FROM THE " D BLOCK " WARDS.
IF you walk up the corridor at half-past four on certain afternoons of the week, you will meet a mob of patients trooping from their wards to the concert-room. Being built of wood and corru- gated iron, the corridor is an echoing cave of noises. It echoes the tramp of feet—and. Army-pattern boots were not soled for silence. It echoes the thud-thud of- crutches. It echoes the slurred rumble of wheeled chairs and stretcher-trollies. But, above all, at half-past four on concert days it echoes happy talk and chaff and boisterous laughter. - As often as not, the loudest talk, the cheeriest chaff, the most
spontaneous laughter emanate from the blue-clad stalwarts who have mustered from the " D Block " wards. " D Block " contains the wards for eye-wmusd cases. Here they come, a string of them, mostly with bandages round their heads. The leading man owns one good eye—a twinkling eye—an eye of mischief—an eye (you would guess at once) for the girls. (But the eye's owner probably calls them the Pushers. Such is our language now.) Behind him, in single file and in step with him, march a gang of patients —each with his hand on 'the shoulder of the man in front. Tramp, tramp ! Their tread is purposely thunderous on the bare boards of the corridor. They sing as they advance. It is a ragtime chorus, whose most memorable line runs : " You never seem to kiss me in the same place twice." A jaunty lilt, to be sure, both in tune and in rhythm. Tramp, tramp ! The one-eyed leader swerves round a corner, roaring the refrain. His followers swerve too. Suddenly the Matron is encountered—emerging from her room. " Fine afternoon, Matron ! " The leader interrupts his chant to ratter this hearty greeting. And, with one voice " Fine afternoon, .Matron ! " exclaim his followers. But they do not turn their heads. Each with his hand resting on the shoulder of the man in front, they go steadily on, towards the concert-room, with an odd intentness, glancing neither to one side nor the other. For though, at their leader's cue, they have hailed the Matron, they have not seen her. They are blind.
The spectacle of men—particularly young men—who have given their sight for their country is, to most observers, a moving one. Melancholy are the reflections of the visitor who meets, for the first time, a promenading party of our blind patients. It is the plain truth, nevertheless, that the blind men themselves are far from melancholy. One of the _rowdiest -characters we ever had in the hospital was totally blind. The blind men's wards are. notoriously amongst the least sedate. I offer no explanation. I simply state the fact. I will fortify it by an anecdote.
It came to pass that eight complimentary tickets for a Queen's Hall matinee were received by the Matron, who in due course allotted them to seven " D Block " patients. An orderly, detailed to take them to the hall, completed the octet. Corporal Smith, the orderly in question, recounted his adventures afterwards. " Never again," quoth he, " shall I jump at a matinee job if there are blind chaps in the party. They're the deuce." You must understand that we hospital orderlies regard the task of shepherding patients to an entertainment in town as an agreeable form of holiday. I have had some very pleasant outings of that sort myself. But not—I am thankful to recall, in the light of Corporal Smith's narrative—with blind men. One-legged men are often a sufficient care in manoeuvring on and off omnibuses. Apparently helpless cripples have a marvellous gift for losing themselves, entering wrong trains, and generally escaping—as the hour for return draws nigh—from one's custody. And the city seems to be full of lunatics ready to supply alcohol or indigestible refresh- ments to the most delicate war-hospital inmates. Even with ordinary patients the orderly's afternoon excursion is sometimes not unfraught with anxiety. But blind patients, as Corporal Smith said, are the deuce. Out of his party, four were totally blind, two could recogniz' e dimly the difference between light and darkness, and one had a single good eye.
Queen's Hall was reached, by 'bus, without mishap. After the performance there was tea at an A.B.C. shop. .Here Jock, one of the totally blind men, a Scotsman—all Scots are " Jocks " in the Army—distinguished himself by facetiae (audible throughout the whole shop) on the English pronunciation of the. ord "scone," and intimated his desire to treat the company to a ballad. This project was suppressed, but " a silly fool in a top-hat threatened to report me for having given my men drink," said Corporal Smith. " Jock gave him the bird ; not 'arf. But I thought it about time to be going home." The 'bus was voted dull. Somebody suggested the Tube. Corporal Smith consented. He had forgotten that at Oxford Circus Station the lifts have been abolished in favour of sliding staircases. Confronted by the escalator, Corporal Smith halted his party and informed them that they must walk down by the ordinary stair. The escalator was not safe for blind men. Unfortunately, Jock had sniffed a lark ; the one-eyed man backed him up ; the party—elated perhaps by their tea—would not hear of anything so humdrum as a descent by the ordinary stair. They were going on the sliding stair. They insisted. Corporal Smith argued in vain. In vain he exerted his (purely nominal) authority. His charges mocked him. The one-eyed man leading, with Jock in his wake, they launched themselves at the sliding stair. In sheer desperation Corporal Smith brought up the rear, supporting two of the more timid venturers as best he might. None of the group except Corporal Smith himself, as it turned out, had over travelled on-an escalator before. But they had heard a comic song about a sliding stair, and they wished—Jock especially—to sample this Metropolitan invention. By dodging forward to place each blind man's hand upon the banister, Corporal Smith managed to send off his patients without a 'stumble. But as the stair inexorably lowered them into the bowels of the earth, ho realiied, only too vividly, what might happen at the foot of the descent. The evening rush of suburb-bound passengers had begun, and the staircase was rather crowded. Nobody seemed to realize that the khaki-overcoated men who stood so still upon the steps were not the usual hospital convalescents out on leave and able to look after themselves. Corporal Smith, delayed by one man who had hesitated at the top before taking the plunge, beheld his charges below him, hopelessly dotted, at intervals, amongst the general-public. It was impossible for him to struggle down ahead, to the bottom of the staircase, to guide the men off as they arrived. This task, he hoped, would be adequately performed by the one-eyed man.
It might have been. The one-eyed man was game for anything. But Jock, arriving in the highest good humour at the bottom of the staircase, was tilted sideways by the curve, and promptly sat down on the landing-place. Instead of rising, he proclaimed aloud that this was funnier even than England's pronunciation of the word " scone." Whereupon various hurrying passengers, including an old lady, tripped over his prone form. The sensation of being kicked and sat upon appealed to Jock's sense of humour. The more people avalanched across him, the more comic he thought it. And in a moment there was quite a pile of wriggling bodies on top of him. For though the public managed, on the whole, to leap over, or circumvent, the obstacle presented by Jock's extremely large body, none of his blind comrades did so. ".Every single one of them fell flop," said Corporal Smith. " I give you my word." But were they downhearted 7 No ! They regarded this mysterious hurly-burly of arms and legs as a capital jest. So far from being alarmed or annoyed, they shouted with glee. The old lady, who had gathered herself together and was directing s stream of voluble reproof at Corporal Smith for his " callousness sad cruelty to these unhappy blind heroes," retired discomfited. Jock's comments routed her more effectively than the Corporal's assurance that the episode was none of his choosing.
The party at last sorted itself out and was placed upon its feet once more. It was excessively pleased with its exploit. Hilarity reigned. Corporal Smith, relieved, made ready to conduct his squad to the platform. Alas ! a bright idea occurred to Jock. Why not go up the other sliding stair and down again ? Agreed, AM. con. At least, Corporal Smith's con. was too futile to be worth counting. " I had to go with the blighters," said he. " There was no end of a crowd by this time. And Jock and some of the others fell over at the top again. And there was a row with tho ticket-collector. And people kept saying they'd report me. Me ! And when I'd got my party down to the bottom for the second time, and some of the Tube officials had come and said they couldn't allow it, and we must buzz off home, I lined the fellows up to march 'em to the train ; and, dash me, if two weren't missing. They'd given me the slip." The two truants, it may be added, could not be found. Corporal Smith had to return without them. At a late hour of the evening they appeared—not an atom repentant —at the hospital, having persuaded some one to put them into the correct 'bus. One of them, Jock, explained that, being from the North, he had desired to seize this opportunity of seeing the sights of London. Jock, I may remind you, is totally blind. Jock's guide, the man who had volunteered to show him the sights and who had only once been in London before, could see very faintly the difference between light and dark. . . . Thus this pair of irresponsibles had fared forth into the dusk of Regent Street.
It sounds a very horrible fate to be blinded. But somehow the blind men themselves seldom seem to be overwhelmed by its horribleness. If you want to hear the merriest banter in a war hospital, visit the blind men's wards. The pathos of them lies less in the sadness of the victims than in the triumphant, wonderful fact that they are not sad. I wish we others all inhabited the same mysteriously jocund spiritual realm as Jock and his comrades, who come tramp, tramping to the concert-room down the corridor
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