THE DOCTOR OF THE REGIMENT

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2959, 23 December 1916, Page 10

THE DOCTOR OF THE REGIMENT

A HERO WHO IS SELDOM

MENTIONED

(By a Subaltern in the "Daily Mail.")

As time goes on the doctors.out at the front are now and again getting a share of honours, decorations, 1 and mentions in dispatches. AVell, they deserve all they get. ' No one except those out there can know how hard these men work. In the clearing stations at railhead, all alonn the lilies of communication, in the bi& hospitals at the base, in boats, at ports, and in our own great city, everywhere when there is heavy fighting in progress, the doctors work, without any iixed interval marking day from night, without any special meal times, without any recreation whatsoever. To these all the honour that is due. .

But there is one type of doctor especially who must be remembered. Ho has no clean overall to work in; it is very probable his khaki is as stained and torn as any private'soldier's. I doubt.if he has the means by him to wash his hands before going from- one patient to another; he certainly has not generally the time. He works, always within reach of tho shells, and often among spattering bullet's.' His consulting room,' surgery, and ward are tho four crumbled walls of a roofless cottage, his nurses sweat-begrimed, bloodstained stretcher-bearers. Gunga Din, tho liative water-carrier, has had. hi£ ode. Another might well be written for the regimental doctor. I so well romember our own 'regi-' mental doctor. He joined us a week before war wa3 declared. Before -that, lie had lived up at the hospital some- , where, and had been a rather vague personality to whom we sent ! the men; when they were .sick or said their feet hurt them and they could not inarch. The officers themselves did not have much dealing with him ;'if they ,felt, ill they .went -home and their family, doctor-or to a specialist in London. As with many other things that are provided free by the Government,' fellows with means of-their own-were a little supercilious- and inclined to say they would as'soon do- without the "Army doctor. He wus just ''the doctor ; some of us were not even. quite sure what his name was, and we only-saw him occasionally when someone brought him into tho mess for a drink. ■ ' " / A Very Big Part. Then; as the storm-clouds gathered, so that there ■ could be 110 mistaking war, and England's little Army •Mobilised, among other changes our doctor came with us in tho mess. One or two fellows, unused the .unfamiliar, .face, asked: "Who is that?"- ■/ /■ "That's tho'doctor,!' they wore told. "Docs he couie with us?" asked a very .young and inexperienced youth."Of course he does," said a major who had been through South Africa,; "and jolly glad you'll be of him." \Yq were all too busy thoso first few days of mobilisation to notico the ,doctor much, hut one evening it was announced that he would give a lecture to officer's on'field dressing.. How well 1 romember that lecture. Our little Irish doctor, standing thorc in tho mifldlo of • the room I 'with an unwound bandage :in his hand explaining liow it, put on. He told us, too, something' about wounds.' Thero were four part's 'of-the body, lie said, where, if _ a man were liit, anyone could render him useful first aid.' These especial parts were ' tho two arms and the. two .legs. ' If-a man was hit. ill these places-the. thing . to do was to put -the field dressing on at bnce—above the wound, applying a tourniquet if an artery was severed. If'the -man was hit in the body or head—well, the doctor shrugged his shoulders in a-way that made us think.He explained how. to plug a . wound • and tho danger of moving a man lut m the stomach.. ' The lecture brought homo to us. the personality <ukl role of the little man Jio was living in our mess. We understood then, as we had not before, what a very big part he might have to play so far as we in tho war. Our lives might depend on liirn. Was lie a good fellow, we wondered? He looked it, anyway.. ■ ■ Later we all went- off to France, the doctor with us. Up. to^ this time it had -seemed lie-' had very little work to do. . The men were all well and fit, and he used to spend a good deal of the day reading the papers in the ante-room. When We were on the march he rode rod: a. horse at the. end of the column beside the empty ambulance wagon. ' ' We. werft into the trendies. The . debtor came with us. He lived at bat-

:alion headquarters with the colonel

the senior major, the_ adjutant} and scout officer. Battalion headquarters was a dug-out three or four hundred yards from the front trenches. He had a little chest .of .dressings, with him arid some. stretchcr-bearers attached. \' , a's Good .'as 'a Tonic. Fighting started,- and we did not see much of'hinu We were all.busy, arid, so thoughlwe did not all-of us realise,it —was he. The battalion was relieved and went .back to billets. At night the officers gathered round a table in a cottage kitchen and drank hot rum and water. "Hullo! Doc—haven't seen you for' ages," said one. "Where have you been all theso days?" ■ _ "Or, round about," said the doctor. "By tho way," asked another, "where was old bnooky' hit?"

' Snooky was a brother officer who had been hit the second day. "Through the knee and thigh," said the doctor. "Rather bad, poor chap. We had a bit of a job to got him in { it hurt him being moved; he was in that bit of trench we had to come back l from." • At the time we all took it for granted thafS was the doctor's job to go out and bring in wounded; so did he. We knew,'of course, that he was a jolly good chap to take it on as he did, but beyond- that thought no moro of the matter. ' - . However, it was not'till my own turn came'that I really got to know our doctor. In a cottage not three hundred 1 yards from the Boehes, with shrapnel knocking slates off the roof and bullets splashing against the wall, the floor three-parts covered with maimed, and 'bleeding humauity, he stood chccry as ever. . i "Hullo! cully," he said, a-s they earned. me in. "Where Miave they got you?" He .made mo comfortablo against tho'wall, bound up airily a wound from which - (quite wrongly) I imagined I was going to bleed to death, and with a promise to return was off attending to three fresh cases just Brought in. All that day he worked. Half tho regiment passed through his hands. Our line thinned, and it looked more TiTio the Germans getting the village. He came aiid had a cigaretto beside mo. ".Phew!" ho said. "I hope they can keep 'em off —else you and I will 'be going to Germany together." The matter-of-fact way in which ho announced his intention of stopping behind to take his luck with tho wounded was as good as a tonic to all of us lying there.