ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 April 1917, Page 4

ON THE BATTLEFIELD.

Men One Kopes to Meet Again-

(By Leander.)

The field of battle is the microcosm of life; Hero may a roan within the spice of a few hours live a career as packed with incident as any that mediaeval romauco can show ; here may a man tnjoy ouch a me men t o'T lire ns even Leonidas of Sparta might envy ; here are hope and fear and courage and despair to lie ra-ted in a measure rarely, met with in man’s normal existence. Life is a matter of years; battle of hours, sometimes only mmute3. In battles, as in life, men drift into one anoher’s ken and drift out again; only in bat’le the acquaintanceship is briefer but riveted by dangers borne in common. In life men come and go within each other’s narrow circles and leave no impression behind. The wounded, perhaps, have most to tell of these strange acquaintanceships of .the battlefield, of good Samaritans who have come to them out of the Unknown, tarried for a while in a shell-hole with them on some fireswept slope to bind their wounds and give them water or a cigarette. . . . and have passed on again into the Unknown. Maybe the Samaritan never bestows another thought on the object of his compassion, but the ■ fevered imagination of the wounded man retains every feature of his face, every modulation of his voice. In every soldiers’ hospital in Britain today there are men who one day hope to meet aod thank the unknown friend that did net pass them by. I have a little tale of kindly acts done to me, a dishevelled, muddy, incoherent, and Ctterly insignificant second lieutenant, by a succession of humble, unknown soldiers on the autumn evening that brought my military career to a temporary close. I was wounded by a shell when all was over bar the shelling, when the last objective had been captured, then the day was won. It was the hour when, in the failing 'light, the horse arabnlioccs struggle up over the shell-ploughed ground as near as they dare to the firing-line, when the work is begun of evacuating the wounded from the shell-holes and trenches where they have lain helpless all day. MICE HOT TEA MiGQ~WSs'*a head-wound, and I was able to walk in a fashion, for at first I was quite conscious though rather shaken. When every treaoh has its complement of viVimf, livid with ghastly wound*, “walking wounded” is a very comprehensive term. My own people brought me down to the dressing-station, where the horse ambulances were waiting. But there the doctors implored me, if I could manage to struggle along on. foot, to make my own way io the clearing station. They pointed to the waiting ambulance already full up with unconscious men on stretchers, to the long lines of stretchers on the ground Burrounding. So I started to hobble on alone, Suddenly I found another officer beside me. a ssoond lieutenant like myself, How he got there or where he came from I do not know, bnt he had been shot through the leg and found walking very painful. So we joined forces', and, patting arms round one another’s necks, hopped along like a pair in a three-legged race. Then from a shell-hole on that corpse-strewn Ginchy elope, I heard a load “ Pst ! ” A battered old sapper was bsckou* ing to up, I can see him now, with his wrinkled cld face and his dirty cap and his grizzled hair, leaninar out of bis shell-hole, with the smoke of a little fire wreathed'aboufc him. “ Would you like a drop o’ nice hot tea; sir ?” he said. Would we ? The next moment we were Bitting on the edge of the shell-hole drinking hot tea oat of mesß-tinß. I must have drunk a pint of jt—it was the best drink I had ever had. True, it tasted strongly of petrol (for on the Somme the water is sent up in more or less empty petrol tins) and my companion was shortly afterwards extremely sick. But to a man with a hole in his head and a touch of temperature, who has been fighting all day, tea is an ambrosial draught. Our good Samaritan would not accept the modest franc I offered. “Me and my mates is here ! ” he said, “right alongside the dressin 1 station, as you might eay, and anyorficer is welcome to his drop o’ tea! ” 1 I had no cigarettes to offer him, but ’ the old boy smoked a pipe, and his eye gleamed as I emptied a pouchful of my best tobacco into his grimy hand. Then I left him at his work of mercy, a valiant figure, anonymous, humble, whom I shall never forget.

MOTHERLY CARE. I resumed my pilgrimage alone, for the other officer had vanished—how and where I do not know now —a wounded man forgets so much. But a hundred yards farther on, when I was feeling very near the limit of my endurance, I fell in with a mess waiter of my own battalion, who forthwith took charge of me with the solicitude of a mother. He put his arm round my waist and supported me to a shell hole where the mess things were, including whisky and Perrier; h'e chatted brightly about a thousand inconsequential things to keep my spirits up, and it was he who stopped the gunners’ water cart and asked the driver to give me a lift, Ho made a seat of sand-bags on the shafts and lifted me into it himself, bidding me “ Good luck ! ” as we jogged away.

Him I shall never see to thank more coherently than I could then, for a shell killed him that same night—a gentle, kindly man. Nest on my list comes the gunner who drove that water cart ... he kept the horse at a walking pace to save my aching head, and he drove a good two miles out of his way to drop me at a clearing station. No walking wounded caso who claimed a lift from that driver appealed in vain, until there was not a vacant space left on tank or limber. I often think I should like to meet that mau again. At the casuality clearing station there was a boy doctor with glasses, who changed my bandages and gave me a soft chair and hot soup and all the cigarettes in his case, and was charmingly affable, though he had been working for twelve hours without

v ntermission. Hq told me his name and hospital, and I have forgotten both . . . but I have a mental photograph of his oheery face and great goggles, and some day perhaps, we shall meet in London, and then the entertaining will be “ on me.” After that impressions grow hazy, and faces and names and surroundings a'l fade 'away. Bat there was a Strapping young Grenadier private who took oharge of me wbeu my senses were failing, and I can remember his arm about my waist as he lad me gently into some kind of fielci ambulance where there was a vesy shadowy R.A.M.C orderly with a very pronounced Dublin accent. Their faces have gone from me. . . . but 1 shall never forget their personalities, soothing and kindly and disinterested. No doubt if their hour, or the hour of any other of these good Samaritans in this narrative, comes in this war, what they did to a humble second lieutenant will be re me mb’red. M>y to them be done even as they did !