WITH THE WOUNDED

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2350, 5 January 1915, Page 6

WITH THE WOUNDED

SOME HOSPITAL SCENES FROST IN THE TRENCHES , The weather has broken. 'A most; wonderful of summers seems at last to have come to an end; and now, instead of blue skies and rosy evenings, we get grey days with rain and mist and wind and bitter cold at nights. To-day there was snow (writes Basil Clarke, to the "Daily Mail" from, the north of France on November 15). Heme an aggravation of .war's hardships. I saw the surgeons at a base clearinghouse'for wounded putting their heads together over a surgical curiosity yesterday. It was tho first case of "frostbite." The patient—a German soldier —had had his feet frozen in the water of the trench in which he had lain wounded. They had cut off his topboots with a knife. As the feet lay exposed the surgeons looked at one another. "That will, be the first of many," said one quietly. lie others went on with- their task and said nothing. ' ■ The man was broken. All the war ffas gone out of him. He made signs and spoke hurriedly, but no- one of the surgeons understood German. They gave me permission to 'talk with him. "What do you wish?" I .said. He poured forth a stream of questions in o breath. "Can I write a postcard to my wife? Can I buy a bottle of wine with my own. money ? Can I have my braces taken off; my side is painful?" These and other questions issued from his grey-blue lips while his eyes regarded me with a resolute, unflinching antagonism. '■ I admired the fellow for that unyielding stare. I had to explain that although he was being tended by British surgeons—(excellent fellows, of the Anglos-Belgian Red Cross Society)—the hospital clearing-house was under the control of the Frenc l ) Army, and he must ask the Frea.>h officer in charge. One of the English surgeons did tnis for him later.

'. The olearing-house ;,was' a railway goods warehouse. On its floor, upon a foot deep of straw, wero wounded of all sorts and typhoid'fever cases. Near the furthermost .whitewashed wall was a railway line sunk about four feet below the platform level. Down here, on deep straw and in just as good, condition as the French wounded, were the German wounded—twenty or thirty of them lying in a row on their Btraw. A single sentry, with _ rifle and fixed bayonet, 6tood' with his back ,to the ; wall facing them. > They had little need of his' attention. One of them, an officer, I think, opened his eyes' ae he heard our. feet rustling in the straw near him. He said nothing but pointed to his shoulder. A characteristic, action of .wounded men, this. They open their eyes, say nothing, and point to their wound. •The surgeon looked at the wound. It was not very serious.'. ; Tie officer said he had lain out in the fields thirtysix hours before being found by the French. His men had been beaten back by a bayonet charge, and they had not had time to take him with them.

I could not help smiling at a little incident that happened as we were' talking. The officer's neighbour—a bearded Grerman—though twisted with pain in his middle, found time nevertheless to remember his officer's status. "He is officer," ho exclaimed,and he 6aid it as though he expected us to clicly our heels and salute on the spot. W© did not. "But aren't you going to take him away?" ho went on. I translated to the surgepn.;. "All in good time," was the'answer. "But he is officer," exclaimed the man, and we left him exclaiming and wondering no doubt why we did not rush off for wine and hot-water bottles for the lieutenant. He had far greater need of a surgeon for himself. '

&. French Singalese soldier, six. feet high, broad a 6 a door and black as coal, was 1 walking about among the straw .nursing his shattered left forearm as a woman might nurse, a child. And as he walked ho kept up a little sing-song chant to himself in his pain. la, 0 ah-la-la-la, 0 ; ee-al-la-la-la," it went. T gave him a cigarette and lit it for him. He'smoked desperately and ceased his-ohant.

A tell, slim woman with girlish face and figure was moving about the hospital—among wounded men, and fever patients with a like disregard. A French soldier, encouraged perhaps by her face and kindly eyes,, scrambled to his feet from amid the straw and walked to her holding outhis battered arm. "Oh, madam, my arm; oh, the pain of it." He was in a dreadful state. He had been .out for days unattended, unbathed, and the rest! He could hardly stand up. She took his arm—his undamaged arm—and led him to the surgeon who was with me. Through her thick, black veil I saw her faco. It was Millicent Duohess of Sutherland. She < was down at .the clearing-house collecting patients for her hospital—at Malo-les-Bains, away on the coast. Her motor-ambulances and her stretcher' panties were outside stacking their vans with wounded. ''Do have a look at it for him, will you she said. TJw, surgeon's shining scissors were sooh through •' the _ rough bandaging of .the wound and it lay exposed—a fearful thing—swollen, and puffed, with a fragment of shell buried deep in the angry .fissure. v A French- officer was in the hospital detailing off the cases to the various hospitals :in the. vicinity. French ambulance men were carrying off man after man to their ambulance vans outside. They could not work too fast. Another trainload of wounded from the front was waiting outside—waiting for the straw and room of these maimed hundreds now lying on the warehouse floor. They had been _ waiting some time too and other trains 'were not far behind. If any British surgeon who reads this wants a fuller scope for his arts and merciful skill let him not look farther, for it; there is. scope here; endless scope here, in France, behind tli'e war line.