Our Casualty, and Other Stories. George A. Birmingham
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There came a day—the 6th of August—for which the Colonel, or some higher authority, devised a “stunt” of the most intense and laborious kind. A very great and remote man, the General in command of the whole district, promised to be present and to witness the performance. Orders were issued in minute detail, and every officer was expected to be familiar with them. Maps were studied conscientiously. Field glasses were polished. Rations were served out. Kits were inspected. The affair was an attack upon a hill supposed to be strongly held by an enemy well provided with machine-guns.
A genuine excitement possessed the battalion. This, so it was felt, was very like the real thing. Just so, some day in France, would an advance be made and great glory won. McMahon alone remained cheerfully indifferent to the energetic fussiness which prevailed.
The day dawned cloudless with promise of intense heat. Very early, after a hurried and insufficient breakfast, B Company marched out. It was the business of B Company to take up a position south of the enemy’s hill, to harass the foe with flanking fire and at the proper moment to rush certain machine-gun posts. B Company had some ten miles to march before reaching its appointed place. McMahon gave it as his opinion that B Company would be incapable of rushing anything when it had marched ten miles in blistering heat and had lain flat for an hour or two in a shadeless field. A party of cooks, with a travelling kitchen, followed B Company. McMahon said that if the cooks were sensible men they would lose their way and come to a halt in a wood, not far from a stream. He added that he was himself very sensible and had already fixed on the wood, about a mile from the scene of the attack, where he intended to spend the day, with a novel.
The other three companies, the Lewis gunners, and a battery of Stokes gun men, attached to the battalion for the attack, marched out later, under the command of the Colonel himself. Cyclist scouts scoured the roads ahead of the advance. McMahon, accompanied by an orderly, marched in the rear and complained greatly of the dust. A Brigadier appeared in a motor and cast a critical eye on the men. Two officers in staff caps, understood to be umpires, rode by.
At noon, the heat being then very great, a motor cyclist dashed up, his machine snorting horribly, the man himself plastered with dust, sweat and oil. He announced that the battalion was under heavy fire from the enemy artillery and that men were falling fast. The Brigadier had sent an urgent message to that effect. The Colonel, who rather expected that something of the sort would occur, gave the orders necessary in such a situation. The men opened out into artillery formation and advanced, by a series of short rushes, to take cover in some trenches, supposed to have been abandoned, very conveniently, by the enemy the day before. The Brigadier, seated in his motor-car in a wood on a neighbouring hill, watched the operation through his field glasses, munched a sandwich, and enjoyed a glass of sherry from his flask. McMahon, for whom short rushes in artillery formation had no attractions at all, slipped through a hedge, skirted a field of ripening oats, and settled himself very comfortably under a beech tree on the edge of a small wood. His orderly followed him and laid down a large package on the grass beside the doctor. The Colonel, an enthusiastic realist, had insisted that McMahon should bring with him a supply of surgical instruments, dressings and other things necessary for dealing with wounds. McMahon opened the package. He took out a novel, a tin of tobacco, a great many packages of cigarettes, two bottles of soda water, two lemons and several parcels of food.
“This,” he said to the orderly, “is the advanced dressing station. When the casualties begin to arrive, we shall be ready for them.”
The Brigadier sent another motor cyclist to say that the battalion would be wiped out if it stayed where it was. He suggested a move to the right and an attempt to get into touch with B Company.
The Brigadier, though he drove in a motor-car, was feeling the heat. If a direct advance had been made on the hill from where the battalion lay he would have been obliged to drive out of his wood in order to keep the battle in view. A move to the right could be watched comfortably from where he sat The Colonel explained the situation, not the Brigadier’s feelings, to his officers, exposing himself with reckless gallantry as he passed from company to company. He said that he himself would survey the ground to the right and would try to discover the exact position of B Company.
“I shall,” he said to the Adjutant, “climb a tree so as to get a good view.”
The Adjutant remonstrated. He thought the Colonel was too old a man for climbing trees. He recommended that a subaltern, a Second Lieutenant whom nobody would miss much if he fell, should be sent up the tree. The suggestion, as the Adjutant might have guessed, made the Colonel more determined and slightly exasperated him.
He gave orders that the Stokes gunners should shell the enemy while he climbed the tree. The Stokes gunners did not want to shell anyone. Their weapons are awkward to handle and their ammunition very heavy. They were already as hot as any men ought to be. But they were well trained and highly disciplined. They attacked the enemy with small dummy shells, which rose gently into the air, made a half-circle, and fell about fifteen yards from the muzzles of their guns.
The Colonel, looking about him for a tree not too difficult to climb, caught sight of the beech under which McMahon lay. It seemed exactly the kind of tree he required. It was high. Its lower branches were close to the ground. It looked strong and sound. The Colonel pushed his way through the hedge, avoided the oats, and approached the tree across a pasture field. He came on McMahon stretched flat on his back, a tumbler full of lemon squash beside him and his novel in his hand. The Colonel was still irritated by the Adjutant’s suggestion that he was too old to climb trees. He was also beginning, now that he was near a tree, to wonder uneasily whether the Adjutant had not been right He saw an opportunity of expressing his feelings at the expense of McMahon.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
McMahon, who had not seen the Colonel approach, stood up hurriedly, upsetting his lemon squash, and saluting.
“What the deuce are you doing here?” said the Colonel. “You’ve no business to be idling, drinking and smoking under a tree, when the battalion is in action.”
“This is an advanced dressing station, sir,” said McMahon. “I’m waiting for the casualties.
“That’s not your duty,” said the Colonel. “Your duty is to be with the men, in the firing line, ready to render first aid when required.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said McMahon, “but I don’t think that you’re quite right in saying——”
“Do you mean to tell me,” said the Colonel, “that it isn’t the duty of a medical officer to accompany the men into the firing line?”
McMahon saluted again.
“According to the instructions issued by the R.A.M.C., sir,” he said, “my place is in the advanced dressing station when there’s only one medical officer attached to the unit in action. If there is more than one the position is, of course, quite different.”
The Colonel, though a soldier of long experience, was not at all sure what instructions the R.A.M.C. authorities might have issued to their officers. And doctors are a powerful faction, given to standing together and defying anyone who attempts to interfere with them. Besides, no one, not even the strongest and healthiest of us, knows how soon he may find himself under the power of a doctor, seized with a pain or other form of discomfort which only a doctor can alleviate. It is never wise to push things to a quarrel with any member of the R.A.M.C.
The Colonel turned away and, somewhat laboriously, climbed his tree. He was anxious, if possible, to make McMahon do a little work. It was annoying to think that this young man, horribly addicted to slacking, should be lying on his back in the shade. Yet he did not at once see his way to any plan for making McMahon run about in the heat.
It was while he scanned the position of B Company through his field glasses that an idea suddenly occurred to him. He climbed down rapidly and found McMahon standing respectfully to attention at the foot of the tree.
“You told me, I think,” said the Colonel, “that this is the advanced dressing station?”
“Yes,