I hadn’t the heart to laugh, but sometimes I felt vaguely envious.
I thought of the men who were carrying on the war, in the
newspapers--those who wrote: “The line has been pierced; why hesitate
to throw in fifty divisions?” Or: “we have only to bring our reserves
right up to the line. A hundred thousand men must at once fill the gap.”
I longed to see that brave set compelled to find between Fouilly and
Maricourt a little corner as secure as their little heaps of paper
plans, on which a purring cat might find repose. I swear they would
have found it rather difficult.
I thought abstractedly about my work as I went along; from time to time
I glanced round at the scene, and I assure you one hit upon some queer
things.
Beneath the rows of poplar trees that stretched along the valley a huge
army had taken cover, with its battalions, its animals and wagons,
its iron and steel, its faded tarpaulins and leather trappings that
stank, and its refuse heaps. Horses nibbled at the bark of large
decaying trees, that were stricken with a premature autumnal disease.
Three meagre elm trees served as a shelter for a whole encampment: a
dusty hedge threw its protecting shadow over the ammunition train of
a regiment. But the vegetation was scarce and the shelter it afforded
most scanty, so that from all parts the army overflowed right on to the
bare plain, tearing up the surface of the roads and leaving a regular
network of tracks, as if great hordes of wild beasts had made their
passage along it.
There were roads that marked off the British from the French. There you
could see marching by the splendid artillery of the British, quite new
and glistening, fitted with light-coloured harness and nickel-plated
buckles, with special rugs for the horses, that were well fed and
gleaming like circus mounts.
The infantry were also filing past--young men, all of them. They
marched to the wild negro music of the flutes and gaily-coloured drums.
Then cars fitted with beds, tier upon tier, came slowly along, jolting
as little as possible, carrying the wounded fair-haired boys with
wondering eyes, looking as placid as a touring party of Cook’s.
Our villages were packed to suffocation. Man had got everywhere, like a
plague or a flood.
He had driven the cattle from their shelter and fixed his abode in
hutches, stables and cowsheds.
The shell depôts seemed like pottery fields full of earthenware
pitchers. Barges floated on the slimy water of the canal. Some carried
food and guns: others served as hospital-boats.
From the movements of this heaving mass of beings and the creaking of
their machinery, the panting of a giant seemed to issue forth and fill
the silence. The whole scene suggested a sinister fair, a festival of
war, a gathering of Bohemian clans and dancers of evil repute.
The nearer you got to Bray the more congested the country appeared to
be. The motor-riding population held tyrannic sway over the roads,
forcing the lowlier horse-wagons to drive across the fields. Little
trollies running on rails clanked along pompously, showing great
independence, hugging the ground with their small wheels, and their
back loaded with millions of cartridges: in amongst the boxes some
fellows were squatting, half asleep, proclaiming to the world in
general the pleasure of being seated on something which does all the
walking for you.
When I got above Chipilly, I beheld an extraordinary scene. An immense
plain undulated there, covered with so many men, things and beasts,
that over vast stretches the ground was no longer visible. Beyond the
ruined tower which looks upon Etinehem lay land of a reddish-brown
colour. I saw later that this colour was due to a great mass of horses
closely pressed against each other. Every day they were brought to the
muddy trough of the Somme to slake their thirst. The tracks were turned
into sloughs, and the air was filled with an overpowering smell of
sweat and manure.
Then, towards the left, stood a veritable town of unbleached tents,
whose top coverings were marked with large red crosses. Farther on,
the ground sank down, only to curve up again suddenly towards the
battlefield quivering on the horizon in a black fog. From different
points a burst of discharging shells sent up white clouds, side by
side, in quick succession, like rows of trees on the roadside. In
the open sky more than thirty balloons formed a ring, giving one the
impression of spectators interested in a brawl.
The Adjutant, pointing out the tents, said to me, “That’s Hill 80. You
will see more wounded passing there than there are hairs on your head,
and more blood flowing than the water in the canal. All those who are
hit between Combles and Bouchavesnes are brought to Hill 80.”
I nodded, and we relapsed again into silence and reflection. The day
gave out in the unclean air of the marshes. The English were firing
their big cannon not far from us, and their roar crashed along the
alignment like an enraged horse dashing blindly away. The horizon was
so thick with guns that you could hear a continuous gurgle as of a huge
cauldron in the tormenting grip of a furnace.
The Adjutant turned again to me. “Three of your brothers have been
killed,” he said. “In one sense you are out of the business. You won’t
be very badly off as a stretcher-bearer. In another it is unfortunate,
but a good thing for you. It’s hard work, stretcher-bearing, but it’s
better than the line. Don’t you think so?”
I said nothing. I thought of that devastated little valley where I
had spent the first few weeks of the summer in front of the Plémont
hill--the deadly hours I spent looking at the ruins of Lassigny between
the torn and jagged poplars, and the apple-trees blighted with the
horror on the edge of the chaotic road, and the repulsive shell-holes
full of green slime and swarming with life, and the mute face of the
Château de Plessier, and the commanding hill which a cosmic upheaval
alone had made capable of giving rise to grim forebodings. There
during long nights I had breathed the fetid air of the corpse-laden
fields. In the most despairing loneliness I had been in turn terrified
of death and longing for it. And then some one came along one day to
tell me that “You can go back behind the lines. Your third brother has
been killed.” And many of the men looked at me, seeming to think with
the Adjutant, “Your third brother is dead. In a sense you are lucky.”
Those were my thoughts as I entered upon my new duties. We were walking
along the plateau, which stood out before heaven, erect as an altar,
piled with millions of creatures ready for the sacrifice.
It had been dry for several days, and we lived under the rule of King
Dust. The dust is the price we pay for fine weather: it attacks the
fighting pack, intrudes upon its work, its food and its thoughts; it
makes your lips filthy, your teeth crunch, and your eyes inflamed. But
when it disappears the reign of mud begins, and then we passionately
desire to stagnate again in the dust.
Far away, like idly moving rivers, large columns of dust marked all the
roads in the district, and were filtered by the wind as they flowed
over the countryside. The light of day was polluted with it, as the sky
was ravaged by great flights of aeroplanes, and the silence violated
and degraded, and the earth with its vegetation torn and mutilated.
I was not that day by any means disposed to be happy, but all this
plunged me into the deepest gloom.
Looking all around me I found the only places where I could rest my
eyes were in the innocent looks of the horses or on some unfortunate
timid men who worked on the roadside. Everything else was nothing but a
bristling gesture of war.
Night had fallen when we arrived at the city of tents. The Adjutant
took me to a tent and found me a place on some straw which was strongly
reminiscent of the pigsty. I took off my knapsack, lay down and fell
asleep.
* * * * *
I got up with the dawn and, wandering through the mist, tried to find
my bearings.
There was the road leading from Albert--worn, hollowed, and terribly
overrun. It bore the never-ending stream of wounded. Alongside of it
stood the city of tents, with its streets, its suburbs, and its public
squares. Behind the tents, a cemetery. That was all.
I was leaning on a fence and I looked at the cemetery. Though it was
overflowing, its appetite was insatiable. A group of German prisoners
were occupied in digging long dark pits that were like so many open and
expectant mouths. Two officers went by: one was fat, and looked as if
at any moment he would be struck with apoplexy. He was gesticulating
wildly to the other. “We have,” he said, “got ready in advance 200
graves and almost as many coffins. No, you can’t say that this
offensive has not been planned.”
As a matter of fact, a large number of coffins had been already
completed. They filled the tent where the corpses were to be
unceremoniously laid out. Outside in the open, a large gang of joiners
were engaged in cutting up planks of pinewood. They were whistling and
singing innocently, as is usual with those who work with their hands.
I realised once again how a man’s opinion of great events is determined
by his vocation and aptitudes. There was a sergeant there whose views
of Armageddon varied with the quality of the wood which he had to use.
When the wood was bad he used to say, “This war is damned rot.” But
when the wood was clear of knots his view was: “We’ll get them licked.”
The heavy and responsible task of running the hospital was entrusted
to a nervy and excitable young man. He appeared at every moment, his
fingers clutching bundles of papers, which he passed from one hand to
the other. I had few opportunities of hearing him speak, but, when I
did, each time I caught the same words: “That’s not my business--I am
getting crazy with it all. I have enough worries of that sort.”
I knew then that he had to think of many things. Almost all day a
procession of motor cars, heavily laden with a groaning mass of
wounded, came along the winding road which was being hastily metalled,
looking like the ravenous gullet of this vast organism. On the top of
the bend the lorries were unloaded under a porch decorated with flags,
bearing no small resemblance to the festooned arch which on wedding
days is erected at church doors.
From the first day I was ordered on night duty to deal with the
ambulance cars as they arrived. A dozen of us were grouped under the
porch for this purpose.
Up to that time it was only in the trenches that I had seen my
comrades, wounded beside me, starting out on a long and mysterious
journey of which little was known to us. The man who was hit appeared
to be spirited away--he vanished from the battlefield. I was going
to know all the stages of the suffering existence he was then only
beginning.
The night I went on duty there had been a scrap towards Maurepas or
Le Forest. Happening between two days of tremendous fighting, it was
one of those incidents which seldom call for a single line in the
communiqués. Yet the wounded streamed in all night. As soon as they
were lowered from the cars, we got them into a large tent. It was an
immense canvas hall lit with electricity. It had been pitched on ground
covered with stubble, and its rough soil was bristling with anæmic
grass and badly pressed clods. Those among the wounded who could walk
were directed along a passage railed off on both sides, as is done at
theatre entrances to make the crowd line up into a queue. They seemed
dazed and exhausted. We took away their arms, knives and grenades. They
let you do anything to them: they were like children overcome with
sleep. The massacre of Europe cannot proceed without organisation. All
the acts of the play are based on the most detailed calculation. As
these men filed past, they were counted and labelled; clerks verified
their identity with the unconcerned accuracy of customs officials.
They, on their part, replied with the patience of the eternal public
at government inquiry offices. Sometimes they even ventured to make a
remark.
“Your name is Menu,” one cavalryman was asked. “Isn’t it?”
And the cavalryman replied in a heart-rending tone:
“Alas! it is, unfortunately.”
I remember a little man whose arm was in a sling. A doctor was looking
at his papers, and said:
“You have a wound in your right arm?”
And the man replied so modestly:
“Oh! it is not a wound. It is only a hole!”
In one corner of the tent they were giving out food and drink. A cook
was carving slices of beef and cutting up a round of cheese. The
wounded seized the food with their muddy and blood-stained hands; and
they were eating slowly and with evident relish. The inference was
plain. Many were suffering primarily from hunger and thirst. They sat
timidly on a bench like some very poor guests at a buffet during a
garden party.
In front of them there were a score of wounded Germans who had been
placed there indiscriminately. They were dozing or throwing hungry
glances on the food and the pails of steaming tea. Hitting on a popular
slang expression, a grey-haired infantryman, who was munching large
pieces of boiled beef, said suddenly to the cook:
“Hang it all! Why not give them a piece of bully-beef?”
“Do you know them then?” said the cook jocularly.
“Do I know them! The poor devils! We have been punching each other the
whole blessed day. Chuck them a piece of meat. Why not?”
A frivolous young man, short-sighted, with a turned-up nose, added in a
tense voice:
“Ought to be done, you know--our honour....”
And they went on gravely chatting and gulped down cupfuls of a hot
brew which was poured from a metal jug. From another angle in the tent
the scene was very different. The men were lying down: they had grave
wounds. Placed side by side on the uneven ground, they made a mosaic
of pain stained with mud and blood, the colours of war; reeking with
sweat and corruption, the smells of war; noisy with cries, moans and
hiccups which are the sounds and music of war.
I shivered at the sight. I had known the bristling horror of the
massacre and the charge. I was to learn another horror, that of the
_tableau_--the accumulation of prostrate victims, the spectacle of the
vast hall swarming with human larvæ, in heaps, on the floor.
I had finished my work with the stretcher and hastened to make my round
of the wounded. I was so deeply moved that I was rather hindered in
my work. Some of the men were vomiting, suffering unutterable agony,
and their brows streaming with perspiration. Others were very quiet
and could be more or less rational: they seemed to be following the
internal progress of their illness. I was completely upset by one of
them. He was a fair-haired sergeant with a slight moustache. His face
was buried in his hands and he was sobbing with despair and what seemed
like shame. I asked him if he was suffering pain. He scarcely replied.
Then, gently lifting his blanket, I saw that he had been terribly hit
by grape shot in his virility. And I felt a deep pity for his youth and
his tears.
There was also a boy who used to utter a queer plaint, current in his
locality. But I could only catch these syllables: “Ah! mon ... don....”
A doctor who was passing said to him:
“Come, come! a little patience! Do not cry out like that.”
The child paused a moment before replying: “I’d have to lose my voice
first if I’m not to cry.”
His neighbour was a big, rough, good-natured fellow with a powerful
jaw, strong and massive features, with the peculiar shape of the skull
and growth of hair that characterise the folk of Auvergne.
He looked at the boy who was groaning at his side, and, turning to me,
commented, with a shrug of the shoulders:
“Rotten luck being hit like that, poor child!”
“And what’s the matter with you?” I said to him.
“Oh, I think I have lost my feet; but I am fairly strong and my body is
solid.”...
It was true! I saw that both his feet had been torn away.
Round the electric arcs, luminous rings were formed by the sickening
vapour. On the sides of the tent, in the folds, you could see the flies
sleeping in big black patches, overcome by the cold freshness of night.
Large waves rolled on the canvas, passing like a shudder or violently
flapping, according as the wind or gunfire was the cause.
I stepped carefully over some stretchers and found myself outside,
in a night that roared, illuminated by the aurora borealis of the
battlefield.
I had walked, with my hands held out in front of me, until I came upon
a fence. Suddenly I knew what it was to be leaning against the parapet
of hell!
What a human tempest! What explosions of hatred and destruction! You
would have said that a company of giants were forging the horizon
of the earth with repeated blows that filled the air with countless
sparks. Innumerable furtive lights gave one continuous great light
that lived, throbbed and danced, dazzling the sky and the land. Jets
of iridescent light were bursting in the open sky as if they fell from
the blows of the steam-hammer on white-hot steel. To me who had only
recently left the trenches, each of these firework displays meant
something--advice, commands, desperate calls, signals for slaughter;
and I interpreted this furnace as if it had expressed in words the fury
and distress of the combatants.
Towards Combles, on the left of Maurepas, one section above all seemed
to be raging. It was just there that the junction was made between
the English and the French armies; and it was there that the enemy
concentrated a tumultuous and never-slackening fire. Every night,
during many weeks, I saw this place lighted up with the same devouring
flame. It was at each instant so intense that every instant appeared
to be the decisive one. But hours, nights and months went slowly by
in the eternity of time, and each of these terrible moments was only
one intense outburst out of an infinity of them. Thus often the agony
of wounds is such that you would hardly think it could be endured any
longer. But death comes not willingly at the desire of men: it strikes
at will, when it likes, where it likes, and hardly permits itself to be
directed or coaxed.
Morning came. Those who have seen the daybreaks of the war, after
nights spent in fighting, or in the bloody work of the ambulance, will
understand what is the most ugly and mournful thing in the world.
For my part, I shall never forget the green and grudging light of the
dawn, the desolating look of the lamps and the faces, the asphyxiating
smell of men attacked by corruption, the cold shiver of the morning,
like the last frozen breath of night in the congealed foliage of large
trees.
* * * * *
My work as a stretcher-bearer was over. I could return to carpentry. I
made heavy planks of green wood and thought of all sorts of things, as
the mind does when robbed of sleep and overwhelmed with bitterness.
Towards eight o’clock in the morning the sun was hailed by a race of
flies as it was emerging painfully from the mist; and these animals
began to abandon themselves to their vast daily orgy.
All those who were on the Somme in 1916 will never forget the flies.
The chaos of the battlefield, its wealth in carrion, the abnormal
accumulation of animals, of men, of food that had gone bad--all these
were factors in determining that year a gigantic swarm of flies. They
seemed to have gathered there from all parts of the globe to attend
a solemn function. Every possible kind of fly was there, and the
human world, victim of its own hatreds, remained defenceless against
this horrible invasion. During a whole summer they were the absolute
monarchs and queens, and we did not dispute the food with them.
I have seen, on Ridge 80, wounds swarming with larvæ--sights which,
since the battle of the Marne, we had been able to forget. I have seen
flies dashing themselves on the blood and the pus of wounds and feeding
themselves with such drunken frenzy that, before they could be induced
to leave their feasting and fly away, they had to be seized with
pincers or with one’s fingers. The army suffered cruelly from them, and
it is amazing that, in the end, victory was not theirs.
Nothing had a more lugubrious and stripped appearance than the plateau
on which stood the city of tents. Every morning heavy traction engines
went up the Etinehem hill and brought water to the camp. Several casks
placed in amongst the trees were filled with water of rather a sweet
taste, and this provision was to suffice, for a whole day, to slake
the thirst of the men and clean away the impurities and emissions of
disease.
Except on the horizon line, not a bush was to be seen. Nowhere a
tuft of fresh grass. Nothing but an immense stretch of dust or mud,
according as the face of the sky was calm or stormy. To relieve this
desolate scene with a little colour, someone had had the happy idea
of cultivating a little garden between the tents. And the wounded, on
being lowered from the cars, were astonished to see, in the midst of
the ghastliness of military activity, the pale smile of a geranium,
or juniper trees uprooted from the stony ridges of the valley and
replanted hastily in the style of French gardens.
I cannot, without being strangely moved, recall the tent in which about
twelve soldiers were dying of gaseous gangrene. Around this deathly
spot ran a thin little border of flowers, and an assiduous fellow was
calmly trying to bring into bloom crimson bell-flowers.
Sometimes the earth, torrid with the month of August, seemed to reel
with the satiating deluge of a storm. At such moments the tents used to
crackle furiously and seemed, like great livid birds, to cling to the
earth in order better to resist the blast of the south wind.
But neither the gusts of rain nor the galloping thunderclaps, none of
these tumults of Nature, interrupted man from his war. The operations
and the dressing of wounds continued on Hill 80 as, on neighbouring
hills, the batteries ploughed up the disputed ground. Often it seemed
that man insisted on speaking more loudly than Heaven, and the guns and
the thunder seemed determined to outbid each other.
Once, I remember, the thunder had the last word: two sausage-shaped
balloons took fire, and the artillery, stricken blind, stammered and
then became mute.
In a few days, I was given the job of furnishing the tents with little
pieces of joinery, benches and tables. I worked on the spot, taking
my tools with me, and I did my best not to disturb the patients, who
were already exhausted by the din of battle. This was very painful
work, because it made me a helpless spectator of unutterable misery. I
remember being greatly touched on one occasion: a young artilleryman,
wounded in the face, was being visited by his brother, a cadet in a
neighbouring regiment. The latter, very pale, was looking at the face
of the wounded man, of which only an eye could be seen and a stained
bandage. He took his hands, and bent down quite naturally to kiss him;
then he shrank back, only to come near again, victim of an emotion of
mingled horror and pity. Then the wounded man, who could not speak, had
an inspiration that was full of tenderness: with outspread fingers he
began to stroke the hair and face of his brother. This silent affection
told how willingly the soul gives up the spoken word and yields to its
most intimate gestures.
In the same tent Lieutenant Gambin was dying.
He was rather a crude, simple-hearted man, who had been engaged in
some obscure civilian employment, and who now, solely by dint of
his stubborn courage, had gained a commission. His large frame lay
exhausted from hæmorrhage, and for two days he lay dying. The breath
of life took two days to quit his ice-cold limbs, from which exuded
large beads of glutinous sweat. From time to time he sighed. At last,
leaving my screw-driver and iron nails, I asked him if he would like
something. He looked at me with wide-open eyes, full of memories and
sadness, and said:
“No, thank you. But oh, I’ve got the hump!”
I was almost glad to see him die: he was too conscious of his long,
dragging, terrible death.
Little Lalau who died the same day was at least unconscious, though
delirious, to the last.
He was a country lad, and had been struck in the spinal cord by a
piece of shell. A kind of meningitis ensued, and, at once, he lost
his reason. The pupils of his eyes swung to and fro with sickening
rapidity; he never ceased moving his jaw, apparently chewing like a
ruminant. One day I found him devouring a string of beads which had
been hung round his neck by a chaplain. An orderly kept his mouth open
while we removed several pieces of wood and steel. The poor wretch
laughed softly, repeating: “It’s a bit hard. It’s a bit hard to chew”;
and the lines of his face twitched with innumerable spasms of pain.
Delirium upsets and wounds the spirit. For it constitutes the uttermost
disorder--that of the mind. But it perhaps betrays benevolence on
the part of Nature when it deprives man of the consciousness of his
misery. Life and death have it in their power to confer these mournful
blessings. Once I saw a soldier struck in so many places that the
doctors decided he was beyond the resources of their skill. Among other
wounds there was a long splinter of steel driven like a dagger through
his right wrist. The sight was so cruel and revolting that an attempt
was made to remove the steel. A doctor gripped it firmly and tried to
loosen it with sharp, short pulls.
“Is it giving you pain?” he said from time to time.
And the patient replied:
“No; but I’m thirsty!”
“How is it,” I asked the doctor, “that he can’t feel the pain you are
giving him?”
“It’s because he is in a state of shock,” replied the surgeon.
And I understood how the very extremity of pain sometimes obtains for
its victims a truce which is, in a way, a foretaste of the sweets of
death--the prelude to extinction.
At each end of the large marquees one of those small bell tents had
been erected to which the soldiers had given the name of “mosques.”
They served as death chambers. There were placed the men who were lost
to human succour, in a loneliness that presaged the tomb. And some of
them were aware of this. There was a soldier with a riddled abdomen who
asked, on entering the tent, to be dressed in clean linen.
“Don’t let me die,” he pleaded, “in an unclean shirt. Give me something
white. If you are too busy, I’ll put it on myself.”
Sometimes, unutterably wearied by so much suffering, I asked for work
outside the camp, in order to sort out my ideas and renew the theme of
my reflections. It was always with a sigh of comfort that I got away
from the city of tents. I contemplated, from a distance, this sinister
agglomeration, which certainly bore comparison with an itinerant fair.
I tried to distinguish amid the white canvas and red crosses the
tops of these little “mosques.” I gazed also at the cemetery where
hundreds and hundreds of bodies had been buried; and, realising the
sum of the misery, despair and rage accumulated on that spot of the
earth, I thought of the people who, far away in the heart of France,
were crowding the concert cafés, the drawing-rooms, the cinemas, the
brothels, finding brazen enjoyment in themselves, in the world, in the
weather; and, sheltered by this quivering rampart of the sacrificed,
will not share in this universal anguish. I thought of these people
with more shame than resentment.
The excursions in the open freshened me a little, and I found some
comfort in the sight of healthy men spared by the battle.
Sometimes I went as far as the English sector. Masses of long-range
artillery were to be seen there. The guns were served by soldiers in
shirt-sleeves and long trousers stained by oil and cart-grease. They
looked more like factory workers than soldiers. You felt then how war
has become an industry--an engineering business devoted to mechanical
slaughter and massacre.
One night, walking along the Albert road, I overheard the conversation
of some men who were sitting on the upturned earth of a pit. By their
accent they were peasants from the north and must have belonged to the
regiments which had just been under fire.
“After the war,” said one of them, “those who are going to dabble in
politics, they’ll have to say they had a hand in this confounded war.”
But this frank opinion, caught in passing one night along a road in the
front--this inconsequent, unanswered comment was lost in the tumult of
the gunfire.
* * * * *
I gained much by being stretcher-bearer. I came to know the men better
than I had ever done until then--to know them bathed in a purer light,
_naked_ before death, stripped even of the instincts which disfigure
the divine beauty of simple souls.
In the midst of the greatest trials our race of peasants has remained
vigorous, pure, worthy of the noblest human traditions. I have known
them--Rebic, Louba, Ratier, Freyssinet, Calmel, Touche, and so many
others whom I must not name if I am not to mention the whole country.
It cannot be said that pain chose its victims, and yet, when I used
to pass by their beds where their destiny struggled--when I looked at
their faces, each one of them, they all seemed to me good, patient,
energetic men, and all of them deserved to be loved.
Did Rebic, that grey-haired sergeant, not richly deserve that a loving
family waited longingly for him at home? One day we came to dress the
big gash in his side, and we hastened to bring him white linen and made
him a warm bed; he began to weep, good and simple man, and we asked
him why, and he made this sublime answer:
“I cry because of the agony and misery I am giving you.”
As for Louba, we could not expect to hear him speak: a shell had
smashed in his face. There remained nothing of it except one immense
cruel gash; an eye displaced, twisted; and forehead--a humble peasant
forehead. Yet one day, as we whispered some brotherly words, Louba
wished to show how pleased he was, and he smiled to us. They will
remember, those who saw the soul of Louba smiling faceless.
Freyssinet, child of twenty, often lapsed into delirium, and was
aware of it in his conscious moments, and asked pardon of those whom
it might have disturbed. The hour came when he sank into the peace
everlasting. A much-decorated personage was making the round of the
wards attended by an imposing suite. He stopped at the foot of each
bed and uttered, in a fitting voice, words conferring whatever honour
which they represented in the minds of the patients. He stopped
before Freyssinet’s bed and began his speech. As he was an important
and methodical man, he said what he had to say without noticing the
many signs that were being made to make him desist. Having spoken, he
nevertheless asked those who were looking on:
“You wanted to tell me something?”
“Yes,” replied someone; “it is that the man is dead.”
But Freyssinet was so modest, so timid, that the very attitude of his
corpse betrayed respect and confusion.
It is there, also, that I made the acquaintance of Touche.
He came to us, poor Touche! his head broken, having had to leave a
temporary hospital owing to its catching fire. I saw him turning out
with his groping hands a bag which contained all his possessions.
“No, no,” he was saying, “they are all lost, and I’ll never find them.”
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I am looking for the little photos of my two boys and of my wife.
Unfortunately, they are lost. I shall miss them.”