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Page 26
"Poor kid," murmured the Captain sympathetically, and began to operate
on the next man, who had a wound in his shoulder about as large as a
hand. In the middle of the raw flesh a short length of undamaged bone
was visible. Nothing serious, and only a flesh wound. The man inhaled
the chloroform and ether fumes without choking or struggling. His wound
was excised, "spirit bipped," dressed and bandaged. Then he was whisked
off the table and carried away to a ward.
In the doorway appeared a man with his arm in a sling. He was dazzled by
the electric light and put his hand over his eyes. Captain Wycherley
called out to him: "Come along, my lad, and hop on to this table." He
walked up to the table with uncertain steps. An orderly helped him on to
it. He lay back and turned his head to one side and looked towards the
next table on which Captain Calthrop was amputating an arm. It came off
in the hands of an orderly who dropped it into the bucket. The newcomer
followed it with horror-stricken eyes. He continued to gaze, as though
fascinated, at the half-closed hand that projected above the edge of the
bucket. Then he trembled violently.
Captain Wycherley observed what was happening and said:
"Come on, don't worry about the next man. Let's have a look at your
wound."
"Yer not goin' ter take orf me arm, are yer, sir?"
"No, of course not, don't be so silly!"
"Yer won't 'urt me, sir, will yer?"
"No, no. Pull yourself together now. Be a man! You won't feel anything
at all."
The orderly untied the sling and began to unwind the bandage, but the
man drew his arm away and cried:
"Oo, oo, oo,--very painful, sir, very painful!"
The orderly, pleased at being mistaken for an officer, said in a
soothing, patronizing voice:
"We'll just have this bit o' bandage orf an' then we'll give yer some
gas and send yer orf to sleep. You won't feel nothin' and yer a sure
Blighty. I wouldn' be surprised if yer got acrorss termorrer."
He went on unwinding the bandage, but the man began to shout and
struggle again.
Thereupon the surgeon intervened:
"For God's sake be quiet. Pull yourself together and don't make such a
fuss."
"I can't 'elp it, sir--I couldn't never stick no pain, sir, no, sir,
never, sir--it's very painful, sir, very painful. I'll try 'ard, I'll do
me best--but it _is_ painful, sir."
However, as soon as the bandage was pulled a little he yelled and
writhed. The surgeon at last lost patience and said: "Hold him down."
Two orderlies and two bearers seized his hands and feet while the
bandage was quickly removed. He shrieked and struggled violently, but he
was firmly held.
He had a small, deep wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. He
received gas and soon lost consciousness. The surgeon pushed a probe
into the hole. There was a metallic click, whereupon he inserted his
forceps and pulled out a jagged piece of steel, the fragment of a German
shell. When the wound had been excised and dressed, the man was carried
away and replaced by another whose right leg was thickly wrapped up. The
wrapping was removed and revealed a shattered knee and two toes dangling
from the foot. Captain Wycherley snipped them off with a pair of
scissors. The man winced and they dropped on to the floor. The
an�sthetist administered gas. It was some time, however, before the
patient lost consciousness, for the balloon that adjoined the mouthpiece
leaked badly and once the rubber-tubing was blown off the nozzle of the
cylinder.
Captain Dowden was busy with a foot, or all that was left of a foot, a
number of crimson shreds hanging from an ankle over a projecting piece
of bone. Captain Calthrop was attending to a "belly case"--he had cut a
longitudinal slit in his patient's abdomen and both his hands were
groping inside it, buried up to the wrists, while the stomach-wall
heaved up and down with the breathing of the unconscious man.
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