A Regimental Surgeon

by Dolbey, Robert Valentine

  The body louse is not only the host of the special organism that gives rise to typhus, but the eggs themselves are infected and the disease is transmitted to the eggs and three generations of successive lice. It was easier for the medical officers to bear than for the men, for the doctors had so much work to do; too busy they to worry over the pain in the back of the neck, that was the dread signal. As for the men, they had only to wait the turn that took them raving to the hospital. But biological discoveries are made in prisoners' camps with regard to lice and their destruction. In the sandy soil of Senne-lager were many ant heaps, and it was found that the enterprising insects would hunt most carefully through shirts spread out upon the ground near their nests and carry off the louse and her eggs in triumph.

  At Sennelager, while looking from the windows of the hut in which we were confined, I noticed strange and unfamiliar badges on the shoulders of passing British soldiers. "Fifth Western Cavalry" was one, and I knew I had met at last the Canadians of whom we had heard so much. A word to the sergeant-major, and all Canadians (and there were eighty of them) were paraded at night in one of the huts. Slipping the sentry, after dark, I went round to see them, and such good fellows the}/ were. All of them had been wounded and most of them gassed as well. They wanted nothing in this world but a gun and a hole in the barbed-wire fence. They were proud that they had done so well, and told me of their progress through Belgium into Germany. They had not been badly treated on the train; their wounds had been dressed, and food and water given. Kitchener's speech had caused a radical alteration. They told me how the German soldiers came to see the "Red Indians" whom the British Government had brought from Canada; how the Germans found white men and not the skins and features that they had expected. "Why did you take a hand in the war?" the Germans asked; for this unity of our Empire was a thing they could not understand. Even the position of Ireland was, to them, a thing incomprehensible. So the progress of these Canadians into Germany was almost a triumph and bore nothing of disgrace. I looked at every wound and most were healed. Every name was recorded, and it was well that I did so; for from the Canadian Red Cross Society in London I found that only ten per cent, of their men had been reported officially by the German Government. Accordingly seventy names were telegraphed to Ottawa and taken from the list of "missing "—that most dreadful of all the columns of casualties in war.

  Now we were all surprised that, as we were so soon to leave Germany, no effort was made to tinge this part of our journey with the pleasant recollections that last so long. But the Germans were thorough, even now, and the medical officers were put to sleep in empty huts, on straw mattresses again; in the train, too, we had the well-remembered third-class wooden seats and railway cattle trucks to sit and sleep upon. A most disagreeable unteroffizier came in charge of us. But at Brussels, how great the difference! After a bowl of good soup, strawberries were brought to us; and, as the ambulance train steamed in, we medical officers found first-class compartments reserved for our comfort. The wounded were put between sheets—poor devils who had not seen a sheet for eleven months! All was immaculate and clean. The frontier reached, the explanation became clear; for the kindly Dutch exclaimed at the sight of officers and men being done so well, in such a train, and in such linen sheets! We did not hesitate, however, to tell them that this was German "eyewash" for neutrals. We reached Flushing at night, and in the morning we were well at sea, watching four of our destroyers sweeping up to the German coast. Midday saw us at Tilbmy, and Home once more.

  CHAPTER IX

  HOME

  Chief among the many things that made our return to England dear to us was curiosity as to the state of the country, of which we had heard so much in Germany. How was it with the England that we knew before the war? How had she lasted under the strain? Was it true, as the Kolnische Zeitung said, that all England was covered with contemptible posters calling on men to fight, that there was in the United Kingdom a condition of moral compulsion that was no whit different from the obligatory services in Germany? That every man in England seemed to be busy persuading the other fellow of his duty to enlist; that the politicians were still at the same old game of trying to make political capital out of the nation's difficulties? They declared that every fool had still the right to air his folly, even in such a time of crisis as this. Did the Hannoverische, ever the most savage of our critics, tell the truth when it declared that young men in England, of great possessions, the elder sons of the first families in the land, were evading their duties? They were wearing uniforms, certainly, said this critic, but they were finding sheltered jobs on the Staff or as A.D.C's. to Generals of the various commands. There was no lack, so the paper said, of young men trying to obtain commissions in the Army Service Corps and the Ordnance Corps, in reserve Cavalry Regiments, in the home service battalions. How different, it pointed out, from the attitude of the sons of the great German houses; they always held that great expectations and great possessions entailed great responsibilities in fighting for them. Such young officers, in Germany, were to be found in the infantry in the front line and not in positions of security.

  Was the Berliner Tageblatt right when it said that the Church of Rome was against the Allies, and had decided in favour of the Central Powers; that the priests and the Sinn Feiners had stopped Irish recruiting, in spite of all that Redmond did or said; that the much-advertised Irish regiments were full of Englishmen; that Scotland had done its duty in the matter of recruiting; that England was a poor second; that Wales and Ireland were nowhere; that the homes of English chivalry in Elizabethan times, Devon and Cornwall, were dead to the call of duty, but that the East Coast and the North were sound? That in fact "the Teutonic parts of the United Kingdom, the Germanic elements in the population," had a sense of national responsibility, while the Celtic elements had none? They repeated the lap-dog legend. The smart young women of England, they said, had their arms full of Pekinese, but their nurseries empty; the women of the working classes urged their husbands to join the army so that they might enjoy the separation allowances.

  These things and countless others we had read in the German Press and we wondered whether any of them were true.

  It was not necessary to be home any length of time before one realised that the "intelligent neutral" had been provided with just a sufficient basis on which to build an indictment that allowed his prejudice full play without doing violence to his conscience. For the rest, it was necessary to avoid the pitfalls into which the German critic or his neutral informant had fallen — generalisation from particular instances. Perhaps there were young men whose object seemed to be to get into the uniform of an officer somehow, and then, this end gained, they appeared to adopt the attitude that they had done all that was necessary. Perhaps the men of England do not wear a sense of duty and obligation on their sleeve; in Germany, we were told, it is a national trait. The Tages Zeitung had said that there were many military "nuts" to be seen; too many in the less reputable districts of London late at night. The Provost-Marshal, we had heard, was a very busy man, and the term "temporary gentleman" had become a word of very common reproach. All this, as representing a phase, may be true; but it did not affect the record of the trenches, "nuts" included; and no German who has had experience of the fighting qualities of our men at the front will be tempted to lay much stress on the shortcomings which loomed so large in the eyes of his stay-at-home countrymen.

  But there was one splendid effect of the war, that even the Berliner Tageblatt drew attention to; it was to be seen on all sides, especially in the casualty lists. The German Press always gave us credit for publishing our losses in full. This war had drawn all Englishmen from far countries home again. What could point better to the German nation the need for Colonial possessions? How much to be preferred to the non-expansionist policy that had buried so many sons of Germany in the United States! All the black and piebald sheep (and one critic said that degenerate England provided many of these) had come back to the fold in the crisis, many of
them now gathered into that great and splendid fold from which there is no straying. The "no-good" Englishman, and I knew him well in Canada, had come home from the ends of the earth to serve, and by his ultimate sacrifice there to expiate the crime of unadaptability.

  In the German papers there were learned articles, too, about the future of their race, as to how the nation was to be compensated for the loss of the young and strong males. It was suggested that the State should take care of the children born to unmarried women in the war, provide a weekly pension for the mothers, and a husband out of the casualty lists, in order that no social stigma might remain attached. The increased proportion of male over female children had been noticed, and was expected to become still more marked. Wounds, illness and exhaustion, nervous and physical, it was said, so reduced the dominance of the males that the females became prepotent, and an increase in the birth rate of boys resulted.

  We were curious to see how the young officer of the new Armies would turn out. The Germans always held that this would be the weak spot in what was known as Kitchener's Army. It is absolutely necessary for an officer that he should have an officer's mind; he must be brave, have m full a sense of duty, and of his responsibilities. The officers of the Expeditionary Force had been of so high a quality that it would, of necessity, be difficult to follow them. To be brave is essential, but this does not necessarily mean not to be afraid of death; if that is a test of courage, then all men are cowards. But he who leads must have more fear of appearing to be afraid than of death itself. He must not be too young, for youth, though very splendid and careless of danger, is irresponsible-Youth wins the Military Cross, but youth may also neglect to visit his sentries. Nor must a combatant officer be too old, for in this modern life "nerves" come to the man of forty-five, and war and sudden death are the supreme tests of mental organisation. There is no room for neurasthenics in the front trenches. And with age, so often, comes the crystallised brain that receives no new impressions; the thickening of cerebral blood-vessels that makes reasoned thought impossible in the actual noise and tumult of battles. There can be little doubt that the young officer of Kitchener's Army in so far as he has been tested has in the majority of cases made good. The record of the campaign, the testimony of his superiors are witness to the fact.

  And what of religion in this war? My own experience prior to my being taken prisoner was not long enough or wide enough to entitle me to pass judgment on the conditions obtaining in the war as a whole. In those early days some of us were tempted to think that never had there been a war in which religion as a great emotional factor had been so completely absent. There were abundant evidences of God, everywhere in the field. One could see Him in the blessed relief that morphia gives; in the limit to human endurance of pain, so quickly reached; in the merciful euthanasia that precedes death; in the bullet that missed; in the tetanus that passed our prisoners by in Germany; in the blunders that the Germans committed. To what extent did our Church interpret these things for us, and so help us in this fight? Some of us missed the stern Old Testament teaching and the type of Cromwell's military chaplains. In their place seemed to figure prominently Bishops and leading dignitaries more filled with the doctrine of humility than with the righteous anger that should have thundered from the pulpit; making excuses for the enemy; too tolerant of evil; turning the other cheek. I leave it to others to decide whether there was any foundation for this view, and, if so, whether as the war has progressed, the conditions have changed.

  In Germany the Lutheran and the Catholic Church had been organised for war, just as every other department in the State. There, if you wished, you could find the Old Testament reincarnated in the war; bigotry, religious fervour, sacrifice, fanaticism. But this attitude of their religious instructors was a great help in the land; and sent the young men out to war as young men should go. The Roman Catholic Church in Germany was Catholic only in name. English Roman Catholic prisoners received grudgingly of the comforts of religion. One of my fellow medical officers, a Roman Catholic, asked in vain to see the priest. The French and Belgian officers, men who were indifferent to religion before the war, found, as they so often said, that they had need of spiritual support. What an opportunity the Church of Rome has missed! The men of France and Belgium ready and willing to return to Mother Church, but definitely restrained by the alleged political leanings of the Vatican. France, once the elder daughter of the Church, has been hurt and is not ready to forgive.

  I have heard it argued that, as a war economy, the abolition of the military chaplain is advisable. It may be doubted whether the consensus of military opinion, as a result of this war, would endorse this view. A good parson, and there are good and bad ones, as there are good and bad doctors, can radiate the right and proper spirit for a soldier to take with him to war. He can do no end of good, if he is full of faith and of the righteousness of the cause; of a cheerful countenance when things are bad. But he must be with his regiment; he must be with his men in the trenches; nor should he fail to impress upon his men that, in this war, they are fighting for a cause that God would wish them to uphold. Let him teach hatred to the enemy now, and not forgiveness until the war is over and right triumphant.

  In part of its theory, at least, the Tages Zeitung was right; for this war has been a triumph for the blonde races of humanity. It is, indeed, the day of the fair-haired and blue-eyed men. The more pigment a man has in his skin, the less able does he seem to stand shell fire. Rifle fire, machine guns the dark men will face, but not the long ordeal of high explosives. The nervous organisation of a man is the test in this war. And in the dark races it seems as if their nerves are nearer the surface. All the coloured troops of every army have shown this. The only exception is the Turk, but he will be ready himself to admit that our shelling in Gallipoli was not effective. Even the big naval guns failed in their effect, both moral and material, as their fire was direct and not high-angle. But there is one fact that the Tages Zeitung failed to recognise; and here, without doubt, lies the explanation of the dominant position occupied by the blonde races. The education of the dark peoples of this earth is, as a rule, much inferior to that enjoyed by the fair. Education confers self-control and a sense of duty. This it is that keeps a man firm in the trenches. Superstition and panic go hand in hand. Self-reliance marches with knowledge and education.

  What do we think of Tommy? we are often asked. Is he not a wonderful person, so happy, always exhibiting the irrepressible gaiety for which he is now world-famed?

  If the truth be told, in spite of the journalists, there is no joy in battle; no fierce delight in conflict, no happiness, no gaiety in the trenches under fire. But the one splendid, precious thing in connection with war is the high sense of duty that takes men and officers back again, time after time, when skrim-shanking is so easy. Tommy wonderful? Of course he is wonderful; he is the most wonderful thing in the world when he belongs to the infantry of the line. What does his country mean to him that he should make this offering of his life? Is it worth the sacrifice? Who can doubt it?

  One is often asked whether doctors do not get hardened with all the casualties they see. If by "hardened" is meant that we have no time for sentimentality, no time to say, "Poor fellow! does it hurt?" only time to ask, "Where are you hit? let me help you; open your mouth, and I'll put these tablets on your tongue/' then all of us are hard as stone. If to eat our beef and biscuit with hands all bloody is to be hardened, then we are hard indeed. But we are not really hard; no one is hard; we are only very practical and know that there are things such as death and fallen comrades, of which we do not speak. We lose some members of our mess; at the next meal we draw our seats still closer, have more rations to eat, perhaps two eggs where one was all our share before. But the names of the departed are not mentioned any more.

  It is natural to look upon a regimental dressing station or hospital as the most pitifully miserable place in the world. But it is not so, certainly not in a dressing station when the wounded have had tea an
d morphia and are warm. The only place where happiness dwells is in a hospital. And the reason of this extraordinary spirit does not, as some cynic would say, lie in the fact that, the men are wounded and therefore out of the war for a few months. No! it is in the sacrifice these men have made; the duty done, the wound that is the receipt, stamped and signed upon their bodies, from God and their country. That explains the wonderful cheeriness of the blinded; the good spirits of men who have lost their limbs.

  And this idea of sacrifice is the oldest in the world; the Old Testament is full of it. Men, in those days, used to make burnt offerings, used to give something to God. Now we only approach God to ask for something; for help in trouble; for absolution when we fear that death in battle may overtake us. But wounded men have laid their sacrifice upon the altar and it has been accepted. There is not the same cheerfulness in the medical wards of a hospital. Enteric and dysentery cases, even when convalescent, are not so happy. They have made a sacrifice too; but no more than a non-combatant might and they have not the receipt to show.

  War is essentially a masculine occupation; the idea of woman as the complement of our lives vanishes. She is no more necessary. From the moment of going out to battle, as far as active service troops are concerned, and until the rest behind the lines or the well-earned leave is taken, the idea of woman as woman is non-existent. We are only conscious of fatigue, of hunger, of heavy packs, of the dull misery of the trenches, and the billets we yearn for. That is why we, the righting troops, could never understand the stories of plunder and Belgian atrocities.