HOSPITALIZATION AND WAR’S END
OCT. 17, 1918 Edward was hospitalized, he had
december 2019
previously mentioned cuts and bruises to hands and
feet earlier in the conflict almost as an afterthought.
OCT. 24, 1918
From a letter to Edward’s parents explaining his care in a British
base hospital “Somewhere in France.”
You can’t imagine how wonderful it is to be lying up in a big
comfortable bed entirely out of the sound of the gun after a week
of living in little niches cut out in the banks and constantly,
always dodging shells. I am one of the very few Americans in
this hospital, so I am known all over our ward as “the big Yank
in No. 7”.
Whenever I think of all that has happened in the past ten
days the whole seems invested with an atmosphere of absolute
unreality, and I again thank the good Lord that I am still alive
and able to write. Goodness! what a period it has been in my
life - the first six days a horrible nightmare and the last four
(since I have been in the hospital) a wonderful dream. It all
started just exactly ten days ago. We were ordered to get ready
at once to go up the line and our orders were to first put up a
barrage and then go over the top with the Infantry. Well, we got
to work, picked our positions, dug the guns in, figured the data
and laid our guns and then sat back to wait until zero hour
(Fritz was shelling us pretty heavily all the time and we lost four
or five men). Capt. Gause and I had taken up our headquarters
in a cellar in a little village very close to our guns and were
sitting around with several of our headquarters men waiting for
the zero hour. As usual, Fritz was shelling the village heavily
with gas and H. E.s. Suddenly, bedlam broke loose and when
I came to a few seconds later our cellar was literally blown to
pieces — my orderly was completely buried and several others
hurt, but miraculously, none of them seriously. I was hit in
several places by flying bricks and other debris and got a slight
overdose of gas but after a trip to the Aid Post I felt much better
and went on back to the Company, and then we started — for
five days and nights, steady going, with never a rest — attack
after attack. Our bunch fought like demons and although it
cost us quite a number of men, we kept Fritz on the run and
gained our every objective, but gosh! it was grilling work. When
we were finally relieved we were practically exhausted and then
orders came that our transport, which was ten miles back would
have to be brought up before morning and it fell to my lot to go
after it, so I spent the entire night in the saddle. Rode 20 miles
in a driving rain over trails and mud tracks and roads, with
no slicker and as a result here I am in a base hospital with a
beautiful case of “flu.”
40
WBM
Top: Civilians on the edge of a mine crater in Bohain, France, circa
1918. Above: Tanks were used in warfare for the first time at Somme,
invented as a trench buster and to rip out barbed wire. The cylindri-cal
pieces carried on the tanks were used to bridge trenches, also
seen, American soldiers of the 11th Brigade near Bellicourt, France.
AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL