WOUNDED IN WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1633, 4 November 1916, Page 4

WOUNDED IN WAR.

HOW IT PEELS,

STRANGE SENSATIONS

It is impossible to standardise the sensations of a wounded man when first he is hit and this because these sensations will depend upon four things; what he is woffnded by, in what part of the body, his stale of health at the time, and his temperament.

It is true that Nature provides a. beneficial shock which numbs the pain for some time. But there arc at least four kinds of wounds in which this numbing sensation does not appear. At Guillemont a man who had a bullet through the centre of the palm at once started running round and round in a circle, shrieking, until a couple of stretcherbearers caught hold of him. Whatever the medical theories nitty lie in a case like this, and however slight the wound might have turned out to be, it was obvious to a spectator that the man was in the last extremity of actual pain. At High Wood, men hit in the ankle by low-Hying machine-gun bullets, made far more mdse than men seriously hit. In the third exceptional case, that of stomach wounds, the Juan lies and groans quietly, becau'se he simply cannot make any louder mdse; but he is in terrible pain all the time, which is made the worst" because it is more than his life is worth to take a drop of drink, even water. And then, of course, there is the fourth case of the man who has a limb blown off in action. LIKE A GIANTS KICK.

To return lo (he consideration of more ordinary cases, in which the beneficial shock has its effect. Take the case of an officer who was hit by a small piece of high-explosive shrapnel which took away the elbow joint and broke the upper arm. He said, “It felt as if a giant had kicked me. Then came a warm tingling all down Ihe arm, a rather pleasant sensation. After that, the excitement of walking a mile or two hack through the teeming crowds of relief and supply troops took my mind off it. But when they put the tourniquet on lo stop the bleeding. . .

My word!” An officer who wns hit hy a bullet which wonl through the lung' and passed out at the hack, lays stress on (lie rather peculiar fact that lie did not feel (he entry of the bullet at all, but only the exit. The sensation, he says, was that of being hit full force in the back by a loaded stick. As an interesting fact, it may be added that nobody discovered the entry wound for three hours after his arrival at the dressing station. Another officer has a piece of a rifle grenade through his chest. ‘“1 felt at first as if a huge weight had been dropped from a height upon my shoulder. This was followed hy the feeling of a red-hot wire being pushed into me. But a blessed numbness succeeded soon to all this, and I got up and walked at least twenty yards before 1 fell again.” A fourth man was hit in the forearm by a shrapnel bullet. “It was like a smack with a sledge hammer. I said, ‘My (!od, I’m hit!' and my arm felt like a piece of lead. A peculiar desire to weep took me, but I was able to stifle it.” V THE JAGGED WOUND.

It is possible jo draw some soil of distinction between I lie sensations censed by n rille bullet, a shrapnel fragment, end ;i piece of u bomb. The German rille bullet leuves the muzzle with n speed of at lens! 2,500 yards second. At under 100 yards range it is still wobbling: slightly, end will probably hit a man broadside on, giving a most dangerous and painful wound. At any range above 100 yards it is travelling steadily, and nearly always passes straight through the body, unless it hits a bone. The .shrapnel is always likely to stay in the body, by reason of its irregular shape. A bomb splinter is likely to .stay inside for another reason, namely its comparative lack of velocity. Thus'it can he affirmed fairly generally, (hough it is by no means si hard and fast rule, that the two latter will produce wounds both tnore dangerous and more painful than the simple rille bullet. Lastly, to consider the effect of the wounded man’s health and temperament upon him at the time he is hit. A man in a had state of health lias little resiliency, as they say in the R.A.M.G. He will feel his wound more than the healthy man, and fake longer to recover. And as regards the (pies)ion of temperament, if his nerves have been shaken by a heavy bombardment, his idea of the danger to himself will he magnified out of all proportion. In every action, nerve-shaken men run about insisting that their death is at hand, when the *hanee> are that three weeks will see them back in the trenches. By contrast, men of strong nerves walk quietly down tif the dressing station, uncomplaining, with a cigarette in their mouths, even though they may lie mortally .wounded and in deadly pain. It may sound strange, hut mortally wounded men can walk, and do. Not far, perhaps. But still, they walk.