1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [134]
The distress of the gas victims was pitiful to see. By the time the lucky ones reached the Casualty Clearing Stations many hours after they had been gassed most had passed into the second stage. Their throats still burned; they were still coughing and gasping, incapable of speech, their chests distended and seared with agonising pain. But the retching and vomiting had passed. The yellow froth that foamed so copiously from the mouth and nostrils in the first few hours gave way to a bright viscous mucus streaked with blood from haemorrhages in the trachea, or reddish-brown where blood vessels had burst and seeped into the tissues of the lung. Now the men were exhausted and weak from lack of oxygen for the lungs had become so engorged with fluid that they swelled to twice their normal size. In the worst cases the skin turned reddish violet, and if pneumonia or pleurisy set in, as it so often did, there was small hope of recovery. Little by little men drowned in their own secretions. It was a horrible death and, try as they would, there was little doctors could do to prevent it.
The doctors and medical orderlies in dressing stations and clearing stations, and in ambulance units run by civilians – the Quakers of the Friends Ambulance Unit, the faithful nuns in the convents – were all frantically over-worked, for men wounded in the fighting and by the incessant bombardments far outnumbered the gas casualties. Stretcher-bearers working under fire performed heroic feats but, even so, men who were wounded in the costly counter-attacks where no ground was gained (or where the troops were forced back) were all too often left to fall into the hands of the Germans if they were lucky, or simply to die if they were not. It was fortunate for Jim Keddie that he could fend for himself, but there were times on his long crawl back when he thought it was touch and go.
L/cpl. J. D. Keddie.
I kept going on and on in a perfect hail of bullets and shrapnel. At last I found an English gun battery. A doctor was there and he put me in a little shed on straw, took off my boot and cut off my sock and dressed the foot. He asked how far I had come and when I told him about three miles he said he did not know how I had got that length. He told me to sleep until he could find a stretcher. I must have slept for hours, but I was awakened by bursting shells, so I thought I’d better get out. But how? was the question. The battery fellows had gone, and now that my boot was off I had nothing to hold my foot together.
There was a farm about two hundred yards away. I saw people moving around so I thought if I could get that length I should be all right. I noticed an old shovel nearby so I hopped over and got hold of it, but it was more difficult than I thought, because my foot started to bleed again, and the blood was dripping through the bandages. The ground was so rough I couldn’t hop without falling – and then I found I had a marsh to get over, which I knew was impossible. So here was a fine fix! I could neither go back nor forward, and shells were bursting all around, so I lay down.
Then I saw two soldiers running towards me. They carried me up to the farm and laid me in the barn, gave me some army biscuits and cheese, and a bowl of milk. It was the best they had. I lay there for a while, when, all at once, a shell crashed through the building and killed one of the men billeted there, so they said they would have to try and get me out. There was a Dressing Station not far off, and they said they could take me over, but it was very dangerous owing to the shelling.* I said I would go. I was then carried on their shoulders, and laid on the floor beside a lot more and given an injection