Hamel, November, 1916 - 105 t. Entrance to Farmyard, Auchonvillers - - 108 2. Entrance to Dressing-room in Farmyard - 108 Battle of Vimy, 9th April, 1917 - - - - 117 Lille Road Collecting Post— Arrangement of Stretchers in Trench- - 119 1. The Trench before we tackled it - - 120 2. The Finished Product—(Ecurie in dis¬ tance) .I2o 3. The Post under Snow - - - - 122 4. Loaded Cars leave for Anzin A.D.S. - 122 Battle of Arras, April—May, 1917— Medical Posts.- - 128 A.D.S. at St. Nicolas— 1. Roclincourt Road - - - - - 129 2. The Car Track to the Dressing Station 129 3. Entrance to Dressing-room - - - 130 4. Entrance to one of the Tunnels - - 130 XIV ILLUSTRATIONS. FACING PAGE Field Ambulance and Regimental Posts— Ypres Salient—Corps M.D.S. at Gwalia Farm— 1. Receiving Room - - - - - - 143 2. Feeding Tent and Nissen Hospital Hut - 143 3. Exit from Surgical Dressing-room - - 145 4. M.A.C. loading Cars from Hospital Tents for journey to C.C.S. - - - - - 145 Battle of Cambrai, November, 1917 - - - - 157 At Trescault—Bringing wounded up from a dug-out on slides by winch, 1917- - - - - 166 Medical Posts during the Retreat, March, 1918 - - 179 Medical Posts in the Battle of the Lys, April, 1918 - 203 Second Battle of the Marne, 1918— Medical Posts in the Valley of the Ardre - - 214 11 on 20th July at 10 a.m. - page 222 11 11 n 5 p.m. - - 11 223 11 on 28th July - - - - 11 225 In the Bois de Courton—German prisoners bringing in French wounded, 1918 ------ 224 Plan of Dressing Stations, Cambrai Area, 1918 - - 243 A Medicos Luck in the War. CHAPTER I. Introductory. Give us again of the days gone by A cheerier one or two, Think of the lads with hopes so high Whose quips and wiles we knew. Lord! If we had not laughed with them We had lost the half of our pay ! For the echo-less heart is a thing apart And it goes by the Wearier Way. To write, with even limited success, the history of any units which served in the Great War, the narrator would, I fear — and it is a large order — require to be a judicious mixture of George Borrow and Charles Lever; the Borrow part of him to deal with the marching and roadside scenes, the wind on the heath, the clouds scudding before the breeze, the sunshine and the shade and the necessary little adventures of man on the move, whether solus or in column ; the Lever part, again, to treat of the tented field, the bivouac, the trenches, the camp-fire, the clash of arms, the cannikin’s clink, the songs the soldier sang, and of whatever takes the place (in these our present degenerate days) of broiled bones and devilled kidnevs. Nay, more, one might with advantage add to the melange a dash of such unblushing super-egoists as Benvenuto Cellini and Herbert of Cherbury, therebv sharpening the flavour of the literary A MEDICO’S LUCK IN THE WAR. diet while possibly interfering with the truth of the story. But I have no desire to hand out laurel wreaths to individuals as the ring-master throws pointed hats at the heads of the clowns: je pretends dire le bien et le mat sans dissimuler la verite, giving you neither wild deeds of derring-do nor the joyous adventures of an Aristide Pujol. And thus it falls out that, as on principle one must eschew the Rabelaisian, Benvenuto and Lord Herbert have to be somewhat regretfully abandoned and their mutely proffered aid respectfully declined. Here, then, if you choose to read on, you will find only the plain unvarnished tale of some Territorial Field Ambulances in France and Flanders ; differing in no way, doubtless, from other tales—possibly told, probably untold—of similar medical units that served there. For most of the places named in this narrative have been, time and again, the locations of other Field Ambulances. One can say, therefore, to anv brother O.C. who turns over these leaves, Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur, whilst he, dubiouslv handling the book and adapting the words of the ancient and pious bishop, can replv, “And thus, but for the grace of God, goes the storv I might have written.” For after all, we had of necessity the same outlook, the same environment, the same experiences, the same joys and sorrows.