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    With A Field Ambulance At Ypres, Being Letters Written March 7-August 15, 1915
    With A Field Ambulance At Ypres, Being Letters Written March 7-August 15, 1915
    With A Field Ambulance At Ypres, Being Letters Written March 7-August 15, 1915
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    With A Field Ambulance At Ypres, Being Letters Written March 7-August 15, 1915

    By William Boyd

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    As an Allied soldier, the Ypres salient was a hellish tongue of land to serve in during the First World War. Overlooked by German forces, surrounded on three sides by the enemies' guns, with little or no protection from the land features, it became a symbol of the stubborn resistance of the Allied soldier in the thin grim trenches. The troops faced shells, bullets, mortars, grenades and poison on a daily basis, whilst only just behind the frontline the Royal Army Medical Corps struggled to deal with the influx of wounded.

    Captain Boyd, as he then was, recounts his experiences in the bloody, cramped and over-worked hospitals as he attempted to save lives so brutally injured by the war. The Author went on to have an illustrious career as an internationally famed pathologist in Canada.

    Author –William Boyd, MB, ChB, MD, MRCP.

    Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in New York, George H. Doran company 1916.

    Original Page Count – 110 pages.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLucknow Books
    Release dateApr 12, 2012
    ISBN9781782890669
    With A Field Ambulance At Ypres, Being Letters Written March 7-August 15, 1915
    Author

    William Boyd

    William Boyd is also the author of A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys War Prize and short-listed for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year; Ordinary Thunderstorms; and Waiting for Sunrise, among other books. He lives in London.

    Read more from William Boyd

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      Book preview

      With A Field Ambulance At Ypres, Being Letters Written March 7-August 15, 1915 - William Boyd

       This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.picklepartnerspublishing.com

      To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – contact@picklepartnerspublishing.com

      Text originally published in 1916 under the same title.

      © Pickle Partners Publishing 2013, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

      Publisher’s Note

      Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

      We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

      WITH A

      FIELD AMBULANCE

      AT YPRES

      BEING LETTERS WRITTEN  MARCH 7-AUGUST 15, 1915

      BY

      William Boyd

      PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA

      ILLUSTRATED

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Contents

      TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

      DEDICATION 5

      PREFACE 6

      ILLUSTRATIONS 7

      I—UP TO THE FIRING LINE 8

      II—BEHIND NEUVE CHAPELLE 10

      III—INITIATION 13

      IV—A MIDNIGHT VISITOR 17

      V—A DAY WITH THE GUNNERS 20

      VI—GAS 24

      VII—IN THE FIELD AGAIN 27

      VIII—THE BURNING OF YPRES 30

      IX—A CITY OF THE DEAD 31

      X—WARM NIGHTS ROUND HELL CORNER 35

      XI—A DINNER IN GOGGLES 38

      XII—LAST DAYS AT THE FRONT 39

      DEDICATION

      TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

      PREFACE

      The present volume does not pretend to be a book. It is a diary, written in the kitchens of French farmhouses, in muddy dug-outs, and other unromantic places, and sent home to friends from time to time. In most cases the account was written within twenty-four hours of the events described.

      Its sole justification is that it is a record of facts, experiences, and emotions, before the facts had become tinged with fiction, the experiences had lost their original sharpness, and the emotions had been erased by the moving finger of time.

      WILLIAM BOYD.

      WINNIPEG,

      August, 1916.

      ILLUSTRATIONS

      THE CLOTH HALL, YPRES

      A DUG-OUT

      CANADIANS SUFFERING FROM GAS POISONING

      THE CITY OF THE DEAD

      THE CHANCEL, YPRES CATHEDRAL

      A SOLDIER’S CEMETERY

      WITH A FIELD AMBULANCE AT YPRES

      "And every mound of Flemish earth Shall witness bear, as men go by,

      That greater things than Life and Death Are Truth and Right, which cannot die."

      I—UP TO THE FIRING LINE

      March 7, 1915.

      AT 8.30 last night the transport which carried our Field Ambulance cast off its moorings and slowly swung away from the land. It was an impressive sight. The sides of the ship were lined by men gazing in silence at the land that many of them were never to see again, the boats were swung out ready to be lowered at a moment’s notice, sentries with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets kept guard over the bridge, the poop, and the stern where the life belts were stored, and on the deck stood great rafts with twenty handles on each side which would float off if the ship were torpedoed. Gradually we gathered way and soon the tugs were cast off, and we glided out into the darkness of the night. For about half an hour we proceeded thus. Then suddenly from my post on the lower bridge I became aware of a long, lean, dark, venomous-looking shape on the starboard bow, and a commanding voice hailed us through a megaphone: There is a light showing at one of your ports—put it out, and don’t let your speed drop below fourteen knots. It was our escort. A light twinkled at the masthead of the dark shape, which was at once answered by a corresponding light on our port side, and the two destroyers swung round and began to slide through the water, one on either side of us.

      Soon we became aware of a great beam of light stretching right across the channel, a beam through which every boat had to pass. And now searchlight after searchlight came into view, sweeping to and fro on the face of the waters, and lighting up the whole channel like a vast ballroom. Suddenly one of the beams fastened on to us, the whole ship became a blaze of light, and we could see our low-lying, sinister-looking escort on either side. We signalled to the fort and were allowed to proceed on our way.

      For long I-watched that wonderful display of illumination and when at last I turned round I found that we had left land behind, and were in the open Channel. Looking over the side, one could not help wondering if the unseen enemy was lurking in those dark depths, but all went ‘well, until all at once a dim form loomed up right in front of us, and a hurried hail, What ship is that, and where the hell are you going? came from a collier which we had nearly run down. Of course we were travelling with all lights out. Just as the grey dawn was beginning to break over the grey sea, our two destroyers suddenly swung round as if operated by a single lever and disappeared in the sea fog, and as the light

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