Kitabı oku: «The First Canadians in France», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XVI

He was a mere boy, scarce nineteen years of age, a sub-lieutenant in the Territorials, and a medallist in philosophy from Oxford.

Who would have guessed that this frail, delicate-looking Welsh youth with the fair hair and grey eyes was gifted with an intellect of which all England might be proud? He might have passed unnoticed had one not spoken to him, and, having spoken, had seen the handsome face light up with fascinating vivacity as he replied.

One cannot attempt to recollect or depict the mystic workings of his marvellous mind; for, once aroused, gems of thought, clear cut and bright as scintillations from a star, dropped from his lips and left his hearers steeped in wonder.

It was then, you may well believe, no ordinary youth who walked into the hospital, with mud-covered clothes and his kit still strapped to his back. He dropped the kit upon the floor of his room, and, sinking wearily into a chair, brushed back with his hand the unruly hair which sought to droop over his high forehead.

His commanding officer, who had accompanied him to the hospital, had taken me aside, before I entered the room, and had told me privately his views about the boy.

"You look tired," I remarked, as I noted the weary droop of the head.

He smiled quickly as he looked up and said: "Done up, I think. Those six months in Malta were a bit too much for me."

"But you have been home before coming to France, have you not?" I asked him.

"Home!" he cried in surprise. "No such luck! We had expected a week or two in England after our return, but it's off. There were four thousand of us in Malta, but we're all here now, at Etaples, and liable to be sent to the trenches any moment. When I stood on the cliffs at Wimereux yesterday and saw the dear old shores across the Channel – " He stopped suddenly, overpowered by some strong emotion. "I'd be a better soldier farther off. Between homesickness and the pain in my chest, I'm about all in."

He did look tired and faint, and even the pink rays of the setting sun failed to tint the pallor of his cheeks. I told him I would send the orderly to help him undress and that he must get into bed at once.

When I returned shortly and examined his chest, I found that he was suffering from a touch of pleurisy; there were, too, traces of more serious trouble in the lungs.

"What do you think of me, Major?" he enquired with a quizzical smile, when I had completed the examination. "Anything interesting inside?"

"Interesting enough to call for a long rest," I replied. "We'll have to keep you here a while and later send you home to England."

"My O.C., who by the way is my uncle too, and a medical man, insisted on my coming here," he remarked. "He says I'm not strong enough for trench life. But the old boy – bless his heart! – loves me like a son, and I'm morally certain he wants to pack me off for fear I'll get killed. I simply can't go home, you know, until I've done my bit. It would be jolly weak of me, wouldn't it?"

"You might go for a time," I replied guardedly, "and return later on when you get stronger."

He started to laugh, but a quick stabbing pain in the chest caught him halfway, and he stopped short with a twisted smile as he exclaimed:

"I believe the old chap has been talking to you too! You're all in league to get me out of France."

This was so close to the truth that I could not contradict him, but shook my head in partial negative. His uncle felt, as I too came to feel later, that the loss to the world of such a brilliant mind and one with such potentialities would not be compensated for by the little good its master could accomplish physically in the trenches.

"After all," he argued, "how much poorer would Wales be if I were gone? The hole would soon be filled."

"I can't agree with you," I answered slowly; "your life is more important to others than you think, and you would risk it in a field for which you are not physically fitted. You have overdrawn your brain account at the Bank of Nature, and flesh is paying up. You must go home until the note is settled."

"Sounds rational but horribly mathematical – and I always hated mathematics. Hope I'll be able," he continued mischievously, "to repay the 'interest' you and uncle are taking in me."

"We want you to consider the matter philosophically," I said, "not mathematically."

"That's better," he replied, with his usual bright smile; "philosophy comes more natural to me. True, it savours of Euclid, but I can forgive it that offence; it has so many virtues."

He remained silent a few moments, thinking, and then asked me suddenly: "If I go home, how soon can I get back to France?"

"I hope you won't return here," I replied gravely; "it would be suicidal, and, flattery aside, your life is too valuable to be sacrificed over here."

"Perhaps you are right," he murmured pensively, as though we were discussing a third party whose life interested him only in an impersonal manner, and without exhibiting the slightest self-consciousness or vanity. "It might be better if I stayed at home. I admit," he continued more brightly, "I have a selfish desire to live. I am so young and have seen so little of this great big interesting world and I want so much to know what it all means. Still I would far sooner die than feel myself a slacker or a 'skrimshanker.'"

"No one will mistake you for either," I returned warmly. "Your lungs are not strong, and I fear if you remain here in the cold and wet you will not recover."

"There's so much in life to live for," he cried animatedly; "besides, I'm a little dubious of the after world. For a little longer I should like to learn what tangible pleasures this world offers, rather than tempt the unsubstantiated promises of a future state."

"But surely you believe in an after life?" I enquired, in some surprise.

"It's difficult to believe what one cannot prove," he returned evasively.

"But," I ventured argumentatively, "I can imagine that if the total matter in the universe is indestructible and cannot be added to or taken from, the soul too is indestructible – it may be changed, but cannot be destroyed."

"Ah!" he exclaimed quickly, "you are assuming the reality of the abstract. Suppose I do not agree with your hypothesis, and deny the existence of the soul! You cannot prove me wrong. Sometimes I fear," he continued more softly, "the soul, or what we conceive to be the soul, is merely the reflection of poor Humanity beating its anxious wings against the horror of extinction."

"Or the shadow of a poor physician scuttling away from the terrors of your philosophy," I laughed. "You iconoclasts would pull our castles-in-the-air about our ears and leave us standing in the ruins."

"I'll build another castle for you," he returned with a queer, sad smile, as though he sympathised with my dilemma.

"But not to-night," I urged, as I arose to go; "you must wait until you are stronger; you have been talking too much already for one so ill, and I must say good night."

It was several days later, and the youthful philosopher was making good progress on the road to recovery, when another young officer, very similar in appearance to our patient, drove up to the door of the hospital in a motor car. He was attended by two senior officers of distinguished appearance and very military bearing, and who showed considerable deference towards their young companion.

Apparently they had come from the front and, as the colonel showed them about the various wards, took the keenest interest in the patients. At last they came to the young Welshman's room. As they entered he turned to look at them, and, dropping his arms, suddenly lay at "attention" in bed.

"Llewellyn, by Jove!" exclaimed the youngest of the trio, as he stepped forward and shook our patient warmly by the hand. "I had no idea you were here. How are you?"

"Much better, thank you, your Royal Highness," said Llewellyn, with his ready smile, "and greatly honoured by your visit, sir."

"I hope it is nothing serious," said the Prince of Wales kindly – for it was he – "you are looking quite bright!"

"It isn't very serious, I believe, sir – a touch of pleurisy, that's all. But the doctors insist on sending me home on account of it. That is my chief grievance."

The young Prince smiled understandingly. It was not so long since he too had unwillingly been detained at home by illness. His blue eyes lit up with a quick sympathy as he remarked:

"I hadn't expected to find an old class-mate here; I hope you will soon be quite well again and able to return to France."

"I shall do my best to get well soon," Llewellyn answered thoughtfully; "but the doctors seem to consider my constitution too delicate for trench life, sir. I have the consolation, though, of knowing that our college is well represented at the front, for of the seventy-five students at Magdalen only five are home, and three of those were physically unfit."

"Isn't that a splendid record!" cried the Prince with enthusiasm. "It makes one feel proud of one's college."

They chatted on various topics for a few moments longer, and then as his Royal Highness turned to go he exclaimed:

"This is a wonderful hospital; a great credit to Canada! I must write father and tell him about it. I consider it one of the finest in France. I am sure you will do well here. Good-bye, dear chap, and the best of good luck to you!"

The kindly and earnest good wishes of his Royal young friend touched Llewellyn deeply, and there was a suspicious trace of moisture in his eyes as he returned:

"Good-bye, sir, and many, many thanks for your kindness in coming to see me."

CHAPTER XVII

The senior major bought a motor car. It was his supreme extravagance. If there were others who frittered away their substance in riotous living, at least the major could not be accused of such frivolity. He had none of the petty vices which eat like a wicked moth into the fabric of one's income. Any vice that got at his income bit it off in large chunks and bolted it before you could say "Jack Robinson." The motor car was the greatest of these. There may be some who do not consider a motor car a vice. The only answer I can give them is that they never saw the major's car. When he first unearthed its skeletal remains in the hospital garage, it bore a remote resemblance to a vehicle. It had part of an engine, four tireless wheels, and places which were meant for seats. A vision of its possibilities immediately arose before his mind's eye, and he could see it, rehabilitated and carefully fed, growing into a "thing of beauty and a joy forever."

Some of the officers argued it was German, because no such thing could have been made by human beings. Others maintained it had been left on the hospital grounds centuries before and the garage had grown up around it. The maker, out of modesty, had omitted to inscribe his name, but it had a number whose hieroglyphics antedated "Bill Stump's Mark." The original owner sacrificed it, from a spirit of patriotism, no doubt, for the paltry sum of three hundred dollars, and in the course of time, with the trifling expenditure of three hundred and fifty more, two mechanics succeeded in getting it started.

That was a memorable day when, with a noise like an asthmatic steam-roller, it came ambling out of the hospital yard, peered around the corner of the fence, and struck off down the road at a clip of three good English miles an hour.

We rushed to the door to see it, and when the smoke of the exhaust cleared a little, there sat the major ensconced in the front seat. There was a beatific smile about his mouth and a gleam of pride in his eye – the pride of possession. He wasn't quite sure what it was he possessed, but it was something which moved, something instinct with life.

"Sounds a bit noisy yet," he murmured confidentially to himself, "but it will loosen up when it gets running a while."

What prophetic sagacity there was in this remark! It did loosen up, and to such good purpose that several parts fell off upon the road. Little by little it got going, and in less than a month you might have heard it almost any bright afternoon, groaning in the garage preparatory to sallying forth upon its quest.

But about this time another event of such importance occurred that the major's car was thrust into the background. We had in our hospital a venerable old sergeant of peripatetic propensities, who had two claims to recognition: first, that he was, and is, the oldest soldier in the Canadian force in France; and secondly – but this was never proved – that he could "lick," according to his own testimony, any man within fifteen years of his age in that part of the world.

Sergeant Plantsfield, our postman and general messenger, travelled into Boulogne and back from once to thrice daily – in other words, inside the year he accomplished a motor trip of sufficient length to encompass the earth. His stock of rumours was inexhaustible, for he developed and launched upon an unappreciative world at least one new tale daily.

Now if there is one thing a soldier loves more than another it's a "rumour"; and the more glaringly absurd, the more readily he will listen to it. So when the worthy old sergeant burst into the hospital with excited eyes, flushed cheeks and cap all awry after his latest trip from Boulogne, the boys crowded round to hear the news.

"They're here! By gosh! They're here at last!" he shouted, as he deposited his overflowing mail bag in the hall and looked triumphantly from one to another of his listeners.

"Who's here," demanded Barker, "the Germans?"

"Germans be blowed!" declared the sergeant with scornful emphasis. "They won't never be here!"

"Put a little pep in it, dad!" said Huxford. "Wot is it?"

The sergeant waited a full minute to give impress to his announcement, and then in a tense whisper ejaculated: "The rest of the Canadians are in France – the whole division's at the front!"

There was a dead silence for a moment, and then a wild cheer went up that shook the hall until the windows rattled.

"Ye ain't stuffin' us again?" Wilson queried anxiously, when the noise had died away. "Ye done it so often afore."

Plantsfield looked at him with withering contempt. That his word – the word of the chief "rumourist" of the unit – should be doubted was almost too much for human endurance.

"I'll stuff you, ye young cub, if ye dare to doubt a man old enough to be yer grandfather," he returned scathingly; and then turning to the others he continued: "I seen the Mechanical Transport near Boulogne and was talkin' to them."

"Oh, I'll bet you wos talkin', all right," Wilson came back vindictively, "if ye got within fifty yards uv 'em."

Plantsfield's garrulity was proverbial. He had been known to buttonhole generals and draw them to one side to whisper a choice bit of scandal in their unwilling ears – his age excusing him from reprimand.

He looked wrathfully at Wilson, but that wily youth kept his rosy cheeks carefully out of arm-shot. Turning back to his more respectful auditors, and for the nonce ignoring the disrespectful one, he pursued:

"The Supply Column on their way to the front saw a German aeroplane over them, forgot discipline in their excitement, jumped down off their waggons and blazed away at it with their rifles."

"Without orders, I'll bet?" exclaimed Jogman, slapping his knee.

"Of course," grinned Plantsfield.

Honk had been standing with his mouth open, listening intently and taking in every word orally. He opened it a shade wider as Jogman finished speaking, and was about to make an observation, when Huxford, who was somewhat of a mimic, took the words out of his mouth:

"Just like them blawsted Canydians – 'avin' their poke at th' bleedin' Hun. W'y cawn't they wyte fer h'orders like h'everybody h'else – wyte until 'e gits aw'y?"

Honk's indignant protest was drowned in the general clamour which followed this sally, but his eyes – individually – said wonders.

At the outset discipline was a sore point with the Canadians. Like the peoples of all free-born countries, it took a long time to suppress the desire for individual initiative and an innate independence resented authority. But as the war progressed, Tommy and his seniors came to realise the absolute necessity for discipline, and bowed with what grace they might before its yoke. Perhaps what reconciled them most was the acquired knowledge that it pervaded all ranks from the generals down. They soon saw that the chain of responsibility must have no missing link.

In the early days of the war, however, on Salisbury Plains in the rain and mud, discipline was almost an impossibility, and officers seeking to inculcate this quality in their men had many strange experiences.

A Tommy was doing "sentry go" one evening in front of his battalion lines when an officer approached to speak to him. Tommy kept his rifle firmly on his shoulder, at the "slope," and made no attempt to come to attention or salute. The officer, wishing to see if he understood his duty, demanded:

"What are you doing here?"

"Just walkin' up an' down," Tommy replied nonchalantly, forgetting, or at least omitting that important suffix: "sir."

"Just walking up and down," the officer reiterated, with annoyance. "What do you suppose you're walking up and down for?"

"To see that none of them guys comes in soused an' disorderly, I s'pose," he replied, but without any apparent interest in his occupation.

"Don't you know who I am?" the officer demanded testily, exasperated beyond endurance by such slackness.

"No," Tommy answered shortly. The absence of the "sir" was striking, and the tone implied further that he didn't care.

"I'm the commanding officer of your battalion!" Each word dropped like an icicle from the official lips.

"Holy – Jumpin' – Judas!" Tommy exclaimed, doing the "present arms" in three distinct movements – one to each word; "court-martial fer me!"

It was too much for the gravity of the most hardened disciplinarian. The colonel turned and fled from the spot until he was far enough away that the God of Discipline might not be incensed at his shouts of laughter.

Tommy escaped the court-martial, but he wondered all evening what a sentry really was supposed to do.

It was almost a month after Plantsfield's momentous announcement before the Canadians commenced arriving at our hospital. They came in twos and threes, scattered amongst large numbers of other British troops, but they were mostly cases of illness or slight wounds – and we had little opportunity for comparing the stoicism of our own boys with that of the English, Irish and Scotch who arrived in droves. What would our lads be like when they too came back broken and torn? Would they be as patient and brave as the other British Tommies? Could they measure up to the standard of heroism set by these men of the Bull Dog breed? We waited, we watched and we wondered.

There was only desultory fighting during the month of March, and most of the wounds were from "snipers" or shrapnel.

The first seriously wounded Canadian to reach the hospital was an artillery officer, from Alberta. A small German shell had dropped into his dug-out and exploded so close to him that it was a miracle he escaped at all. When he arrived with his head completely swathed in bandages, and fifty or more wounds about his body, he looked more like an Egyptian mummy than a man. His mouth and the tip of his nose were the only parts of his body exposed to view, and they were burned and swollen to such an extent that, apart from their position, they conveyed no impression of their true identity. It was somewhat gruesome to hear a deep bass voice, without the slightest tremour, emerge from this mass of bandages. It was as if the dead had suddenly come to life.

"Would you be kind enough to put a cigarette in my mouth, sir?" he asked.

One is tempted to believe that after this war the eternal question will no longer be "Woman," but "Cigarette."

"Do you think you can smoke?" I asked him doubtfully.

Something remotely resembling a laugh came from the bandaged head, but there was not the slightest visible sign of mirth.

"I can manage it fairly well," he returned confidently; "my right arm has only a few wounds."

Only a few wounds! And he could lie there and speak calmly of them! He might have been excused for hysterics. The English officers in the other beds smiled appreciatively:

"He's a brick!" I heard one murmur.

The nursing sister, a keen, young woman of ability, looked across the bed at me with a slight smile of pride. She made no remark but as she leaned over her patient to unwind his bandages, a flush of pleasure at his heroism dyed her cheeks. We would have no cause to be ashamed of our own boys. As we stood beside the bed of that gallant chap, the epitome of all that was best and bravest from home, a lump arose in our throats and choked back speech.

With the aid of cocaine, I removed about a dozen small pieces of shell from his chest and arms. His face was mottled with myriads of splinters of stone, and his right eye was practically gone. The hair had been completely burned off his head and in the centre of the scalp a piece of nickel, about the size of a penny and as thin as a wafer, had been driven. One large piece of shell had buried itself in the right leg; half a dozen more smaller scraps were in the left; his wrist watch had been smashed to atoms and the main spring was embedded in the flesh.

"I can't see yet," he explained, "so please watch where I lay my cigarette. I suppose my eyes will come around in time?"

How much would we have given to have been able to assure him of such a possibility! I had grave doubts, but answered as encouragingly as I dared. Reggy came in later to examine the eye and shook his head over it despondently.

"There's a chance for the left eye," he remarked to me, as we passed out into the hall, "but the right eye will have to be removed as soon as he is able to stand the operation."

(Apart from this loss, in the course of time, he recovered perfectly.)

We went into the room of a young officer from British Columbia, who had also just reached the hospital. He was a tall, handsome, fair-haired youth. He rose to his feet, trembling violently, as we entered. He was still dressed and after we had passed the customary greetings I enquired:

"Have you been wounded?"

"No," he replied with a smile, although his lip quivered as he spoke. "I wish I had been. It's rotten luck to get put out of business like this. I got in the way of a 'Jack Johnson'; it played me a scurvy trick – shell-shock, they tell me, that's all."

It might be all, but it surely was enough. There is nothing more pitiable than the sight of a strong, active young man, trembling continuously like an aspen leaf. Shell-shock, that strange, intangible condition which leaves its victims nervous wrecks for months or years, was uncommon in the early days of the war, but with the advent of thousands of guns is much more common now.

We chatted with him for a little while, and then continued our pilgrimage to the larger wards. Nursing Sister Medoc, a tall graceful girl, a typical trained nurse, met us at the door.

"Here's a strange case, Major," she remarked, as she pointed to one of the new arrivals who had just been placed in bed. "He is quite insane and thinks he is still in the trenches, but he refuses to speak."

"He must be insane if he won't speak to you, Sister," Reggy suggested facetiously.

"That will be quite enough from you, young man," she returned with calm severity.

Sister Medoc preceded us into the ward, and Reggy whispered confidentially in my ear:

"Do you know, you can't 'jolly' our trained nurses – they're too clever. Sometimes I think they're scarcely human."

"You're quite right, Reggy," I returned consolingly, "too many are divine."

Reggy looked as if he would have liked to argue the point, but by this time we had reached the bedside of our patient. I addressed a few words to him, but he made no response and returned my look with a fixed and discomfiting stare. I wondered how, if he refused to talk, the nurse could tell he believed himself still in the trenches.

The riddle was shortly solved. Turning on his side and leaning on one elbow, he grasped the bar at the head of the bed and cautiously drew himself up until he could look over the "parapet." He shaded his eyes with one hand and gazed fearfully for a moment or two into the mists of "No Man's Land." Then quickly raising his elbow in an attitude of self-defence, he shrank back, listening intently to some sound we could not hear, and suddenly, with a low cry of alarm, dived beneath the sheets (into the trench) as the imaginary shell went screaming over his head.

As soon as it had passed he was up at the "parapet" again, straining his eyes and ears once more. His nostrils dilated tremulously as his breath came in quick short gasps. His upper lip curled in anger, and in that grim moment of waiting for the German charge, his teeth snapped firmly together and every muscle of his body was tense.

By the strained look in his eyes we knew the enemy was almost upon him – Reggy and I in the forefront. With a wild cry of hate and fury he sprang at us, lunging forward desperately with his bayonet. Reggy backed precipitately against me, but before he had time to speak our assailant, with a shiver of horror, had retreated into his "dug-out."

"Thank the Lord that was only an imaginary bayonet!" Reggy gasped; "I could hear my finish ringing the door bell."

"If we had been real Germans, Reggy," I returned with conviction, "we'd be running yet!"

"Do you think he'll recover?" Reggy asked.

"Yes. The attack is so violent and sudden; I think he has every chance. We'll send him to England to-morrow."

Another month passed. It was the night of the twenty-second of April when this startling message reached the hospital:

"Empty every possible bed. Ship all patients to England. Draw hospital marquees, beds, blankets and paliasses, and have your accommodation for patients doubled in twenty-four hours."

Something unlooked for had happened. We worked like slaves. The hospital grounds soon looked like a miniature tented city. In half the time allotted us we were able to report that we were ready for six hundred wounded.

A despatch rider, covered with mud, whirled up to the door on his motorcycle. A little crowd gathered round him.

"Anything new?" we asked him excitedly.

"The Canadians are in one of the most frightful battles of the war," he replied. "The wounded will be coming in to-night."

And this was the day for which we had been waiting! This was the day for which we had crossed the sea! It was as if an iron hand had suddenly gripped the heart and held it as in a vise. We asked for further news, but he knew nothing more, and with anxious and impatient minds all we could do was – wait.