MEMORIES OF MONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3195, 9 June 1915, Page 80

MEMORIES OF MONS.

A NEW ZEALAND DOCTOR'S EXPERIENCE. tF»o»i Oub Own Dirrescondesi.) INVERCARGILL, May 28. Following are extracts from a recent letter from Lieutenant Thos. Wylie, R.A.M.C., to his father (Mr Wylie, inspector of schools). Having been trained at Aldershot before the war.. Dr Wylie was able to proceed to the front with ihe first British troops and landed in France on August 17 of last year. He is attached to the Donegal Rangers and Highland Light Infantry, and, with the exception of three weeks’ furlough, has been with the forces in action since the beginning of the war. “Aon speak of reading of bustle and work when an ambulance train arrives with its load of wounded. I never see one, for the simple reason that they do not come up as far as I am. It comes up to within four miles of the headquarters of our field ambulance, but hardly within seven or eight of where I am. It- isn’t safe for it. We collect the wounded from the regimental medical officers, who have dressing stations, say, 200 yards in the rear of the trenches. At times we have to help them, though it isn’t our work. On a few occasions I have been some dozen yards nearer the German than our trenches. This is quite out of the ordinary run. Wo got the wounded back to our temporary shelter or dressing station, and hand them over to a motor convoy which takes them to a casualty clearing station and there they get on to an ambulance train for the base. The wounded generally reach us with a first field dressing put on their wound by a comrade. We endeavour in most cases to put on a more secure dressing, to stop bleeding, and to make the man feel more or less comfortable. We put splints on in cases that require them, give some morphia to those suffering severe pain, yet bad cases on to stretchers, and get blankets for all. We endeavour to give each man a hot drink of bovril or oxo. Every wounded man gets, in theordinary routine, a prophylactic dose of anti-totamc serum.

“ Our equipment consists of a few panniers, containing necessities, and 10 ambulance wagons. Up till a few days ago these were drawn by horses, but some of the old horse ambulances have been replaced v/ith motors with very good results. We have our little Ford ambulance, which I have taken up within 500 yards of the German trenches several times, so far without accident. I have been usually with an advanced dressing station, and not with the headquarters sectioit of the field ambulance. Jt is much more interesting to be further forward than headquarters. Our billets are usually in some old house which has been more fortunate than those around it, and is not so badly damaged by shell fire. During the worst of the winter, during the worst snowstorm we had,' we lived on some straw placed by the side of a bedje for shelter, with four sticks and a piece of canvas 3ft square for a roof. The field itself was rather muddy. One sank to one’s knees anywhere except on my straw bed. I hadn’t taken my clothes off for weeks just, then, and L. enjoyed no part of the campaign better than those same weeks. “Of Mons, the Marne, the Aisne, and Ypres you have already heard. On the retreat, from Mons our chief business was the picking up of * scrimshankers,’ as we called them—men with bad feet or weak hearts. Occasionally, after some slight ‘scrap.’ wo managed to collect a few wounded. T was quite often behind our own rearguard trying to get an extra man or two. The Marne supplied us with lots of German wounded. The Aisne I remember chiefly because I first met ‘Mr Johnson ’ there —otherwise known as ‘ Black Maria.’ It was at the Aisne that I learnt the difference between a shell bursting and a gun going off. It was there I began to know from the whistle of a shell whether it would come near me or not, and whether it was worth lying down. It was there I learnt that it was useless to duck when one heard a bullet whiz past. It w r as there that familiarity began to breed contempt for these things. ( “ Ypres remains in my memory chiefly for bad weather and night work on roads with the mud at least a foot deep, where my poor wagons of wounded invariably stuck somewhere, requiring the assistance of some kind-hearted gunners to help us out. I remember one night when 10 heavy draught horses could not shift an empty ambulance wagon out of a bad shell hole in the road. Wo dug it out next morning in daylight. I am one of two of the original medical officers who started out ( at Aldershot with the field ambulance, sickness, wounds, and other jobs have accounted for the others. When we started there were nine of us, but at least 20 different officers have passed through our unit ns medical officers. The next field ambulance at one nonod was practically scuppered.’ Tr has only one medical officer left and six stretchsr-beJrers out of about 200.”