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A SURGEON IN ARMS
A SURGEON IN ARMS
BY CAPTAIN R. J. MANION, M. C. OF THE CANADIAN ARMY MEDICAL CORPS D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1918 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America TO MY WIFE AND BOYS I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THIS LITTLE BOOK FOREWORD The greater part of A Surgeon in Arms was written before the United States entered the war in April, 1917. Therefore, the Americans are not mentioned in many paragraphs in which the soldiers of the other allies are spoken of. The Can
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CHAPTER I LIFE IN THE TRENCHES
CHAPTER I LIFE IN THE TRENCHES
Life "out there" is so strange, so unique, so full of hardship and danger, and yet so intensely interesting that it seems like another world. It is a different life from any other that is to be found in our world today. In it the most extraordinary occurrences take place and are accepted as a matter of course. I am sitting in a dugout near Fresnoy. Heavy shelling by the enemy is taking place outside, making life in the pitch-dark trenches rather precarious. A number of soldiers of different batt
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CHAPTER II OVER THE TOP
CHAPTER II OVER THE TOP
When a man has gone over the top of a front line trench in an attack on the enemy, he has reached the stage in his career as a soldier at which the title, "veteran," may honorably be applied to him. For, to climb out of your burrow where you have been living like an earthworm into God's clear daylight in plain view of enemy snipers, machine-gunners, and artillerymen, and, under the same conditions, to start across No Man's Land toward the Hun in his well-protected and fortified trenches, is inde
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CHAPTER III OVERLAND
CHAPTER III OVERLAND
The normal position of man on the earth is on its surface. Generally speaking, when he is under the surface he is in his wine cellar, or he is dead. But at the front all this is altered. Both the enemy and ourselves have reverted to the cave age, for if we wish safety in the lines—comparative safety, that is—we pass our time in caves or cellars, dugouts or trenches. Not that living underground would be taken as a matter of choice in the piping times of peace. For the mud and dirt of the trenches
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CHAPTER IV KELLY
CHAPTER IV KELLY
Kelly is my batman or personal servant. His name tells his nationality. His philosophy, especially as regards the war, is usually interesting and always instructive. Yesterday he accompanied me to headquarters out in front of the railway line at Vimy. We had to cross a few hundred yards in the open, where the Huns had an annoying habit of dropping shells at irregular moments. Suddenly we heard the horrible shriek of an approaching whizz-bang. It passed over our heads and banged into the earth tw
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CHAPTER V THE LANGUAGE OF THE LINE
CHAPTER V THE LANGUAGE OF THE LINE
Talleyrand once wittily said that language was given us to hide our thoughts, and this saying might be enlarged by adding that slang was given us to hide our language. The Frenchman, in making this witticism, was referring not only to the beautiful language of Corneille and Molière, but to speech in general. However, if he visited the lines of the Canadian or British troops today, even though his knowledge of English were perfect, he would hear many words and expressions not found in the diction
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CHAPTER VI JUST LOOKING ABOUT
CHAPTER VI JUST LOOKING ABOUT
At the front you never need to go beyond the day on which you write to find things of interest to tell those who have not known the life, who are so unfortunate as to have to remain hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of miles from the center of interest in the greatest game the world has ever known—the game of war—being played at this moment by all the highly cultured, civilized, and refined peoples of the world! It is a bright spring day in May, 1917, for so-called Sunny France is trying to redeem
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CHAPTER VII GASSED!
CHAPTER VII GASSED!
About a month after the Canadians had taken Vimy Ridge we relieved the —— Canadian Battalion in the town of Vimy, where our battalion was in support to another battalion holding the front lines some distance in advance. Our Regimental Aid Post on our previous stay in this town had been in the cellar of a brewery near the railway station. Since we had left the shelling in the neighborhood had become so severe that this cellar had been abandoned. It had caught fire and all the woodwork had burned
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CHAPTER VIII RELIEF
CHAPTER VIII RELIEF
When one battalion goes out of the line it is relieved by another, and no section or company of a battalion may go from its point of duty until a corresponding section or company has relieved it. Reliefs, except on very quiet parts of the line, are usually carried out by night to keep the enemy from being aware that they are going on. A severe shelling during a relief is always more likely to cause many casualties than at other times. Battalion H.Q. goes out last. As each company or section is r
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CHAPTER IX DUGOUTS
CHAPTER IX DUGOUTS
To anyone who has served any time at the front the above word will bring back recollections of various kinds, for dugouts are of varying types. The term is employed to denote any shelter in the neighborhood of the firing line, from the funk hole which is only a recess cut into the side of a trench with little or no shelter above it and none at the entrance, to the cavity dug down into the ground a distance varying from ten feet to seventy, and strengthened by supports of wood, steel, or concrete
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CHAPTER X THE SICK PARADE
CHAPTER X THE SICK PARADE
The handling of the sick is not so easy a matter as the caring for the wounded in the lines, for the reason that it is not what disease the man has that the medical officer must decide as much as whether he has any disease, or has simply joined the Independent Workers of the World. In other words, is he really ill, or is he just suffering from ennui, has he at last become so "fed up" with it all that he has decided to go sick, running the gauntlet of an irate M.O. with the hope of receiving a fe
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CHAPTER XI CARING FOR THE WOUNDED
CHAPTER XI CARING FOR THE WOUNDED
The method of caring for the wounded at the front depends a great deal upon whether a battalion is holding a set of trenches on a standing front, or advancing, either in a big push, or in a raid. The medical officer to a fighting battalion is the member of the Army Medical Corps who is closer to the firing line than any of the other officers of that corps in the whole theater of war. He is served by the nearest field ambulance, whose stretcher bearers not only evacuate the wounded from his R.A.P
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CHAPTER XII CHEERFULNESS
CHAPTER XII CHEERFULNESS
Something that is noticed by all who have served at the front is the drollery of the men in dangerous or uncomfortable surroundings. Sometimes it is good-natured, sometimes ill-tempered and critical, but it is ever present. One cannot but believe that the wag of the company is better than a tonic to the men, in fact is almost as good a pick-me-up as the rum ration. Who has not felt the benefit of a good laugh? Who has not seen a well-developed sense of humor save a difficult situation, or at lea
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CHAPTER XIII COURAGE—FEAR—COWARDICE
CHAPTER XIII COURAGE—FEAR—COWARDICE
Practically all men and most women are brave when the occasion requires it. Out there one sees many types of brave men. There are few cases of cowardice in the face of the enemy, though in all the armies in this great conflict men have been shot for this crime. Conscience may make cowards of us all, but war makes brave men of most of us. In this war the pampered few, as well as those who earned their bread by the sweat of their brow, have shown a courage unsurpassed in the so-called chivalrous a
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CHAPTER XIV AIR FIGHTING
CHAPTER XIV AIR FIGHTING
Up to the present the greatest aid given by the air service to any of the armies in this war is that of acting as scouts; or, in other words, the air service supplies the eyes of the army and navy. Much is said of the time when thousands of planes will be used as offensive weapons on a large scale. It is quite possible that in the future this will come to pass; but up to the present, spasmodic bombardments of fortified positions by a few planes, and the useless murder of non-combatants by German
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CHAPTER XV STAFF OFFICERS
CHAPTER XV STAFF OFFICERS
Now, the ordinary combatant officer who perhaps will read these lines may expect a diatribe against what the boys call, "the brass-hats," but, if so, he will be grievously disappointed. Outside the fact that Staff Officers, like Medical Officers, are a necessary evil, the writer has the vivid recollection of one occasion on which he might have been court-martialed, and perhaps shot, for lèse majesté , or something akin to it, but for the good humor of a well-known Brigadier General. So there wil
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CHAPTER XVI THE BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE
CHAPTER XVI THE BATTLE OF VIMY RIDGE
On Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, occurred on the western front the great push which has been named by the press the Battle of Arras. For some days previously our bombardment of the enemy lines had been almost continuous, the so-called "drum fire" which sounded like rolls of thunder. At times during the night the rumble would become a roar, and one of my tent mates would half awaken, and say: "Well, they're giving poor Heiny hell tonight," and the tone would almost imply pity. A grunt from the re
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CHAPTER XVII A TRIP TO ARRAS
CHAPTER XVII A TRIP TO ARRAS
One day toward the end of March, 1917, our battalion was in reserve in huts and tents at Bois des Alleux, a mile or so back of Mt. St. Eloy, so I took advantage of a fine afternoon to ride about the country. Making a detour through fields to avoid being stopped by some officious transport control, I came to the Route Nationale running from Bethune to Arras. To my surprise it looked like the Strand on a busy day, for it was full of marching troops, transport wagons, hurrying motor cars with staff
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CHAPTER XVIII RAGOÛT À LA MODE DE GUERRE
CHAPTER XVIII RAGOÛT À LA MODE DE GUERRE
(Trench Stew) Usually hunting partridge or grouse is the pleasure only of those who remain at home; but one day, while sitting in a dugout, I enjoyed a wonderful meal. Our dugout was in a communication trench some five hundred yards from the front line, and probably six hundred from the German. The dugout was one of those steel-roofed affairs, the roof forming a graceful semicircle of one-eighth-inch metal, covered with sand a foot thick, carelessly shoveled on. My orderlies were Corporal Roy, a
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CHAPTER XIX LEAVE
CHAPTER XIX LEAVE
Leave is the be-all and end-all of anyone who has been at the front for any great time. It is supposed to come every three months. It never does, but you know that if you stay long enough it will come, for Army Headquarters, Corps H.Q., Divisional H.Q. and finally Brigade H.Q. (I don't dare mention Battalion H.Q.!) "may use all of the leave some of the time, and some of the leave all of the time, but they cannot go on using all of the leave all of the time," to paraphrase Mr. P. T. Barnum in reg
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CHAPTER XX PARIS DURING THE WAR
CHAPTER XX PARIS DURING THE WAR
Paris, that queen of cities, has been an interesting study to all who have paid her a visit at any time, but particularly interesting is that study since the war began. Previous to the war I had the good fortune to visit this city on a number of occasions, my last visit having been but a few months before the beginning of this great militaristic conflagration which is still sweeping over the civilized world. At that time I had just returned from a "grand tour," taking in Italy, Austria, and Sout
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CHAPTER XXI PARIS IN WARTIME
CHAPTER XXI PARIS IN WARTIME
At this period of the war the restaurants of Paris—and no other city is so famous for its restaurants—were not appreciably curtailed in their food supplies. They still served the well-seasoned, dainty dishes of the French chefs, though their clientèle was considerably smaller in numbers. You could still get a delicious cut off the joint at Boeuf à la Mode near the Palais Royal; or you could have a choice of many luscious dishes at Voison's well-known dining place. If you preferred French society
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CHAPTER XXII IN A CHÂTEAU HOSPITAL
CHAPTER XXII IN A CHÂTEAU HOSPITAL
Early in the conflict, after the Germans had been pushed back from their rush on Paris, the French were in a bad way for many of the necessities of a country at war. Among the necessities that France lacked was sufficient hospital accommodation for the sick and wounded of her armies, and for the first year of the war this shortage was partially supplied by voluntary ambulances—the word ambulance in French being employed for a field hospital. Many rich Americans gave valuable service at this time
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CHAPTER XXIII ON A TRANSPORT
CHAPTER XXIII ON A TRANSPORT
Since the war began and the Germans undertook the drowning of women and children by the submarine method I have crossed the Atlantic four times. Two of these voyages were on troop transports. Traveling on a transport is really a pleasure voyage, except for the military discipline, always a bit obnoxious to the Anglo-Saxon of the North American continent—but absolutely necessary if an army is the thing desired, not a mob. On a transport the food and sleeping quarters are all that anyone could des
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CHAPTER XXIV DECORATIONS
CHAPTER XXIV DECORATIONS
To sneer at decorations is often much easier than to earn them. It is true that more decorations, from the Victoria Cross down, have been awarded in this war than in the hundred years before it. It may be stated that for each of these distinctions given a man, ten others should now be wearing the bit of ribbon which signifies the award, if justice could only be done. Many a high-minded chap is lying out there, with only a small wooden cross to mark his last resting place, who, if the truth were
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CHAPTER XXV ON A HILL
CHAPTER XXV ON A HILL
Just before the great Vimy Ridge offensive a crowd of us stood on a small hillock beside our camp, which is in a wood six or seven miles behind our lines, to watch the "earthquake" that was to open on Thelus at 3 p.m., and of which we had been told by brigade. The "earthquake" was to take the form of a bombardment of Thelus,—a small town one mile behind the German lines, opposite our front, and which, from the lines, we could see very distinctly with the naked eye,—by every gun of ours that coul
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