Alma Russell Letters
Letters of British Columbia men on active service with Canadian and British Expeditionary Forces, 1914-1918. Learn more.
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being my first dressing since I was hit (about four or five hours). He must have injected a big dose of morphia into me, because from then on till I got to the Casualty Clearing Station I was more or less unconscious. I had a large stretcher party (I’m no light weight) on account of the very bad ground.
The night was pitch dark, and I remember the N.C.O. in charge saying on several occasions to the men leading up the pack mules with ammunition “keep to the right, stretcher case” and I heard the tramp of the animals close to my side. Well, it being so dark, the poor fellows lost their way and missed the dressing station; the finally lighted upon the light railway after packing me for about four or five miles. I was then put down on the side of the line, while waiting for the little train to come along: eventually it came and I thought the boys had put me down on the lines and that the train was going to run over me, of course this was only imagination on my part, and then our guns opened up and I was not sure if they were our guns or the Huns shelling us. I did not say anything. They placed my stretcher on the truck, along with a lot of other cases, and off we went. We seemed to travel for miles and miles. At last they came to a stop, and took me into a small dressing station. I remember seeing an awful lot of wounded in this dressing station, the M.O. there, dressing my wound again, and cut off my big top boots which gave me a slight bit of comfort as they were plastered with mud and dirt. I have not the faintest idea where this dressing station was, and what times I got there or what time I left, all I remember was being driven again along in a motor ambulance, over rough ground to the C.C.S. At once time we seemed to be going up a very steep hill, and I again imagined that the stretcher
BC Archives, MS-1901 Box 1 File 6 / RUSSELL, Alma M., 1873 - 1964. Victoria; librarian. / Selected letter from Lieutenant Gordon Patrick Heinekey, 1917.