Blighty meant life, life
and happiness and physical comfort. What we had
left behind over there was death and mutilation and
bodily and mental suffering. Up from the depths
of hell we came and reached out our hands with pathetic
eagerness to the good things that Blighty had for
us.
I never saw a finer sight than the
faces of those boys, glowing with love, as they strained
their eyes for the first sight of the homeland.
Those in the bunks below, unable to move, begged those
on deck to come down at the first land raise and tell
them how it all looked.
A lump swelled in my throat, and I
prayed that I might never go back to the trenches.
And I prayed, too, that the brave boys still over
there might soon be out of it.
We steamed into the harbor of Southampton
early in the afternoon. Within an hour all of
those that could walk had gone ashore. As we
got into the waiting trains the civilian populace cheered.
I, like everybody else I suppose, had dreamed often
of coming back sometime as a hero and being greeted
as a hero. But the cheering, though it came straight
from the hearts of a grateful people, seemed, after
all, rather hollow. I wanted to get somewhere
and rest.
It seemed good to look out of the
windows and see the signs printed in English.
That made it all seem less like a dream.
I was taken first to the Clearing
Hospital at Eastleigh. As we got off the train
there the people cheered again, and among the civilians
were many wounded men who had just recently come back.
They knew how we felt.
The first thing at the hospital was
a real honest-to-God bath. In a tub. With
hot water! Heavens, how I wallowed. The orderly
helped me and had to drag me out. I’d have
stayed in that tub all night if he would have let
me.
Out of the tub I had clean things
straight through, with a neat blue uniform, and for
once was free of the cooties. The old uniform,
blood-stained and ragged, went to the baking and disinfecting
plant.
That night all of us newly arrived
men who could went to the Y.M.C.A. to a concert given
in our honor. The chaplain came around and cheered
us up and gave us good fags.
Next morning I went around to the
M.O. He looked my arm over and calmly said that
it would have to come off as gangrene had set in.
For a moment I wished that piece of shrapnel had gone
through my head. I pictured myself going around
with only one arm, and the prospect didn’t look
good.
However, the doctor dressed the arm
with the greatest care and told me I could go to a
London hospital as I had asked, for I wanted to be
near my people at Southall. These were the friends
I had made before leaving Blighty and who had sent
me weekly parcels and letters.
I arrived in London on Tuesday and
was taken in a big Red Cross motor loaned by Sir Charles
Dickerson to the Fulham Hospital in Hammersmith.
I was overjoyed, as the hospital was very near Southall,
and Mr. and Mrs. Puttee were both there to meet me.
The Sister in charge of my ward, Miss
Malin, is one of the finest women I have met.
I owe it to her care and skill that I still have my
good right arm. She has since married and the
lucky man has one of the best of wives. Miss
Malin advised me right at the beginning not to submit
to an amputation.
My next few weeks were pretty awful.
I was in constant pain, and after the old arm began
to come around under Miss Malin’s treatment
one of the doctors discovered that my left hand was
queer. It had been somewhat swollen, but not
really bad. The doctor insisted upon an X-ray
and found a bit of shrapnel imbedded. He was all
for an operation. Operations seemed to be the
long suit of most of those doctors. I imagine
they couldn’t resist the temptation to get some
practice with so much cheap material all about.
I consented this time, and went down for the pictures
on Lord Mayor’s Day. Going to the pictures
is Tommy’s expression for undergoing an anesthetic.
I was under ether two hours and a
half, and when I came out of it the left hand was
all to the bad and has been ever since. There
followed weeks of agonizing massage treatments.
Between treatments though, I had it cushy.
My friends were very good to me, and
several Americans entertained me a good deal.
I had a permanent walking-out pass good from nine
in the morning until nine at night. I saw almost
every show in the city, and heard a special performance
of the Messiah at Westminster Abbey. Also I enjoyed
a good deal of restaurant life.
London is good to the wounded men.
There is entertainment for all of them. A good
many of these slightly wounded complain because they
cannot get anything to drink, but undoubtedly it is
the best thing for them. It is against the law
to serve men in the blue uniform of the wounded.
Men in khaki can buy all the liquor they want, the
public houses being open from noon to two-thirty and
from six P.M. to nine-thirty. Treating is not
allowed. Altogether it works out very well and
there is little drunkenness among the soldiers.
I eventually brought up in a Convalescent
Hospital in Brentford, Middlesex, and was there for
three weeks. At the end of that time I was placed
in category C 3.
The system of marking the men in England
is by categories, A, B, and C. A 1, 2, and 3 are for
active service. A 4 is for the under-aged.
B categories are for base service, and C is for home
service. C 3 was for clerical duty, and as I was
not likely to become efficient again as a soldier,
it looked like some kind of bookkeeping for me for
the duration of the war.
Unless one is all shot to pieces,
literally with something gone, it is hard to get a
discharge from the British army. Back in the early
days of 1915, a leg off was about the only thing that
would produce a discharge.
When I was put at clerical duty, I
immediately began to furnish trouble for the British
army, not intentionally, of course, but quite effectively.
The first thing I did was to drop a typewriter and
smash it. My hands had spells when they absolutely
refused to work. Usually it was when I had something
breakable in them. After I had done about two
hundred dollars’ damage indoors they tried me
out as bayonet instructor. I immediately dropped
a rifle on a concrete walk and smashed it. They
wanted me to pay for it, but the M.O. called attention
to the fact that I shouldn’t have been put at
the work under my category.
They then put me back at bookkeeping
at Command Headquarters, Salisbury, but I couldn’t
figure English money and had a bad habit of fainting
and falling off the high stool. To cap the climax,
I finally fell one day and knocked down the stovepipe,
and nearly set the office afire. The M.O. then
ordered me back to the depot at Winchester and recommended
me for discharge. I guess he thought it would
be the cheapest in the long run.
The adjutant at Winchester didn’t
seem any too pleased to see me. He said I looked
as healthy as a wolf, which I did, and that they would
never let me out of the army. He seemed to think
that my quite normal appearance would be looked upon
as a personal insult by the medical board. I
said that I was sorry I didn’t have a leg or
two gone, but it couldn’t be helped.
While waiting for the Board, I was
sent to the German Prison Camp at Winnal Downs as
corporal of the permanent guard. I began to fear
that at last they had found something that I could
do without damaging anything, and my visions of the
U.S.A. went a-glimmering. I was with the Fritzies
for over a week, and they certainly have it soft and
cushy.
They have as good food as the Tommies.
They are paid ninepence a day, and the work they do
is a joke. They are well housed and kept clean
and have their own canteens, where they can buy almost
anything in the way of delicacies. They are decently
treated by the English soldiers, who even buy them
fags out of their own money. The nearest thing
I ever saw to humiliation of a German was a few good-natured
jokes at their expense by some of the wits in the
guard. The English know how to play fair with
an enemy when they have him down.
I had about given up hope of ever
getting out of the army when I was summoned to appear
before the Travelling Medical Board. You can
wager I lost no time in appearing.
The board looked me over with a discouraging
and cynical suspicion. I certainly did look as
rugged as a navvy. When they gave me a going
over, they found that my heart was out of place and
that my left hand might never limber up again.
They voted for a discharge in jig time. I had
all I could do to keep from howling with joy.
It was some weeks before the final
formalities were closed up. The pension board
passed on my case, and I was given the magnificent
sum of sixteen shillings and sixpence a week, or $3.75.
I spent the next few weeks in visiting my friends
and, eventually, at the 22nd Headquarters at Bermondsey,
London, S.C., received the papers that once more made
me a free man.
The papers read in part, “He
is discharged in consequence of paragraph 392, King’s
Rules and Regulations. No longer fit for service.”
In another part of the book you will find a reproduction
of the character discharge also given. The discharged
man also receives a little silver badge bearing the
inscription, “For King and Empire, Services
Rendered.” I think that I value this badge
more than any other possession.
Once free, I lost no time in getting
my passport into shape and engaged a passage on the
St. Paul, to sail on the second of June.
Since my discharge is dated the twenty-eighth of May,
you can see that I didn’t waste any time.
My friends at Southall thought I was doing things
in a good deal of a hurry. The fact is, I was
fed up on war. I had had a plenty. And I
was going to make my get-away before the British War
Office changed its mind and got me back in uniform.
Mrs. Puttee and her eldest son saw me off at Euston
Station. Leaving them was the one wrench, as they
had become very dear to me. But I had to go.
If Blighty had looked good, the thought of the U.S.A.
was better.
My passage was uneventful. No
submarines, no bad weather, nothing disagreeable.
On the eighth day I looked out through a welter of
fog and rain to the place where the Statue of Liberty
should have been waving a greeting across New York
harbor. The lady wasn’t visible, but I
knew she was there. And even in a downpour equal
to anything furnished by the choicest of Flanders
rainstorms, little old New York looked better than
anything I could imagine, except sober and staid old
Boston.
That I am at home, safe and free of
the horrors of war, is to me a strange thing.
I think it comes into the experience of most of the
men who have been over there and who have been invalided
out of the service. Looking back on the awfulness
of the trenches and the agonies of mind and body,
the sacrifice seems to fade into insignificance beside
the satisfaction of having done a bit in the great
and just cause.
Now that our own men are going over,
I find myself with a very deep regret that I cannot
go too. I can only wish them the best of luck
and rest in confidence that every man will do his uttermost.