A surgeon in khaki
| Language | en |
|---|---|
| First published | 2025-11-18 |
| Rights | Public domain in the USA. |
| Gutenberg ID | #77265 |
Description
"In peril on the sea" by Montague T. Hainsselin is a wartime memoir written in the early 20th century. It offers a frontline surgeon’s personal account with the British Expeditionary Force during the opening phase of the Great War, following mobilisation, transport, field ambulances, and early battles such as the Marne and the Aisne. The narrator—a New Zealand hospital surgeon attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps—focuses on medical work under fire and the human toll on both sides. The opening of this work states the author’s aim to record impressions from 1914 and quickly moves from a pre-war surgical tour to Britain’s entry into war, his volunteering, rapid commissioning, and first duties at Aldershot examining and inoculating recruits. He embarks from Southampton to a rapturous welcome at Le Havre, bivouacs at Harfleur, digs emergency defenses against a German raiding force, witnesses enemy aircraft and a probable spy, and is then swept up in a sudden change of base to St. Nazaire amid chaotic loading and badly handled horses. Ordered forward by rail through the Loire to the advanced base, he reaches Coulommiers, joins a field ambulance near the Marne, treats captured Prussian Guard Jägers, and watches British generals driving the crossing and pursuit. A night of continuous triage in a lamplit tent by the river is followed by marching beyond the Marne, where the narrative closes on stark roadside scenes of the German retreat, with shrapnel’s impersonal deadliness etched into fields, ditches, and abandoned cars. (This is an automatically generated summary.)