“‘... What has happened to you?’ Then when he learned: ‘Ah, my poor
friend, surely in your condition they can not send you to a reprisal
camp; courage, you shall go to France!’
“The commander of the guardhouse himself, feeling a sense of pity
when he learned what had happened, offered to telephone to the camp
commander and ask for a cancellation of the order. Lemordant refused;
he wished to owe nothing to the destroyers of his country. He started
for the reprisal camp. But there his blindness classified him almost
immediately among the severely wounded who were listed for exchange.
Switzerland received him for a time. At last arrived the moment when he
could cross the French frontier.
“He had waited for that moment with a sort of religious ecstasy. Blind,
wounded in the back and side, with a broken knee, and a high fever,
he hoped for a miracle, but expected one only from himself, from the
power of his own will. He had asked the Red Cross nurses who had charge
of him to tell him the moment when the train crossed the frontier. He
would see it—see at least something belonging to it, no matter what—a
hedge, a length of rail, a pebble, a tuft of grass. They did what he
asked, took him to the door of the compartment, and there he exerted
all his strength, all his will-power. It was not to be!
“The frontier was left behind; he fell back fainting—totally blind!”