 Section 10 of the Daredevil of the Army, Experiences as a Buzzer and Dispatch Rider by Austin Patrick Cacoran. This Librebox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5. In which the author repairs the airline and retires for repairs himself. Part 2. The brigade signal officer, having obtained a long deferred leave, I now found myself appointed to fill his temporarily empty shoes. We spent the morning after my arrival, going over the details of the job. I learned who could be trusted to do what, who showed up best in a crisis, and whose long suit was the tedium of routine. My assistants were to be sergeants, those omniscient but unobtrusive veterans who are the young sobbleton standby, and best friends. When my predecessor departed for the joys of Blighty that afternoon, I decided to take one of these invalubles on a tour of my sector that evening, and see for myself the lay of the land. We set out after dark, the safest time to visit the trenches. While engaged in an investigation of a certain signal dugout, we became involuntary eavesdroppers on the following conversation. Though the Lester's were manning the front line at the time, it was obvious that their ranks were not entirely composed of English blood. Oh! the poor Angershaw! Sure, Tis Starvin' he is! Larry, give him some of your bully-beef! When did they feed you last, Jerry? Even if the accent had not betrayed the speaker's origin, this last would have been sufficient in itself. An Irishman, be it known, distains the conventional fritz when referring colloquially to his friends across no-man's-land. Unseen, I approached the opening of the dugout and found the particular Jerry in question to be no more than a boy who was exhibiting an advanced stage of starvation. I had some black bread and three ounces of meat at twelve o'clock this morning. He announced presently in perfect English between mouthfuls. It was now nearly twelve midnight. Evidently he had availed himself of the darkness to make his way across to our line. How he had contrived to elude the centuries, heaven knows! But here he was, safe and sound, a self-made and satisfied prisoner. The Irishman, however, was by no means through with his catechism. His is an inquiring and sometimes sceptical mind. Tell me now! He began again, when his guest had finished eating. How came you to desert on your friends? Wouldn't you be better off to stay where you were? I would not, replied the German promptly and decisively. But if you fellows weren't so quick with your guns there would be many glad to follow my example. At this juncture I thought it might be profitable to make my presence felt, so I stepped out of the surrounding shadows. Instantly the boy saw me and stiffened to attention after the rigid fashion of his kind. After upon the Irishman, pointing a finger at him, observed jocklessly, More gun-meat we've got for you, sir. As he spoke, such a look of terror came into the prisoner's eyes as it is not good to see in the face of any man. With the intention of reassuring him as much as anything else, I asked him what was the matter. No one could help seeing that he was in a panic of fear. They told us that if the British caught us alive they'd shoot us. But I didn't believe it. He had obviously taken the Irishman's remark as proof that after all they had been right. Well, why come over if you thought there was a chance of being shot? I asked him after our evident amusement had allayed his fears. I couldn't stand it any longer, he announced, and then he told me his story. He was a Saxon as we suspected all our opponents of being down here, and as is well known neither he nor any of his countrymen had much heart in the fight they are forced to make. They have no great hatred of the British, but they have much of their bosses. And now, he explained, they have given us Prussian and Bavarian officers and non-coms. And he went on to relate how one Prussian sergeant had so well treated his particular charm that the chap one day lost entire control of himself and beat out his superior's brains with the butt of a gun. Naturally he paid the penalty with his life, which did not make things more cheerful for our young prisoner. As to how he had got across, well, he had just watched his chance, crawled over the parapet to comparative safety, and then ran for bare life. And the Saxons are not the only ones who show an unexpected affection for our side. Which leads one to wonder whether the hate fostered so seduously by their superiors has in reality spread very effectively through the German ranks. All along the line there have been pathetic attempts at intervals to bridge the terrible gulf that divides the fighters. On one occasion a German went so far as to stick his head over the parapet while he sheltered for such as were interested the following family information. Either wife and five children in Bolton. Well, if you don't put your bloom and head down she'll be a widow, came the swift and uncompromising response. Such appeals have little effect on our men's hearts. They don't curry favour, but neither do they cherish hate. Either would be too much trouble for the unemotional lazy Britisher. Wars are rotten business, but it's got to be done. Meantime let's not pretend an interest in a people who are a nuisance. Next morning we woke to such a dim, dull day as might have provoked the illusion of being in London. Fog pressed on the window panes or streamed like smoke into the room at the slightest opening. So densely did it envelop the landscape for miles around, that's one might have promenaded on no man's land, had one desired to, without risk of interruption from the Boschers. What was the midday sun, powerful enough to dispel it? After breakfast I repaired to the signal office with the general intention of remaining indoors all day, but shortly after my arrival came report of a break in the cable communicating with battalion headquarters. As my tour of the sector had been cut short last night I decided that here was a good opportunity to resume it with profit. So I told the lineman I would accompany him on his job. As I have intimated dense weather is not an unmitigated disaster. Low visibility is quite desirable on the front line, allowing, as it does, a freedom of movement that would mean death on a clearer, more cheerful day. Not to be backward in taking advantage of our opportunities, we determined to ride up to the trenches. We found the break easily enough, repaired it, tested communications and found them once more OK. Then with the lineman as escort I proceeded to an investigation of the rest of the cables round here. On route a pile of trench rivets crossed our path. We could have got by them easily enough, but somehow I didn't want to. Instead I dismounted, giving my horse to the care of the lineman. Then I wandered off alone, leaving him sitting peaceably on the woodpile, puffing at the inevitable cigarette. What prompted me to act thus, I can't say. I simply did it without reason. People have told me Providence was protecting me. But then he was neglecting my man, which seems unfair. Anyway, about thirty feet farther on I found a line in bad condition, the insulation being eaten away. I ought to have called the lineman to mend it. Again I didn't. I don't know why. Instead I bent myself, examined it and was beginning to patch it up when, bang, crash, stars. The wire faded from my vision. I fell to the earth and lay there. I don't know really how long. Perhaps it was an hour later, perhaps two hours, perhaps only ten minutes when I woke to find myself still alone. I was lying on my back, with neither the force nor desire to move. All that concerned me was my head. It didn't hurt, but it felt odd, numb, heavy, as if removed from me. I put my hand up. It stuck in something prickly. That struck me as curious, but it did not disturb me. I felt my face. It was bloody. So was my coat. And where in the world was my cap? I tried to turn my head, as if to search for it. It stuck. Well, why bother? I didn't want it. I didn't want anything, unless perhaps that it might be to be left alone. I had a sort of presentiment that moving me would mean pain. At present I had no sensation whatsoever. I was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. It seemed almost as if I didn't exist. There I lay, enveloped in fog, unable to see anything on any side of me. It struck me once that perhaps, if I knew it, I was dead. And then, imperceptibly, I slipped back into a state of coma. When I woke I was in the trench dressing station, with a bandage round my head, pressing, as it seemed to me, into my very brain. They gave me a drink. I suppose it was some kind of spirit. Certainly it stimulated me on the spot. Sensation returned to me. Oh, how I wished it wouldn't! My head caught fire, and a hundred red-hot needles seemed to be pricking into one horrible mass of pain. Then I was seized with a rampant headache, the kind that bursts through one's eyeballs and causes one's cheeks to blaze like a flame. The more conscious I became, the worse my suffering grew. I wished to heaven I had died in the coma. Still, with consciousness came some interest in my earthly affairs. I inquired how the accident had happened. They told me that a shell had come over, hit square in the midst of the wood-pile on which my lineman was sitting so peaceably smoking his vag, had blown him and the two horses instantly to atoms, and scattered the fragments of them and the wood for yards around. Four or five of these flying pieces had evidently caught me amid ships as I bent over the piece of worn wire. Led by the concussion, they had thrown me forward on my head. As I fell, my hair caught in some disused barbed wire. This penetrated the scalp on the crown of my head, tearing it forward to the forehead. I rather suspected I had assisted in the tearing myself. My body must have turned as I fell. Well, I had met Indians and savages of all sorts in my travels, but it remained for the hun to turn the old trick. So, I've lost my scalp. I inquired of the doctor. Oh, no! He reassured me. It is simply hanging loose. Somehow his answer gave me a sick sensation in my stomach. I started. When had I had that feeling before? When I was buried, here I was scalped. My whole body began to tremble and sweat to ooze from every pore. A fine chance, surely, for the old enemy to attack me, and I was right. There were many long nights ahead of me now when my head, red hot with pain, I was to be tortured with the old torments, when imagination was to take advantage of outraged mother nature to conjure up abominations unknown to me before. Many a night, oppressed by that powerlessness that paralyzes us in sleep, I was to try to dig with arms that refused to move, or to shout with a throat that refused to open, or to attack an enemy with a gun that refused to shoot. In the dark, before the dawn, when the vitality is lowest, and resistance at the irreducible minimum, I was to lie awake quivering with pain, confronting strange shapes and nameless horrors that faded only with the breaking of clear day. And I am but one of many who have faced such misery. Ask any wounded soldier what is the worst part of war. He will not tell you that it is the mud, or the monotony, or the terrors of the hand-to-hand attack, but the nightmare after he has been restored to the normal again in a hospital back of the line. Ask any nurse what she finds hardest to bear in her work in the wards. It is not the foul smell of blood, nor the filth of trench clothes, nor the mangled flesh of the operating table. It is the drawn faces of the men, the haunted, harrowed look that stares at her out of their sorrowful eyes, or it is the shrill, eerie cry that wakes the ward in the night when the man's mind reproduces the old misery in a nightmare. It is in retrospect that some soldiers suffer most. That is why death is sometimes preferable to maimed life. Back in the casualty clearing station one first meets women again. When I woke at CCS No. 1 that evening, after my jaunt in the comfortable ambulance, however, it was an orderly I found bending over my head. How that man irritated me with his benevolent, officious air! My only consolation lay in cursing him. His first duty was to shave my head. Poor chap! I suppose he went gently, but he might have been using hoop iron by the feel of it. I'd have given a good deal to use the razor on his throat. We wounded heroes give people a good deal to put up with. Gentle reader, if you are looking for a saint to canonize, search among the attendants in the casualty clearing stations behind the line. It was in the midst of his operation that a sister visited the ward. There were four of us in it, and, though she paid no attention to me, the very look of her was sufficient to soothe me. The rustle of her apron, the swish of her skirt, the sound of her voice admonishing a fellow sufferer, they were the sweetest music I had heard in many months, and then the cool feel of her capable hand and the kind smile on her capable face. Such small things it is that restore life to the normal and help to relax the tension of trench nerves. They kept me here a week, then I was made ready for a move to the base. We left early one morning on what I expected would be a short trip. The towns were not more than sixty miles apart, but hour after hour passed, and still no stretcher made its appearance to take me out of the trap they called a train. At last came evening. Lo and behold, we had arrived. But where? After a twelve-hour trip, here we were again at Casualty Clearing Station, number one. What's the blank? Why the blank? Our language was very strong, much stronger than was warranted by the strength of our bodies. Did they call this a joke? We asked one another. But no, there was a reason. Here it is. Tours are precious things, and can't be wasted on just a few. So this one had made a tour of all the Casualty Clearing Stations in the district, picking up a burden from each. They began at the beginning, which was also the end. I can only presume they thought we should like a journey. But the end was not yet. Although it was late in the evening, the train could not be halted on its trip. So off we set again, this time really for the base, which, as I remember, was General Hospital number three. Here I had hoped to make but a call en route for Blighty and Home. But again I was fated to be disappointed. In all, my stay consisted of about six weeks. They refused to trust me before that, to the channel. Bandaging twice a day broke what might have been monotony. Headaches and the smell of a drug kept me quiescent, if not amused. I learned to distinguish between sisters. There were many of them here, some of the Variety, which is known to the Tommy as the Niggle-Naggles, a very apt name. These were the ladies who administered your medicine, adjusted your pillows, and pointed out your sins with the air of a teacher addressing a naughty class. Efficient, omniscient, industrious creatures, they are fortunately rare, for if there is one thing needed in a war nurse, it is a quality of humanity. Most of them possessed it, blessed their souls. The doctor, a genial creature, had no small load on his hands. Probably the heaviest item in his burden was a Bosch officer, who was not far from me. He was a Prussian, and like most of his kind spoke very passable English. Some of our chaps who could walk tried visiting him at first. This is customary. We know the captives are lonely, but they met with a cool reception, so they stopped pretty soon. They thought he didn't understand what they were saying. The doctor, however, knew better. Trying to diagnose the blighter's trouble, which was internal, he put him a couple of questions about his wound. That's your business to find out, was the very amiable answer. After this snap he relapsed into silence. If I had been the doctor, I'd have been tempted to let him die. Came the news that a convoy was crossing. We have been hearing that at intervals for weeks, and each time it has raised hopes destined to be disappointed. But my turn has come at last. For ten days I have been allowed to roam the corridors, with short little spells of walking in the open. Now I am declared fit to be sent home. An orderly has already packed my belongings. They are even now preceding me to the Dieppe boat. I am to follow them in the morning. It is a glorious day, though the snow is thick on the ground, clogging the wheels of our slow-moving ambulance. E1 out first. That means me, among others. I am able to walk aboard alone. Following us is a long line of sitting cases and stretcher cases. These latter are put to bed straight away. We can roam on deck if we so choose. God, it's a great thing to be alive after all, and fill your lungs with salt sea air. Dover, we're across. Our landing is made quietly. Right up to the pier runs the train to take us to London. We're dog-tired. The excitement is too much after the monotony. We slouch in our seats and try to read the home news. Presently comes Captain Bland with his bunch of tickets. He takes our names and hands us a slip. King's College, all right for you? No more dangerous than the rest. He laughs. We're all in great humour. And then Charing Cross and its cheering crowds. Nurses come to collect us for our various hospitals. They put us in luxurious cars, lent by private owners. Our laps are laden with flowers, hurled at us through open windows. Presently my head begins to reel. A mist comes before my eyes, but my brain is fairly clear. You're all right, I tell myself. You're home. What more do you want? I slip back, semi-unconscious, among a pile of receding cushions, secure in this new sense of complete safety. End of Section 10 End of the daredevil of the army, Experiences as a Buzzer and Dispatch Rider by Austin Patrick Cacourin