"SIMPLY KNOCKED OUT."

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2455, 7 May 1915, Page 3

"SIMPLY KNOCKED OUT."

PATHETIC SCENES AT BOULOGNE. Boulogne, the French seaside resort on the Channel, has witnessed many sad scenes. It is to Boulogne that the • ambulance trains come from the front with British and Belgian wounded. In ■-.he city and the surrounding district are /'7 military hospitals, and in these tho iore serious are treated. Tho ghtly wounded are sent across tho . .Tiannel to English hospitals. Sir Frederick Treves, the famous English sur- , 'xcod, gives the following description of "• ! arrival of an ambulance train at Joulogno:—"The unloading.of an am- ' bnlance train is always a sad sight, but at is not the worst cases —the stretcher (cases —that impress one most. .The men on the stretchers are lying still, and are up with blankets, so that •it is l . impossible to guess at tho gravity of their, wounds. Far sadder objects to look upon are the 'sitting-up cases,' tho men who, whether wounded or sick, are still able to walk. Here they come down the platform, a party of 200 of .them. They crawl along, moving very slowly. They are bowed and listless. They look neither to the right hand nor the left They seem dead tired; tired almost to dropping, lyhile more than one man appears to be asleep as he shuffles along. They move stiffly, _ for many are crippled with rheumatism. .They are mud-coloured, the dingy tint being only relieved by a white bandago nind the head of one or by the white /, -m sling of another, and one man's ' coat is so solid with mud that ho may have been a figure moulded by e sculptor out of a some dull clay. "These men left England, fine alert ivoung soldiers, trim and jolly, with a V igorous swing in their march and some stirring barrack song on their lips. N T ow the horrible thing about them >s ,ihat they move so slowly. They are Bo bent; they limp and shuffle along as if they had just cope from the torture <>f tho rack; they seem old men, and above all they arg' so silent. If you ask one who is unwounded what is the .matter with him, he replies: 'Knocked eut.'"