REMEMBRANCE DAY

In my book on Bob Goldham, I wrote about his dad, Harry Goldham. The elder Goldham served in World War One as a stretcher-bearer. These were the brave men who risked everything to retrieve the injured and the lost souls on the battlefield.

During my research, I came across a remarkable passage that described the dreadful conditions the stretcher-bearers had to work under. It wasn't pretty.

Here is the passage from "Stretcher-Bearers...at the Double" by Frederick W. Noyes, which was published in 1937:

Under actual battle conditions we simply picked up our wounded man as tenderly as possible, bandaged him as quickly as circumstances would permit, and carried him out as fast as his weight, terrain, and our own fear and legs would let us go.
What man who carried wounded under these circumstances could ever forget the terrible groaning, cursing, and pleading of the poor fellow, half-rolling off a shoulder-high stretcher? Who could ever forget the dark brown and purplish stain that seeped through the stretcher canvas, and all-to-often dripped down on our backs and arms? Who can't remember the seeming futility of the whole mad business, as we were unable to take cover when shells blasted the chalky ooze all over us, or when a  bearer was hit and fell, dumping perhaps a compound-fracture case, shrieking with additional pain, into a ruddy, stinking trench or shell-hole? And how many times did we go through all this, only to find, on reaching the aid-post, that the wounded man had died on the way, and that all our efforts to save him were futile? Nothing grand or heroic about all that, was there? It was simply a matter of carrying on as long as you had sufficient strength and fortitude to do so.
The nights were very cold and, when a day without rain did come along, the hot sun baked the chalky uniforms into hard, chafing, misshapen masses.

Their work was emotionally drenching, and gruelling. All day and all night, they dug deep to seek the courage to conduct their duties. The job description never changed. The conditions never changed. The pain and suffering never left.

The stretcher-bearers never forgot their responsibilities to their fellow man or their country.

Lest we forget.