Chapter 3 No.3

My knowledge of subsequent events is based partly on information obtained from Private, now Sergeant, R. Sinclair, who was next me in the trench, and at once bandaged up my head with his emergency field-dressing. It was still day when I came back to life. My first consciousness was of intolerable cramp in the legs. When Sinclair saw that I was breathing, he laid me down on the straw at the bottom of the trench and tried to give me a drink out of my water-bottle.

I was unable to move any part of my body except the left hand, with which I patted the right-hand pocket of my coat, where I had carried, since leaving Plymouth, a flask of old brandy. Red Cross books say that brandy is the worst thing to give for head wounds; but Sinclair poured the whole contents down my throat, and I believe the stimulant saved my life. I have been told that while I was unconscious Captain Lumsden came down the line to see what could be done for me. After drinking the contents of my flask, I remember sending him up a message to say I was feeling much better; and the answer came back, "Captain Lumsden says he is very glad indeed you are feeling better." Sinclair dug in under the parapet and made the trench more comfortable for me to lie in; shells were bursting overhead, and several times I was conscious that he was covering my face with his hand to protect me from the flying shrapnel. During the rest of the afternoon I had alternate periods of consciousness. I sent up another message asking how things were going, and the answer came back, "Captain Lumsden is killed."

When I next regained consciousness Sinclair told me that the enemy had again reached the Route Nationale. "But don't you worry, sir," he said, "we'll stick it all right; they won't come any farther."

Just after midnight the order came to retire.

Sinclair and the other occupants of the trench lifted me out, this operation coinciding with a fusillade from the enemy, who from their position on the road were firing volleys into the night-a great waste of ammunition. Still, the bullets must have been close overhead, for the men put me back into the trench, jumped in after me, and waited till all was quiet.

The second attempt to get me out was more successful. I was laid on to a greatcoat and lifted up by six men. It is probably not easy to carry along such a burden in the dark, and they made a very bad job of it. Some one suggested that a substitute for a stretcher could be made with three rifles, and the suggestion was at once adopted with most painful results. I still remember the agony caused by the weight of my body pressing down on my neck and the small of the back, while my head, just clearing the ground, trailed among the wet beetroot leaves. The distance to the little wood was not great, but to me the journey seemed to take hours.

As the men struggled along with their awkward burden, shadowy forms of the retiring company passed close by in the pitch darkness of the night. "Lend a hand here, some of you chaps," said Sinclair; "here's a wounded officer. Come on, Ginger." Ginger, a big stout fellow, volunteered to carry me on his back, and asked me if I could hold on. He got me on to his back, and I held on with my left arm round his neck; but we did not go for more than a hundred yards or so-the dead-weight was too much for his strength-when the party came to a halt.

During the whole of that night I was only intermittently conscious of what was going on around me. The only men I remember speaking to after I had been laid down are the Regimental Sergeant-Major and Lieutenant Houldsworth. The Regimental Sergeant-Major laid his mackintosh on the ground for me to lie on. To Houldsworth I said what a fine thing it was the men carrying me out of the trench; and he replied, "It is nothing at all, but very natural," or words to that effect.

My one fear at this time was to be left behind and taken prisoner, and the one hope, a very forlorn one, was that the battalion stretcher-bearers would be able to carry me away. But I heard some one in the dark say that there were no stretchers, and that orders had come to retire and leave all wounded.

There was shuffling about of men and whispered orders, then the not very distant tramp of marching along the road, a sound which grew fainter and fainter, till all in the night was silent: the battalion had gone.

After an indeterminate time-perhaps half an hour, perhaps an hour-I opened my eyes. I was not alone. Two kilted forms, indistinct and vaguely familiar, were seated on the ground close beside my head.

"Who are you?" I said, "and what are you doing here?"

"Macartney and Sinclair," replied the voice.

Macartney was the soldier who had acted as servant for me since leaving Plymouth, but the name of Sinclair was not familiar. "Who is Sinclair?" I asked; and I remember the words of his reply: "The soldier, sir, who looked after you in the trench."

Each effort of speech and thought resulted in a short period of unconsciousness.

When I next recovered there was the sound on the road of marching men. Sinclair went off to find out who they were, and ask (vain and foolish hope it now seems) if they had stretchers or an ambulance!

He came back to say that two companies of the Royal Scots were marching down the road; they had no stretcher-bearers; the Major in command of the party, when he heard that Sinclair and Macartney remained behind, ordered them to rejoin their battalion. This the two soldiers at first refused to do, and only left on receiving a direct order from me. Sinclair went off first. Macartney stopped behind a moment to speak. "Have you any last message to send back to your family?" was what he said. But to this question I distinctly remember answering "No"; and also saying, or perhaps only thinking, that I would be my own messenger home to Scotland.

Macartney also disappeared into the night, and this time I was really alone.