THE DOCTOR OF THE REGIMENT

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 243, 19 January 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE DOCTOR OF THE REGIMENT

A HERO WHO IS SELDOM MEN-

TIONED. By A SUBALTERN. M time goes on the doctors out at the front are now and aga'n getting a share ot honours, decorations, and mentions in despatches. Well, they deserve all they get. No one except those out there can know how hard the.-* men work. In the clearing stations, at railhead, all a\ong thv> lines of communication, in the big hospitals at the base, in boat', at ports, and in our own great citv. everywhere when there is heavy fighting in progress, the doctors work, without any special meal times, without any recreation whatsoever. Tc this? all the honour that is due.

But there is tne type of doctor especially who must he remembered. He has no clean overall to work in: it is very probahl.; nis khaki is as stained and torn as any private soldier's. T doubt if he has the means by h ; m to wash lu'.s hands before going from on° pnt:ent to another; he certainly has not the time. He works always within reach of th » shells and o*.ten among spattering bullets. H : s consulting room, surgery, and ward are the four crumbled walls of a roofless cottage, his nurses sweat-l>egrimed, blond-stained stretcher-bearers. Gunga Din, the rative water-carrier, has had his ode. Another might well be written for the regimental doctor.

I so well remember our own regimental doctor. He joined us a week l>efcre war was declared. Before that he Jiad lived up at the hospital somewhere, and had been a rather vague personality to whom we sent the men when they were sick or said their feet hurt them and they cotild' not march. The officers themselves did rot have much dealing with him : if they felt ill they went home and saw their family doctor or to a specialist in London. As with many other things that are provided free by the Government, fellows with means of their own*were a litth? supercilious and inclined to say they would as soon do without the Ann.v doctor. He was just "the doctor" ; some of us were not even quite sure what his name was, and we only saw him occasionally when someone brought him into the moss for a drink.

A VERY BIG PART Then, as the storm-clouds gathered, so that there could be no mistaking war, and Englands' little Army mobilised, among other changes our doctor came to liv.e with us in the n.CKs, Onv or two fellows, unused to ihe unfamiliar face, asked, "Who is that?" "That's the doctor," they were told. "Does he tome with us-'" asked a very young and inexperienced youth. "Of course lie does," said a majoi who had been through South Africa; "and jolly glad you'll be of him." Wo were all too busy those first fendays of mobilisation to notice the doctor much, but one evening it was announced that jie would giw a lecturn 11 officers on field dressings. How well I remember that lecture. Our little Irish doctor standing there in the middle of the room with an unwound bandage in his hand explaining how it should bo put on. He told us, too, something about wounds. There worn four parts of the body, he said, where, if a man were hit, anyone could render him useful first aid. These especial parts were the two arms and the two legs. If a man was hit in these places the thing to do was to put the field dressing on at once —above ihe wound, applying a tourniquet if an artery was severed. If the man was hit in the body or head —nell, the doctor his shoulders in a way that made us think. He explained how to plug a wound and the danger of moving a man hit in the stomach.

The lecture brought home to us the personality and role of the little man v.ho was living in our mess. W'e understood then, as we had not before, what a very big part he might have to play so far as we were concerned in the war. Our lives might d. pond on him. Was he a good fellow, we wondered. He looked it, anyway. Later wc all went off to France, the doctor with us. Up to this time it liad .*>. med he had very little work to dn. The men were all well and fit, and ho used to spend a good deal of the day reading the papers in the ante-room. When we were on the march he rode on a, horse at the end' of the column beside the empty ambulance wagon. Wo went into the trendies. The doctor cam? with us. He liv.nl at battalion headquarters with the colonel, the senior major, the adjutant, and scout officer. Battalion headquarters was a dug-out three or four hundred vards from the front trenches. He had a little chest o; dressings with him and some stretchcr-ibearers attached. AS GOOD AS A TOXIC.

FHiting started and wo did not see much of him. We wer.' busy, and so-t-hough we did not all ot us realise it was he. The battalion was relieved and went back to billets. At night the officers gathered round a tab!.' in a cottage kitchen and drank hot rum and water. "Hullo! Doc—haven't seen you tor ages," said one. "Where lave you !:e.'ii all these days i ... , 44 Oh, round a'»out/' franl tin* doctor. " 13v the way," asked another, "whore was old Snookv hit.' Snooky was a brother officer who had been hit the second day. 'Through the kneo and thigh, siul doctor. " Kather bad, poor chap. We had a bit of a job to get him in; it hurt him being moved: he was m I hat bit of tic mil we had to lome back f• oni." At the time we all took it ior graiwe.d that it was the doctor's job to go out and bring in wounded: o did lie. We kn.uv, of course, that he ww a j.vlv good chap 1o take it on as he did] but b-yond that thought no more of the matter. However, it was not till my own turn came that 1 really got a. know our doi tor. In a cottagw rot three hundred yards from iue Hoci::s, with shrapnel kneeking nlates off th.e r.ail and bullets splashing against the wal . the ffi'or three-parts covered with manned. niainuHl, ond bl«MXling humanitv, b. % stood cheerv as r'.cr. "Hullo* cullv." h.e s.'id as ti.ey c-.r----ri«l no in. "Where have they got voir''" H > made me comfortal >e against the wa-'l. bound up airily a wound from wfueh "(quite wrongly) 1 imagined T was going to bloed to ueith, and

with a promise to return was off attending to three fresh cases just brought in. All that day he worked. Half tin* regiment passed through lii.s hands. Our lin.9 thmn.'d, and it looked more like the Germans getting the village. He came and had a cigarette beside use.

" Phew!"' he said. "I hope they can ke?p 'cm off—else you and I will be going to Germany together." The matter-of-fact way in which he announced his intention of stopping 1 behind to take his luck with the vounded was as «ood as a tonic to all of lis lying there.