PASTORAL: 1945

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 307, 11 May 1945, Page 16

PASTORAL: 1945

The following is taken from a letter written to his mother, from France, by a young doctor in the R.A.M.C. IFE isn’t too bad in spite of the intense cold, but I feel an older and wiser man since last I wrote. We occupied a village a while back, a nightmare village of sorrow and destruction, and I think we saw for the first time the full significance and horror of this war, The Germans had pulled out and we entered unopposed. Practically every house was a complete ruin and absolutely uninhabitable by normal standards; the only civilians we saw were mal-nourished and red-faced with weeping; the only sounds distant gunfire and the local crying of women. Clean fresh snow, bright sunshine, a clear blue sky and the exhilaration of a day’s march through lovely country could do nothing to stop life being anything but foul."I don’t think I’ve ever been so completely depressed as I was in that village. a oe ‘ALMOST before I had got my post set up in what had been a grocer’s shop, it was discovered that I was a doctor, @nd messages were coming in from civilians who looked to a doctor as someone who could help. And that was the ‘worst part about it; I was numb and felt useless, completely and loathesomely selfish I suppose, and just longed to escape and get away from it all. That night I spent examining week-old wounds, foul and septic and untreated, examining them in dirty cellars amongst crowds of miserable people by the light of poor quality candles, or rather, I should say, candle, probably the last in the house. But the wounds were easy enough; I could dress them and get them pway to a surgeon. My real problems were the sick; problems which in normal circumstances would be quite simple and problems which at the time I thought I couldn’t solve-and didn’t want to; I wanted to escape. How vital it is to be optimistic in this world, how vital not to be too sensitive. Had I not "just hoped for the best," I don’t think I could have got over the difficulties as well as I did. f ™ * * ONE of my cases was a month-old ‘~ baby; it was obviously ill, had a nasty cough, and was feverish. I realised straight away that I knew absolutely nothing about sick kids and only wanted to ask another doctor. But, of course, there weren’t any. Well, I didn’t think it. had pneumonia, bronchitis or gastroenteritis, but I found that it was being’ rubbed with dirty raw lard (a local cureall apparently) and hed got a rash from that. I discovered that 19 adults lived in the same filthy cellar the size of our dressing room and that the window only Jet in air beeause one pane was broken. With ridiculous assurance I told the mother there was nothing to worry about, to give the baby a warm bath, to apply no more lard, to clear out the other adults a8 much as possible, and to have the baby near the window. Oh, yes, I also simplified the diet. And went my way wondering if the kid would die in the night, and, feeling as useless as ever I’ve. felt, I prayed hard that night. I didn’t go to see the baby next morning, but by five o’clock I had plucked up

enough courage, Isn’t this a good tale? It lay on my knee and gurgled happily as I tickled its chin-as healthy a haby as ever I’ve seen in my life! * * we UT I haven't told you the background to the tragedy of that village. On Christmas. Eve the Germans had marched off all the young active men of the district and most of the young attractive women, the former for German labour camps, the latter for the brothels with which the Germans try to keep their labour camps happy and contented. Lord knows that was bad enough, but in that district the Maquis had shot up a Gestapo car in the summer and killed an S.S. General, so there were additional reprisals. Part of the village was pillaged completely, then burned down and put out of bounds to civilians. At Christmas there was a German celebration of the event on the looted wine and good things stolen. It wasn’t until the Germans had been driven out that the villagers explored their ruined homes; in one cafe they found the bodies of 34 of their young men, battered and bruised and then shot through the head and left to freeze where they fell. And that was how we and, the villagers found them. One man had escaped and hid up till the German departure. He told the eye-witness tale; one S.S. officer had shot the lot in cold blood one aftér the other. It must haye taken a good halfhour, :

[SN’T it incredible? I never believed those atrocity tales, I dismissed them as mere propaganda, but there it was in real life for us all to see, and it made us realise just why and against what we were fighting. Every shattered home I visited had one or more close relatives killed. Many of my patients had lost everything and everybody they loved, and they were stunned, they only wished to die, Others had fevers from starvation, many were the old folk with swollen ulcerated legs, they had not been to bed for three weeks, and their hearts were no longer up to maintaining full circulation in their dependent limbs. Everything had been stolen, the simplest household remedy was missing; it was no earthly good prescribing anything which I couldn’t supply myself. Then, of course, there were serioué illnesses as well, pneumonia, rheumatic fever, and others. One little girl was covered with septic sores, her little fingers were all stuck together with pus, and she wept with pain on the slightest touch. I prescribed the treatment, but it was too difficult for her mother, and one of my great tough "parachutist orderlies took her in hand and I left him to it. When I returned she was sitting on his knee, he had won her with chocolate and they were giggling with fun as he bathed each finger, and dressed each one with a gentleness only found in the strongest men. After a few days, and it took a good .hour each day, every ‘sore was healed and dry.