Injury, death and remembering
Soldiers remember those who survived and the others they lost.
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I saw a fellow get a lovely wound in the head with a bit of shrapnel. He was so pleased, he made me laugh.
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A man who could smile and laugh in the face of adversity and in the presence of death was a man of incalculable worth. The morale of the army was kept up by those men who smiled.
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When I go back there I feel I'm on consecrated ground. That ground has been trod by all those lovely lads who never came back. I think of that poem:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.
I think it's marvellous. Because that's just how it is. You imagine them as they were then - not as they would be now - young, and in their prime, and never grown old.
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On the night of the ninth, at midnight, the wounded poured in. It was simply ghastly. Most of them were head cases (our hospital is a special hospital for head cases). They were all operated on and the MOs never stopped day or night for four or five days. It is terrible to see them wounded in the head - numbers of them became paralysed and quite a number were minus arms or legs or eyes. For the first few days they were quite silly - lost their reason and some speechless. Oh it was ghastly and very busy - we just went on and on doing dressings with no hope of finishing.
The doctors and padres were awfully good in the wards - taking the men drink and so forth. I don't know what we would have done sometimes without them. Crowds died of course and 80 were down on the dangerously ill list. We worked hard in the daytime and oh the nights they were terrible. Matron put ten of us out to sleep in two large marquees. We didn't like it of course but we had to pick up our camp beds and get into them like lambs.
