The Golden Virgin

by Henry Williamson

  “Yes, Father.”

  He became aware of the moans and groans all around him in the courtyard, of the stretchers that were continually being brought in through the archway. He watched for awhile, trying to make himself not think of his own pain, but of those worse-off than himself. Heads in bandages like turbans of white and red cloth held in bloody hands. Slit-trouser’d legs big with white cotton and soaked through and through with crimson splotches. Boots and puttees and tunics all mud; had they come from the valley below Thiepval wood? They were Inniskillings. He listened to them talking to other lightly wounded men of the Ulster division, who had gone over before the Schwaben redoubt on the high ground above the valley. They had climbed out of their trenches before the guns lifted and got up close to Jerry’s front line. At Zero bugles had sounded the advance. They got into the German front line just in time to catch Jerry coming up from the dugouts, and having scuppered them, went on to the Hansa Line, where they sent back hundreds of prisoners. Carrying on, they reached the final objective, beyond all the shell holes and barbed wire, where the grass was tall and green, giving plenty of cover. They were so far in advance of the others that their own shells were dropping behind them. They had looked down into the valley and seen the steam of the train bringing up Jerry reserves into Grandcourt station.

  So ‘Spectre’ West had been right. He felt suddenly very cold, and cried silently. The tears loosened dust in the eye-sockets.

  *

  Working among the British orderlies was a German in a green tunic with a red-cross band on his sleeve. He went from stretcher to stretcher, bandaging quickly. There were occasional screams. He heard a cry of “O my God” made in a voice twisted with despair. He noticed a young, clean-shaven clay-yellow face beside him. The lips were quivering, the face began to contort. With an anguished cry of “Mother” the young soldier rolled off his stretcher. When he saw Phillip looking at him he said in an imploring, weak voice, “I think I’m going to die. Please ask them to send for my mother.”

  He elbowed himself off his side, meaning to give the frightened youth his right hand. Before he could do so, his left hand was seized, and he fell back. As the nails of the youth dug into the ulcerous burns, he had to press his lips and eyelids tight to stop himself from crying out. An orderly came, and opened the grip of the fingers; then looking at the staring eyes and open mouth, said to Phillip, “A stomach wound. I’ll get the M.O. to give an anti-tetanic serum injection.” He went away, but no doctor came. Flies settled upon the open mouth, drinking the bloody froth on the lips. Later, Father Aloysius came, and knelt by the stretcher, and prayed. Later still two bearers carried the stretcher to the cemetery.

  *

  When Phillip’s turn came for treatment he was carried into a room opposite to that hung with white sheets. It had electric light. After an anti-tetanic injection, his dressing, caked with blood and dust, was pulled off, the wounds examined: “Flavine,” said the doctor. While an orderly sprayed the wound the doctor looked down at his face.

  “Is the pain bad?”

  Phillip shook his head: he would hold out against himself.

  “You were in luck. Another inch higher, and the colon would have been perforated by that bullet. You’ve got shell splinters in your leg, too. Now we’ll put on a fresh dressing, and give you an air-ring for your backside. That will make you more comfortable. Let me look at your burns.” He sniffed them. “H’m, still oxidising. We’ll soak your hand in a solution of sodium bicarbonate, then put it on as a powder until the burns cease to fizz. Finally, a pack of the same stuff, and down you go to Field Ambulance.”

  The doctor gave him a cigarette, and said, “Now it will hurt a bit. I’ve got to dig out those bits of phosphorus.”

  He thought steadily of Joan of Arc burning at the stake: his pain was nothing to what others had to go through. When the doctor had finished bandaging he apologised for having taken up so much of his time. The doctor laughed, and said, “I suppose I could say the same thing to you. Anyway, you’ve got plenty of guts.”

  He was carried back into the courtyard. There, while his hand lay in soak, Father Aloysius brought him an enamel mug of tea. There were bloodstains on it, but he took it gratefully. The sweet taste of condensed milk brought instantly to mind an afternoon on Reynard’s Common in the early days of the Bloodhound patrol. The vision was so clear that afterwards he felt distress that he could not find himself back there. Another picture floated before him, of himself during a summer in the Backfield, cooking bacon and tomatoes over a fire in a deep crevice of the clay. He saw the grass-fringed sky above, and felt a blissful happiness that he was in his hiding place, away from all the world, as he ate his “biltong” and read a green-covered Gem Library.

  This contentment, like the period when the flowers and butterflies in the grass had suddenly seemed so beautiful, was brief. The nagging dullness of pain returned, with unhappy mind-pictures of his home. The orderly brought more tea, which he drank so eagerly that some of it ran down his neck and chest. The thought of his clumsiness worried him; and the further thought that he had messed himself added to his own disgrace. He began to think of his platoon, and cried silently.

  The injection made his head throb, throb, throb. The corrugated rays of the sun solidified into hot brass. Time was suspended; he floated; he slept, and saw with delightful clearness when he awoke; and was almost crying-dull when his turn came to leave. Never again, he thought, would he see the doctor or the priest or the orderly, whose care had taken away the burning pains. But life was like that. Nothing ever was the same again. Friends were lost by misunderstanding and death. Goodbye courtyard, goodbye you blokes. Thank you, Mother of Jesus, for helping my spirit.

  The stretcher was lifted and taken through the archway, and slidden into a Ford ambulance.

  The ambulance held only one other stretcher, the space opposite being occupied by four sitting cases. One of them was swathed in many bandages, crossing and recrossing his shoulder and chest. He sat in the care of a sergeant with a bullet through his jaw. The other two sitting men were lively, and talked a lot together at first. Seeing Phillip looking at the listless, swathed man, the sergeant explained with painful slowness, pointing to the mass of bandages.

  “Hickinglung, hir, ussenk igh gown,” he said. Then the two slightly wounded men explained together, what the sergeant with the bullet in his jaw had tried to say. “Hit in the lungs, sir, mustn’t lie down,” while the other said, “’E may drown in ’is own blood if ’e lies down, see?”

  The ambulance buzzed along the straight road under the poplars, climbing and running easy as the contours rose and fell. The Amiens road was empty of troops, as he could see by looking out of the back. But soon the fast pace slowed down; for they had come to the head of a new division marching up. There were halts. Helmeted faces peered in the back.

  “What’s it like up there, chums?”

  “Not so bad, mate,” replied the two lightly wounded cases with shrapnel-balls in calf of leg and arm—not good enough to be Blighty ones, they had agreed.

  The sun-burned faces looked cheerful. “Good luck, boys! Have a pint for us in Blighty!”

  The lung-case groaned wearily. The sergeant with the swelled iodine-brown jaw said something which was meant for encouragement. Phillip felt sorry for the fresh brown faces. Still, everyone was in it now.

  The ambulance left the long straight road and bumped and swayed over a dusty track to some hutments. Red crosses in white squares were painted on black felt roofs. Here it was easier than in the courtyard at Albert. Bandaged men talked cheerily to one another, smoking and laughing. Their spirits were already on the way home. He watched the sergeant with the smashed lower jaw helping the lung case, now spewing a froth of blood, to walk to a hut. They went inside; he saw them no more. The two lightly wounded men talked hilariously with some pals they had met. Then he recognised Captain Bason’s servant, and learned that he was there. He had been hit in the arm, not badly. The servant went away, to
return with Bason.

  “How goes it, old sport?”

  “Oh, not so bad, Skipper.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “In the thigh.”

  “Jasper Kingsman and Milman both copped it. So did Tommy Thompson, and ‘Brassy’ Cusack. And Paul.”

  “Killed? All of them?”

  “All gone west, so has the Brigadier, and his brigade-major. In fact, the whole brigade’s copped it.”

  There was nothing to say about that.

  “How far did you get before you were hit?”

  “About halfway across no-man’s-land.”

  “How did your chaps get on?”

  “It was so difficult to see, skipper, in the smoke. I think all of them must have been hit.”

  “Tommy Thompson got into their first trench, along a hundred yards of it, just north of the Bapaume road, and held on for about two hours. He was killed on the way back. You know, I reckon your pal ‘Spectre’ was right after all. But one man can’t fight a system, old sport.”

  “Who’s in command of the battalion now?”

  “Cox!” laughed Bason. “I expect what remains of the brigade will be withdrawn tonight. Anyway, write out a report as soon as you can, and send it to the C.O., for the battalion diary, will you? They’ll want to know what happened.”

  His wounds were inspected, a label tied to the second button-hole of his tunic with the letters G.S.W. back, left foot. Phosphorus burns hand and arm. Thus, after more tea, he was sent down to the Casualty Clearing Station at Heilly.

  *

  There he was carried into a hut for officers, with beds, into one of which he was put, on a rubber sheet, and covered with a blanket. Flowers in a jar on the table and wide open windows: how strange to think of the battle raging not many miles away, and here nobody seeming to care.

  More tea, with bread and butter and jam, brought round on a tray by a nurse, changed his mournful feeling. He began to feel happy; his left hand no longer throbbed. After tea, face and right hand washed; nurse bringing him the latest number of The Bystander; time began to flow almost sweetly, as he thought of going back to England—of the months of rest before him, with accumulations of pay at eight and six a day—for his promotion was to be ante-dated to June—and also his salary from the office.

  Voices were talking happily outside the windows. They were discussing the attack, seeming to regard it as a bit of sport. Had it been sport at the time for them? It was so easy to forget, in the relief of afterwards.

  A padre came up the hut, holding by the arm an officer who dragged his feet and clung to him, while darting dark eyes about in a sallow face, and talking wildly, as though he were still in the attack, and expecting enemies. He was put into a bed opposite, and constantly beat his hands on the blanket. He had a moustache, not clipped like most regimental officers wore, but long; and seemingly in imitation of the Kaiser’s. He was constantly smoothing out the ends, and pushing them upwards, with his fingers. Once Phillip caught his eye; immediately a hand went over the eyes, the cries broke out. Phillip had an idea that he was putting it on.

  Soon afterwards the padre was back again, holding the arm of a very young officer, who was weeping, and had to be restrained from beating his own head with his fists. He looked really shattered. He cried, “Don’t let me go back, I can’t go back! Why did it happen? I can’t bear any more!”

  The padre spoke to him, soothing him. The man with the darting eyes and rat-whisker moustaches was watching. Phillip saw his face contort before he sprang out of bed and rushed across the hut, screaming, “Shoot! Shoot! They’re coming! Where’s my rifle?” Whirling his arms, he smashed himself into the wall, punching with his fists. Then he sank down, moaning.

  “Don’t worry, old fellow, you’ll soon be better after some rest and sleep, probably in England. You’re quite safe here.”

  The officer stared and gave a mad laugh, then started to do P.T. exercises. The padre led him back to his bed. The officer held out his hands, with fingers spread, showing his broken knuckles.

  Later on an R.A.M.C. sergeant asked his name.

  “I don’t give information to Huns!”

  “This man is your friend,” said the padre. “He is in the R.A.M.C. He wants to know your name.”

  “I don’t talk to Huns! I claim the Berne Convention!”

  The sergeant moved to look at his identity disc. The officer clung to it.

  “Oh no, you don’t! I need give you only my name and regiment! I’ll give you no information about code names!”

  “Very well then, give me your name.”

  “I refuse!”

  “What does it say on your identity disc? Come on, sir, let me see.”

  “I put you under arrest!”

  “Very good, sir. Meanwhile the senior medical officer wants to know all the names here in this ward. Won’t you let me see your identity disc?”

  “What’s wrong with my name?”

  “I only want to write it down here. Come along, I’ve got other officers to see.”

  The man now appeared to be dazed. Phillip felt sure that he was pretending to be mad. As the sergeant looked at the disc a terrific flash-report shook the hut. Whimpering cries broke out from the very young officer; the man in the bed opposite gave a scream, threw off his blanket, and crawled under his bed, to curl up and lie still.

  “What is it, the twelve-inch railway gun?” Phillip asked the man next to him.

  “Fifteen-inch, I believe,” he replied, in a voice that appeared to be in shreds. Phillip wondered if he had been gassed, for his face was the colour of rotten eggs, which was also what phosgene tasted like if one smoked when it hung about.

  “Were you gassed?”

  “Hit in the stomach,” the voice said, with extreme weariness. Then he began to groan, and twist under his blanket.

  “You’ll be all right,” said Phillip. “Try and keep still, old chap. Sergeant! Please come!” for the officer had fallen out of bed. An R.A.M.C. lieutenant came to join the sergeant. They kneeled beside the man on the floor. He was so near that Phillip could see a small brown hole in his stomach beside the navel. “Bring him to the operating table,” said the doctor, getting up. The man, his eyes staring, was carried away to the end of the hut on a stretcher, to some screens. A nurse with flurried ginger hair ran past.

  More and more stretchers were being carried in. When the spaces between the beds were filled up they were placed at right angles to the beds, leaving only a narrow foot-way. An R.A.M.C. colonel appeared, with a major, who looked worried. “We can’t take any more,” the colonel said.

  “There’s a queue outside, two hundred yards long, and three Dressing Stations have telephoned urgently for ambulances,” replied the major.

  The R.A.M.C. lieutenant came down the hut from the screens with the nurse and said to the sergeant, “Get two orderlies to remove the case on the table to the mortuary line.”

  “What happened?” Phillip asked the ginger-haired nurse, later on.

  “Must you ask questions? Can’t you see we’re more than busy?”

  “I’m sorry, nurse.”

  “That’s all right. I didn’t mean to be sharp with you. Was he your friend? I’m afraid he died under the mask. Now before you ask me what the mask is, I’ll tell you that it holds the A-C-E mixture which is sprinkled on it before we put it on a patient’s face, to give him a whiff. Don’t look so alarmed, you’re not to be operated on! You’re far too well!”

  “Thank you for telling me, nurse.”

  “Now lie still, like a good boy, and don’t ask any more questions. We all realise what you have to put up with in the line, but you aren’t the only one carrying a burden, you know.”

  *

  That morning, of the first day of the battle of the Somme which was to continue during one hundred and forty-one days and a hundred and forty nights, the total of the British Forces in France was 1,489,215. Of this number, 1,206,704 were in the battle areas of Flanders, Artois, a
nd Picardy, and by the afternoon many were coming sick and wounded into the aid posts of battalion areas, thence to dressing stations of brigade, field ambulances of division, and casualty clearing stations of corps areas.

  When the battles of the year were over, 643,921 men had been admitted to hospital sick, together with 500,576 wounded, a total of 1,144,497: a number nearly equal to that of all the British combatant soldiers in the B.E.F. on July the First.

  Such was the metal of the British pastures, and slums.

  Many of the wounded returned, like Phillip, to fight again in due course; while the dead lay unburied, or in shallow graves upon or just behind the battlefield, the falling or resting places marked by rusting helmet, cross of ration-box wood, or bayoneted rifle stuck in the ground; while never for a moment during the night or the day, in rain, frost, snow, or sunshine, did the artillery cease to thunder, machine-gun and rifle bullets cease to shear the air, or bombs to burst with their sharp, gruff noises in dug-out and along broken trenches in ruinous fields, woods, and villages upon nearly two hundred thousand acres of upheaved subsoil that was the battlefield of the Somme.

  Meanwhile, on the late afternoon of the first day, with its 57,470 British casualties among the assault troops, Phillip was lying between rough brown blankets in the C.C.S. at Heilly.

  The ginger-haired nurse came back, looking more composed; her hair was brushed, she felt renewed desire to be of service as she carried round a tray of bread and jam and mugs of tea. Phillip found that he was both hungry and thirsty; the unchlorinated tea tasted wonderful. He began to enjoy the adventure of being wounded, with months of ease in the sunlit sweetness of England before him. He was one of the lucky ones, he told himself: he was alive. For the moment, pain was gone. He lay back happily; but pain returned, so throbbingly and twistingly heavy that he was given an injection of morphine sulphate. Some time hazily later his stretcher was slidden, with eight others, in the open body of a lorry, and driven to the station. The jolting made the stretchers jump, causing cries from those badly wounded, whose bone-fractures grated together; but he was able to hang on in silence against crying-out until they came to the siding beside a long hospital train.