Читать книгу The Times Great War Letters: Correspondence during the First World War - James Owen - Страница 50

LOSS OF KIT

6 May 1915

SIR,—I AM WRITING TO ask you to help all wounded and sick officers and men, by bringing to notice the loss to which they are put on returning from the front. Nearly every wounded officer I met while on the journey to England made the complaint that they had lost all their personal belongings, haversack field glasses, revolver, belt, &c. The loss to which I refer takes place in the “field ambulances” and in the “clearing hospitals,” not in the field. I give you my own experience. I reached the “field ambulance” one afternoon with all my belongings strapped on my person; they were taken off me and laid at my side on the straw; that evening, when I was removed on a stretcher, I asked that these things might be placed under my head on the stretcher, but was told that it was against the order. I refused to be moved until the medical officer in charge of the “field ambulance” allowed me to have my things; permission was then given and my things reached the “clearing hospital” with me. I lay on the floor of a room that night with my equipment beside me. The following morning, on being removed on a stretcher to the train, I asked to take the equipment with me, but was again informed that I could not have it, and that it would be sent after me. As most wounded officers of my regiment have written afterwards to say they have lost all their belongings in hospitals on the way to the base, I would not agree to this, and had an extremely heated argument with the R.A.M.C. captain on the subject; he eventually let me have the things. As I had all the cash I possessed in my haversack, I naturally wished to keep it with me. In the train all the wounded near me were complaining that they had lost everything. The officer next me in the ambulance train, in France, said he had been wounded at Ypres in November and had lost literally everything he had; he was again wounded last month after having been at the front only a week, and lost all his things for the second time. With his previous experience he tried to keep his things, and insist on taking them with him, but was not allowed to; he said he was so weak from the loss of blood that he could not argue the point. Field glasses, revolvers, &c., cost a certain amount to replace, and it is a scandal that we should be put to the unnecessary expense of buying them again.

No doubt, an order has been issued that nothing heavy is to be carried on the stretcher, but the above-mentioned articles are a part of one’s personal equipment, and as they must in all cases have been carried on the stretcher (sometimes for long distances) in the field before they reach the field ambulance at all, it is absurd that this procedure cannot be continued on leaving the hospital, where the stretcher is usually only carried a few paces.

I am informed that in the town where the “clearing hospital” is to which I was taken there is a shop where second-hand field glasses can be bought, supposed to be the property of wounded officers! In view of the appeal made by Lady Roberts for field glasses to be lent to the troops, it is an abuse that they should be purloined in this fashion. I do not presume to say who disposes of these things to the shop, I do not entirely blame the orderlies, the chief fault lies in the order which prevents the personal equipment being carried on the stretcher. Perhaps if this state of affairs is brought to the notice of the public something may be done to rectify it.

This is my personal experience as an officer; the men may also have money or other effects that they are loth to part with; they are exposed to the same treatment.

The “field ambulance” is not a vehicle, as might be supposed, but a place, usually a house, that is being used as a temporary hospital.

AN OFFICER

LOST KIT

28 May 1915

SIR,—MORE THAN ONCE you have drawn attention to the robberies committed on wounded officers by the orderlies who have dealt with the wounded. Usually these cases are connected with the transit of the wounded from the field of action. There has come to my knowledge the case of an officer in a Highland regiment, severely wounded at Ypres, and who arrived lately at Charing Cross, and now lies in a London hospital. Through all his journey he managed to retain his revolver and a flask given him by a relative. It was a stretcher case, and the officer became slightly unconscious on reaching Charing Cross. In that interval he found he had been robbed at the station of these two articles of his equipment which he had managed to retain till close to the hospital, where he will have to lie for many months. The fact that the orderlies commit these robberies again and again, and that the shops of certain towns in France are full of “secondhand” glasses and other effects taken from officers, is a matter of common notoriety. Is there no possibility of some discipline being exercised in this matter, or if it is part of a system to permit this form of perquisite, that the War Office should amply, and above all rapidly, compensate the officer, who is probably not so rich as not to feel the loss in a pecuniary as well as a personal manner?

Yours faithfully,

FRANCES BALFOUR

5 June 1915

SIR,—IN THE TIMES OF May 28 you published a letter signed by Lady Frances Balfour, charging the orderlies who were responsible for removing “an officer” in a “Highland Regiment, severely wounded at Ypres, and who arrived lately at Charing-cross and now lies in a London hospital,” with having stolen his revolver and flask. The charge is a disgraceful one, wantonly made. It is untrue. The officer in question, Second Lieutenant C. Warr, of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (T.F.), was removed from Charing-cross on Monday, May 17, by the ambulance column attached to the London district to St. Thomas’s Hospital. The revolver and flask referred to were, in accordance with practice, handed to the orderlies in charge of the luggage van, and a voucher therefor was properly made out in the delivery book. The revolver and flask were delivered at St. Thomas’s Hospital within a few hours and the receipt therefor duly signed by the hospital authorities. The revolver and flask were then placed with Second Lieutenant Warr’s Burberry coat, all tied, together, in the hospital kit room, duly labelled. They were quite safe there as late as June 3. The wicked accusation so lightly made and so unfounded has caused the greatest pain to those concerned. I desire to add that this organization is a voluntary one, recognized by the War Office, and has removed upwards of 22,000 cases from the stations to the hospitals.

Yours faithfully,

L. W. DENT, in Charge of the Ambulance Column attached to the London District

14 July 1915

SIR,—ON MAY 28 LAST you published a letter of mine referring to the losses sustained by wounded officers on removal from the field of action, and giving details of an instance where a similar loss had, apparently, been sustained by an officer between Charing Cross and the hospital in London to which he was being removed. The removal of the wounded is, I understand, entrusted to the Ambulance Column attached to the London District, a voluntary association. Colonel Giles, the Commandant of the Corps, at once gave me every facility to investigate the case, with the result, I am glad to say, that it has been conclusively established that the officer in question had not sustained any loss and that his kit had been safely delivered at the hospital shortly after he arrived there, and has ever since remained there. I am told that the Ambulance Column for the London District is composed of gentlemen of position and standing, who since the war have voluntarily given their services to the care of our wounded, and I regret very much the pain that my accusation must have caused, and as in all fairness your readers should know that the charge made against the Corps was mistaken, and that there was no foundation for any imputation upon it, I hope that you will see your way to allow this letter of withdrawal and apology the same publicity in your paper as you were good enough to accord to my original letter.

Yours faithfully,

FRANCES BALFOUR

WHAT GAS MEANS

A VISIT TO A FRENCH HOSPITAL

7 May 1915

We have received from a correspondent, whose authority is beyond question, the following grim account of a visit to the victims of “gassing.”

Our correspondent complains that the whole truth about this diabolical form of torture is not sufficiently realized by the world. The publication of his letter should remove any doubts on the subject.

Yesterday and the day before I went with — to see some of the men in hospital at — who were “gassed” yesterday and the day before on Hill 60. The whole of England and the civilized world ought to have the truth fully brought before them in vivid detail, and not wrapped up as at present.

When we got to the hospital we had no difficulty in finding out in which ward the men were, as the noise of the poor devils trying to get breath was sufficient to direct us. We were met by a doctor belonging to our division, who took us into the ward. There were about 20 of the worst cases in the ward, on mattresses, all more or less in a sitting position, propped up against the walls.

Their faces, arms, hands were of a shiny grey-black colour, with mouths open and lead-glazed eyes, all swaying slightly backwards and forwards trying to get breath. It was a most appalling sight, all these poor black faces, struggling, struggling for life, what with the groaning and noise of the effort for breath. Colonel — who, as every one knows, has had as wide an experience as anyone all over the savage parts of Africa, told me to-day that he never felt so sick as he did after the scene in these cases.

There is practically nothing to be done for them, except to give them salt and water to try to make them sick.

The effect the gas has is to fill the lungs with a watery, frothy matter, which gradually increases and rises till it fills up the whole lungs and comes up to the mouth; then they die; it is suffocation; slow drowning, taking in some cases one or two days.

We have lost hundreds of men who died in the trenches, and over half the men who reached hospital have died. Eight died last night out of the 20 I saw, and most of the others I saw will die; while those who get over the gas invariably develop acute pneumonia. It is without doubt the most awful form of scientific torture. Not one of the men I saw in hospital had a scratch or wound.

The nurses and doctors were all working their utmost against this terror; but one could see from the tension of their nerves that it was like fighting a hidden danger which was over-taking every one.

A German prisoner was caught with a respirator in his pocket; the pad was analysed and found to contain hypo-sulphite of soda with 1 per cent. of some other substance.

The gas is in a cylinder, from which when they send it out it is propelled a distance of 100 yards; it there spreads.

Please make a point of publishing this in every paper in England. English people, men and women, ought to know exactly what is going on, also members of both Houses. The people of England can’t know. The Germans have given out that it is a rapid, painless death. The liars! No torture could be worse than to give them a dose of their own gas. The gas, I am told, is chlorine, and probably some other gas in the shells they burst. They think ammonia kills it.

The Germans had used banned chlorine gas for the first time on April 22 (against French and Canadian troops). The Allies soon followed suit.