PERSONAL GLIMPSES

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 48, 20 November 1917, Page 6

PERSONAL GLIMPSES

SURGEONS' WORK AT VIMY RIDGE Here is a pen picture of a bit of the French trendies in front of V imy Kidgo drawn witk the brutal Iranknoss of a Itajemaekers;

It was a bitter winter there, as here. The soil was frozen to deptn 01 fourteen inches. Hain foil, There was uttle drainage. Tho earth slid in <ra the top of tho water and was trodden into a mess like dough. To walk the trenches under 6uc'h circumstances is tiie last test of human endurance. One wears rubber boots hip-high, and from tho lops a strap is fastened over the shoulders to prevent the boots being pulled off by tho mud. On one occasion my orderly lost boots and socks, and came in with bare feet. If a man falls he may be lifted over the parapet and left there till night, or he may He where he fell and be trampled under foot. It requires very little resolution to lio down and die—life is so hard, and death so easeful. It was under the simple title of A Day's Work" that Captain Andrew M'Phail told the story of the battle from which the above quoted. He was delivering the Cavendish Lecture at the West London Hospital recently, and his description of the scenes at the firstnid stations,, whero the surgeons toiled in snow and mud with the thermometer hovering around zero and with constant streams of wounded coming in from the front, is photographed in its detail. The battle- itself was fought on schedule, for the performance had been rehearsed all winter behind the lines with an area marked off with tapes to represent the battlefield as disclosed by photographs taken from airplanes. The plans allowed minutes to drive the enemy into the French Flanders plain. 'Die battle followed the scheduie to the minute.

Captain M'Phail is professor of history of medicine at the M'Giil University, Montreal, and is now with the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Ho said in his lecture, as quoted in the New York "Times":

Let us attempt to follow the progress of a wounded man. When he falls he is attended bv the regimental medical orderlies and is sent back a. few hundred yards by regimental bearers to the aid post.- where he is more carefully dressed by the regimental medical officer. There he is hnnded over to the field ambulance bearers, and borne by hand, bv wheeled stretcher, or by trolly from one relay post to another, until finally, at a distance of one or two miles, ho arrives at the advance dressing station. There i the dressings are examined and, if neces- '■ onry, renewed. Trains of trolleys drawn ! bv gasoline engines are in waiting to ; bear the loads further to the rear, where 1 they may be accessible to the motor- | ambulance convoy, which takes thein to i the main dressing station. Here the I patients'are redressed and so sent on to ! railhead, clsnn, warm, and fed. ! Of the wounded in detail one soes i littie; one sees them in a mass. Our i business is to speed them on ithoir way, | and twelvo surgeons in a dressing ' working night ami day will clear the ! casualties as fast as thev are brought in. I Zero hour was at the davn of a bleak ■ morning. By six o'clock the wounded I were coming in; by seven the prisoners were marching down by companies; by eight the supply-trains were moving up, and by nine o'clock the whole world was alive with men and horses and motors over roads that were spewing up their stony entrails. When tho action was over the battle area was like a heavy cross-sea which had been partially transformed into land. Further advance was impossible by reason of the elements, earth, and water. ' Sixtesn battalions were engaged on tnis 1000-vard front, sixteen men to » ? ar 9; Each one had its pieco to do, and whon it was done and another battalion passed through and took up 'the advance. Ail winter tho performance had j been rehearsed behind the lines on ! a terrain marked off with tapes Ito imitate the battle area as discovered by aerial photographs. To eacli battalion was allotted a certain number of minutes for its task. All was over by two o'clock, and before darkness fell the field was clear. The evacuation from the front was so rapid that oases began to accumulate at the advance dressing station, and there they lay, a piteous spectacle, but their presence was the finest tribute ever'paid to the Medical Service. A "eneral passed by, and Wien he saw the wounded lying in ranks on each side of the road, covered 1 with snow, be thought the Medical Service had broken down, until it was explained to him that all casualties were dressed and fed, eased with morphia, and covored with blankets, instead of lying where they fell. Additional convoy was procured, and by midnight all were in their beds. That day s work was over. You have heard much of tho unpreparedness for war, but the Medical Service leapt up full armed when the first call sounded. , It must be hard for you to understand how stictly military is medical service at the front. In a division there are about twenty regimental medical officers, and three field ambulances with nine medical officers each, or twenty-seven in all. The personnel is divided into bearer, tent, and transport sections, comprising 250 men, or 750 to the three'amhulances. For transport each ambulance has fifty horses, seven motors, and three horse ambulances, lYith general service, limbered wagons, and carts. Each section is self-oontained and marches with bearers, tent orderlies; transport, and equipment. At any moment a can fall out and open up with all for lue .and work in.the field. The sections can be as'quickly assembled, and the bearers of .ill ambulances may pooled for such large operations as took place at \ lniy and on the Somrae. For such precise movements a IngJi: degree of military training w and in physique tho men must be the best, for the work is heavy, and the marches arduous. The ambulance-benreio and officers have their advanced headquarters two hundred yards from the parapet in the regimental aid posts, and in action they go over just behind the infantry. Tlwy are trained soldiers; the transport carried arms/ind until quite recently they were practised in musketry, and all were qualified to take their place on parade with the other elements ot the division. , , By that day's work on Vnnj Judge wo 'convinced ourselves and proved to tne enemy we cannot be beaten. After that other and later day's work at Messines Ridge we can say with surety that we shall win, that the enemy will be defeated and that- he will defeat himself in the slow effluxion of time. We are now free to prolong the war until it 6Uils us to bring it to a close. _ Tn the beginning we were inclined to take the German at his own estimate of himself. Now we have the tine mea sure of him, and we are not in tho least afraid. __