moved forward and the fresh stream from the ambulances flowed in
to its place. Everywhere could be heard a continuous low drone of
conversation. There was no excitement. But neither was there silence
nor sadness--though some were dying--nor groaning nor evidence of pain.
They were talking, indeed, but it was noticeable that no one spoke of
his wounds or his sufferings, though some had lain twenty-four hours
and more on the field or in the dugouts under intense barrage before
they could be brought in. But it was not of this they spoke. The
battle, what had happened up there, still intoxicated them, still held
their brains in thrall. They talked of horrible, grotesque, fantastic
and sanguinary things in low, level dispassionate tones, as if they
were discussing the weather:
“I saw my captain and my lieutenant blown straight to hell; it was a
head-on collision with a high explosive. My captain was a fine fellow.
He always seen we had a place to sleep, and if there was anything to
eat going we got it. I was handed one in the chest. We was creeping
up on a nest of their machine guns that the dirty boches had hid in
a tree. I couldn’t bandage my chest wound, and I was spitting blood
pretty bad, so I lay down in a shallow shell hole for the rest of the
day.
“Along toward night I says to a comrade shot through the arm, who had
crawled in alongside: ‘Steve,’ I says, ‘we’ve got to beat it. This
is getting too lively for me.’ By that time the shells was busting
at regular intervals at a distance of about five feet apart. No use
scrouchin’ down to dodge ’em; if you did you lost your interval--see?
And the next one caught you straight! So we just stood up and walked
along kind of slow. We made it that way for about a mile, stumbling
along, not going too fast or too slow, for fear of losing that danged
interval, when suddenly I flopped down. I’d been bleeding pretty freely
right along.
“‘Steve,’ I says, ‘I’m not going to make it. You hike on.’
“But he helped me to stand, and so we kind of leaned up against each
other like some of these funny dead drunks you see, and staggered along
until presently we saw something looming ahead. I let out a feeble
little yip. It was a French machine gun right on top of us, and they
was just drawing off to fire! Yes, sir! That holler, for all it was so
feeble, was the best little piece of business I ever pulled!”
Some of their stories, I am bound to say, were whoppers, and their
figures as inflated as those of watered stock. They saw things
heroic size. This phase of battlefield psychology is well known to
war surgeons. One soldier, for example, declared his entire division
had been wiped out. Another made modest mention of the fact that his
company alone, single-handed, against overwhelming odds, had started
the Hun on his return trip to Berlin.
“Aw, dry up!” groaned out an exasperated realist, with a grimace of
pain. “You four-flushers make me sick, blowing like that!”
“Well, anyhow,” retorted the youth who had boasted of his company, “we
whaled ’em in that pocket!”
The realist lifted himself with labor, for a contemptuous look at the
optimist.
“What’s the matter with your eye?” he demanded.
“Left it on the battlefield to look after things,” said the other with
utter sang-froid. “What’s a little private eye or two in a war of this
size?”
“Well, you’re no tin-horn sport!” admitted the realist grimly. And he
laid himself down again.
Near the entrance to the admission tent lay a man on a stretcher, his
leg bandaged above the knee. The trouser leg had been cut away, the
white bandage gleamed ominously red, and down his leggings, down to the
heel of his heavy boot, oozed slow drops of red which formed a dark
pool on the stretcher. His eyes were closed; his eyelids were violet;
his face, under the gleam of the surgeon’s torch, showed ghastly white;
and a week’s growth of black beard emphasized the pallor.
“Get him right up to the house,” commanded the surgeon after an expert
squint, not so much at the leg as at another bandage round the chest.
“Have you taken his history?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then shoot him in ahead of the others. Tell the nurse to have him
X-rayed at once, and pass him into the operating room. It’s a long
chance at that.”
The brancardiers bore him away.
Down in the other wards the cots were fast filling with the gassed.
For these, in an evacuation surgical hospital, nothing could be done
save to remove their gas-impregnated garments, bandage their blisters
and burns, feed them, rest them--and rush them on to the rear. Upon
one of the beds lay a boy, gassed by phosgene. He lay in a kind of
stupor, wondrously beautiful and pale, a statue carved in pure marble,
the mobile boyish mouth curved in a faint smile. No visible breath. No
pulse. And for him, too, rest--absolute rest.
Still the cannons thundered and their vivid flames painted momentarily
the black sky. The ambulances never ceased their steady rumble.
The drivers got down for a draught of hot coffee, a word with the
sergeant, and then drove off in the dark. It was an unending
procession.
And now another tent down in the grounds, isolated from the others,
began to be filled. Some of the occupants were wounded, some gassed;
some groaned and called out in guttural accents of agony, of fear; some
were too far gone to groan. A guard stood at the door.
“Guess they think we’re going to murder them!” opined he grimly to the
brancardiers as they bore in still another litter.
“We caught quite a bunch to-night between the devil and the deep
blue sea,” remarked a brancardier jovially. “Now then--steady!
One--two--three! Drop the stretcher!” They lifted the silent figure
into bed. “This poor devil is almost in. He’ll be going West before
long. Here’s another. Says his name is Max. All right. Max! You’re
in America now! Nothing but a kid--is he? Can you make out what he’s
chewing the rag about?”
The guard bent down his head. The German prisoner, young, pale, with
still a lingering, childlike softness of contour about the chin, rolled
his head ceaselessly to and fro, to and fro, while he muttered in a
delirium of pain: “Oh, my poor old mother! Oh, my little sister! The
Germans did not want the war!” Over and over again, like a litany.
Up in the pre-operative ward in the château the beds and the floor and
the hallway were encumbered with men on stretchers waiting to be fed
into the X-ray room. Here, as down in the admission ward, there was a
constant circulation, the gravest cases being rapidly pushed forward
and fresh stretchers from the outside filling their places. Suddenly
an orderly, who had been bending above a still figure on a cot,
straightened himself, and with panic in his face stepped across the
room to the nurse.
“That guy in the corner’s dying, I think,” he muttered in her ear.
“Anyhow, he’s stopped breathing.”
Hastily the nurse sought the alleged moribund’s cot, leaned down and
felt his pulse. Normal. She held her palm above his nostrils. The
man was sound asleep! He was slumbering softly, tranquilly, like a
babe in its crib. The orderly, accustomed to the labored, stertorous
respirations of those who fight a running fight with death, thought a
man must be dying if he did not make a noise!
Stepping carefully along that crowded corridor I bent down to rearrange
the blanket of a stretcher case, and ask the soldier how he did.
“I’m all right,” he replied quietly. “It’s only my foot. I was cleaning
my automatic and suddenly it went off accidentally and shot me through
the ankle.”
At that word “accidentally” a kind of cold chill assailed me. Why had
he used that ill-omened word at all? Before now I had heard of the
S. I. W.’s--self-inflicted wounds. These were soldiers who, through
cowardice or momentary panic or spite, raging against some real or
fancied wrong committed by a superior officer, shot themselves in the
hand or foot in order to be sent back to the rear. In any aggregation
of humans mounting up to more than a million there are bound to be
a few such weaklings. But not this youth with the quiet voice and
the clear, candid eyes! A second time he explained the incident,
elaborating the details--with painstaking care--and a second time he
used that fatal word. My heart was troubled. My head--that cool, hard,
alien, dispassionate observer that sits up aloft in us all--whispered
that this foolish lad had given the game clean away by the double use
of that damning word. But my heart cried out that his story might be
true.
Angry at myself, and even more at this savage war, at those monstrous
taskmasters, the guns, which put to the same acid test all men, whether
strong or weak, I passed the closed doors of the operating room to the
deserted veranda and sat down upon the steps. A stray hound, coiled on
the lower step, stirred at my coming, thrust its cool muzzle into my
lap and licked my hand. And so we sat in mute companionship, the dog
and I, and listened to the pounding of the guns. And it seemed to me
that night that the dog had the best of it!
Presently a scream--or, to speak more exactly, a yell--pierced the
quiet of the house and brought me, startled, to my feet. It was not
a cry of terror or of anguish--nothing at all like that. It was the
loud, chesty, rebellious roar of a lusty infant asserting his human
rights. But this particular infant was well within the draft limits.
Softly I crossed the hall, the dog tagging my footsteps, and opened the
door of the operating room. In that brilliantly lighted little theater
of healing and pain three tables were occupied, three teams of surgeons
were working.
On the table nearest the door a big red-headed young colossus with the
chest and huge freckled arms of a Samson, was just going under ether.
Or rather, he was not going to do any such thing if he could help
himself. At the head of the table, behind him, sat the anæsthetist.
With one hand she held the ether cone over his nose while with the
other she poured the ether over the cotton. Perhaps the giant had taken
fifteen or twenty whiffs--just enough to decide he didn’t like the
smell and that he was going to be boss of his nose! At the hot-water
tap stood the major, soaping his hands for this new case while the
nurse tied on a sterile apron.
As I opened the door the young giant, with a swift twist of his
head--the only part of him that was free--whirled the offending cone to
the floor. It was for all the world like the action of an obstreperous
young colt refusing the bridle. The anæsthetist retrieved it, affixed
it firmly to his nose and soaked it in ether.
Sounded a muffled roar: “Stop! Stop, I tell yah! Don’t you know how
to stop?” More ether. “Stop you!” By this time he was struggling
violently. He had taken just enough to be rebellious, and he looked
sufficiently strong to rise up and walk off with the table strapped to
his back. “I want--I--wanta--wanta----”
“Easy there, old man,” counseled the major reassuringly. “Take it easy.”
But Redhead did not intend to take it easy or any other way. Another
whisk of the head. Off flew the ether cone. This time the major himself
picked it up and took the anæsthetist’s chair. But before he could
readjust the cone the blue eyes in the crimson face beneath opened
widely, the giant struggled determinedly and roared in strangled tones:
“I--I--wanta--I wanta s-s-s--I wanta--spit!”
The major chuckled as he lifted the cone. “All right, old man,
shoot! Now then--count. One--two--three. Louder! Breathe deep.
Four--five--six. That’s the stuff! Seven. Keep it up! Loud! Ten----”
The breathing turned into a strong regular snore, and soon the giant
had slid fathoms deep into the state of profound unconsciousness.
Softly I closed the door.
Some of these men, strong husky youngsters, pulsing with life, hard
as nails from their free out-of-door habits, are about as easy to put
under ether as would be a wild steer off the range. Every atom of their
physical nature rebels at surrendering consciousness. Others go under
like lambs. It is largely a matter of temperament. Once a private
laughed as they lifted him upon the table, and catching a whiff of
ether he chuckled: “Hi! Give me my gas mask!” Then he cuddled the cone
comfortably into place over his nose, settled down to snooze, and took
the high dive into complete unconsciousness without a single kick.
The next morning broke into one of those exquisite soft mellow days
for which this part of the country, called by the French the heart
of France, seems celebrated. It was like a perfect rose, a day when
Nature, by her clear sheer beauty, seems to shame man for his deeds
of anger and blood. Still the ambulances climbed the hill, a steady
stream, and vanished to the rear. At the moment, however, they were
carrying more gassed than wounded. And thus the surgeons were snatching
a rest. One or two of them appeared in the doorway for a moment, pale,
with circles under the eyes and heavy lines from nostril to jaw. When
they walked, it was slowly, and I had the impression that they might
make it on a dead level, but that they would stumble over a pin.
When the major appeared he proposed a walk to the laundry plant. The
change of linen on a thousand to fifteen hundred beds a night during a
rush means a well-organized washing system--and this hospital had to
depend on the village women. We strolled through one of the loveliest
woods in France, the branches overhead interlacing into Gothic arches
of lucid green, while far above, great white billowy clouds, like
graceful schooners under full sail, bowled along through the deep
uncharted blue of some unknown port. And as we strolled the major spoke
of something extraordinary that had occurred the night before.
“It was a queer piece of psychology,” he said, “and I don’t know that
I can get it over to you. It will probably sound unreal, exaggerated,
in this calm morning sunshine. But you must try to realize the setting;
try to comprehend the tensity, the strain of that operating room. We
had been operating for twenty-four solid hours without a break, upon
our men. Fine brave fellows, who went on the table without a groan. Men
shot to pieces, horribly mangled, done to death. It’s heart-breaking
work, if one’s got any heart to break. At the end of the night we all
felt mighty blue. Then they brought in an American captain, a medical
officer, already in a moribund condition. Well, to see one of our own
corps in that state touched us pretty close. He was blown to pieces. He
hadn’t a chance, and he knew it. And the sight of his calm, his high
fine courage, hit us hard. But we did what we could for him--which was
just nothing at all. After that was over I called out: ‘Fetch in the
boches!’
“And as they brought in the first German wounded I was aware of a
peculiar atmosphere, a sense of strain, a clear antagonism in the
room. It was like a live magnetic current. You cannot conceive--nobody
can--the terrific night we’d been through trying to salvage our brave
fellows. The emotional stress was stupendous. Well, now we were looking
on those who had caused that ruin, and the revulsion of feeling ran
high. As the anæsthetist fixed the ether cone in place on the Prussian
he said to me: ‘Sir, would you consider it a crime if I were just to go
on pouring ether on this Hun’s nose?’
“That brought a laugh and cleared the strained atmosphere. And we
cleaned up their wounded exactly as if they had been our own. But I’ll
not deny we were glad when it was done!”
Returning to the château the major suddenly stopped and inquired: “Have
you ever seen any cases of shell shock?”
I had not, though I had heard of them in the French and British armies.
“We don’t know exactly what it is yet,” continued the major. “Nobody
does. But we have a special American hospital for its treatment. Look
here: You see those two chaps crouching down by the steps? They both
have it--hard.”
I looked. I had noted those two hunched figures before, and had taken
them for orderlies, dead with fatigue, snatching a few minutes’ sleep.
Now I looked closer. And looking closer I perceived it was not fatigue
that caused them to squeeze themselves into the smallest possible
space; it was not fatigue that caused them to hunch their shoulders
and bow their backs as before a storm, draw their heads down into
the curved hollow of their chests and try to hide themselves in the
ground. It was fear--abject, ghastly, insane fear. They were obsessed,
petrified, rendered deaf and dumb--by fear.
The major bent down to one, laid a hand on his shoulder, spoke a
friendly word. The man’s fixed gaze stared straight through him as
if he had been composed of air. He was deaf to reason, deaf to human
appeal--but not deaf to the roar of the cannon. For each time that an
ambulance rolled by or distant thunder issued from the clouds banking
in the western sky his head jerked in the direction of the sound as
though pulled by invisible wires. But not one word would he utter. Only
his eyes seemed alive, wild, dark, affrighted. For the moment he was
not human, but an effigy galvanized by fear. The noise, the continuous
shelling, with probably some additional culminating shock, had
temporarily bereft him of reason. For both of these men were unwounded,
unscathed.
Later, in the admission ward, with the help of an orderly I induced
one of these men to eat. The other patients watched with indifference.
They had long since become hardened to uglier sights than that of a man
crazed in battle. It was like feeding an infant ostrich. The mouth
opened methodically to receive the food, but not one move, not one
sound would he make. One hand upheld in air, the index finger raised,
marked the tensity of his strained attention. His blue eyes forever
darted from side to side. At each distant volley his body trembled
and shook. And those straining eyes, full of horror, and that raised
index finger followed questing through the air for the sound. It was
infinitely pitiful.
“Don’t coddle him!” called the major, passing through. “It’s the worst
thing in world you can do.”
“May I see if I can get him to talk?”
“Certainly. But treat him like an ordinary individual.”
“He’s afraid to talk,” said the orderly, pausing by the stretcher.
“He’s a nut. He thinks if he opens his mouth the Germans will hear him
and send over a shell.”
In taking his record I discovered his first name was Thomas.
“Why, Thomas,” I said, “I’ve a brother by that name. What do they call
you--Tom?” For the first time his eyes fixed themselves on mine. “No,
no, don’t point up there!” For now his index finger was lifted toward
the canvas roof, upon which the first pattering drops of the storm were
beginning to fall, and his wide blue eyes were straining after the
sound. “It’s raining, Tom,” I explained. “Rain, rain, rain. You know
what rain is! Now put that hand inside.”
With the faint, troubled smile of a child he obeyed. But the next
instant that listening index finger was upraised again in the air.
Resolutely I thrust his hand under the blanket.
“Look at me, Tom. Tom! Look!” He brought his strained gaze down from
the roof. “Look round you and see where you are. Do you see those
nurses? Do you see these beds? You’re in a hospital. You’re not
fighting now. No shells can get you here. So you’ve got to buck up and
feed yourself. We’re all busy here. Take your spoon. Now! Can you find
the road to your mouth?”
With another smile, infinitely pathetic, he managed to convey a very
wobbly loaded spoon somewhere near the region of his face. The second
one found the goal. But it was a prodigious effort. The sweat poured
off him. The startled blue eyes lost their fixed glare. Still he had
not spoken. When finally he finished the soup and started to haul the
blanket up over his head I drew it back and tucked it firmly under his
chin. And again those blue eyes smiled! And now for the first time
he recognized I was a woman. Before then I had simply been a vague
irritant which prevented his proper listening.
With hesitation he pointed to his shirt pocket. This was the first
movement, unconnected with his obsession, he had made of his own
initiative. Thomas was coming on! I drew forth a small worn black
leather Testament and laid it in his hands. With trembling fingers,
for at intervals he still quaked like a leaf, he opened to a
photograph--most obviously himself and his young wife. At sight of this
girl looking out at him with frank laughing eyes a ray of joy broke
across his troubled countenance. He stared hard, his face working--and
then he burst into sobs.
“Who is it, Tom? Your brother?”
He shook his head violently and pointed to himself. And now the
fugitive smile reappeared.
“Not you!” I exclaimed in hearty surprise.
He nodded, fully absorbed. But still he would not commit himself to
speech.
“Then tell me. Say it. Speak!”
He thumped on his chest to indicate it was himself; his face worked;
his eyes begged, implored me not to insist, not to drag him forth from
his cellule of silence.
“Who is that, Tom?”
He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, and with the sweat starting out on
his forehead he pronounced huskily: “Me!”
The sound of his own voice seemed to terrify him utterly, and again he
burst into tears.
“And who is this with you, Thomas--your grandmother?”
Again that ray of vivid joy. No need to ask Thomas’ sentiments about
his wife! That one look told it all. Again the violent head shake.
“Thomas, it’s no use shaking your head at me. You’ve got to tell me who
this lady is!”
And with a tremulous laugh and an effort that brought the tears into
his eyes and mine Thomas responded proudly, brokenly: “My wife!”
The ice was broken. In stumbling accents, like a child, Thomas began
to talk. And when an hour later he was evacuated back to a base which
treats these mental breakdowns it was Thomas himself, from the dark
interior of the ambulance where he lay on a stretcher, who called out
weakly: “Good-by, miss! Good luck!”
Thus Thomas came back from the land of fear.
Later I went down through the wards searching for the man who had shot
himself through the ankle.
“Oh, you mean the S. I. W.?” replied the nurse to my interrogation.
“Well, he’s keeping pretty quiet this morning. There he is.”
“But he’s not an S. I. W.,” I protested rather faintheartedly. “He told
me it was an accident.”
“Maybe he did,” she retorted with a significant smile.
“Well? Did he confess later?”
“No. Not consciously. But after the operation, while he was coming
out from under ether, he gave the whole thing away. He blabbed
the entire story before all the men. It seemed he had a grievance
against some officer and took this way of getting out from under his
command. Somebody,” she finished humorously, “ought to tell those
S. I. W.’s that they can’t get away with those accidental-on-purpose
self-inflicted wounds. Lie as they may, when they’re put under ether
out plumps the truth. All the ward hears it, and the poor devil,
regaining consciousness, wonders why it is that all his comrades turn
away their eyes or look him up and down with a cold, contemptuous
stare. That chap down there is suffering agonies right now. You see he
has pulled up the sheet over his head and is pretending to be asleep.”
A word to the wise is sufficient. Those privates who try to take
the law into their own hands and change the deal by means of a
self-inflicted wound, heed the advice of this friendly nurse--and
don’t. You can’t get away with it. Ether will find your guilty secret
out. Fortunately, cases of this type are few and far between.
As the afternoon waned into evening and darkness fell the cannons
resumed their bellowing, and the ambulances, which during the day had
fallen off, began once more to climb the hill. And this time it was
not only gassed that were flowing in but wounded as well. Despite the
swiftness and the precision with which the hospital machinery moved
the stretchers began to congest, to mass, to lie in the corridors, on
the porch, and down on the moon-blanched grass. Men shattered and torn
to pieces, patient, incomparably brave, with a smile or a joke for the
orderlies who worked among them, lay in the open night under the stars
awaiting their turn at the table.
Ah, those dark, silent, blanket-draped figures, lying so still under
the moon! Those ghastly pale faces smudged with mud and blood,
summoning a smile from their fainting souls as they look up into your
eyes! All the papers were glowing with the magnificent deeds of the
American heroes. Well, here they were, those heroes, lying before our
eyes mangled, torn, bleeding to death with a smile. Somehow in the face
of all this the glory and the bombast of those printed eulogies seemed
tawdry and cheap.