On the way back I came across two very singular cases. One was that of a man who had had his arm amputated only a fortnight previously, and he was not used to it. He used to turn round and say, “I keep putting up my hand to scratch the back of it--and the hand isn’t there!”
I saw another poor fellow--quite a youngster--who was being carried on a stretcher to the train. Both his legs had been blown off by a shell. I was right alongside when he said, “For Heaven’s sake cover up my feet--they’re cold!” He lived for about half an hour after that, but never reached the train.
There is one thing I would like to say in finishing, and that is to thank our own flesh and blood for what they have done for us. I’m sure there never can have been a war in which so much has been done in the way of sending presents like cigarettes and tobacco; but I think that too much has been sent at one time, and that friends would do well to keep some of the good gifts back a bit. They will all be wanted later on.
[In this story we become acquainted with a brilliant bit of work done by our brave little Gurkhas, fresh from India, and we learn of a splendid achievement under a deadly fire--the sort of act for which many of the Victoria Crosses awarded recently have been given. The teller of this story was, at the time of writing, home from the front. He is Private W. H. Cooperwaite, 2nd Battalion Durham Light Infantry, a fine type of the Northerners who have done so much and suffered so heavily in the war.]
I was wounded at Ypres--badly bruised in the back by a piece of a “Jack Johnson.” There is nothing strange in that, and people have got used to hearing of these German shells; but the main thing about this particular customer was that it was the only one that burst out of eighteen “Jack Johnsons” I counted at one time. If the other seventeen had blown up, I and a lot more of the Durhams would not have been left alive. That same shell killed two of my comrades.
We went into action very soon after leaving England. We had had plenty of tough marching, and on the way we grew accustomed to the terrible evidences of the Germans’ outrages.
In one place, going towards Coulommiers, we came across tracks of the German hosts. They had ravaged and destroyed wherever they had passed, and amongst other sights our battalion saw were the bodies of two young girls who had been murdered. The men didn’t say much when they set eyes on that, but they marched a good deal quicker, and so far from feeling any fear about meeting the Germans, the sole wish was to get at them.