The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1917-03-27
Soldiers Sensations In Battle.

(By Lewis R. Freeman, in the April
Popular Mechanics Magazine)
1t was recently my privilege to see,
in single period of 36 hours, all the
stages through which a wounded SOL
dier Of the British army passes from
the time he is brought back to the
most advanced dressing station on the
Somme until he is put aboard the
hospital steamer for England Or sent
to convalescent depot 70 recuper-
ate his strength in France. During
this short time I saw several tflOus-
and wounded men-with injuries all
the way from two hours old to as
many weeks-(aside, Of course, from
their magnificent courage and fortl-
tude) was the apparent absence
among them of poignant physical SUI
fering.
One Of the most painfully wounded
men I saw was also one of the most
slightly wounded \ German Shell
penetrating deep into the soft earth
before exploding had driven him un-
scathed by the explosion itself.
straight through a barbed-wire en-
tanglement Faring better in one
respect than the man who jumped
into a bramble bush in the nursery
rhyme, he did not scratch out both
eyes" Protected, as they were, by
rather beetling brow, these escaped
injury; and they were about the only
part of his unfortunate anatomy that
cid escane While there was not a
cut on him over a haif-inch deep,
neither we're there more than a few
inches OF cuticle at any place on his
body that had been spared by the
cruel harbs. Some of the furrows
on his back and legs were over two
feet long.
"He brc!ght up like a shared par
fridge" said one of the doctors who
attended him, ''in tangle of the
wire and they had to cut this away
before he could be taken out. AL
though the cuts were not deep, the
germ-laden earth of the Somme was
so thoroughly rubbed into them that
only repeated injections of antitox-
in saved him from blood poisoning.
I have never known human body to
tneutralize' so much antitoxin. Dur
ing the first two weeks he was here
he was constantly in greater pain
than any one Of the many hundreds
of far worse wounded men that pass
ed through our hands in that time.
One cannot talk long with Tom
my on the Somme without hearing
some Wierd tale or another of what
he has seen happen to one of his
comrades as a result of she'll explo-
sions in the trenches. For obvious
reasons these tales are almost inva-
riably told about some one else; in
fact, the one frst-hand recital OF
such an incident that I heard was 4
far less illuminative account of what
happened than might well have been
told by one of the chief actors COM
rades. I talked with the man in b
hospital where he had been for a
month recovering from crushed pei
vic bones and internal injuries caus-
ed by impact with the limb, 20 feet
from the ground, of tree against
which he had been thrown by a Ger
man shell exploding in his trench.
"I was sitting On a sandbag," he
said, "when the blighter that done
the business pumped right into the
bottom of the trench and buried it
self deep into the mud before explod-
ing. Up flew me and the sandbag to-
gether, and the first thing l knew
was a ell of a crack across the ips.
and there I was angling in the bloom
ing tree like last weeks wash. Didn't
have to 'ang on at all. 1t just plas-
tered me round the linn like piece
of soft meat. couldn't climb down,
and, as they 'ad no ladders, there was