SURGERY IN A TRENCH

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2676, 24 January 1916, Page 2

SURGERY IN A TRENCH

: THE AMAZING TOMMY. ; A story wliich, as the waiter puts it, shows the soldier as he siihply and inconceivably is, is told by Mr. Prevost Battersbv in a message to the "Daily Express from the British headquarters. It happened but a few nights ago, during the long spell of bad weather, when all the trendies were wet ■ with four days of rain; but these trenches were exceptionally trying, and the men had been standing all the week above their knees in water. The mortars had been firing much later than usual, and it was pitch <tark, and rain was pelting down, when one of their bombs fell plumb in tho trench with its back to a traverse. The traverse was removed in one direction, and 'a sergeant, standing some 10 yards away from it, turned a somersault over tlie traverse in front of it, and landed head first in over 30ft. of water. ■ When he came to the surface lie found a difficulty in standing, and felt that- one,of his legs was in several pieces.By jjreat fortune a surgeon happened to be m a dugout near by, and hearing the explosion and the splash, looked out and 1 saw the wounded man struggling in the water. He ploughed his way to Rim through tho mud, and seeing his desperate condition, determined to make a dash for his instruments over the exposed morass of mire in the rear instead of by tho long roundabout communication trenches. He succeeded, having collected his instrument case, in returning across the open to the injured man before liis senses had left him, and there and then, I while they were both standing up to their thighs in water, he performed an operation, severing wnat was left of the leg—tli© stump being just clear of the water—and tying up the arteries with no light in that pouring night to help him"but tlie fizzle of the Gorman flares. When at last the wounded man ar-riveil-at the dressing station, little hope was entertained of his recovery, and at the clearing hospital his acceptance seemed a mere formality, unconscious as he was and so near in hue to the colour of the dead. . At 8 the next morning tho chaplain found him with a cigarette between his lips, entertaining the cntiro ward with a humorous account of the past night's adventure, and he wrote with ms own hand a letter to his wife, hoping that it "found her in the pink," as_ it left him at that present, and warning her that a portion of him was unfortunately missing, but that he was lucky in bringing back what remained to her.