Behind the Scenes in Warring GermanyFox, Edward Lyell
History
Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany
Fox, Edward Lyell
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
"What I marvel at is," said Dr. Sanders, "that a man can go into the
battleline and come out alive. The amount of lead and steel that is sent
flying through the air is appalling. Of course we will not have any
statistics on it until after the war is over, but everything I can learn
from the wounded, and from the nature of their wounds--and I have men
here hit five times--they must be using far, far more ammunition,
proportionately of course, than in any war in the world's history. By
the way, judging from my patients, the Russians cannot be using
dum-dums. I have yet to find one in a man. For every three rifle ball
wounds, we get two caused by shrapnel and about one quarter by fragments
of bursting shells. We had a man who was hit by a piece of shell--and
those fragments are terribly hot. It cut his throat to his ear, but it
just stopped at the sheath of the artery. His life was saved by the
minute distance. The Germans have the greatest confidence in us here. We
have one man here who might have been sent on to another hospital five
weeks ago. We didn't send him, though. It was almost a form of paranoia
and honestly I dreaded sending that man away. I feared the nervous
shock. Doctors who come from the front tell me that they have actually
seen cases of men being killed, who only had a bullet wound in their
hand. It was the nervous shock that killed them.
"You see those two Russians," and the doctor pointed towards two
heavy-faced patients. "Well, they were in mortal terror that we were
making them well so as to have more fun by killing them later. It took
two weeks to convince them that they would not be put to death. They are
pets here now."
The doctor was called away a moment, and as I watched him stride off,
his sturdy figure carrying well the olive-drab of the United States
army, I noticed again that the heads of the wounded turned, following
him with thankful eyes, and it was not difficult longer to understand
how these few Americans were able to come into the midst of strange
Silesia, and transform that theater, where at night if they forget to
shut the door, they can hear the ribald clamor from the cheap cabaret
next door; it was not difficult to understand how they, all of them
having their first experience with war, had developed an efficiency
which the Germans had complimented by sending them the worst cases from
the firing line. That sturdy, wide-shouldered man in army olive-drab
personified something that made you thrill at the thought that you were
an American.
But Dr. Sanders was not the last impression that I had of Gleiwitz,
although he waved good-by to me at the train.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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