MEN OF IRON NERVE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1626, 19 October 1916, Page 4

MEN OF IRON NERVE.

COOLNESS AND COURAGE. HEROIC WOUNDED TOMMIES. Courage, coolness, imperturbable sangfroid in the face of death and danger are qualities with which the world-war has greatly familiarised us, but in the ordinary paths of every-day life these attributes are not quite so common as to pass altogether unnoticed.

They wore embodied in a remarkable degree in the late Sir Arthur Markham. Sterling honesty and courage characterised his life; the peculiar nature of his end he met with the nerve and insouciance of a British soldier. To a few intimate friends he announced his impending fate after his return to the House of Commons from his last severe illness. He had only been given six months to live. No one could have faced fate more calmly. “What is to be must be,” he said. His exit from the House of Commons was characteristic. If was just a day or two before his death. As he reached the door that night he met one of the Government Whips—a class he delighted to torment.

Well," he remarked, “I won’t be here next week. I’ve got L.G.’s promise about the Bill, and there’s nothing to come up for. In fact, you'll never see me here again.” “Oh, I hope we, shall," protested the Whip. “No; I’m a dead man. Goodnight.” And with light step, and his hat at a jaunty angle,,he disappeared through the swing doors —for the last time. But his hand was on his heart —where the trouble was. In nearly all walks of life we meet, or hear tell of, the man of iron nerve, of colossal coolness under conditions that might well have excused at least a slight show of perturbation or physical weakness. Within the circle of your own acquaintance you can doubtless number one or two men of the kind. You will therefore be interested in a few narratives about others.

HEROIC SURGERY. The Hospital of St. Mandier, at Toulon, was once the scene of a most extraordinary instance of coolness and skill. Admiralty-Sur-geon Regault performed an operation upon himself for inguinal hernia on the left side. Propped up with cushions, the doctor seated himself on the operating table, and after administering to himself an injection of cocaine, be commenced to operate, closely watched, in case of accident, by Drs Gastinel and Dofour, and assisted by several students for the washing of instruments, the preparing of dressings, etc. The whole operation lasted an hour and a (piarter, being suspended occasionally to allow photographs to be taken of the unique spectacle. Dr. William M, Deck, who distinguished himself by his daring when fighting in the Philippines, not long ago, joined the ranks of the 'medical men who have operated on themselves. He had been suffering from a growth which threatened to destroy his jawbone, and lie calmly stood before a mirror at his home one day and performed the difficult task of operating upon himself. He made an incision just below his left jaw, cut away the flesh front the point of the chin almost to the left ear, then scraped the hope, apd sewed up the wound. SOLDIER’S STOIC GRIT. It is amazing how supremely indifferent to pain and suffering our gallant Tommies are. They suffer their wounds, great and small, without a tptmnur; they get their wounds dressed, fake chloroform, and give consent to hiiye (heir limbs amputated, just as if they were going to have their hair cut. As an instance of unflinching grit and unconscious heroism, Mr Philip Gihhs relates how a sergeant was badly wounded as he stood thighhigh in water’. One of his legs was horribly smashed. Word was passed down to the field ambulance, and a surgeon came up, splashing to the neck in mud, with his instruments held high. The operation was done ill the water, red with the blood of lire wounded map, who was brought down, less a leg, to the field hospital. He was put a little off ofip side, as a man about to die. What else could one expect after that agony in (lie ice-cold puddle? But that evening he chatted cheerfully, joked with the priest who came to annnint him, and wrote a letter to his wife: “I hope this will find yon ‘in the pink,’ as it leaves me,’’ he began. He mentioned that he had had an “accident,” which had taken one of his legs away, ‘‘lint the youngsters will like to play with ?ny wooden leg,” he said, and discussed the joke of it.

As one of the R.A.M.C men said; “The wounded soldiers we fetch in never flinch or make a murmur.” Then he told of a very touching

case. “A chap got hit by shrapnel in his back, and was severely wounded. We took him to the operating theatre, and as they had just run out of chloroform the surgeon told him he must bear it if he could. “They cut the flesh away, and the poor (diap stuck to it all without a groan, and smoked his pipe all the while. He is now getting on well, I am very happy to relate.’’ A BOY HERO. In another case the hero was a young Tommy of the grand Northumberland Fusiliers. He was little more than a boy, and was probably not out of his teens. After a very fierce attack ho was taken to the field ambulance with over a dozen shrapnel wounds in the right leg, and the surgeon said the leg must he amputated. The lad was laid on the operat-ing-table, and the surgeon —an'officer and a gentleman in the best sense of the word —said to him: “Laddie, I’m sorry, but it’s your life or your leg!”

Thoughts of his mother and his home —perhaps even a sweetheart -—came to him. How would they like to see him without one of his legst A tear started trickling down his face. The surgeon noticed it, and patting him on the cheek, said: “Be a British soldier, laddie.” “Yes, doctor; it’s all right. Take it off.”

Afterwards lie told one of the ambulance men Ibat his widowed method was dependent on him, and he bad hesitated hcean.se he feared that lie would never he able to go baek to the eoal mine minus a leg. He wanted to live to work for his mother.

A soldier who cut off his wounded leg with a penknife was Sergeant E. Walker, Ist Battalion Rifle Brigade. It occurred during the lighting on the Aisne. He says: “1

was just “jotting u]>, and turning round to take my platoon to the loft, when smack! wont my log — and didn’t 1 Jump! It did not blow niv log’ oloan oil. It was banging by a thick piooo of llosh, sinows, and skin, so I bop])od a few yards down the bill under cover, sat behind some straw, and cut my log ot( with a penknife. 1 might mention I had a piece of string round my log to slop it from bleeding, which saved mv life.”