TRENCH SURGERY.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 10, 13 January 1916, Page 3

TRENCH SURGERY.

AMPUTATION WHILE YOU WAIT. THE AMAZING TOMMY. LONDON, November 25

A story which, as the writer puts it, "shows the soldier as he simply and inconceivably is," is told by Mr. Provost Battersby in a message from the British headquarters in France. It happened during a recent spell of bad weather, when the trenches were soaked with four days of rain, and the men had been standing above thenknees in water. The enemy’s mortars had been tiring much later than usual, and it was pitch dark and rain w.-«-j pelting down, when one of their bombs J fell plumb into the trench with its back to a traverse. . The traverse was removed in one direction, and a sergeant, standing some ten yards awav from it, turned a somersault over the traverse in front of it, and landed head first in three feet of water. When he came to the surface be found a difficulty in standing, and felt that one of his legs was in several pieces. Happily, a surgeon happened to be in a dugout nearby, and hearing the exp osion and the splash, looked out am saw the wounded man struggling m the water. He ploughed his way to him through the mud, and seeing hie desperate conditions, determined make a dash for his instruments over the exposed morass of mire m the rear, instead of by the- roundabout communication trenches. THE OPERATION. Having collected his instrument case he succeeded in returning safely across the open to the injured man, arid there and then, while they were both standing up to their thighs in water, Inperformed an operation, severing what was left of the leg—the stump being just clear of the water—and tying up the arteries with no light to help him but the fizzle of the German flares. When at last the wounded man arrived at the dressing-station, little hope was entertained of his recovery, and at the clearing hospital' his acceptance seemed a mere formality, unconscious as he was, and so near apparently to death. But next mormnf the chaplain found him with a cigrette between his lips, entertaining the ward-with a humorous account of the night’s adventure, and he wrote with his own hand a letter to his wife, hopino- that it “found her in the pink, as°it left him at present, and warning her that a portion of him was unfortunately. missing, but that he was lucky in bringing back what remained to her.