Our Casualty, and Other Stories Part 4

"Binny began to get indignant. He said he wasn't dead, that anyone could see he wasn't dead, and that it would be a barbarous thing to bury him.

The orderlies, who were very nice fellows, admitted that Binny seemed to be alive, but they stuck to it that it was their business to carry out their orders. Into the mortuary Binny would have to go. They tried to console him by saying that the funeral would not be till the next morning. But that did not cheer Binny much. In the end they took pity on the poor fellow and said they would go away for an hour and come back.

If Binny could get the order changed they'd be very pleased to leave him where he was. It wasn't, so they explained, any pleasure to them to put Binny into a coffin.

"Binny did not get much chance during his hour's reprieve. The only person who came into the ward was a V.A.D. girl, quite a nice little girl, good-looking enough to be bullied a lot by the sister-in-charge.

Binny told her about the fix he was in, and at first she thought he was raving and tried to soothe him down. In the end, to pacify him, I suppose, she went and asked the orderlies about him. She had not been out in France long, that V.A.D., and wasn't properly accustomed to things. When she found out that what Binny had told her was true, she got fearfully excited. She couldn't do anything herself, of course, but she ran off to the matron as hard as she could. The matron was a bit startled just at first, but she kept her head.

"'Tell Private Binny,' she said, 'that if he has any complaints to make they must be made at the proper time and through the proper channels.

The C.O. goes round the hospital every morning between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. Private Binny can speak to him then.'

"'But by that time,' said the V. A.D. girl, 'the man will be buried.'

"'I can't help that,' said the matron.' The discipline of the hospital must be maintained. It would be perfectly impossible to run a place like this if every man was allowed to make complaints at all hours of the day and to all sorts of people.'

"That V.A.D. was a plucky girl, and persistent--they sent her home afterwards in disgrace--and she talked on until the matron agreed to take a look at Binny. I think she was staggered when she saw him sitting up in bed and heard him cursing the orderlies, who had come back by that time. But she couldn't do anything. She wasn't really a bad sort of woman, and I don't suggest for a moment that she wanted to have Binny buried alive. But she had no authority. She could not alter an order.

And there the thing was in black and white. However, she persuaded the orderlies to wait another half-hour. She went off and found one of the surgeons. He was a decent sort of fellow, but young, and he didn't see his way to interfering. There had been several mistakes made in that hospital, and the C.O. had been rather heavily strafed, which meant of course that everyone under him was strafed worse, on the good old principle of pa.s.sing it on. That surgeon's idea was to avoid trouble, if possible. Somebody, he said, had made a mistake, but it was too late, then, to set things right, and the best thing to do was to say nothing about it. He was sorry for Binny, but he couldn't do anything.

"When the V.A.D. girl heard that, she lost her temper. She said she'd write home and tell her father about it, and that her father was a Member of Parliament and would raise h.e.l.l about it She didn't, of course, say h.e.l.l!"

"She couldn't do that," said Mackintosh. "The censor wouldn't pa.s.s a letter with a story like that in it."

"Quite right," said the padre, "and it wouldn't have been any good if her father had got the letter. He couldn't have done anything. If he'd asked a question in Parliament he'd simply have been told a lie of some kind. It was a silly sort of threat to make. The V.A.D. saw that herself and began to cry.

"That upset the surgeon so much that he went round and took a look at Binny. The man was pale by that time and in the deuce of a funk. But he wasn't in the least dead. The surgeon felt that it was a hard case, and said he'd take the risk of speaking to the C.O. about it.

"The C.O. of No. 97 General at that time was an oldish man, who suffered from suppressed gout, which is the regular medical name for unsuppressed temper. He said emphatically that Private Binny was reported dead, marked dead, removed from the hospital books, and must stay dead. The whole system of the R.A.M.C. would break down, he said, and things would drift into chaos if dead men were allowed to come to life again whenever they chose.

"The surgeon was a plucky young fellow in his way. Remembering how pretty the V.A.D. looked when she cried, he pressed Binny's case on the C.O. The old gentleman said he might have done something two hours sooner; but the hospital returns had gone to the D.D.M.S. and couldn't possibly be got back again or altered. In the end, after a lot more talk about regulations and discipline, he said he'd telephone to the D.D.M.S.

office and see if anything could be done. It is greatly to his credit that he did telephone, explaining the case as well as he could over a faulty wire. The staff colonel in the office was perfectly civil, but said that the returns had been forwarded by a motor dispatch rider to G.H.Q. and could not be recalled by any possibility. The C.O., who seems to have begun to realize the horrible position of Binny, asked advice as to what he ought to do. The staff colonel said he'd never come across a case of the kind before, but it seemed plain to him that Binny was dead, that is to say, officially dead. The Chaplain's Department, he thought, might be able to do something for a man after he was dead. If not n.o.body could.

"That," said O'Byrne with a smile, "is where I came in. The C.O. sent for me at once."

"I suppose," said Mackintosh, "that you straightened the whole thing out without difficulty?"

Mackintosh is always irritated at a suggestion that anyone connected with the medical profession can possibly make a mistake. When irritated he is apt to attempt a kind of heavy sarcasm which O'Byrne sucks in with obvious delight.

"No," said the padre, "I couldn't straighten it out. But I did the best I could. I went to see poor Binny. He was in the mortuary by that time.

I found him sitting up in his coffin crying like a child. I comforted him as well as I could."

"Poor devil," said Mackintosh. "Not that I believe a word of this story.

It couldn't have happened. But you may as well go on and tell us what you did. Sang hymns to him, I suppose."

"Not at all," said the padre. "I got him something to eat and a couple of blankets. That mortuary is a cold place, and, though you mightn't think it, a coffin is draughty. Next morning I buried him."

"G.o.d bless me!" said the A.P.M. explosively. "Do you mean to say you buried a man you knew to be alive?"

"Couldn't help it," said the padre. "It was in orders, matter of discipline, you know. Can't go back on discipline, can you, Mackintosh?

I got through it as quickly as I decently could. Then I let Binny out The graves in that cemetery are never filled in for an hour or two after the coffins are let down, so I had lots of time. Jolly glad poor Binny was to get out. He said he'd s.h.i.+vered all over when he heard 'The Last Post.' I had a suit of clothes for him; of course, civilian clothes."

The padre filled himself a gla.s.s of whisky and soda and lit his pipe.

He looked round with a smile of triumph. Most of us applauded him. He deserved it The story was one of his best imaginative efforts. I suppose the applause encouraged him to go further.

"I'll give you his address if you like," he said to the A.P.M. "He's working on a French farm and quite happy. But I don't see that you can possibly arrest him without getting the whole medical profession on your back. They said he was dead, you see, and, as Mackintosh will tell you, they never own up to making mistakes."

IV -- THE SECOND Ba.s.s

"Be careful, Bates," said Miss Willmot; "we don't want your neck broken."

"No fear, miss," said Lance-Corporal Bates; "I'm all right."

Lance-Corporal Bates had three gold bars on the sleeve of his tunic.

He might fairly be reckoned a man of courage. His position, when Miss Willmot spoke to him, demanded nerve. He stood on the top rail of the back of a chair, a feeble-looking chair. The chair was placed on a table which was inclined to wobble, because one of its legs was half an inch shorter than the other three. Sergeant O'Rorke, leaning on the table, rested most of his weight on the seat of the chair, thereby balancing Bates and preventing an upset. Miss Willmot sat on the corner of the table, so that it wobbled very little. Bates, perilously balanced, hammered a nail, the last necessary nail, into the wall through the topmost ray of a large white star. Then he crept cautiously down.

Standing beside Miss Willmot he surveyed the star.

"Looks a bit like Christmas, don't it, miss?" he said.

"The glitters on it," said Sergeant O'Rorke, "is the beautifullest that ever was seen. The diamonds on the King's Crown wouldn't be finer."

The star hung on the wall of the canteen opposite the counter. It was made of cotton wool pasted on cardboard. The wool had been supplied by a sympathetic nurse from a neighbouring hospital. It was looted from the medical stores. The frosting, which excited Sergeant O'Rorke's admiration, was done with sugar. It was Miss Nelly Davis, youngest and merriest of Miss Willmot's helpers, who suggested the sugar, when the powdered gla.s.s ordered from England failed to arrive.

"There can't be any harm in using it," she said. "What we're getting now isn't sugar at all, it is fine gravel. A stone of it wouldn't sweeten a single urn of tea."

Miss Willmot took the sugar from her stores as she accepted the looted cotton-wool, without troubling to search for excuse or justification.

She was a lady of strong will. When she made up her mind that the Christmas decorations of her canteen were to be the best in France she was not likely to stick at trifling breaches of regulations.

She looked round her with an expression of justifiable satisfaction. The long hut which served as a canteen looked wonderfully gay. Underneath the white star ran an inscription done in large letters made of ivy leaves. Miss Willmot, in the course of two years' service in the canteen of a base camp, had gained some knowledge of the soldier's heart Her inscription was calculated to make an immediate appeal. "A Merry Christmas," it ran, "And the Next in Blighty." The walls of the hut were hung round with festoons of coloured paper. Other festoons, red, blue, and green stretched across the room from wall to wall under the low ceiling. Chinese lanterns, swinging on wires, threatened the head of anyone more than six feet in height Sergeant O'Rorke, an Irish Guardsman until a wound lamed him, now a member of the camp police force, had to dodge the Chinese lanterns when he walked about Jam-pots and cigarette-tins, swathed in coloured paper, held bunches of holly and sprigs of mistletoe. They stood on the tables and the window sills.

But the counter was the crowning glory of the canteen. In the middle of it stood an enormous Christmas cake, sugar-covered, bedecked with flags.

Round the cake, built into airy castles, were hundreds of crackers. Huge dishes, piled high with mince pies, stood in rows along the whole length of the counter on each side of the cake. Behind them, rising to the height of five steps, was a long staircase made of packets of cigarettes.

"Sure, it's grand," said Sergeant O'Rorke; "and there isn't one only yourself, miss, who'd do all you be doing for the men."

Miss Willmot's eyes softened. They were keen, grey eyes, not often given to expressing tender feeling. At home in the old days men spoke of her as a good sport, who rode straight and played the game; but they seldom tried to make love to her. Women said she was a dear, and that it was a thousand pities she did not marry. It was no sentimental recollection of bygone Christmases which brought the look of softness into her eyes. She was thinking that next day the men for once would feast to the full in the canteen--eat, drink, smoke, without paying a penny. She knew how well they deserved all she could do for them, these men who had done so much, borne so much, who still had so much to do and bear. Miss Willmot thanked G.o.d as she stood there that she had money to spend for the men.

"Tea! tea! tea! Tea's ready. Come along, Miss Willmot."

The call came from behind the counter. Miss Nelly Davis stood there, a tall, fair girl in a long blue overall.

"I've made toast and b.u.t.tered it, and Mr. Digby's waiting."

"Good evening, miss, and a happy Christmas to you," said Bates.

"If there's a happy Christmas going these times at all," said Sergeant O'Rorke, "it's yourself deserves it."

"Thank you, thank you both," said Miss Willmot "If it hadn't been for your help I'd never have got the decorations done at all."