August 28, 1915.) 
LAND AND WATER 
TO THE DRESSING STATION. 
By An Officer. 
A DRY ditch bordered the orchards where such 
desperate fighting had talven place on the 
previous day. Lurking in this ditch I 
found two stretcher-bearers apparently none 
too keen to enter the fray. On the other side 
of it ran the by-road which led direct to the dressing- 
station. I was now very tired, and it seemed suitable 
that the two men should do their bit of work. Between 
the three of us we applied a couple of field dressings. 
One could not have presented a very elegant appear- 
ance on this occasion — soaked to the skin with the 
brackish water of these French ditches, clothes caked 
with mud and stained yellow by the lyddite which 
permeated water and ground alike, breeches ripped up 
one side and putties torn to shreds. Part of my equip- 
ment I had discarded at various points ; the remainder 
was unrecognisable under layers of mud. And it seemed 
extraordinary that, although chilled to the skin after 
struggling through streams and ditches, chin-deep in 
poisonous water, and although it was to be three days 
before one could obtain a change of clothing, still I 
suffered no after-effects. 
So presently my ten stone ten was hoisted up by the 
two stretcher-bearers and borne along the shell-stricken 
road. All this section to the dressing-station— about a 
quarter of a mile — had been the scene of heavy fighting 
the day before. It was a picture such as many a battle 
painter would have envied, and in its stark reality 
appeared strange and awe-inspiring. Ammunition 
wagons, rushing up the road, had been caught by 
artillery fire and overturned or smashed. There they 
lay, half on the road, half ofT it. Dead horses blocked 
the ditch alongside, their legs protruding stifHy erect, 
their bodies half buried in mud and water, and all 
around a great litter of tackle and equipment. 
The road itself was pitted and furrowed, and upon 
its surface were little drops and trails of blood where 
the wounded had been carried past. The milestones 
along this via dolorosa were the bodies of men who had 
fallen and died — some in the middle of the fairway and 
others just beside it, resting on the grass. In the fields 
and the orchards on either hand the attack had swayed 
to and fro, and these, too, were littered with relics. No 
attempt had been made to clear them away, for bullets 
still whistled past and shells screamed, though harm- 
lessly, overhead. 
I obser\-ed these things as I was borne along on the 
stretcher, the bearers of which laid it down in the road 
now and again to change hands or to rest. A constant 
procession of wounded passed by. Here and there 
detachments of troops or Red Cross men were awaiting 
orders by the roadside. 
We came presently to the dressing-station— a 
ruined farm, whose bright red waHs stood out stark and 
roofless. Here was a busy scene indeed. The place 
swarmed with activity, the air was alive with the purr- 
ing sound of motors. Apart from the stream of 
wounded on foot and on stretchers constantly coming 
in, doctors and Red Cross orderlies rushed to and fro, 
and in the open space where the by-road joined the 
main highway there stood groups of Staff officers, 
medical officers, motor-cyclist orderlies, and messengers. 
Two motor ambulances were ready to start o(T imme- 
diately, and in one of these my stretcher was placed. 
It did not wait long. Three other stretchers were 
lifted in, one resting on the top tier beside my own, the 
other two beneath us. The occupants of the ambulance 
are a sergeant, who moans restlessly, and a bucolic, 
bloodthirsty fellow, who loudly proclaims that he has 
been hit three times and has " done in " as many 
Germans. A lightly wounded comrade has accompanied 
him down to the ambulance and now wishes him a safe 
journey home and a good holiday. Xor does this precious 
rascal cease to chatter volubly (to hiniself) as we rattle 
15 
along, voicing his own peculiar opinion about the 
progress of the battle ; and when the suffering sergeant 
presently tells him to " shut his row," the only retort 
is a volley of amiable blasphemy. 
It is a ridiculous situation. 
The fourth member of the party is a youthful 
subaltern, who lies beside me, very still and quiet. His 
face is white as marble, his eyes are wide open ; he 
seems to be half conscious. Occasionally he moves his 
lips, and once clasps the roof-joist with his pallid hand, 
which presently falls limp across my chest. He does 
not move again, and when they hft him out he is 
dead. 
The flap of the ambulance is left open, so that I am 
able to observe many things that happen on the rapidly 
receding road to the field hospital. There is great 
activity — Red Cross motors and big grey Staff cars rush- 
ing past, orderlies on bicycles and on horseback. Staff 
officers cantering along, and numerous parties of soldiers 
on one mission or another. All the ruins of farmhouses 
by the roadside are occupied by troops. 
We have not travelled far before we pass batches 
of German prisoners between armed guards, trudging 
stolidly along in file, their grey uniforms, little round 
caps, and unkempt faces suggesting a party of convicts. 
Weedy and uneven they are for the most part, and of 
no account compared with the fine men of the Prussian 
Guard whom I had met the day before. 
Now we rattle through the streets of the little French 
town whence a couple of days ago the battalion had 
marched out at full strength. Then, leaving behind the 
noise of the market-place, we pass under an arch into a 
quiet courtyard. I ask the name of the place. It is a 
school for young priests. I glance once more at the 
composed face of him for whom there is to be no journey 
home, and am carried across the courtyard to a surgical 
room. Here a new dressing is applied, and at the same 
time one is inoculated against tetanus. My label for 
England is affixed, and I am taken to another room, a 
large, cool place, where two figures are already lying. 
One is a Scotch colonel, wounded in two places by 
shrapnel ; the other, the same young doctor whom I had 
found lying in the open that morning, having been shot 
while attending some of my own wounded. 
An amiable attendant in a white suit immediately 
brings a cup of hot soup, relieves me of my haversack 
and equipment, together with a good deal of mud, and 
produces a very welcome cigarette. Presently one of 
the priests appears — a grave man with an austere, sallow 
face, dressed in a rusty black cassock — and inquires of 
each whether he belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. 
Obtaining little satisfaction from anybody, he shuffles 
out, and we are left alone on our stretchers with our 
pains and our thoughts. 
The curious silence of the place after the unspealc- 
able din and confusion of the struggle round the mill 
was one of the strangest reactions imaginable. Not a 
sound but the occasional echo of a footstep down the 
cool stone passages came to disturb our rest for many 
hours. Only the poor doctor moaned quietly to himself 
in his darkened corner. 
Once an aeroplane sailed across the space of blue 
sky which could be seen through the open window, and 
its droning hum drifted in on the still air. Outside, I 
remember, there was a glimpse of a plane tree and a 
flower garden, and a red brick wall, upon which, as 
afternoon passed into evening, the setting sun cast its 
lengthening shadows. One thought — by way of con- 
trast — of the years and years of sunlit peace which must 
have lingered in this quiet place and of all the unso- 
phisticated, retiring men who had learnt their lifelong 
lessons there. 
Presently it was quite dark, and we were carried out 
one by one to the motor-ambulance, which travelled 
swiftly to the clearing hospital nine miles away. 
