From a closed British port to London I made a journey in a Red
Cross train which, with great scarlet crosses marked on each blind
compartment, carried a cargo of ninety-five wounded men--a precious
cargo of war that I had seen transferred from the finest of his
majesty's hospital ships to the cots of the ambulance train drawn up
under the roof of the Admiralty pier.
It was through the courtesy of the War Office that I was permitted to
board the hospital ship, to watch the unloading of it, to see each
detail of a very complex and splendid organization, and to journey
to London in one of the white ambulance trains created and set apart
for the grave and pitiful purposes of war. I am grateful for these
privileges.
I have come closer to the actualities of this war as it stands--have
penetrated the surface of it. For these men who by thousands are
returning to England bring with them, each and all of them, the stamp
of it. It is in their eyes, the horror of it; it is in their words, in
their gestures, the misery and the pain of it; it is written in their
faces, borne witness to by every fold of their stained and shabby
garments. It is France they are bringing home with them, France and the
memory of all the gray and wretched splendor of war. This is in their
faces; this and courage.
At first, when I walked down the concrete pavement at one side of the
pier, with its railway lines and great, spreading gray roof, I thought
that the hundred men or more whom I saw sitting on benches in a square,
inclosed place were but one more unit of the soldiers which throughout
England bear testimony to the new army of the King. But as I came
nearer to them, saw them sitting there, with on one side of them the
white coaches of the ambulance train and on the other, anchored close
in, the great white hospital ship with its broad band of green, I knew
these were wounded men sent home from France. The slightly wounded men,
they call them.
"These are not serious cases," the captain who was in charge told men.
"Shrapnel, mostly."
I looked at the long rows of men in khaki sitting on the wooden
benches, with their coats drawn loosely over their shoulders, with
their bandaged heads and arms and feet showing a very clear white
against the dim and gray light of the pier. How patient they were,
and how tired they looked! Slightly wounded; shrapnel, mostly. One of
them with his arm bandaged from the elbow to the wrist and supported
in a wide sling; one of them with his feet wrapped thickly in layers
of dressings and covered over with heavy woollen socks; one of them
with his left hand in a splint and his right arm wrapped in gauze the
full length of it; another man, leaning against the man next to him,
with his thin hands folded across his knees, and his head and his face
almost covered with fold upon fold of white linen. On his forehead a
little round dark stain widened on the clean cloth. Slightly wounded;
shrapnel, mostly. Such are the terms of war.
Then I went with the captain, who was also the disembarkation officer,
to stand beside the gangway and see the stretcher-bearers carrying the
wounded from the ship. It was such a fine, spotless ship, with her
broad band of emerald like a big girdle around her. Her great red cross
amidships, that clear and gracious emblem of service, proclaimed her
inviolate, symbolized her, transfigured and illumined her; she rested,
white, splendid, immobile, the rich sunlight streaming down on her
decks.