WAR WOUNDS OLD SCARS CAUSE TROUBLE

Evening Post, Issue 51, 2 March 1931, Page 31

WAR WOUNDS

OLD SCARS CAUSE TROUBLE

MANY OPERATIONS

"Forty operations a week." It all took me back a. dozen years to the days that soeni so long ago. There was the same nerve-shaking smell of anaesthetics and antiseptics, the room glittering with hundreds of instruments, tho whito theatre, with the north light shining clear upon the shrouded operating table, tha nurses with their still demeanour and their quick movements, writes A. E. MacGregor in the "Daily Mail." "Here we have 40 operations a week," said the sister in the instrument room. Yet it was Roehampton in November, 1930, and every operation is for * wound received in the war. And Boehampton is only one of the hospitals where these Men in Blue, wounded by bullet or shell in the faroff! days, are to be found. At Roehampton there are 500, but in institutions throughout the country there are 10,150 soldiers receiving treatment. These figures include 6000 upon whom war wrought destruction of the mind, not of the body. A GALLIPOLI BULLET. As we passed round the hospital we came upon a man lying at flat as if his position were set by a spirit level. He was on a verandah, and the November wind blow on him. Only his eyes moved, but they were fine eyes, brown, expressive, set deep in masculine brows. He smiled as we came up. "Aro you not cold?" asked the medical superintendent, who was conducting me round. "Only my face," said the man who was once a "wounded Tommy," but is now only an "ex-Service man." "Where did you get it?" I asked. "In Gallipoli—a machine-gun bullet in the back." For seven years it seemed as if he might overcome the wound. Then three years ago his spine began to go. He has since then been continuously in hospital. But British surgery with all its immeasurable patience and resource is fighting to make him a fit man again, and it looks like winning. Inside the ward we spoke to a man who was cheerfully watching a game of nap. "I've had ten operations on my chest," he said. "They took out a bit of shell as big as my finger nail, I sent it home to my folks yesterday." His story began in Ypros in 1916. Near him was a man who got a bullet in his shoulder at Loos. It has been in various parts of his trunk since then. They took it out ,of his liver at last. He, too, had sent it home as a trophy. ONCE MOKE. Sitting alone was a man who when he was a boy of 19 got a bit of shrapnel in his back as he went up from yiamertinghe to Langemareke. Now he is over 30. He was. able to work at his trade for six years. But then his wound "flared" up, and ho is once more a "wounded soldier" and in hospital. "Are you tired of it?' Tasked a man who "took a packet" at Beaucourt fourteen years ago, and has had eleven operations since. "I used to talk like that long ago," he said. "You give it up after a while." There is something not a little mysterious about the increase in surgical cases during the last two years. It seemed as if the number of eases must rapidly decline, if only by the ordinary processes of mortality. Then there began here and.there the "flaring up" of old and almost-forgotten wounds. In one hospital 90 per cent, of the surgical cases were "flares." Of all the surgical eases probably 60 per cent, are "flares." Old wounds which were quiescent became active. Bullets which had almost been forgotten began to cause pain and poison. One man will lose his foot at Eoehainpton from an injury of twelve years 'ago. ■ ■ ' The men at Eoehampton are not forgotten by the general public. There are many who will never forget the war even for a flay, and these memories express themselves in service to. the wounded. Each bed has wireless. Entertainments and outings are frequent.