"Did you mugs ever hear de story of de two specials wot met in Lon'on de oder day? Naw? Well, I'll tell yez. Two special constables met, an' one o' dem had no hat, coat all torn to rags, bot' eyes black, an' some hair gone. 'Hello, Brown,' says de oder, 'wot-a-hell's wrong wid yez?' An' de first answers: 'Ye know dat purty little Missus Smit wot lives behind de Lion an' Dragon whose husban's gone to de front? Well, he ain't gone!'"
Even the wounded man joined the laugh. They all finished their smoke without even glancing in the direction of the shells bursting nearby, when the stretcher was picked up and carried safely to the rear. His officers all say that they would as quickly trust Tom in a ticklish job as any other man in the world. But he is just an example of the thousands of loyal, life-risking stretcher bearers--some, like Tom, rough, uneducated, uncouth; many others with the culture acquired in college halls and drawing rooms--who are daily and nightly giving of their blood and their service to the men in the lines.
These bearers wear a red cross on the arm, are non-combatant troops and carry no rifles. Each two of them carry a stretcher, and all of them carry a little haversack slung over the shoulder and filled with large and small surgical dressings, bandages, scissors, splints, and perhaps a bottle of iodine. Being non-combatant troops they are supposed to be allowed to carry out their work in comparative safety, but they really run the same risks as the combatants. This is to be expected in severe actions, for a machine-gunner or artilleryman cannot even try to avoid the stretcher bearers when they are mixed up, as they always are, with the fighting troops.
But, at any rate, the Germans get the reputation of caring as little for red crosses or white flags as they do for scraps of paper. One afternoon I stood in a trench one-quarter mile from Willerval which was held by our troops, and in the ruins of which there was an advanced dressing station of a field ambulance. For some reason two ambulances came over the crest of Vimy Ridge in broad daylight, in plain view of the Germans, and ran rapidly down into Willerval. They arrived without mishap, but one-half hour later I saw them start back over the ridge a few minutes apart. The first one had got one-half way up the steep side of the ridge when a heavy German shell lit thirty feet behind it. And then shell after shell dropped behind it all the way up the steep slope. Fortunately the gunner's aim was short, for the car disappeared from view over the crest. Then the second car made the trip, the German shells falling behind it just as they had with the first one. They both got out in safety, but no thanks were due to the Huns who had done their best to get them with heavy shells. That was one instance in which I saw the Germans shell two ambulances which could not have been mistaken for any other type of vehicle.