EXTRACTS: Drawing from History: The Forgotten Art of Fortunino Matania © The Book Palace (340 PAGES in Full edition)

Drawing from History 254 With the field guns on theWestern Front – a visit to a British battery . “An order arrives by telephone: a soldier repeats it loudly; the officer unfolds his map hurriedly and looks, and raps out, ‘tell the observer we will fire on X’.” The men are busy round the gun; the officer in the foreground is just receiving a message which has come by way of the field telephone. One man is pressing down the spade at the end of the cylindrical trail, while another holds the shell in readiness.The row of field guns is screened from enemy gaze by various means. Taking the wounded aboard a British ambulance train on theWestern Front . On arrival at the railhead, or at any other place where sick and wounded are to be taken up, the O.C. of the train receives from the Ambulance Train Embarkation Medical Officer a list of patients who are for the train, so many “sitting” cases and so many “ lying” or stretcher cases. Either he or one of the two junior M.O.’s of the train or both of them, remain on the platform and with this list check each patient and he arrives, and detail him a place on the train.The sisters remain on the train and receive patients and see that they are comfortably settled, fed and attended to. Orderlies also remain on each coach to help receive the wounded. Other orderlies unload the patients from the ambulances and carry them to the medical officer, who details them to different coaches. Sometimes the wounded arrive so quickly that the staff are obliged to set them down in rows. In the latest British-made trains the wounded are passed easily through the wide folding doors.The men are very clever at raising the wounded without jarring them.