IS THE ARMY SOULLESS?

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1389, 22 November 1918, Page 5

IS THE ARMY SOULLESS?

GRIM FIGHT WITH DEATH. O.H.M.S.—Regret to inform you that Private Michael Casey is lying seriously ill in this hospital. Should you desire to sco him and have not the means to travel, take this telegram to the nearest police station.—Officer in Charge Militarv Hospital, . d’his telegram was delivered to a small house in a Belfast slum. A few hours later a frail, frightened little woman, who had never before left Ireland since she was born there 40 odd years ago. was on her way to a military hospital near London (says Thomas Purple in the Daily Mail. I was present when she arrived. Her husband, Private Michael Casey, occupied the bed directly opposite mine ip the long 28-cot ward. He had collapsed on duty with double pneumonia. I fancied I could see the death sweat gathering on his brow when they brought him in unconscious on a stretcher. With her brown-paper parcel, oldfashioned woollen shawl, squeaky boots, her hair scraped severely back from a white, careworn, travehstained face, and screwed into a tight knot at the back, Mrs Michael Casey came timidly into the ward. A great bewildering lovelight leapt into Michael’s eyes when he saw her. He had nob known of her coming. Although he knew she had been apprised of his condition, Michael could not m In's wildest moments imagine his wife leaving Ireland. Yet she stood before him. But there was no outburst; no emotional torrent. Mrs Casey simply kissed her husband, spoke some words I could not overhear, and then settled by his side in a big armchair like a woman carved in stone —as she thought to watch him die. It would have done those who look upon the Army as a great soulless raachine good if they could have seen what happened during the next five days and nights. From my bed opposite I watched half-fascinated a magnificent battle with death. Arrayed on one side were two R.A.M.C. doctors (a colonel and a captain), two nursing sisters, a devotee wife; on the other hand the Great Do stroyer. They were battling for Pn vato Michael Casey. Casey was not a hero, not even a great soldier. Ho was merely a private in the Army Service Corps with less than a year’s service, one of the thousands of men to be seen daily riding about in tho M.T. lorries. Yet this little band fought for his life as though he had been a great general. Doctors and nurses came in during their onduty time to see how ho was progressing. Once his life hung by the merest thread; only the administration of oxygen saved him. The whole ward grew interested in this grim light with death. , , . As for the woman who kept taitlitiil vigil by the bedside during those five long nights, she was treated with the courtesy duo to a queen. And sue saw them snatch her husband irom Death’s very jaws. I have just finished a game of caids with Michael.