On the pier the orderlies were waiting.
Sometimes two of the wounded men would come fumbling and staggering
down the gangway together, holding to each other. With intense
concentration, without any knowledge of what was taking place around
them, looking neither to the right nor the left, they progressed step
by step, infinitely cautious. They advised each other, admonished
each other, argued in an absorbed, gentle monotone, wholly engrossed,
set apart, dedicated to this mysterious and immediate moment which
lay between them and the harbor of the benches. With each uncertain
step, with each circumspect, tentative advance, I think that a new
cycle of destiny was spun for them, such was their earnestness and the
simplicity of their world.
Thus, slowly, by open magic, the benches steadily filled. I don't know
how many men were sitting there, nor how many more men were in the
adjoining inclosure. But while I had been watching the unloading of the
ship one ambulance train had been filled and had moved out, slowly,
silently, toward her nameless destination. For each day, as the new
offensive on the Western front fulfills the tragic bartering of men for
land, the hospitals of England register toll for victory.
And this offensive, which has reclaimed territory valuable beyond
estimation, was conceived with accuracy and true vision. Men were
neither squandered nor offered up in sacrifice. Yet day by day the
white ships put into harbor and the white trains come and go, weaving
back and forth, fulfilling the purposes of war.
And I was watching one infinitesimal part of this.... It was moving
very surely and precisely, the grave business of transference. I saw
with astonishment that the deck was cleared. A little procession of
orderlies, bringing empty stretchers, was marching down the pier. I had
thought that the ship was emptied, so many men in khaki had passed down
the gangway. But I saw, instead, that the work had but commenced.
For from below they were carrying up other men. And these men lay quite
still on the stretchers, with their gray blankets drawn close around
them. Their faces were very white, that extraordinary clear white of
pain. But sometimes when they were carried by they smiled. I think
that there were men among these soldiers who had measured the hours
of their journey by their own agony. Only suffering could have drawn
such deep and searching lines, could have brought such shadings and
such contours into men's faces. There was one boy who lay with his
hands folded on his chest; his eyes were closed, and the shadow of
his black lashes was no darker than the deep circles which furrowed
his cheeks. There was neither life nor color in his flesh; his hands
had the fine and delicate transparency of a child's hands. Yet, just
as he was being carried by, he opened his eyes, made an inscrutable,
almost imperceptible, movement with his fingers as if some impulse had
impelled him to a gesture which must be unrealized. There was, for one
swift instant, the illusion that he smiled.
Yes, there was courage enough among them, these men who were coming
home. I marveled at them; I had never thought of that particular degree
of courage which lies in the one very simple fact that men--even those
men who are coming back to England to die--come back home smiling.
And I marveled more and more at these miracles of war when I went
abroad the white ship and saw just what it meant, this long journey
of the wounded. I saw all of the splendor of that big ship only as a
background for the men who had returned in her. Yet certainly she was
both beautiful and splendid. I was told that once in her history she
had come into royal favor; be that as it may, whatever the purport of
her destiny, she had been fashioned with true understanding. In the
wide sweep of her decks, in the very lines and gradations of her, there
was that character, that abiding character and personality, which is
the inheritance of all good ships of the sea.
It may be that she suffered a little from a certain lavishness, not
wholly judicious. For her cabins and her saloons were panelled in woods
of many colors and many grains, inlaid according to the obscure ethics
of such matters. Not that her fine frescos were not decorative, with
their bright cubes and squares and quaint juxtapositions. They shone
like satin; in the borders, golden and black, the green, brilliant
hangings were mirrored, extraordinarily luminous and rich in texture.
But I liked best her big wards below. I liked their generous
proportions and the clean, wide cots, row upon row of them. There was,
too, that faint, pleasant odor of antiseptics and new linen. The
copper sterilizers, set on shining tables, were resplendent in that
cool and colorless interior. The enamelled basins and portable dressing
stands were a brilliant and stainless white.
But, above all, there was in this place a certain very fine and
definitive individuality. I do not know that there were either details
or designs in which it found expression. But indisputably this was a
hospital on board a ship. It is true that above each cot, suspended,
were two long canvas strips to which were attached a bar of wood,
very much like a short trapeze. By means of this a patient could
lift himself, so that, with his pillows behind him, he could sit up.
Also, there were above certain cots strips of white cloth. These were
fashioned like big slings, and they had been conceived by genius. For
by the simple means of supporting a bandaged arm or a bandaged foot in
them the vibration of the ship, the steady throbbing of her engines,
was in a very great measure counteracted. But it was not in these
things that the character of this white saloon was revealed. I think,
instead, that it was concentrated in one quite simple thing. In this
big ward there was but a faint, diffused light; for above the beds, and
screening the portholes, was a long, unbroken sweep of green curtains,
with black shadows marked in vertical lines. And these shadows,
straight, deep bars on the green cloth, swayed a little, changed a
little, widened and became narrow with a certain rhythmic, recurrent
design. It was the movement of the ship. It was the inflowing and the
outflowing of the tide.