Anti Tank by Mark Carter

Author:Mark Carter [Carter, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781783031993
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2012-10-23T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

The hospital, in spite of its Red Cross signs and drapes, was a bombed and shell-shattered building open mostly to the sky. Here, under a tarpaulin roof, in what had once been the kitchen, the surgeon and his assistant laboured hour after weary hour. The surgeon chain-smoked because this was the only way he could keep going. Now and again his assistant would reach across and wipe the sweat from his face or put another cigarette into his mouth and light it for him. The atmosphere in the room was thick with tobacco smoke, the smell of anaesthetics and the stench of wounds. Outside, a long queue of wounded awaited their turn and they lay along the pavements and their stretchers filled the town square.

The surgeon was a young man who had recently flown out to North Africa after finishing his training. He worked with scalpel and saw under a single hanging bulb. He cut through ligaments, tied up veins, stitched up wounds, sawed off arms, sawed off legs. He had passed his exams only by the skin of his teeth but the Royal College would have been impressed with what he was doing now. Sometimes, when the bombing started, the bulb would flicker and go out and then he would work by candlelight or paraffin lamp. Buckets of water were used to swill down the table and more buckets were used for carting away the pieces of flesh and sawn-off limbs. One man was brought in with a stomach wound. A hopeless case. A great wad of field dressing was placed over the wound and the surgeon jerked his thumb.

‘Next!’

This, too, was a stomach wound. The bullet had gone through the front and out of the back. The man was alive but unconscious. The surgeon swore. He did what he could to clean and plug the wound but the man would die anyway. He was put on a stretcher and taken outside to lie with the other hopeless cases. In due course they would be loaded up on to a lorry and taken to some waste ground where a mechanical digger was working overtime.

The light from the solitary bulb shone on the exhausted face of the surgeon. His assistant removed the soggy butt end of his cigarette and placed another between his lips.

‘Next!’

A young soldier was carried in who had had a miraculous escape. The bullet had gone through the back of his head, and missing every vital section of the brain, had come out through his mouth. All he suffered was a serious but clean flesh wound plus a couple of missing front teeth which the bullet had sheared off on its way out. Four weeks later he was downing his beer in the NAAFI canteen.

‘Next!’

The next was me. After waiting all day in the queue I stepped inside that butcher’s shop. Anybody who could walk was small fry for the surgeon and he paused to drag a little longer on his cigarette. I climbed on to

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