THE WOUNDED

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 55, 2 September 1916, Page 11

THE WOUNDED

HOW THEY ARE DEALT WITH

WONDERFUL ORGANISATION,

The distressed and excited party who is for ever shaking his head over the blunders of Government, and who is continually uttering the' most doleful lamentations over our notorious dearth of Great Men, must occasionally hang up his muck rake, wipe away the more scalding of his tears, and exclaim with Dickens that Todgers can do.it when it chooses. Imagine the condition of this depressed and depressing party on going downstairs from his lugubrious shaving, Iris melancholy tubbing, and his funeral robing to read at the breakfast table in his newspaper (which is never doleful enough for his mool) that roses bought in the Strand are being tossed into the motor-ambulances at Charing-cross which carry yesterday's wounded at La Boisselle to the various London hospitals. Must he not scratch his head? Must he not reflectively rub his chin? And must he not grudgingly and dumpishly confess that Todgers can do it when it chooses?

Of course Todgers can do it, lias done it, and will continue to do it as long as the necessity is laid upon him. Let me have the pleasure of introducing you to Surgeon-General Sir Alfred Keogh,, Director-General—of Todgers' Royal Army Medical Corps, writes the Daily Chronicle's special correspondent, in continuation of an article on the evacuation of the wounded.

He is a busy man, but not a fussy man. He throws down his pencil, sits back in his chair,' knits his eyebrows, blows out his grey moustache, and asks what you want with him— not churlishly, but with a glance at the clock. A brisk man, but a gentleman. "Tell me," say you, "how you manage to evacuate your wounded so quickly."

„ l',^. for that." he replies, shortly, ' it's just a matter of organisation." He is not interested. If you had asked him a questiop about micro-organisms he would have leaned forward to you with a glisten in his eye and talked for' an hour, so enthusiastic a man of science is this Director-General, who happens to be* a genius of organisation as well.

But the organiser, when once the machinery of his organisation is running smoothly, no longer wants to talk about it. He has ceased to dream of it, so how should he talk about it? But Sir Alfred Keogh never ceases to dream about microbes. I believe his dreams are haunted by the elusive, invisible, and undiscovered micro-organism of measles. Lawk-a-mussy, if only he could catch that beast! , SPEEDY TRANSIT. Press him, however, and he will tell you that a man hit in the shoulder soon after breakfast before a piece of German barbed wire in France may be sitting up very comfortably in a London hospital rc-r his supper that same evening. "We have so organised matters,'" says this dapper little grey man with the high forehead and quick penetrating eyes, that with the smallest amount of discomfort our wounded may be carried straight from the battlefield' to the hospital in. England which is nearest to Ms home. It is simply a matter of system, Ihere was bother at the beginning; it took some little time to adjust ourselves to the new conditions; but it was not long before, the system devised for an army of 160,000 men slid into proportions necessary for an army of something like two millions. How did we do it? We multiplied by ten. But we took care to multiply with the best brains we could get And we had the whole medicalprofession of the United Kingdom to pick from. _ There have been acts of self-sacrifice in this war among surgeons, physicians, and bacteriologists which, could they be told, would . . . But you were asking me? Yes?" Once ' more he looks up at the clock, and this time we take the hint. j

Let us think aa we go away of what this little man has done. Upon my honour I think he is cmc of the greatest managers of big things that ever breathed. Put him at the Irish Office (he's an Irishman) and you'd settle tljat troublesome business in a month or two. Put him in India, put him in the Mansion House, I was going to say put him in Lambeth Palace; but truly you might put him almost anywhere and he'd get 6mooth running order out of the stubbornest chaos. He has a way with him. BOUND FOR "BLIGHTY." .'

But think of the underground casualty collecting stations in France, where the wounded man, carried thither on a stretcher, is dressed and cared for with the shells above still.tearing the air like calico and digging huge pits on every side of him. Think of him earned thence in the darkness of night to a dressing station, and from that point going in a convoy of wounded men to the main field ambulance. Think of him swiftly but very carefully attended to here, where serious operations are performed, and then carried in a luxurious ambulance train to the sea coast and the hospital ship with its steam up for "Blighty." Think of him borne safely across the perilous ocean, even after the great German victory of Horn Reef, and being. whizzed without a jolt and without a stop from the white cliffs.of Albion to the central roar of streaming London town. And finally think of him walking about Eastbourne in a suit of buicher's blue, with a scarlet tie at his collar, a rose stuck in his cap, and on his arm— ah, but that's what is curing him so quickly—the prettiest, daintiest, dearest little maiden that ever gave her tiny heart, packed full of laughter and tears, to a first-class fighting man. System ? Yes, but with heart in it, and soul in it. And between you, me, and the nearest electric standard it's the heart of Todgers which is knocking the German into a cocked hat.