Nothing of Importance: A record of eight months at the front with a Welsh battalion, October, 1915, to June, 1916Adams, Bernard
History
Nothing of Importance: A record of eight months at the front with a Welsh battalion, October, 1915, to June, 1916
Adams, Bernard
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English
The process of “coming to” was unpleasant and uninteresting. I do not
think I distinguished myself by any originality, so will not attempt
to describe it. That was a long interminable day, and my arm hurt a
good deal. In the afternoon I was told that I should be pleased to hear
that there was no bone broken. I was anything but pleased. I wanted the
bone to be broken, as I wanted to go to “Blighty.” This worried me all
day. I wondered if I should get to England or not. Then in the evening
the sister (I found that the nurses should be called sisters) dressed
the wound. That was distinctly unpleasant. It took hours and hours and
hours before it began to get even twilight. I have never known so long
a day. And then I could not sleep. They injected morphia at last, but
I awoke after three or four hours feeling more tired than ever.
THURSDAY
I can hardly disentangle these days; night and day ran into one
another. I can remember little about Thursday. I could not sleep
however much I wanted to; and all the time my brain was working so
hard, thinking. I worried about the company: they must be in the
line now. Would Edwards remember this, and that? Had I left him the
map, or was it among those maps in my valise which Lewis had gone to
Morlancourt to fetch?
And all the time there were rifle-grenades about; I daren’t let the
buzzing come, because it was all rifle-grenades really; and always I
kept seeing Lance-Corporal Allan lying there. Why could I not get rid
of the picture of him? Yet I was afraid I might forget; and it was
important that I should remember....
I remember the waiting to have my arm dressed. It was like waiting
before the dentist takes up the drill again. I watched the man next to
me out of the corner of my eye, and felt it intensely if he seemed to
wince, or drew in his breath. And I remember in the morning Mr. Bevan
dressed my wound. I looked the other way. For a week I thought the
wound was above instead of just below the elbow. “This will hurt,” he
said once.
Some time in the day the man behind the screen died. I had heard him
groaning all day; and there was the rhythmic sound of pumping--oxygen,
I suppose.... I heard a lot of moving behind the screen, and at last
it was taken away and I saw the corner for the first time and in it an
empty bed with clean sheets.
The man next to me, with the bandaged head, kept talking deliriously to
the orderly about his being on a submarine. Once the orderly smiled at
me as he answered the absurd questions.
There was one good incident I remember. After the surgeon had dressed
my arm, I said, “Is there any chance of this getting me to Blighty?”
And I thought he did not hear; he was looking the other way. But
suddenly I heard that calm deliberate voice:
“Yes, that is a Blighty one. There is enough damage to those muscles
to keep you in Blighty several months.” And this made all the rest
bearable somehow.
FRIDAY
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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