THE KHAKI TRAIN

Otago Witness, Issue 3195, 9 June 1915, Page 85

THE KHAKI TRAIN

By Evelyn Isitt.

(Specially Written for the Otago Witness.) An ambulance train is the most elusive thing in the world. It runs to no time table; it has no settled lines, no regular stations of call. It may speed for a whole month ceaselessly between railheads and hospital bases, and for the next month it may without any known reason spend half its time sulking in sidings, its medical officers, restless at the enforced dqlay, its army sisters longing for a nice busy monotonous ward, its orderlies of their old work in crowded cities. They dare not leave the train to take the exercise they, require, for at any moment an urgent summons may come ; there may have been a fierce engagement, and hundreds of wounded men may be speeding by motor ambulances to,the clearing hospitals ready for the train to take them on. And French methods of starting trains are so erratic that even the medical officer in charge has had on more than one occasion to spring along the platform to catch his own train, and think himself lucky to clamber into the last carriage. The most curious thing about these fine trains is that no human being knows till five minutes before they start where or if thev are going. At least, in all my hunts for tfte finest of them all, the proud affair known officially as No. 12 ambulance train, familiarly as" “the khaki train.” and described by The-Tnnes correspondent as “ the most perfect hospital train in the world,” I never succeeded in finding any-

one who pretended to know by what human authority its movements were directed, and finally 1 came to the conclusion that these things were done by the Superman. All the time I was at Boulogne I was trying to catch that train. Day after day, night and morning, I made my way to its favourite station with the query ; “Any news to-day of No. 12?” The girls who camp at the station in a row of railway carriages, from which they dispense first aid to the men about the station, and cocoa, soup, or other good things to the troops or the wounded passing through, used to listen sympathetically; the officer in charge of all arriving ambulance trains was kindly and hopeful; and the men in the traffic office used to look through their files for my benefit, but always with the same result. “No. 12, for some reason which no one could guess, was playing around Rouen. 5 ’

I spent an extra day in Boulogne in hope of its arriving, but in vain. At last I could wait no longer. I went to Rouen, and the same day No. 12, shaking the allpervasive mud of Rouen from its heels, took up its permanent abode in the neighbourhood of Boulogne. The game repeated itself at Rouen a week later when, day after day, I tramped along the blusterous quays, past the lines of lazy barges, past the challenging sentry at the gates, to the traffic office in the station yard, and always “ The khaki train is at Boulogne.’ 5 Then suddenly it turned up bright, smiling, and filled with wounded at Rouen. They told me about it late one afternoon when I had gone through drenching rain to make one more hopeless inquiry, and they added cheerfully that it had just that moment gone out to Sotteville, the distant suburban station where the ambul-

ance trains fairly wallow in slush. There was nothing for it but to go where the train had gone, but fortunately a breathless newcomer announced that it was still standing in the yard—we might find it if we ran. We ran. In the gathering darkness we found what looked like a

khaki train. An orderly at the door said in was indeed No. 12, and added that it was just off to Sotteville. As he spoke that wretched train began to move. One

does not chase a marvel for weeks to let it go like that. It seemed a suitable time to emphasise the fact that I had some acquaintance with the commanding officer, that he would at least know I was not a German spy. “I’m coming, too,” I said, jumping on board. What the kindly escorting officer

said I never knew, but hoped it was “Right 0!” for next minute we were off to Sotteville, and beyond a doubt I had caught the khaki train. It was rather eerie. The lights were turned low, except in those carriages where the orderlies were busily scrubbing .the floors after the trampling stretcherbearers who had unloaded the wounded an hour before, and as I made my way through endless wards to find the commanding officer’s room, the 300 yards of shining corridor twisted and wriggled like a snake as the train curved and straightened along the line. A little army sister came out of one of the comfortable little cabins where the nurses live —two to each compartment, —and together we sought the doctor in charge, who agreed—there was, indeed, no choice —to my remaining on board till we reached the labyrinths of Sotteville, and who introduced me to the wonders of the ambulance train de luxe. To appreciate No. 12 fully one must recall the lamentable tales told earlier in the war of the way our wounded men had to be brought from the front, of the ordinary trains where they lay in little shut-off compartment carriages only to be reached by the doctors when, they stopped at stations, those carriages still heavily upholstered and calculated to retain every germ which escaped from, horribly septic wounds. Worse still wore the other trains composed only of cattle trucks, lined with straw and crowded with the wounded, —trucks that they told us it was unpleasant to approach too closely—say to within 10 yards. In these trains the men spent anything up to nine days on their way to the hospitals in France, “dodging the Germans.” There were no hospital train, nor could they have been used if provided, for the few lines that remained open were needed by the hasty heavy traffic of troops and munitions. We are told that the Germans, for all their

vaunted preparations, have not yet got beyond the stage of cattle trucks for their -j wounded, hut the English and French have

been improving their arrangements with each month. All these trains are composed of French rolling stock, but the khaki train, with the exception of the carriages where the 45 orderlies live, is purely English, composed half of Great Eastern and half of London and North-Western carriages, beautiful carriages, steam-heated throughout. There is a clear passage down the train’s entire length, and were it not for a silly little projecting storeroom in one car there would be a clear view of the 300 yards, and a wonderful sight it would be when the luxurious wards were packed with men lying in a double row down each side. * There are three doctors on board comfortably housed with a separate compartment for each, and a fourth compartment for a mess room. There are four army nurses, who'have their own mess room next their cabins, and 45 orderlies. The train has accommodation for 330 sitting-up cases, or 220 lying down, but usually it has a mixed company, and several of the upper berths have to be let down to make room for the men who lounge comfortably on the lower seats. Thei’e is also an officers’ warc^ Up at the railhead, or the hospital base station, the stretcher bearers pack the train carefully, taking- care that a man’s injured side is next to the corridor so that his wound may be easily reached. If his injuries are severe, he is not lifted from his stretcher, but stretcher and all placed on the wide berth. The loading is done as quickly as possible, but even on the “ khaki train,” with the aid of its 45 orderlies, it takes over an hour to settle the men.

. The first thing to do is to feed the patients with cocoa and bread and jam. This cheers them un wonderfully. Then they are washed, and their wounds dressed again if necessary. Sometimes, of course, they have come from a base hospital, but often thev are straight from the trenches, and revel in the luxury of their train. Their eyes nearly pop out of their heads when dinner time comes and they find they are to have a good square meal — tinned meats, a first-class Irish stew—the speciality of this train —piping hot from one of the kitchens de luxe, or other good things. They become very lively and chaff each other as the medical officer goes down the wards, questioning the men, or poking fun at them. The whole ward listens to what is said, and roars with laughter at every joke. “ This is a train and no mistake,” they say as they gaze along the wards, whose connecting doors are all open, and “My, that’s the best meal I’ve s td since I left ! ome.” They are amazingly brave and jolly, even tliough the agony of their frostbitten feet brings tears to their eyes. From the wide windows by their berths they get a clear view of the countryside, and when they want to write there is an elegant little bed rest ready for their use. while by means of a pully arrangement they can raise themselves in bed. There are two kitchens on this train, a tank holding more thousands of gallons than I can remember, a large store room, a pharmacy, and—-it is the only train with such a thing—an operating theatre, though this is really very little used, because the run is now usually a short one. There is also a Red Cross room filled with knitted things and other garments for the men, who are often brought on board in the most ragged condition, or with clothes that have been soaked in mud for weeks. It is part of the nurses’ work to distribute those stores. The train is electrically lighted throughout, and generates its own electricity. It is an odd life that the staff of an ambulance train lives, and their hours are worse than those of any newspaper men. Sometimes they are running between hospital towns far from the front, at others they are in the districts threatened by aeroplanes. It is no uncommon experience for them to arrive at a station near which bombs have just been dropped; they are frequently within sound of the guns, and most of them had a Red Cross painted on each carriage roof in the pious hope that it may be some protection. And often they are hard at work all night, for it is a favourite plan to load them up in the evening, or they may be travelling all day and only discharge their patients towards midnight.

I should have liked to watch the unloading of the khaki train, for it does not unload through the window's as the others are compelled to do, but has wide doors in the centre of each carriage. This, of course, makes the work much more expeditious. It is very interesting to watch the unloading of any of the trains; the speed, precision, and'quietness with which the work is carried out are marvellous. At one station it Avas all done by St. John Ambulance men from north of England collieries, men with muscles like steel. They would come swinging along in perfect silence past the platform, where we stood, two men to each stretcher, and Avoulcl disappear within one of the carriages. Presently the loaded stretcher would appear at a Avindow, and Avould be slowly shoved out to he seized by a stretcher company standing outside Avith their arms raised to the fidlest extent, and then very sloAvly and without the least jar loAvered to the leA T el of their doAvn-SAvung hands, and back tAVO men Avould come with their burden. A Salvation Army man told me that once he had taken one of his old officers, a man trained to grim Avork, doAvn to the station to see the men unloaded, and that in a feAV minutes the old man turned away with the tears rolling cloavu his cheeks, saying he could not bear to look on at so much misery and horror. That was in the earliest days. Now everything is done with such perfect care and order that the onlooker gets no such painful impression. The SAvathed figure lies on the stretcher face Upwards. The face looking out from the blankets is often plump and healthily coloured, for the men, though wounded, may have been in firstclass condition. “ You must remember,” the doctors say, “ that these men are not ill. They are well men injured.” Here and there, of course, are the sick men, racked Avith rheumatism, worn with pneumonia or perhaps enteric, or shattered

men, biting their lips to keep back a moan, but they seemed to us to be in the minority, and the general effect was infuriating at the sight of so much fine manhood brought low, rather than heart-breaking. Somehow the heartbreak came later when all the stretcher cases had been carried away and there followed the men fit to walk to the motor ambulances, the ragged, weary men, caked with mud, tattered and beggarly, limping along on bandaged feet, carefully guarding an injured arm, their heads perhaps swathed in bandages, the most forlorn, melancholy wrecks of a gallant company that one could imagine. 1 used to feel glad that their wives and mothers could not see the piteous sight; but weak and worn as these men were, the old spirit flashed out, and they jested among themselves as they waited for the cars to take them to the hospital.