Lieutenant Gallagher’s Narrative (June 1965 | Volume: 16, Issue: 4)

Lieutenant Gallagher’s Narrative

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June 1965 | Volume 16, Issue 4

A Swede from Illinois and myself were sent to the headquarters of the 2nd 2nd South Midland Field Ambulance Company of the 61st Division in St.-Nicolas, a suburb of Anas. The headquarters of the and was in an old two-story brick house, about the only one there which had not been hit by a shell. Lieutenant Colonel Hurroughes, who was in command of that unit, Captain Robson, and another officer were having supper when we arrived. It was a bleak-looking place, with no furniture except an improvised table and boxes for chairs. We slept upstairs on army cots. I thought at the time it was pretty bad, but later experience taught me that we were living under elegant conditions compared to the usual tiling anywhere near the front.

My first trip to the trendies with Colonel Kurroughcs was very impressive to me. The front line must have been three or lotir miles cast of Arras. We went tip a little way in an ambulance, then got out and walked along a communication trench leading toward the front. I noted that the trenches here were deeper than a man’s height and about a yard wide at the bottom, a little more at the top. They were revetted along the sides, that is, the walls were reinforced by a kind of fence work made by interlacing the branches of trees. There were very good “duck boards” (a kind of sidewalk) along the bottom so that walking was easy. After a while we came to where an officer was standing at the entrance of a dugout. He and Colonel Burroughcs talked a lew minutes and then I asked the olliccr what kind of a dugout he had, being very anxious to see one. He took me down and showed me all throng!) it. After we left I asked Colonel Hurroughcs who that officer was and he replied that it was Brigadier General Spooner, the commanding officer of the 183rd Brigade. I had thought he was a second lieutenant, not knowing at all the insignia of rank of British officers. Wc went on a little further through the trench and came to the advanced dressing station which the Field Ambulance maintained and to which cases were evacuated by the four battalion medical officers in the brigade from their battalion aid stations further up in the line.

Arras was evidently a big headquarters, for there were many soldiers of various divisions in and around it. The Britishers were very joyful at that time: a few days before (on November 20) a part of General Julian Byng’s Third Army had made an attack a few miles southeast of Arras on the Cambrai front, taken several thousand prisoners, and used tanks for the first time with any degree of success.

It was intended that the division should entrain for Bapaume, a few miles south, and there rest foi a couple of weeks, the different units billeied in the