Our Casualty, and Other Stories. George A. Birmingham
When she got home she would be less inclined to sneer at people who catch cold in the service of their country.
The night was extremely dark. I do not think I have ever experienced a darker night. We could hear the sea roaring on our left, and could see, when we looked back, a dim glow here and there from the windows of our houses; but it was quite impossible to see anything on the beach.
I missed Cotter when we had been stumbling along for about a quarter of an hour, and felt glad that he had done his share. In a minute or so, I hoped, he would be safe on a stretcher, and half an hour later would be drinking whisky and water, hot. That, so Tompkins told me, was the restorative which was to be administered to all the casualties.
We got through the business of relieving the trenches in the end, though we had a tough struggle. The great difficulty was to find them. If Platoons Numbers 1 and 2 could have shouted to us or flashed their electric torches we should have got them much sooner than we did. But noise and light were strictly forbidden. They would, so Haines said, attract the enemy’s fire, and result in our being wiped out by shrapnel.
I got separated at one time from the rest of my platoon, and walked into the sea twice. Afterwards I fell over the Company Sergeant-Major, who was sitting in a pool beside a rock. He said he had sprained his ankle. But that turned out not to be true. He had only twisted it a little, and was able to limp home. In civil life our Company Sergeant-Major is one of the directors of the Corporate Banking Company Ltd., and drives into town in his own motor.
Then I came on Haines, wandering by himself on a sandhill. He was swearing viciously. It was, indeed, the sound of his oaths which led me to him. They were not loud, but they were uttered with an intensity which gave them the power of piercing through the tumult of the storm. He and I and the Company Sergeant-Major stuck together, and at 1 a.m.—we took the time from Haines’ luminous-faced wrist watch—we suddenly tumbled into the trench.
We found the whole four platoons waiting for us; but they would not have waited much longer. The senior Second Lieutenant—a very well-known solicitor—had taken command of the company, assuming, as he said, that Haines had become a casualty accidentally. His idea was to march the men home, and then send the Ambulance Brigade to search for Haines, the Company Sergeant-Major, and me.
“That’s the sort of thing,” he said, “an ambulance is for. The men in the fighting line can’t be expected to do it.”
We marched home in pretty good order, considering that we were all very wet, greatly exhausted, and many of us bruised in various parts of our bodies. Our spirit was quite unbroken, and Haines, writing up the official diary afterwards, said that our moral was excellent. He did us no more than bare justice. There was not a man among us—except perhaps the Company Sergeant-Major, whose ankle was swelling up—who would not have welcomed a German attack.
We got back to the golf pavilion, and found the whole place in an uproar. Women, all of them very wet, were rushing about. Tompkins was giving confused and contradictory orders to the twelve stretcher bearers, who looked cowed and miserable. Mrs. Cotter was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room crying bitterly. We got the explanation out of Tompkins at last.
Three of the casualties had, it appeared, been successfully picked up and carried home. The stretcher bearers had somehow missed Cotter. Search parties had been sent out. Tompkins himself had felt his way round each of the fifteen bathing-boxes. The nursing section of the Ambulance Brigade had waved electric torches and stable lanterns up and down the beach from the edge of the sea to the sandhills. The stretcher bearers, scourged by the remarks Tompkins made about their incompetence, had gone shouting through the storm until they were hoarse and utterly exhausted. Nothing had been seen or heard of Cotter.
Haines took charge of the situation at once. He formed up the four platoons, and marched us all back to the beach. There we assumed open order, and skirmished in a northerly direction. We were told to keep in touch with each other, and to leave no square yard of the sand unexamined. We were to go on skirmishing until we found Cotter, dead or alive. My own idea was that if we found anything it would be his corpse.
I did my best to obey orders, but I almost immediately lost touch with everybody else. The other men, so I learnt afterwards, had the same experience. However, I had the good luck to find Cotter. He came towards me, indeed he ran into me before I saw him. He was in charge of a policeman, who held him firmly but kindly by the arm. The moment Cotter saw me he burst out:
“Tell this infernal fool that I’m not drunk,” he said.
“If you’re acquainted with the gentleman,” said the policeman, “it would be well for you to take him home to his bed. He’s not in a fit state to be out by himself.”
I drove off the policeman with some difficulty, making myself personally responsible for Cotter’s safety. Then I questioned the old gentleman.
“What have you been doing?” I said.
“Waiting for the ambulance. I’d be waiting still if that ass of a policeman hadn’t insisted that I was drunk and dragged me away.”
“Good Lord!” I said, “and they’ve been looking for you for hours.”
“I know that,” said Cotter. “I saw their lights all over the place and heard them shouting.”
“Then why on earth didn’t you shout back and let them know where you were?”
“Casualties don’t shout,” said Cotter. “They can’t. They’re too weak. I groaned occasionally; but I suppose they didn’t hear me.”
“And how long did you mean to lie out in this storm?” I said.
“Till the stretcher bearers found me,” said Cotter. “Those were the C.O.‘s orders.”
I do not know whether any medals will be given to volunteers after the war. Cotter certainly deserves one. I have never heard a finer story of devotion to duty than his. When I had got rid of the policeman he actually wanted to go back and lie down again.
II ~~ GETTING EVEN
The battalion awaited its orders to embark for France. A feeling of expectation, a certain nervousness, a half-pleasurable excitement, prevailed in the officers’ mess and among the men. No one thought of service in France as a picnic, or anticipated a good time in the trenches. But there was a general sense of relief that the period of training—a long, tiresome, very dull business—was over at last over or almost over. For the Colonel and certain remote authorities behind the Colonel believed in working the battalion hard up to the last moment. Therefore day after day there were “stunts” and “shows,” field exercises of every conceivable kind. The weather was hot, as hot as weather ought to be in the first week of August Long marches became dusty horrors to the men. Manouvres meant hours of desperate toil. Officers thought longingly of bygone summers, of the cool shade of trees, of tennis played in white flannels, of luscious plates of strawberries and cream. The Colonel, an old soldier, went on inventing new “stunts” and more of them. He had laboured at the training of his battalion, hammering raw boys into disciplined men, inspiring subalterns with something of his own spirit.
On the whole he had been successful. The men sweated, but grumbled very little. The officers kept up a gallant pretence at keenness. Slackness was regarded as bad form, and only one member of the mess made no secret of his opinion that the Colonel was overdoing the “spit and polish” business. This was McMahon, the medical officer; and he did not, properly speaking, belong to the battalion at all. Men and officers alike were drawn for the most part from the English midlands. McMahon was an Irishman. They were born with a sense of discipline and the Colonel worked on material responsive to his methods. McMahon, like most Irishmen, was by temperament a rebel. Yet there was no more popular officer than the Irish doctor. His frank good humour, his ready wit, his unfailing kindliness, won him affection.