Richard Wilcocks writes
Wounded is a homage to the
heroic men and women who cared for the wounded in the Great War, described by
her as “an undiscovered, somehow silenced group”. Using a remarkable collection
of letters and diaries, and rooted in wide reading and original research, Emily
Mayhew has produced a startlingly vivid and engaging account of the way the wounded (almost
every other British soldier could expect to become a casualty) were rescued,
treated and cared for by bearers, Regimental Medical Officers, surgeons,
nurses, VADs, orderlies, chaplains, ambulance drivers and others during a
conflagration which was sparked by a symbolic act of terrorism in Sarajevo,
rolled on like a mad machine for four years, and which led to the crumbling
away of empires and the destruction of countless lives. A modern conflict.
The military medical services hardly knew
what had hit them at first, just like the British Expeditionary Force itself,
which was nearly wiped out at Mons and the Marne in 1914. Veteran nurses and
doctors were at the front at that time, possibly with
Boer War experience, but dealing with ghastly shrapnel wounds on a large scale
was very different to dealing with relatively straightforward bullet holes on
the warm, dry South African veldt. In Flanders, the fields tended to be wet and
heavily manured, and most of the tetanus and gas gangrene cases which resulted from just slight scratches as well as mangled limbs were destined to die horribly. The
up-to-date cylindro-conical bullets were fast, hit hard and took tiny fragments of dirty
uniform and other contaminants deep into bodies. The medics learned as fast as
they could, and coped with almost impossible situations over and over again, a
fact made clear through a collection of true stories about the ones who were there.
Wounded is a homage to the
heroic men and women who cared for the wounded in the Great War, described by
her as “an undiscovered, somehow silenced group”. Using a remarkable collection
of letters and diaries, and rooted in wide reading and original research, Emily
Mayhew has produced a startlingly vivid and engaging account of the way the wounded (almost
every other British soldier could expect to become a casualty) were rescued,
treated and cared for by bearers, Regimental Medical Officers, surgeons,
nurses, VADs, orderlies, chaplains, ambulance drivers and others during a
conflagration which was sparked by a symbolic act of terrorism in Sarajevo,
rolled on like a mad machine for four years, and which led to the crumbling
away of empires and the destruction of countless lives. A modern conflict.
Take the story of Regimental Medical
Officer William Kelsey Fry of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who, after heavy
losses taking a small town from the Germans, went out onto the battlefield
himself to retrieve casualties.
“Time after time he cleaned the mud off his glasses, braced himself and
joined the fighting soldiers, oblivious to all but the cries of the man he was
trying to find in the middle of the chaos. When he found him, Kelsey Fry
hoisted him up onto his back and ran as fast as he could. During one of these
trips, he was shot in both legs. The wounds weren’t serious, but he was lucky
to make it back to the medical post with his patient.” It was his duty to look
after the water supply as well, making sure it was fresh, and supervised the
digging of latrines. His reputation for unflappability and efficiency caused
the upper ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps to offer him a promotion away
from the dirt and gunfire of the front line, but he preferred to stay. During a
battle in 1916 he had so little time that a proper medical post could not be
set up, so with his bearers he dug a hole as deep as time and the enemy would
allow and put a tarpaulin over it, “It filled with casualties almost
immediately, like rain collecting in a puddle. As in every aid post on the line,
they worked so hard that they stopped hearing the shellfire and didn’t notice
as it crept closer and closer…” Siegfried Sassoon, who knew him well, was one of many who was shocked when he heard of his death.
Or the story of surgeon Norman Pritchard,
who found himself responsible for
a ward of recently captured German prisoners. “When Pritchard first set
eyes on them, in their special ward, he almost turned round and walked out
again. The POWs were in a dreadful state. Most had been hiding for days, lying
in abandoned trenches and shell holes, hoping that their side would retake the
ground. They were fetid with infections and starved, many of them on the brink
of death. It was difficult to know where to start. Pritchard had no German, and
so a kind, firm tone would have to do…”
Or the story of Nurse Winifred Kenyon, who
“never considered going anywhere else but a casualty clearing station. She
wanted to be as close to the war as possible, to share in the adventure and
excitement and to make her contribution”… “Perhaps the most unexpected thing
Kenyon learned inside the ward tents was how much was left up to the nurses
themselves. There were several wards that they ran without doctors, and they
taught their new skills to the new arrivals like Kenyon. ‘Resus’ was one of
them. The men were too weak to raise their heads, let alone be operated on, and
it was the nurses who brought them back from the brink. Kenyon learned to
administer the magic mixtures of hot saline, brandy and coffee, and that you
could never have too many hot water bottles. Sometimes you put ten or twelve
around a man close to death from hypothermia and gradually watched him come
back to life. Men came in grey and went back pink.”
Or the story of Nurse Morgan, whose home
was the No 3 Ambulance Train, 300 yards long, with a supposed maximum capacity
of 440 and equipped with iron stands and straps where cots or stretchers were
hung. “During the Somme offensive the pushload of 440 or more became the norm,
as No 3 struggled to keep up. Carefully planned entraining and detraining
routines simply went to pieces in the face of the sheer numbers of casualties
at the railheads, and within a week of the Somme the whole system of transit
simply broke down”… “Morgan tried to calm her patients, while all around them
they could hear the moaning of men in agony, the train an island in a sea of
human desolation.”
Most of the material in Wounded is new,
from previously unused archival sources, and it is presented not in a cold,
detached way, but with genuine warmth and engagement, because Mayhew has the
skills of a novelist, the ability to empathise, to stand in the shoes of those
who were so committed to saving lives a century ago. The reader is invited to
engage with the senses, to smell the gas still clinging to the uniforms of
those arriving at London’s Victoria Station on ambulance trains, to recoil from
appalling injuries, to gasp at the madness of it all.
Published by Bodley Head ISBN 9781847922618
UPDATE - website for published book Stories from the War Hospital is at www.firstworldwarhospital.co.uk
* Emily Mayhew will be a guest of Headingley LitFest on Tuesday 18 March 2014
* Emily Mayhew will be a guest of Headingley LitFest on Tuesday 18 March 2014
