R. J. Manion

“ On a drizzling, rainy day when our Battalion occupied the front lines on part of the Vimy Ridge, I was standing in front of a so-called dugout, which consisted of a room about twelve feet by twelve, in which, through lack of space, two Medical Officers and their four Assistants and two batmen, ate, slept, and attended the wounded and sick. We were sheltered from shells by a tin roof, on which someone had piled two layers of sandbags.
The trenches were of sand with no revetments of any kind, so that the rain, which had been pouring for days, washed the earth down and formed mud to the knees. ”

“ It is here that the battalion stretcher bearers do their finest and most self-sacrificing work. They go over the top with the fighting troops, and as the men are hit it is their duty to give them first aid, while the fight still goes on, with machine-gun bullets whistling by their ears and shells bursting all about them. Their duty it is, and nobly they perform it, to dress the wounded, stop bleeding if possible, and temporarily set fractures. ”

“ For when a man dies in a charge, or even when he is mortally hit by a sniper's bullet or by a shell, he is either killed instantly, or he is brought back on a stretcher with hopes of recovery. But when an aviator is ten thousand feet in the air, carrying on a duel with a foe, it is often only his machine that is disabled, and while it noses down the long ten thousand feet, though it is only a matter of moments, he has time to realize that death is about to conquer him, and not in a pleasant manner. ”

“ Your leave comes one day after many months beyond the three required of you. You start to a railhead where you put up for a night at an Officers' Club and mingle with the other happy beings who are leaving for the same purpose on the nine-mile-per-hour French train in the morning. As you sit about after a dinner that makes your ration meals for the past six months look literally like "thirty cents," you light a cigarette, cock up your heels, and look at the world through a beaming face, made ruddy by an extra portion of the grape juice of France, and wearing a smile that won't come off. ”

“ On one side in a field stands a battalion forming three sides of a square. The fourth side is filled by the regimental band playing, "Lead, Kindly Light," the padre standing beside them. It is an open air church service. As far as the eye can see are military huts, tents, drilling soldiers, and piles of ammunition, but in the distance, overtopping all, is the spire of a church, dumbly supplicating us to send our thoughts upward to the Prince of Peace, as everything on earth seems to tell us to give our minds to the Gods of War. ”

“ He would find them in somber, semi-invisible garb, standing shoulder to shoulder with their one-time hated enemies, the latter clad in plain khaki, both facing the same foe, the Prussian, whom he had once humbled by marching into Berlin, but who had later helped the British defeat him at Waterloo. And many he would see groveling in the earth in trenches, dugouts, and tunnels, like so many earthworms. Some few he would discover who, with the French love of the spectacular, are sailing thousands of feet in the air, or leagues under the surface of the sea. ”

“ Beyond the cemetery a road twisted here and there, and along it hurried from time to time motor ambulances, with the large, red cross on their sides; motor lorries, full of food and munitions; limbers, painted in vari-colored patterns, and looking like a calithumpian procession, to make them inconspicuous against the earth to the German aviators; large guns drawn by strings of horses; pack mules with their burdens of shells; and motor cyclists hurrying forward or rearward with messages. ”

“ Or you may be walking quietly through apparently safe trenches, maybe dreaming of your loved ones at home, when a bullet thuds into the trench wall a few feet from your head, insolently spattering mud into your face. Then you know you are alive only by the grace of God and the poor aim of the German. ”

“ Our feet slip on the semi-frozen mud of the mats, over our heads in both directions shells sing at intervals, and we hear the pounding of the guns and bursting shells before and behind us. In the quieter moments we can hear a quarter of a mile away the rattle of transport wagons on the hard road as they bring their nightly loads of ammunition and food to the dump where we are going and where we expect to find our horses. ”

“ A witty Tommy once said that all you can get from an officer of the medical department is a pill number nine—made up mostly of calomel—"an' if 'e hain't got a pill nine 'e'll give ye a four an' a five."
No doubt the man who "swings the lead" is to be sympathized with at times. Often he is given work to do almost beyond human endurance, his dugout may be a mudhole, his clothes soaking from a downpour of rain, his rations short, and, finally, perhaps the rum ration, the one cheery thing on a dark day, is missing. ”

“ When airmen fly over their opponent's lines, they are first met by shells from anti-aircraft guns and bullets from machine-guns, and between the two they are often forced to return to their own side of the lines. It is a beautiful picture, on a clear day, to see these machines, swerving this way and that, diving, ascending, out of the path of this rain of shot and shell that greets them, though it rarely brings them down. The swaying machine, cutting its way through the hundreds of white and black puffy balls, caused by the bursting shells, is a sight for gods and men ”

“ They have not, as their men have, the variety of change, the interest of novelty, or the excitement of battle to sustain them and occupy their minds. Their duty is to wait, wait, wait—praying and hoping that a good and merciful God will spare their loved ones. Oh, you wives, and mothers, and sweethearts, who wait, the world owes to you much more of honor and thanks than it owes to the men at the front! ”

“ While it is all in progress one is likely to stumble over the Colonel who has stolen half an hour from his busy work to sit on the ground and eat some bully beef, biscuits and chocolate, and who insists on everyone else doing the same; or to bump into the corpulent form of the R.S.M.—regimental sergeant major—who is everywhere, directing everything, in the way that only a R.S.M. can do, though his crossest word is usually grumbled through a smiling ruddy face, for his heart is proportionate to his large size. ”

“ The airmen of our brave French, Belgian, Italian, or Russian allies require no praise from my feeble pen; and those of us who have been out there have seen too many incidents of the courage of our enemies to belittle them, and we have no desire to do so. They have often been barbarous in their uncalled-for cruelties and outrageous in their acts, but they have been sometimes brave, careless of death, and chivalrous.
On one occasion I saw a German airman fly so low over our lines from the front to the rear that we could see him leaning out over the side and looking down at us in the trenches. ”

“ Beyond them in the dim distance hangs the lazy, sausage-shaped form of an observation balloon. Above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth, one sees war, war, war!
Here and there one passes white limestone farmhouses of France with red tiled roofs, the buildings forming a square about the court. The latter is filled to overflowing with its ever-present pile of manure, at one side of which always stands the well, raised, it is true, a little above the manure dump, but built of brick and mortar through which in many cases permeate the fluids from this cesspool in the center. ”

“ 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 and dugouts cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to be comfortable or pleasant. ”

“ I leaned against the ruins of this old stone building, and watched the shells exploding for some minutes.
Gas attacks have a most depressing and demoralizing effect on everyone. I have never made a trip with as little pleasure as that I felt at the thought of this one before me. A medical officer can, but very rarely does, refuse to go to cases. He may insist on having them brought to him, as there is only one medical officer to a battalion, and his death may make it awkward for his unit till he is replaced by another surgeon from the nearest field ambulance. ”

“ So all you must do is to possess your soul in patience, avoid getting directly in front of a shell or bullet, and some day in the dim and distant future leave will come for you to expose yourself once again to the temptations of the World, the Flesh and the Devil in London ”

“ It was not at all difficult to get staffs for these hospitals, for thousands of young Americans with red blood in their veins and the love of romance in their hearts were only awaiting the opportunity to do something useful anywhere between Paris and the firing line. Between the people of the United States and the French there has always been a deep sympathy, possibly engendered up to half a century ago by their common antipathy to England, a sentiment forever removed by mutual sufferings and common interests and ideals in this war. ”

“ 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 desire in a time of war, and they satisfied all, from the veriest batman to the highest military officer whose duty it is to maintain discipline. ”

“ The French realized full well the sacrifices that were made daily by these aristocrats who had given up their luxurious homes, their autos, their servants and their money, to live in the servants' quarters of this old château, and to wait hand and foot upon wounded poilus, with at any moment of the day or night the chance of a shell coming through the roof and stirring things up. No praise is too high for the self-sacrificing work of these men and women, all voluntary workers and untrained in this type of labor. ”

“ Gradually our eyes become accustomed to the dark, and instinctively our feet keep on the trench mats as we twist and turn along the trenches. An occasional flare or star shell from the front lines aids us for a moment, but plunges us into deeper darkness afterwards. ”

“ Had he succeeded in downing his enemy, luck would have been on his side, for success in fighting in the air, as in ordinary life, often depends on chance.
Besides the courage displayed by the youthful members of the air service, they and their German enemy-rivals usually display toward each other a chivalry perhaps not equalled in any other branch of the army. It is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that the men who go into the air service, outside of their courage, are naturally lovers of the picturesque and spectacular. ”