CURIOUS WOUNDS IN WAR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5739, 5 December 1896, Page 1

CURIOUS WOUNDS IN WAR.

The duties of an army surgeon during actual hostilities are inconceivably distressing. But often, in the midst of the terrible tragedy (says the writer of an interesting article in the Evening Standard) he come 3 upon a casualty so curious as to border on the ridiculous. There was a curious relic at Netley Museum some years ago, which some barbarian has since stolen, consisting of two French coins found in an English soldier's leg during the Crimean campaign. As he was a wellknown spendthrift, who never had a penny in his pocket, the discovery was inexplicable until it was found that a French soldier, fighting beside him, had had his pocket and all its contents carried away by a missile. Examples of this kind of accident are very numerous, where soldiers are killed, not directly by bullets, but indirectly by objects which, the balls force in their bodies. Everything that a soldier wears ov carries on his person is liable to pass into the body, and probing of wounds is often like the examination of magpies' nests. Pieces of knives, and of watches, of boots, belts, buckles, swords, water canteens, keys, coins, etc., are fished out of arms, legs and bodies after every serious battle; and no doubt there is many a veteran alive and well who has still some relic in his body of stormy tunes. A curious result of a wound was that in the case where an English officer was struck on the head during one of our Eastern quarrels. Ho received the wound while giving a command to his men and fell insensible before finishing it. He was taken off the field, brought home some time after, and placed in hospital, being all the time unconscious. But when the piece of depressed bone was raised off his braiu; he started up in bed, and, in loud tones, finished the command that he had begun some months before in a foreign land. Round balls used to commit strange freaks in the old days. At the battle of Alma a soldier was struck by a cannon ball and fell dead. When they took him up the huge mass rolled out of his body. It had been stopped by the elastic skin of the 'back. Spent balls had a singular way of rolling over men's bodies and causing terrible destruction without leaving any external mark. During the Indian Mutiny a fatigued gunner lay on a gun to rest, the ground being wet. Presently a welldirected ball from the Sepoys passed over his body, cutting away the projecting parts of his vest and breaking his arm, but apparently doing no further injury. Three days later, however, the greater part of his leg fellaway. He had not at -the time of the occurrence perceived that the ball had pressed heavily on his leg, and he died a firm believer in that very prevalent military fallacy— " windage/ During the New Zealand campaign the Maoris, in one engagement, wounded sixty-eight British soldiers, while the British, for some inexplicable cause, wounded ten of their own number. And it is said that during the Crimean War oue-third of the wounds treated were accidental. But, no doubt, many of these supposed accidental wounds were really inflicted by the enemy, for there is 'a widely prevalent belief among a large number of wounded soldiers that they have been shot by their comrades from behind when they have actually been shot by the enemy in front. This is often owing to the curious fact that the first twinge of pain may be felt, not where the bullet enters, but where it comes out. A , bullet hit an officer of the 7th Fusiliers at Inkermann in the neck, and passed out > behind. He thought he had been pricked . from behind with a sword and turned i round to see the officer in his rear fall dead from the same bullet.