It was his trench knife, a battered old wreck of an affair, the big
blade of which was still crusted with dried blood--Georges’ own blood,
spilt there when he got his wound, and carefully preserved by him as a
souvenir. As a lethal instrument that knife was a joke, and I trusted
he would see the point. But I underestimated the depth of blackness in
his soul. For a long moment he stared at me, silent. Then suddenly,
with a swift and violent movement, he tore open his chemise at the
throat.
“_Voilà!_ There you are!” he exclaimed. I laid the knife out of reach
in a hurry.
“_Peu!_” he said contemptuously, and turned his back on me.
It later appeared that the _cafard_ in this particular case had its
origin in a girl. Following hard upon his operation, as soon as he
could grasp a pen, Georges had written to his fiancée, telling her
that he was now a cripple and releasing her from her engagement. And
it seemed that the girl had taken him at his word. Not a single line
had he received from her! And added bitterness lay in the fact that,
deep down in the unplumbed depths of him, Georges had a fine upstanding
confidence in himself, and believed that, cripple or no cripple, he was
a pretty fine match for any girl.
As the days filed by without news he began to bleed inwardly. But one
afternoon, shortly afterward, as I passed down the ward I beheld by
Georges’ bedside her hand tightly locked in his, a small, pale-browed
but radiant young person, in a heavy veil of black crêpe. Georges,
exultant and gay, beckoned me over.
“_C’est ma fiancée!_” he introduced proudly.
Upon receipt of his letter she had waited only to bury a relative, and
then hastened up from their native village to give him her reply in
person.
In the hospital there were innumerable love affairs that came under my
eye as the busy, monotonously diverse days flowed by; and the soldiers,
one by one, made me their confidante while I wrapped their bandages,
made their beds, or scrubbed the ingrained mud of the Somme from their
feet with liquid soap and a flesh brush. But there is one that lingers
in my mind because it became a game, half playful, half serious,
between me and the soldier lover.
On visitors’ day the spacious _salle_ was always crowded by a throng of
wives, mothers, sweethearts and friends. Before the big double doors
were thrown open each soldier had his tiny pocket mirror out, combing
his mustache and grooming himself for the occasion. Among these, I came
to observe Coussin, a jeweler by trade, who, with his wife and small
son of three, lived in Montmartre before the war.
Coussin was a quiet young man with an understanding eye and an
unfailing sunny smile. I always hated to hurt him in dressing his
wound, because it hurt him so to hurt me. As the hands of the clock
approached two he would shift on his pillow so that his glance could
reach the door without obstruction. He was one of those rare Frenchmen
who do not smoke; and he would lie thus, motionless, a little pale from
emotion, his eyes glued to that distant door. They never left it save
to consult his watch. And when finally, on the stroke of two, his wife,
Fabienne, appeared, a pretty, dark young woman, trimly veiled, pushing
her son ahead of her, Coussin would lift himself abruptly out of
bed--despite stern orders to the contrary, for there was still danger
of hemorrhage--and wave his uninjured arm.
And Fabienne would lift her wee son for a salute to _Papa_! After
which she would start down the long, crowded aisle. Smiling, her eyes
still clinging to those of Coussin, she moved sedately, controlling
her eagerness; but at the end she always ran. The kiss that followed
was--well, indescribable. You will have to imagine it. And the look
which they exchanged afterward was even more than a kiss, more
passionate, tender, revealing.
As the afternoon drew on to a close the bell rang, warning the visitors
that it was time to begin to get ready to think of departure. It was
at this juncture that the comedy with Coussin began. Earlier in the
day he had secretly set his watch half an hour back. If he could have
got hold of a stick long enough to reach from his bed I am convinced
he would have unblushingly turned back the hands of the ward clock to
match, without a single compunction. As it was, he and Fabienne blandly
ignored the first bell, as none of their private concerns. But when it
rang again, and the orderlies began shooing the dilatory ones out into
the corridor, Coussin would glance guilelessly at his watch, start,
compare it hastily with the ward clock, and then exclaim with an air of
surprise, mingled with indignation:
“Again too fast! But it is no good--that big old clock. This admirable
little watch of mine has not been out a minute in five years!”
And Fabienne would regard lovingly the admirable little watch of her
admirable little husband. In the end, of course, he won his extra half
hour, and after the departure of his wife his timepiece and that of the
ward would somehow mysteriously synchronize. But this was not quite all
of the comedy. When the visitors had gone basins were passed round and
the men bathed themselves before supper. But on the day of his wife’s
visit Coussin always refused to bathe.
“I don’t wish to!” he would say with gentle obstinacy.
“But you must. It’s the rule. It’s good for you.”
“Not to-night. To-morrow.”
“But to-night it’s very necessary. Many visitors--many microbes.”
“I don’t wish to--to-night.” He would shake his head with smiling
decision.
“But why don’t you want to wash to-night?” I asked him on the first
occasion.
He gave me a single full look, and the truth dawned upon me: He did not
wish to wash away the kisses of his wife and little son!
“To-morrow night I will wash twice!” he added magnanimously; and upon
that we compromised.
There are certain French words--one can hardly call them slang--which
have come into popular usage since the war, and which one hears
constantly on the lips of the soldier. One of these is _pinard_, the
trench word for wine, corresponding loosely to our term “booze.”
Another is _copain_. A _copain_ is a pal, a chum, a trench comrade;
one with whom a soldier shares his bed and his blanket and whiles away
the long dull hours of inactivity. Not to have such a friend at the
Front--or _là-bas_--Out There--as the soldiers call it--is a severe
deprivation; for it means spiritual isolation; one puny soul bearing
alone the terrific impact of the war. To illustrate this tender feeling
toward a _copain_:
One day I was given the task of taking down the histories of the men
in my ward; and I discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that a postman,
a quiet, drab, nondescript little man with a bald spot, had won both
the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille Militaire. To me, his tale was
astounding in its valor, for this timid, oldish little person seemed
the sort to flee for his life, like a frightened rabbit, at the first
big thunder of the guns.
It appeared that one night he had volunteered to go out upon the
battlefield, still under French and German fire, to rescue a fallen
soldier. While carrying his charge a shell exploded near at hand,
injuring both his legs and wounding his companion afresh. At this point
he might have saved himself by deserting his comrade. Instead of which,
he remained all night beside him; made his dressings; fed him the dew
that collected on the adjacent leaves, drop by drop; remained beside
him throughout the following day, under constant bombardment; and at
nightfall got him, like a sack of meal, up on his shoulders, and,
crawling on his hands and knees, dragging his injured legs--“_Grâce
à Dieu_ it was not my arms,” he said, “or I never could have made
it!”--he eventually reached a dressing station, five kilometers away.
But he had paid the toll of that long wait upon the infected field of
glory. Gangrene set in and it was found necessary to amputate both
feet. Never again could he be a postman.
“That was very splendid of you!” I said at the end of his recital.
“But no! But no!” he denied swiftly. “You see, ’twas my _copain_!”
There is still another word the war has brought into being; an epithet
that, falling in anger from the lips of a soldier, is the supreme and
ultimate insult. It is the word that has been coined to cover the
case of the man who evades military service. _Embusqué_ is the French
term. Literally it means one who hides in ambush. But practically it
has come to embrace all who, through graft or influence, hide in easy
administrative jobs, soft snaps, sinecures, saving their pusillanimous
skins instead of taking their chances with their fellows in the
trenches. The contempt for this particular brand of coward is great,
and insults are extremely likely to be the portion of any civilian who
walks the streets of Paris these days in mufti.
An American ambulance driver on the field service at Verdun told me
that, on a recent _permission_ in Paris, he had taken all his uniforms
to the tailor to be cleaned.
“It seemed bully,” he said, “to have a real American all-over bath and
get into real American clothes again--that is, it seemed bully until
I ventured out upon the boulevards _en civile_. But presently I began
to hear ‘_Embusqué!_’ ‘_Embusqué!_’ all round me in the air. Sometimes
it was hurled in my face in passing; sometimes it was hissed close to
my ear. And finally there approached four _poilus_ abreast, _mutilé_
every one, taking the entire width of the pavement, stumping along on
their wooden pegs, gay as larks, and chattering seventeen to the dozen.
Convalescents, I figured them, out on their promenade. When they came
alongside, naturally I gave them the road. But they halted, confronted
me contemptuously, and cried: ‘_Embusqué! Embusqué vous!_’ Well, it was
too much for me. I beat it back to the tailor and got into respectable
clothes.”
Like many opprobrious epithets, however, _embusqué_, among friends, has
a different slant; used thus, it becomes a term of endearment, a sort
of rough caress. A soldier, fresh Out There, muddy-booted, unshaved,
bristling with the accouterments of war, will clump awkwardly into the
hospital, bend over his wounded comrade, salute him on both cheeks,
and exclaim jovially: “Well, old _embusqué_, how goes it?” And on the
morning following my weekly afternoon off the men never failed to
greet me: “Aha, Mees _Embusqué_! You deserted us yesterday. _Embusqué
vous!_”
Used so, it was a term of affection. Nevertheless, it is a word to be
handled with discretion. Returning from the hospital late one night to
my quiet hotel, I found the place in a tumult. The police had invaded
the kitchen; and the Dutch chef, a stout, pompous white-capped tyrant,
before whom the entire establishment walked in terror, lay on the floor
with his head smashed in, weltering in his own gore. Over him stood
the head waiter, a tiny sprite of a Frenchman, hands clenched, eyes
blazing, and looking ready to jump on the chef’s fat stomach if that
prostrate gentleman so much as batted an eyelid.
“What’s the matter?” I inquired.
“He--he called me _embusqué_! Me!” exploded the head waiter, stammering
in his rage. “I knocked the fat swine down and his head hit the stove.”
The police, upon hearing the provocation, vindicated the servant
completely, and the Dutchman went to the hospital to mend his head and
his manners. It was another version of Owen Wister’s famous Western
tale: “When you call me that--smile!”
At the end of three months I was transferred to another ward with only
twelve beds--a small, tranquil family, it seemed to me, after the
continual rush and hurry of the big receiving ward. But still there was
plenty to do. No time to sit like a lady, with folded lilylike hands.
And the first three days, in addition to the regular routine, I had a
dying man in charge. For three days and three nights he lay dying from
general gas infection, a poor wreck, too ghastly to look upon with
composure. His face, under the process of decay, had turned a horrible
greenish yellow; beneath one eye yawned a deep unhealed bayonet gash;
his mouth was filled with poisonous ulcers; and his tongue was so
swollen that he could scarce articulate.
One leg had been amputated at the thigh in a vain effort to arrest the
gangrene; but the infection had immediately showed in the other leg.
The stench of this moribund organism was such that, with every window
flung wide open, the odor was still almost overpowering. And the danger
of infection was no imaginary fear. A nurse, with her hands tender from
being constantly in water, is always crocking off bits of superficial
skin.
Conceive the daily dressing and bandaging of this poor wretch; the
daily changing of linen, soaked through and through with deadly
suppurations, down to the very mattress! In touching him the doctor,
the nurse and the orderlies wore gloves; so, also, did I whenever that
was possible. But at this time there was a temporary shortage of nurses
and I had the ward to myself, save when the head nurse looked in for a
minute to ask if all went well. And perhaps I would be busy when the
cry would come:
“Mees! Mees! Number Two! A drink! Quick!”
Upon which I would drop everything in a panic and fly to his bedside,
barely in time to prevent him from swallowing the contents of the
spittoon; for he had long, lean, powerful arms, this Number Two, which
were always wandering, always in motion. With these he would pull into
his bed whatever of the adjacent landscape he could lay hands on;
for this reason we were forced to discard the bedside screens that
usually inclose the dying. Once this blind, wandering hand discovered
a thermometer on the bedside table of a neighbor. Instantly it was in
his mouth and was broken in two between his teeth. Nothing for it but
to thrust in my bare hand and pull the pieces out. No time for rubber
gloves! He might die of gas gangrene; but I was not going to have him
die of a thermometer.
Happily he did not suffer and at times he was conscious. Once, as I
held up his head--this time with gloves--to give him water, he looked
into my eyes and said, quite matter-of-factly:
“_C’est la fin, n’est-ce’pas?_”--It’s the end, isn’t it?
As he lingered and still lingered on, there came a subtle change over
the attitude of the ward with regard to this long-spun-out dying. At
first, when, after what seemed to them a proper and suitable length
of time, Number Two still stubbornly held on, complaints began to be
heard. No Frenchman loves an open window. Were they all to die of
colds in the head because of one inconsiderate fellow? Frankly, they
had had enough of him. It was not courteous to linger thus!
“_Bon Dieu_, not yet? Will he go to-night, think you?” they would
impatiently inquire.
But as the feeble flame still burned mysteriously on, unquenched, this
feeling gradually altered; it merged into a wondering awe and respect.
The gallant fight of Number Two, his gaspings, his wrestlings with the
invisible foe, commanded their admiration.
“How strong he is!” they would murmur respectfully, “What force!”
“’Tis the force of youth,” commented another.
“’Tis sad to die like that, so young, so brave--_n’est-ce-pas_, mees?”
And when the final spells of periodic shuddering began, showing the
last phase was at hand, they watched him with undisguised interest.
“He’s passing!” announced one.
“Not yet,” retorted another, almost with pride. “See him drink! _Pauvre
brave!_ ’Tis a good warrior.”
“He’ll go to-night--that’s sure!”
They began to argue about it.
But he did not go that night, nor yet the next morning; and the
afternoon found him still battling feebly for breath. Late in the
afternoon of the third day his wife arrived, a shabby, terrified
little peasant woman, infinitely pathetic in her rusty black crêpe
and her gnarled toil-worn hands. Accompanying her was the soldier’s
father, a gaunt Breton, in smock and wooden shoes, with a small,
round beribboned hat like that of a priest, and beneath it deep-set,
intelligent eyes.
Upon me devolved the unpleasant task of breaking the news. I led them
out into the corridor and, for a space, I could find no words. What
is the polite formula in such a case, anyhow? Perhaps the wife read
the trouble in my face, for her eyes upon me were like those of a dog,
piteous, begging not to be beaten. She grasped me by both elbows.
“How goes it?” she breathed. “He is better? Say that my husband is
better!”
The situation was intolerable.
“He is dying,” I blurted out brutally.
With a loud cry she flung herself into my arms. The father gazed
stonily out the window. Soon, however, she had composed herself, and I
asked whether they wished a priest. Was her husband a Catholic? Briefly
they conferred apart, and then the woman turned, with a timid query.
Would it cost anything? And with that the whole bleak truth came out.
They were poor, very poor, it appeared; so poor, indeed, that they had
sold their cow to enable them to come to Paris.
They had counted the expenses down to the last sou; but they had not
counted the expense of a priest.
I assured them we had an abbé in the hospital and that his services
were free. Upon which they decided to have him. An hour later he
celebrated Holy Communion, the soldiers looking on with simple,
unaffected interest. Only one blemish marred the serenity of the sacred
event: At the crucial moment Number Two absolutely refused to receive
the Host. Twice the murmuring abbé bent over him and inserted the holy
wafer, and twice it was rejected by the swollen lips.
“Let’s try it with water,” I suggested.
The dying man drank thirstily as ever, but again refused the symbol. I
was nonplused, for plainly those black eyes staring up into mine were
conscious. After the departure of the abbé a soldier beckoned me to his
side.
“He’s not a Catholic,” he explained softly.
As daylight waned there came a brief respite in the struggle; Number
Two breathed more easily; he lay quiet, relaxed; his invisible
antagonist seemed to have removed a short way off. The men meantime
chatted cheerfully. Some sang.
Presently a knock sounded at the door. It was the X-ray man from
upstairs, who had come to take a photograph of a certain plaster cast,
an extraordinarily fine specimen, made at the Front.
“Who’s the new _blessé_ with the leg cast?” he called out jovially. He
consulted a card. “Peletier’s the name.”
“Present!” came a voice from the corner.
“But you can’t take a picture now!” I protested, scandalized. “A man’s
dying in here. Wait until he’s dead.”
“Can’t! The cast comes off to-morrow morning. Got to take the picture
right away. Here’s the order.”
Perforce I let him come in. And now a lively bustle ensued. The bed
containing the soldier adorned with the desired cast was wheeled into
the center of the room, the leg exposed to the best advantage, bandages
unwrapped, the bedcovers composed neatly, the tripod set up, the lights
arranged.
Then the photographer’s head disappeared beneath the black camera
cloth. It would be vain to deny that the men enjoyed it hugely. They
watched with eagerness as the photographer’s head emerged from the dark
folds. He altered slightly the position of the cast, looked again, and
made a second change.
“Good!” he exclaimed at length briskly; and he held up a warning hand.
“Now! Ready, old man! Tell your leg to smile! Tell it to regard the
little bird.”
At this threadbare joke a veritable shout of laughter went up from the
ward. Even the dying man smiled!
“_Regardez!_ He smiles!” cried a soldier, pointing. “_Bon garçon!_”
The mirth renewed itself. It was the strangest death scene I had ever
viewed.
Number Two lingered through the night and slipped away the next morning
so quietly that none of us knew the exact moment; and his strength and
his smile at the photographer’s jest became a legend in the ward.
There is much talk nowadays of the great number of desertions, and
one’s fancy is fed by all kinds of wild and fantastic tales. Most of
them are pure inventions, or have grown, like snowballs rolling down
hill, from the merest innocent fact. The French are not deserters by
temperament. One does not hear of whole companies of Frenchmen, bereft
of their officers, falling on their knees, lifting up their hands, and
crying: “_Kamerad!_ Spare me; for I am a father!” Simply, that is not
the French note. To drag in his papahood at such a moment would appear
to a Frenchman as grotesquely humorous and absurd.
And yet it would be idle to assert that there have been no French
desertions. But most of them are pathological cases. The human brain
can experience just so much bloodshed, so much killing, without going
a little mad. And the more sensitive, finely tempered and humanitarian
the person, the heavier the spiritual strain.
The following story is a case in point. It was told me by the would-be
deserter himself, a young playwright of twenty-four, called, let us
say, Vernier, who had been invalided back to Paris. He related it with
a certain mordant humor, as being something of a joke on himself. The
background of the story, his repeated wounds and illnesses, his hatred
of killing, which grew with the months into a morbid soul sickness,
were supplied by his mother and a friend:
Vernier, nervous, high-strung, idealistic, had been in the war since
the days of mobilization. Repeatedly wounded, but never gravely,
constantly ill from exposure, he gravitated back and forth between
the trenches and the hospitals, not remaining very long at a time in
either. He took part in a number of attacks and killed a number of
Germans. He didn’t like it. About Christmas he wrote to his mother: “To
be a really successful trench warrior one should be made of pig iron
clean through: no head, no heart, no nerves!” And he added: “Frankly I
am sick, sick, sick to death of it all.”
Shortly after this he was wounded again and went to the hospital; a
month later he was back in the lines. Threatened with a relapse, he was
sent to a shelter behind the trenches. And here the breakdown came.
Fortunately his mother was with him. To her Vernier declared he had
killed his last man in battle. He swore a solemn oath never to take
another human life. He was through! He was going to clear out, escape
to Canada, become a farmer and start life anew.
He spoke wildly, passionately, in tones that carried far beyond the
small room. His mother listened, gray with terror. She implored him
not to be foolish, to hush, to speak lower; to consider himself, his
mother, France. Vernier, however, remained firm.
“But they’ll shoot you, my son, as a deserter!”
And to this Vernier vehemently replied:
“Mother, can’t you conceive that it’s more honorable to stand up
against a wall and die publicly for your faith than to die like a dog
in a hole in the ground for something you don’t believe? No; I’ve
killed my last man, I tell you! If they want to kill me for that let
them kill.”
Frenzied, the mother flung herself upon him, trying to stifle with
her hand that dangerous young mouth; but the damage was already done.
His loud speech had been overheard. Within the hour he was summoned
before the commandant and asked whether the charge were true. Far from
denying, Vernier admitted everything up to the hilt; he even went
farther and embroidered his point of view. The commandant listened
attentively; and at the end he spoke.
“He told me,” related Vernier in excellent English, “that in ordinary
circumstances I should be shot the next morning as a deserter--and
thus achieve what was so evidently my desire. But there was somebody
else to be considered--namely, my mother. For, in overhearing me, they
had overheard her entreaties as well. The son of such a mother must
be worth saving; and, therefore, he was returning my life, plainly
forfeit, to this brave mother of France. But he named a condition. And
after that,” continued Vernier with a reminiscent grin, “he simply cut
loose and lit into me. Asked ironically whether I supposed I was the
only man in France who was opposed to the shedding of blood! I was
a socialist, eh? Well, he was a philosophic anarchist! Went me one
stronger, you see.”
And this was the commandant’s condition: He asked Vernier to remember
that this bloody war was a trial, not to him alone but to all Frenchmen
with a spiritual nature; and, as they were strong for the common
good, he asked Vernier to be strong also--and hold his tongue. Simply
that--to be strong and hold his tongue! And to this Vernier consented.
He had to, he said, after the commandant’s courtesy to his mother. And,
also, he was not going to be outdone in delicacy. When last heard of,
Vernier was still holding his tongue Out There.