SURGERY UNDER FIRE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 566, 2 December 1915, Page 12

SURGERY UNDER FIRE.

THE MEDICAL CORPS AT GALLIPOLI. 1 HOW THE WOUNDED WERE CLEARED FROM THE BEACH. Whatever charges may have been cited agaiifst the handling and treatment of the wounded at the base hospitals and along the lines of com'miinication, from a month's observation on shdre with the Ist Australian Division, and having seen the medical staff organisation tested under the stress of a desperate battle, I am convinced of the celerity and care with which the wounded are taken from the midst of shot and shell down to the clearing stations 011 the beach at Anzac (says the j special representative of, the Melbourne "Age" at Gallipoli). In-order that some idea may be gained of the bravery, the resource and coolness of the medical units, in which I include all stretcher bearers, I will describe the means adopted to evacuate wounded. My experiences " I gathered, not from the ordinary times when the patients are coming in a few at a time, but when, in the heat of a general engagement, there is, unfortunately, a continuous line of wounded and. dying! being slowly drafted ,down to the beach. It is only comparatively slowly, for the way is arduous up ■ and down the gullies and hills. The Conditions. Dressing stations have to be as near to the firing line as is consistent with safety. As there is no place quite safe, and as space is a matter for some consideration, there are dressing stations just abutting the trenches. Sometimes a communication trench widened and hollowed out has formed a place where the doctors can give first aid and put* a dressing on a w r ound that will enable the man to get down to the beach. I give this specific occasic?s, though it is always the same—there were bullets streaming down" in front of the little, roofed dug-outs, and occasionally they came through. Shells whined round the hill and fell a few feet away. Somehow they never burst right on top, which would have meant the wrecking of the station. Into this zone of death, of bursting Bin and lOin shell, of spluttering shrapnel in broad daylight, the stretcher bearers had to go and work. They went right into the jaws of the ikttlc, into the places where the shells were tearing down the trenches, and the doctors and some of the padres went with them and commenced in the trenches the binding up of limbs. From the trenches the men had to be carried in blankets and waterproof sheets, taken at a run down to the dressing station, where at once they were placed on a stretcher and lifted on to the dressing stand. A doctor bent over the case, skilfully wrapped the wound,in antiseptic dressings, and called to the stretcher bearers. They at once lifted down the stretcher, fixed the straps over their shoulders, andwithout a second's hesitation faced again the tornado of §hell and bullets going on their way down to the beach, more than a mile away, round the foot of the hills, down into the gullies. Those were the badly wounded cases. Men Desire to Help Themselves. It Wanted many minutes till the battle reached its height, when, standing behind the firing line, I saw two stretcher bearers carrying a

mnn tliem.solves struck with shrapnel—one in the fool who limped away as if he had received a "kick at football; the other needed help himself. Other S.B. men came at a double through the dust of the burst shell, and bore on the wounded man. Past inc, one after another, in an almost continuous line, came men holding their hands streaming with blood, men, limping men, with their I lips cut. "Where's the dressing station, mate?" They receive the direction, and have to go on again through the shell fire. "Oh, only a ''few teeth gone, I think." "Winged me in the arm." "Got it in the shoulder." So the wounded explain as they wait a minute for breath in shelter of sandbags, having hurried from the firing line. They all go on. Work Done at the Double. "Stretcher bearers! Stretcher bearers! Here, here, stretcher bearers!" There seemed no end to the cry. The men, braver than can be imagined or pictured, with one thought, the reaching the wounded man, run up at a double. They take the nearest case in all probability. The doctor may come with them with his medical chest. Under a hail of bullets lie performs a few hasty, dexterous dressings, 'ind, moving as fast as is consistent with safety for the wounded, the stretcher bearers go off at a jog trot to the dressing station lower down, further from the infernal regions above, but none Ihe less in a danger zone. Along the trenches where the men are fighting all that can be done for the moment is to lift some poor lad on to a ledge and moisten his lips with water. As soon as the press is cleared he will be attended to. it may be worthily recorded here that amongst those first men who dashed across to the captured Turkish trenches was-'a doctor. No words I can write can ever picture the relief that noble act alone gave. Down to the Beach Clearihg Stations To the place where.the wounded are dressed and sent off to the hospital ships it might be a mile if one <;oul(i go direct. But the paths wind round the hills and along the sides of steep banks. The way is stony, it is full of abrupt The air is filled with shells and bullets. Imagine the wounded being carried or making their way along these routes down to the beach. On the way they may pass several clearing stations and receive help. I have watched the men just doing ordinary duties struck with bullets and shell seek medical attention in these halfway stations, the doctors sometimes standing on the scooped out platforms before their dugouts waiting for the wounded. doctors had been stationed all along the routes, and it was by this means that the pressure on the stations on the beach was relieved. Men came to the beach all ready treated and ticketed, only waiting a means of being placed on one or other of the hospital ships as the white or red tickets -they received indicated. The check came in the supply of barges and pinnaces. But it was only a matter of a few hours, and the beach stations, that had perhaps 300 men lving closely packed between the high piles of boxes of , stores used for protection against shell, were clearing as quickly as they filled. It was dusk when I first saw the wounded coming in, and in the fierce light of acetylene lamps, the bloody faces of the men, their torn reddened clothes made a picture of dreadful gruesomeness. Illuminated Hospital Ships. As night falls and the war ships that suggest strength and power

fade away, and you sec only the occasional leaping light from their guns, there appears first one and then two, sometimes six or eight, red crosses on the sides of the hospital ships. In the dark hours of the night the rows of green lights, the blood red crosses, the lights on masts and decks, make them like floating palaces, and the wounded know that they are there to takfe them in comfort. The fleet has vanished; you do not even see the dark, , sinister shapes of the destroyers, yet j you know they must be about. They j never venture within that fairly glowing circle of light that falls from the sides decks of the hospital ships. that hospitals have been established at Mudros, on the island of Lemnos, some of the hospital ships go no further, and discharge those men who, will, after a few days, be able to get back to the firing line. The badly wounded are sent back to the base with the least delay possible. . 0 Difficulties on the Left Flank. It was nearly three miles that the wounded had to drag themselves back, or the stretcher bearers had to carry them miles over rough, untrodden paths in the beds of dried-up mountain torrents, past the dead that had fallen as the battle line advanced. Stretcher bearers worked till they dropped, and from sheer exhaustion had to be sent away themselves. The men reached the few dressing stations only to find that they w r ere already crowded with serious cases that were lying in rows in the sun, or in a few vacated dugouts, and they had but to turn to the sap that led to the main Australian station. It meant, another mile in a hot, breezeless sap, travby scores of mules, to avoid which you had to press against the wall. < The doctors did what they could with the materials at hand. Three days after the fight began they had erected a tent, and then a tarpaulin stretched over a rough framework gave the suffering men some small degree of comfort. Yet they bore their hurts silently. They accepted the dictum of the doctors to lie still (perhaps j another half day), untiL the stretcher bearers could take them through to the clearing station on the beach. The dead ldy in lines, covered with a blanket. Wounded mules whinnied and whined for water. 'Day and night the unending lines'of the wounded filed by, some too tired to move almost, others anxious only to get away from the surroundings. The doctors looked haggard and worn." sut the laces of the men were coated with yellow dirt. Their cheeks were bloodstained. But they were not complaining. The worst cases even tried to tell the stretcher bearers tales of their light, of the battle that the Turk put up, of his bravery, of the bravery/bf their own men.