And the fat man, leaning on his counter, and likewise examining the soldier, cried, "Ol" Bert it is!"
"Knew you in two ticks," grunted Bert. "Same ol" "Arry." (This was the derelict.) "Same ol" "Erb." (This was the fat--and once again jolly--man.)
Explanations ensued. Bert, the young soldier, was a native of these parts. He had emigrated to Canada five years previously. To-night, _en route_ for the front, he had returned. Earlier in the evening there had been ill-advised libations; he had started for his home, felt sleepy, sheltered from the wet in a tunnel quite familiar to him, and there been discovered by the ladies and roused by myself. Arrived at the coffee-stall he had recognised in its proprietor a former pal and another former pal in "Arry the derelict. To throw the spoon at "Arry was merely his playful mode of announcing his ident.i.ty.
I left the trio reviewing the past and exchanging news of the present.
My services, it was clear, would no longer be required by the prodigal.
He and his mates gave me a hearty good-night.
I did not guess how intimate was soon to be my a.s.sociation with the Berts and "Arries and "Erbs of the world. I was to be their servant, to wait upon them, to perform menial tasks for them, to wash them and dress them and undress them, to carry them in my arms. I was to see them suffer and to learn to respect their gameness, and the wry, "grousing"
humour which is their almost universal trait. In my own wards, and elsewhere in the hospital, I came in close contact with many c.o.c.kneys of the slums. Even when one had not precisely "placed" a patient of this description, the relatives who came to him on visiting days gave the clue to the stock from which he sprang. The mother was sometimes a "flower girl"; the sweetheart, with a very feathered hat, and hair which evidently lived in curling pins except on great occasions, probably worked in a factory. These people, if the patient were confined to bed, sat beside him and talked in a subdued, throaty whisper. But I have seen the same sort of patient, well enough to walk about, meet his folks on visiting afternoons at the hospital gate. There is a crowd at the hospital gate, pa.s.sing in and going out; hosts of patients are waiting, some in wheeled chairs and some seated on the iron fence which fringes the drive. The reunions which occur at that gate are exceedingly public.
Our East Ender is perhaps accustomed to publicity; his slum does not conceal its feelings--it quarrels, and makes love, without drawn blinds, and privacy is not an essential of its ardours. Be that as it may, these meetings at the hospital gate, which are not lacking in pathos, have sometimes manifested a tear-compelling comicality when the actors in the drama belonged to the cla.s.s which produced Bert.
In a higher cla.s.s there is restraint and a rather stupid bashfulness. I have seen a wounded youngster flush apprehensively and only peck his mother in return for her sobbing embrace. That is not Bert"s way. He knows--he is not a fool--that his mother looks a trifle absurd as, with bonnet awry, she surges perspiringly past the sentries, the tails of her skirt dragging in the dust and her feet flattened with the weight of over-clad, unwholesome obesity they have to bear. But he hobbles sprily to meet her, and his salute is no mere peck, but a smacking kiss, so noisy that it makes everyone laugh. He laughs too--perhaps he did it on purpose to raise a laugh: that is his quaint method; but the fact remains that, whatever his motive, he has managed to please his mother.
She is sniffing loudly yet laughing also, and one could want no better picture of human affection than this of Bermondsey Bert and his shapeless, work-distorted, maybe bibulous-looking mother, exchanging that resounding and ungraceful kiss at the hospital gate. I have heard Bert shout "Mother!" from a hundred yards off, when he spied her coming through the gate. No false shame there! No smug "good form" in that--nor in the time-honoured jest which follows: "And "ave you remembered to bring me a bottle of beer, mother?" (Of course visitors are not allowed to introduce alcohol into the hospital--otherwise I am afraid there is no doubt that mother would have obliged.)
In one of our wards we harboured, for a while, a costermonger. This coster, an entertaining and plucky creature who had to have a leg amputated, received no callers on visiting day: his own relatives were dead and he and his wife had separated. "Couldn"t "it it orf," he explained, and with laudable impartiality added, "Married beneath "er, she did, w"en she married me." As the lady was herself a coster, it was plain that here, as in other grades of society, there are degrees, conventions and barriers which may not be lightly overstepped. "Sister,"
however, thought that the patient should inform his wife that he had lost his leg, and prevailed on him to send her a letter to that effect.
A few days later he was asked,
"Well, did you write and tell your wife you had lost a leg?"
"Yus."
"I suppose she"s answered? What has she said?"
"Said "m a liar!"
Her retort had neither disconcerted nor offended him. He was a philosopher--and, like so many of his kind, a laughing philosopher. When he was sufficiently recovered from his operation to get about on crutches he was the wag of the ward. He took a special delight in those practical jokes which are invented by patients to tease the nurses, and devoted the most painstaking ingenuity to their preparation. It was he who found a small hole in the lath-and-plaster wall which separates the ward from the ward"s kitchen. Through this hole a length of cotton was pa.s.sed and tied to the handle of a mug on the kitchen shelf. At this period, owing to the Zeppelin raids, only the barest minimum of light was allowed, and the night nurse, when she entered the kitchen, went into almost complete darkness. No sooner was she in the kitchen and fumbling for what she required than a faint noise--that of the cup being twitched by the cotton leading to the mischievous coster"s bed--arose on the shelf and convinced her that she was in the presence of a mouse. She retreated, and perhaps if any convalescent patient had been awake she would have enlisted his aid to expel the mouse; but in the ward the patients were, as one man, snoring vociferously. It was this slightly overdone snoring, at the finish, which gave birth to suspicions and caused the trick to be detected.
The night nurses do not have a placid time of it if their patients are at the stage of recovery when spirits begin to rise and the early slumber-hour which the hospital rules prescribe is not welcome. String-actuated knaveries, more or less similar to the mouse-in-the-kitchen one, are always devised for the plaguing of a new night nurse. Sometimes in the dead of night, when utter silence broods over the ward, the gramophone will abruptly burst into raucous music: its mechanism has been released by a contrivance which gives no clue to the crime"s perpetrator. The fl.u.s.tered nurse gropes her way down the ward and stops the gramophone, every patient meanwhile sitting up in bed and protesting against her cruelty in having awakened them by starting it. Half an hour after the ward has quietened, the other gramophone (some wards own two) whirrs off into impudent song: it also has been primed. Nurse is wiser on future occasions: she stows the gramophones, when she comes on duty, where no one can tamper with them. Even so, she may have her nerves preyed upon by eerie tinklings, impossible to locate in the darkness; these are caused by two knives, hung from a nail fixed high up in the rafters. By jiggling a string, which is conducted over another rafter and down the wall to his pillow, the patient makes the knifeblades clash. Sometimes two strings, leading to different beds, complete this instrument of torture. After a determined search, nurse finds one string, and, having cut it, flatters herself that she has got the better of her enemies. Not a bit of it. She has scarcely settled in her chair again before the tinklings recommence. The second string is in action; and as she hunts about the ward for the source of the melody in the ceiling, m.u.f.fled convulsions of mirth, from the dim rows of beds, furnish evidence that her naughty charges are not getting the repose which they require and to ensure which is part of the purpose of her presence.
A nurse who happens to be unpopular never has these pranks played upon her. They are in the nature of a compliment. Nor do they occur in a ward where there is a patient seriously ill. It is impossible to imagine war-hospital patients acting inconsiderately towards a distressed comrade. This observation renders all the more amusing the scandalised concern which I once beheld on the demure physiognomy of a visiting clergyman when he gathered the drift of certain allusions to a case on the Danger List.
The name of the Danger List explains itself. When a patient is put on the Danger List, his relatives are sent for and may be with him whether it is the visiting afternoon or not. (If they come from the provinces they are presented with a railway pa.s.s and, if poor, are allotted lodgings near the hospital, a grant being made to them from our Benevolent Fund.) For the information of the V.A.D."s who answer visitors" questions in the Enquiry Bureau at the main entrance to the hospital, a copy of the Danger List hangs there, and it is on record that an awestruck child, seeing this column of patients" names, and reading the heading, asked, "What does "Danger List" mean? Does it mean that it"s dangerous to go near them?" Now in Ward C 22 a patient, a c.o.c.kney, was on the Danger List--which circ.u.mstance availed nothing to depress his spirits. In spite of considerable pain, he poked fun at the prospect of his own imminent demise, and was himself the chief offender against the edict of quietness which "Sister" had issued for her ward.
He _would_ talk; and he _would_ talk about undertakers, post-mortems, epitaphs and the details of a military funeral. "That there top note of the Last Post on the bugle doesn"t "arf sound proper," he said--a verdict which anyone who has heard this beautiful and inspired fanfare, which is the farewell above a soldier"s grave, and which ends on a soaring treble, will endorse. "But," he went on, "if the bugler"s "ad a drop o" somethin" warm on the way to the cemetery, that there top note always reminds me of a "iccup. An" if "e "iccups over me, I shall wanter spit in "is eye, blimey if I won"t."
This persiflage had been going on for a couple of days and getting to be more and more elaborate and allusive, infecting the entire ward, so that the fact that the man was on the Danger List had become a kind of catchword amongst his fellows. Entered, in all innocence, the clergyman.
("The very bloke to put me up to all the tricks!"--from the irreverent one.) At the same moment a walking patient, also a c.o.c.kney, who had been reading a newspaper, gave vent to a cry of feigned horror. "Boys!" he announced, "it says "ere there"s a shortage of timber!"
Guffaws greeted this sally. Everyone saw the innuendo at once--everyone except the clergyman, and when he grasped the point, that Ol" Chum So-and-So was on the Danger List and a shortage of timber was supposed to imply that he might be done out of a coffin, he was visibly shocked.
Perhaps he did not understand c.o.c.kney humour.... However, one may add that our irrepressible friend, at the moment of writing, is off the Danger List (albeit only after a protracted struggle with the Enemy at whom he jeered), and is now contriving to be as funny about life as he was funny--and fearless--about Death.
I caught sight to-day of another c.o.c.kney acquaintance of mine, whose Christian name is Bill, trundling himself down the hospital drive in a wheeled chair. Perched on the knee of his one leg, with its feet planted on the stump which is all that is left of the other, was his child, aged four. Beside him walked his wife, resplendent in a magenta blouse and a hat with green and pink plumes.
The trio looked happy, and Mrs. Bill"s gala attire was symbolical. When Bill was in my ward he too was on the Danger List. I remember that when he first came to us, before his operation, and before he took a turn for the worse, his wife visited him in that same magenta blouse (or another equally startling) and that for some reason she and "Sister" did not quite hit it off, "had words," and subsequently for a period were not on speaking terms. Later, when Bill underwent his operation, and began to sink, his bed was moved out on to the ward"s verandah. Here his wife (now wearing a subdued blouse) sat beside him, hour after hour, while little Bill, the child, towed a cheap wooden engine up and down the gra.s.s patch, oblivious to the ordeal through which his parents were pa.s.sing. It was my business, as orderly, to intrude at intervals upon the scene on the verandah, to bring Bill such food as he was able to tolerate. On the first occasion, after Bill"s collapse, that I prepared to take him a cup of tea, Sister stopped me. "Don"t forget to take tea, and some bread and b.u.t.ter, to that poor woman. She looks tired. And some milk for the child." "Very good, Sister." I cut bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and filled an extra mug of tea. "Orderly! What are you doing?" Sister had reappeared. And I was rebuked because I was going to offer Mrs. Bill her tea in a tin mug (the patients all have tin mugs) and had cut her bread-and-b.u.t.ter too thick. I must cut dainty slices of thin bread-and-b.u.t.ter, use Sister"s own china ware, and serve the whole spread on a tray with a cloth. All of which was typical of Sister, who from that day treated Bill"s wife with true tenderness; and Bill"s wife became one of Sister"s most enthusiastic adorers.
It came to pa.s.s, after a week of pitiful anxiety, that the Medical Officer p.r.o.nounced Bill safe once more. "Bloke says I"m not goin" ter peg art," he told me. I congratulated him and remarked that his wife would be thankful when he met her, on her arrival, with such splendid news. "I"ll "ave the larf of my missus," said Bill. "W"en she comes, I shall tell "er I"ve some serious noos for "er, and she"s ter send the kid darn on the gra.r.s.e ter play. Then I"ll pull a long fice and hask "er ter bear up, and say I"m sorry for "er, and she mustn"t tike it too rough, and all that; and she "as my sympathy in "er diserpointment: _she ain"t ter get "er widow"s pension arter all_!"
I believe that this programme was carried through, more or less to the letter. Certain it is that I myself overheard another of Bill"s grim pleasantries. He was explaining to madame that they must apprentice their offspring to the engineering trade. "I wanter mike Lil" Bill a mowter chap, so"s "e can oil the ball-bearings of me fancy leg wot I"m ter get at Roehampton." The "fancy leg" ended by being the favourite theme of Bill"s disgraceful extravaganzas. He would announce to Sister, when she was dressing his stump, that he had been studying means of earning his living in the future, and had decided to become a professor of roller skating. He would loudly tell his wife that she would never again be able to summons him for a.s.sault by kicking: the fancy leg would not give the real one sufficient purchase for an effective kick. And she was not to complain, in future, about his cold feet against her back in bed: there would be only one cold foot, the other would be unhitched and on the floor. And of course there were endless jokes about what had been done with the amputated leg, whether it had got a tombstone, and so forth: some of the suggestions going a trifle beyond what good taste, in more fastidious coteries, would have thought permissible. But Bill had his own ideas of the humorous, and maybe his own no less definite ideas of dignity. In this latter virtue I counted the fact that although once or twice, when he was very low, he gave way to a little fretting to me, he never, I am convinced, let fall one querulous word in the presence of his wife. She sat by her husband"s side, and when things were at their worst the two said naught. The wife numbly watched her Bill"s face, turning now and then to glance at the activities of little Bill with his engine, or to smile her thanks to the patients who sometimes came and gave the child pickaback rides. When I intruded, I knew I was interrupting the communings of a loving and happily married pair; and the "slangings" of each other which signalised Bill"s recovery and his wife"s relief, did nothing to shake my cert.i.tude that, like many slum dwellers, they owned a mutual esteem which other couples, of superior station, might envy.
Personally I have never known a c.o.c.kney patient who did not evoke affection; and as a matter of curiosity I have been asking a number of Sisters whether they liked to have c.o.c.kneys in their wards. Without a single exception (and let me say that Sisters are both observant and critical) the answers have been enthusiastically in the affirmative.
XIII
THE STATION PARTY
An earnest shopman not long ago tried to sell me a pair of marching-boots, "for use"--as he explained, lest their name should have misled me--"on the march." Had he said "for use after the war" he might have been more persuasive. When I told him that marching-boots were no good to me, it was manifestly difficult for him to conceal his opinion that, if so, I had no business to flaunt the garb of Thomas Atkins. When I added that if he could offer me a pair of running-shoes I might entertain the proposition, his look was a reproach to irreverent facetiousness.
A grateful country has presented me with one pair of excellent marching-boots. But a hospital ward is no place in which to go clumping about in footgear designed to stand hard wear and tear on the high-roads; and my army boots, after two years, have not yet needed re-soling. I wore them, it is true, during my period of service with the Chain Gang, as a squad of outdoor orderlies, engaged in road-making, was locally called. And I wear them when we have a "C.O."s Parade"--an occasion on which naught but officially-provided attire is allowable. It would take a century of C.O."s parades, however, to damage boots put on five minutes before the event and taken off five minutes after: the parade itself necessitating no st.u.r.dier pedestrianism than is involved in walking less than a hundred yards to the ground and there standing stock-still at attention.
I do not say that hospital orderlies never go for a march: only that marching bulks relatively so small in our programme that any special equipment for the purpose sounds a little ironical. The issue of ward-shoes, now, was a real boon. Not that all the pairs with which our unit was suddenly flooded by the authorities proved as silent as they were intended to be. Some of them squeaked; and the peregrinations of the orderly thus afflicted were perhaps more vexatious to the ear of a nervous patient at night than even the clatter of honest hobnails. And the soles were thin. A pair of ward-shoes lasted me on the average one month. If only worn within the ward they might have lasted longer--though not so very much longer. According to regulations, you were not allowed to wear ward-shoes except within the confines of the ward. No doubt it was expected that every time you were sent on an errand outside the ward you would solemnly take off your ward-shoes and put on your marching-boots--then, on the return, take off your marching-boots and put on your ward-shoes--but life as a nursing orderly is too short for such elaborations of etiquette. It was nothing unusual, when one was working in a ward which lay at a distance of quarter of a mile from the hospital"s main building, to be sent to the said main building a dozen times in a single morning. This incessant message-bearing had to be done, if not at the double, at any rate at nothing slower than five miles per hour in the morning (the busy time); in the afternoon a speed of four miles per hour might sometimes be permissible. At all events, running-shoes, as I told the shopman, would not have been inappropriate during certain periods of crisis.
From time to time our tasks were interrupted by the notes of a bugle--or the shrilling of the Sergeant-Major"s whistle--demanding our presence for an intake of new patients. A party of orderlies was wanted to go to the railway-station to help to remove stretcher-cases from the ambulance train. The station lies at a distance of a mile from the hospital, and this small pilgrimage, achieved a few score times, is practically all I know of the veritable employment of marching-boots.
I regretted when a change of plans diverted the ambulance trains to the central termini for evacuation. The interlude of a station-party trip was far from unwelcome. Lined up on the parade ground we were put in charge of a corporal. "Party, "shun! Right turn! Quick march!" Off we trudged, round the back of the hospital, down the drive, out past the sentry and away along the road. Presently, "Party, march at ease!"
Cigarettes were lit, talking was allowed, and someone would raise a tune. How pleasant it is to march to singing! To march to a drum-and-fife band must be wonderful. Or a bra.s.s band--! Those joys will never be mine. Almost all the marching I shall have done in the great war will be summed up in these tiny promenades from the hospital to the railway-station, their rhythm sustained by self-raised choruses, none too melodious.
Occasionally an officer would be descried, on the pavement. Then "Party, "shun!" Cigarettes were concealed. The song died. "Eyes left! ... Eyes front! Party, march at ease!" The cigarettes reappeared, the song was resumed. Approaching the station, "Party, "shun!" Cigarettes were thrown away. Here, in the chief street, we must make a smart show. A crowd is gathered round the station gate, attracted by the array of Red Cross vehicles within. Police are keeping back the curious. The way is cleared for our arrival. "Left wheel!" Now is our one moment of glory.
We swing round, through the lane of gaping sightseers, and tramp-tramp in style across the station yard and under the archway, flattering ourselves (perhaps not without justification) that there are spectators whose eyes pursue us with secret envy at the serious import of our task.
The station platform, when we reached it, was generally a blank perspective devoid of all living creatures except ourselves. Fate decreed that we should be summoned long before the train was due. I have kicked my heels for many a doleful hour on that platform, and the reflection that "they also serve who only stand and wait" was chilly comfort if--as frequently happened--we had been hurried off dinnerless.
The convoys" arrivals always seemed to coincide with dinner-time. On our return to the hospital we should find that the rations had been kept hot for us. But, in the meanwhile, an empty stomach was a poor preparation for the strain of carrying stretchers up the stairs from the station platform to the ambulances; and those of us who could produce pennies for automatic-machine chocolate gained an instant popularity. The longest period of waiting drew to an end at last, however. The platform a.s.sumed a livelier air. The station-master appeared from his den.
Officers of the Army Medical Service and the Red Cross strolled down.
And the stairs and platform echoed to the pattering of the feet of hosts of industrious "Bluebottles," fetching stretchers and blankets.
The blue-uniformed volunteers who form a portion of the London Ambulance Column are nicknamed the Bluebottles in allusion to their dress. It is a nickname which, let me say at once, any man might be proud of. I know not whether the history of the Bluebottles has yet been written, but certain it is that their doings have got into newspaper print less often than they deserved. For theirs is a double role which truly merits the country"s admiration. While carrying on the commerce of the Empire--that vital commerce without which there would be bankruptcy and no sinews of war, nor indeed any England left to defend--they have vowed themselves also, of their own free-will, to the helping of the wounded. Day or night the Bluebottle is liable to be called from his desk or his home by the telephone: like the Florentine Brother of the Misericordia he must instantly hurry into his uniform and rush to the place appointed. He may be busy or he may be tired; no matter: his vow holds good. Off he goes, to the railway-station to meet the hospital train and evacuate its stretchers.
Myself, I have the deepest respect for the Bluebottles and for their energy in a cause which must often be not only fatiguing, but, from a commercial point of view, extremely inconvenient. It would be absurd to pretend, nevertheless, that the less responsible khaki-wearing R.A.M.C.
do not cherish a mild contempt for all Bluebottles. There is no reason for that contempt. It is idiotic, childish--a humiliating exhibition of the silliness of masculine human nature. Members of our station-party who had enlisted but a week back, and who knew nothing whatever of their work, would, in a whisper, mock the Bluebottles--although every Bluebottle had taken first-aid cla.s.ses and pa.s.sed examinations at which most of the mockers would have boggled. The Bluebottles were "civilians"
... there you have it. We--who would probably never do any battlefield soldiering in our lives--looked down on all civilians who had the impudence to wear a uniform of any sort. Such is the behaviour of the sterner s.e.x at a moment when its sole thought should be of sensible and efficient co-operation in the performance of duty.
For of course it was our duty to co-operate with the Bluebottles. The theory with which we beguiled ourselves, that the Bluebottles were physically starvelings and required our Herculean aid to lift the stretchers up the stairs, was palpably nonsense. Still we told ourselves that we, as disciplined soldiers, were here to give a hand to a civilian mob who might otherwise faint and fail. A singular delusion! Time has proved its falsity, for with the issue of fresh orders our station-parties ceased to function: the Bluebottles now make shift without us--and without, as far as I know, any mishap.
The hospital train was eventually signalled. We were ranked, at attention, at the foot of the stairs. The Bluebottles stood by their stretchers. There was hurrying hither and thither of officials.
Sometimes our Colonel, having motored from the hospital, appeared on the platform to see that all was well, and you may be sure that we endeavoured to look alert in his august presence. And finally the train glided into the station.
The hospital trains seemed to be never twice the same: South Westerns, North Westerns, Great Northerns, Midlands, Great Centrals, Lancashire and Yorkshires--I saw them all, at one time or another, their sole affinity being the staring red crosses painted on each coach. A coach or two consisted of ordinary compartments, for sitting-up cases; the rest were vans the interiors of which had been converted into wards by means of bunks. Access to each van-ward was gained by a wide pair of sliding doors in its centre. These doors, when the train had come to a standstill, were opened by pallid-looking orderlies, who lowered gangways and then gazed forth at us, while they awaited orders, with the lack-l.u.s.tre eyes of men who had been deprived of the proper allowance of sleep.
As soon as the list of the Medical Officer on the train had been checked with that of the Medical Officer on the platform, the evacuation began.
Walking-cases were sent off first--generally a tatterdemalion crew, hobbling and shuffling along the platform, and, at one stage of the war, with trench mud still clinging to their clothes. They seldom needed our a.s.sistance: the Bluebottles (even if feeble folk) were deemed by our corporal to be fit to give any weak walking patient an arm, or carry his kit. The walking patients, in fact, were a mere episode. Motor-cars whirled them off, five or six at a time, and they might be half through the process of being bathed at the hospital before the last stretcher-case was quit of the train. The stretcher cases were our concern. Pairs of Bluebottles, each carrying a stretcher, entered the van-wards and anon reappeared with their burden. Now came our cue to act. As the stretcher approached the foot of the stair two of our number stepped forth from the rank, each taking a handle from a Bluebottle; the stretcher thus proceeded on its course up the stair carried by four men, one on each handle--two Bluebottles and two R.A.M.C."s.
That flight of iron stairs from the platform to the road seemed no very arduous ordeal for the first half-dozen journeys. There was a knack about keeping the stretcher horizontal: the front bearers must hold their handles as low as possible; the rear bearers must hoist their handles shoulder-high. It was all plain sailing and perfectly easy. Four men to a stretcher is luxurious. At least it is luxurious on the level, and if you have not far to go and not many consecutive stretchers to carry. But when the convoy was a large one, when the bearers were too few and you had no sooner got rid of one stretcher than you must run down the stairs and, without regaining your breath, grab the handle of another and slowly toil up again to the ambulances ... yes, even on the coldest day it was possible to be moist with perspiration; and as for the hot weather of the 1915 summer, when one of our Big Pushes was afoot, or when returned prisoners came from Germany (those were memorable occasions!)--you might be pardoned a certain aching in the arm-muscles.
It was on one of these busy days that I discovered that the comical prejudice of khaki against the Bluebottles was not (as I had hitherto supposed) confined to the young swashbucklers of the home-staying R.A.M.C. It was seldom our custom to enter the hospital trains. An unwritten law decreed that Bluebottles only should enter the train: the R.A.M.C. limited themselves to carrying work outside, on the platform and stair. But on this occasion the supply of Bluebottles had, for the moment, run short, and our party took a turn at going up the gangways and evacuating the van-wards. As it happened, I and my mate on the stretcher were the first khaki-wearers to invade that particular van-ward. And as we steered our stretcher in at the door and down the aisle of cots a shout arose from the wounded lying there: "Here are some real soldiers!"