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The First Canadians in France
The First Canadians in France / The Chronicle of a Military Hospital in the War Zone
PREFACE
In glancing through these pages, now that they are written, I realise that insufficient stress has been laid upon the heroism and self-sacrifice of the non-commissioned officers and men of the Army Medical Corps – the boys who, in the dull monotony of hospital life, denied the exhilaration and stimulus of the firing line, are, alas, too often forgotten. All honour to them that in spite of this handicap they give of their best, and give it whole-heartedly to their stricken comrades.
The pill of fact herein is but thinly coated with the sugar of fiction, but if the reader can get a picture, however indefinite, of military hospital life in France, these pages will not have been written altogether in vain.
F. McK B.
CHAPTER I
We were a heterogeneous lot – no one could deny that – all the way down from big Bill Barker, the heavyweight hostler, to little Huxford, the featherweight hustler.
No commanding officer, while sober, would have chosen us en masse. But we weren't chosen – we just arrived, piece by piece; and the Hammer of Time, with many a nasty knock, has welded us.
One by one, from the farthest corners of the Dominion, the magic magnet of the war drew us to the plains of Valcartier, and one by one it dropped us side by side. Why some came or why they are still here God knows! Man may merely conjecture.
Divers forces helped to speed us from our homes: love of adventure, loss of a sweetheart, family quarrels, the wander-spirit, and, among many other sentiments – patriotism. But only one force held us together: our Colonel! Without him, as an entity, we ceased to exist. His broad-minded generosity and liberal forbearance closed many an angry breach. His love of us finds its analogy only in the love of a father for his prodigal son.
Long after we reached France, when the dull monotony of daily routine had somewhat sobered us, one early morning the sweet but disturbing note of the bugle sounding the reveille brought me back from dreams of home. I lay drowsily listening to its insistent voice. The door of my room opened softly, and the orderly stole in.
He was a red-cheeked, full-lipped country lad, scarce seventeen years of age. He knelt down before the fireplace and meditatively raked the ashes from its recess. He was a slow lad; slow in speech, slower in action, and his big dreamy blue eyes belied his military bearing.
I turned over in bed to get a better view of him.
"What freak of fancy brought you so far from home, Wilson?" I queried.
"Dunno, zur," he drawled. "Not much fun hustlin' coals in the mornin' nur pullin' teeth in the afternoon." For Wilson, among his multitudinous duties, was dental orderly too.
"There's such an air of farm and field about you, Wilson, that sometimes, at short range, I imagine I get a whiff of new-mown hay."