Tomasos Fortune and Other Stories | Page 2

sent up
to the front before we had been three days at work. Our hospital by the
river was not full when I received orders to follow the flying column

with two assistants and the appliances of a field-hospital.
Out of this little nucleus sprang the largest depot for sick and wounded
that was formed during the campaign. We were within easy reach of
headquarters, and I was fortunately allowed a free hand. Thus our
establishment in the desert grew daily more important, and finally
superseded the hospital at headquarters.
We had a busy time, for the main column had now closed up with the
first expeditionary force, and our troops were in touch with the enemy
not forty miles away from me.
In the course of time--when the authorities learnt to cease despising the
foe, which is a little failing in British military high places--it was
deemed expedient to fortify us, and then, in addition to two medical
assistants, I was allowed three Government nurses. This last piece of
news was not hailed with so much enthusiasm as might have been
expected. I am not in favour of bringing women anywhere near the
front. They are, for their own sakes and for the peace of mind of others,
much better left behind. If they are beyond a certain age they break
down and have to be sent back at considerable trouble--that is to say, an
escort and an ambulance cart, of which latter there are never enough. If
they are below the climacteric--ever so little below it--they cause
mischief of another description, and the wounded are neglected; for
there is no passion of the human heart so cruel and selfish as love.
"I am sorry to hear it," I said to light-hearted little Sammy Fitz-
Warrener of the Naval Brigade, who brought me the news.
"Sorry to hear it? Gad! I shouldn't be. The place has got a different look
about it when there are women-folk around. They are so jolly clever in
their ways--worth ten of your red-cross ruffians."
"That is as may be," I answered, breaking open the case of whisky
which Sammy had brought up on the carriage of his machine-gun for
my private consumption.
He was taking this machine-gun up to the front, and mighty proud he
was of it.
"A clever gun," he called it; "an almighty clever gun."
He had ridden alongside of it--sitting on the top of his horse as sailors
do--through seventy miles of desert without a halt; watching over it and
tending it as he might have watched and tended his mother, or perhaps
some other woman.

"Gad! doctor," he exclaimed, kicking out his sturdy legs, and
contemplating with some satisfaction the yellow hide top-boots which
he had bought at the Army and Navy Stores. (I know the boots well,
and--avoid them.) "Gad! doctor, you should see that gun on the war-
path. Travels as light as a tricycle. And when she begins to talk- -my
stars! Click-click-click-click! For all the world like a steam-launch's
engine--mowing 'em down all the time. No work for you there. It will
be no use you and your satellites progging about with skewers for the
bullet. Look at the other side, my boy, and you'll find the beauty has
just walked through them."
"Soda or plain?" I asked, in parenthesis.
"Soda. I don't like the flavour of dead camel. A big drink, please. I feel
as if I were lined with sand-paper."
He slept that night in the little shanty built of mud and roofed chiefly
with old palm-mats, which was gracefully called the head surgeon's
quarters. That is to say, he partook of such hospitality as I had to offer
him.
Sammy and I had met before he had touched a rope or I a scalpel. We
hailed from the same part of the country--down Devonshire way; and,
to a limited extent, we knew each other's people--which little phrase
has a vast meaning in places where men do congregate.
We turned in pretty early--I on a hospital mattress, he in my bed; but
Sam would not go to sleep. He would lie with his arms above his head
(which is not an attitude of sleep) and talk about that everlasting gun.
I dozed off to the murmur of his voice expatiating on the extreme
cunning of the ejector, and awoke to hear details of the rifling.
We did not talk of home, as do men in books when lying by a camp-
fire. Perhaps it was owing to the absence of that picturesque adjunct to
a soldier's life. We talked chiefly of the clever gun; and once, just
before he fell asleep, Sammy returned to the question of the nurses.
"Yes," he said, "the head saw-bones down there told me to tell you that
he