THE HEROISM OF THE WOUNDED
One poor fellow whose feet were bare, attracted my attention. When I
looked at him more carefully I noticed that he had no shirt and I asked
him what had happened to him and what had become of his clothes. At
first he did not want to tell me, but when I inquired again, with a kind
of embarrassed and self-conscious look upon his face Louis related this
tale to me.
His old acquaintance and fellow-townsman, Paul, was in the same company
with him. Back in the little home town before the war they had been
enemies. They had both been bad men, crooks and drunkards, and had at
one time tried to kill each other. For years they had hated and had as
little to do with each other as possible. It all started over an
insignificant something, but nevertheless the dislike had grown until it
had become very bitter and each was continually on the lookout to find a
chance to do the other a mean turn when possible. They had cursed each
other many a time when their paths crossed, but as far as possible they
had tried to avoid meeting. But when the war came they had been placed
together side by side as comrades in the battle. Their officers had told
them that they were not to think of self now, because their fight was
for _La Belle France_. Day after day they drilled together and week
after week performed the hard labor which was allotted them, side by
side, until at last they outgrew their ancient antipathy, and finally
became bosom friends. Then they were sent to the trenches. Together they
held the line in the same fire bay, and hour after hour both looked into
the muzzles of the German guns. They had on different occasions gone
"over the top" together, and neither of them had been hurt at all. At
last, however, early one morning when the Germans made a mighty charge,
fate was against both. The bombardment had been blinding and when the
Boches came tearing "over the top" these two sturdy poilus stood their
ground and held the enemy back. A German was just about to make a lunge
at Louis when Paul, with a spring, jumped in front of him, receiving a
bayonet thrust in his lung, and also a terrible wound in his ankle.
Louis had been painfully wounded in his left shoulder. His wound was
not dangerous but Paul was about "done in," and was breathing hard as he
had lost a large amount of blood from the hole in the lower part of his
leg. Here the narrator's eyes began to fill with tears.
"I couldn't let the poor fellow bleed to death after he had saved my
life. I tore up my shirt into bandages and tied them around his leg, and
then so they would not come off and also to keep his feet warm I took my
socks and pulled them on his feet. What else could I do? I tried to fix
up his injured lung also, but--" and then the tears burst forth and he
sobbed like a baby. "It didn't do any good and Paul lies over there
now." I glanced over in the direction where he pointed and sure enough
there was Paul, bandaged up with strips of shirt and wearing a pair of
socks over the bandages. But the black angel had already come to him. He
had "gone West."
I talked with the man a little more and he opened up his heart to me. At
best life is a strange thing to understand. Here were two human beings
who previously, by heredity or environment, or else their own
devilishness, had been evil characters. They were known as such by their
acquaintances and they knew each other as such. Their lives had been
unenviable to say the least, and then at last through war, that fearful
and awful thing, each man had been made better and the angel had come
out of what before seemed a devil. Not only was Paul a bad man but he
had hated the other man and yet here he was doing a noble and
self-sacrificing deed and not only that, but doing it for his enemy;
giving up his life for his old foe.
And here was the other man, showing a gratitude which was noble towards
the man he had hated and who had tried to kill him. He gave up his own
shirt and took off his own socks to try to keep warm the feet of the
dying Paul and to keep the blood, which meant life, in his body. It did
not accomplish the result but my narrator would not take back his socks
as he said he wanted the man who died for him to have this little gift
and be buried in them. Such heroism is not uncommon in the trenches.
After all there are some compensations even for war. In many instances
it may bring out all the hate and the hell that is in a man's heart but
I have also seen hundreds of cases where it made men much better than
they had ever been before. It made them better men and better
Christians; not necessarily of the shouting type but of the kind, of
which One said: "He that giveth a cup of cold water to one of these
little ones, shall not lose his reward," and again, "Greater love hath
no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend."
But someone may think I am preaching. Well, if I am, I am preaching the
gospel of service and sacrifice, which to my mind is the greatest gospel
there is to preach at the present critical hour. I am trying to tell men
that they can be better men wherever they are if they will it so. I have
known men to go over there from various walks of life, some of them from
wealthy homes and high salaried positions to engage in this or that line
of work, perhaps relieving suffering without getting anything for their
labor, and yet boast that they had received more than they had ever
gotten in their lives before, and it was true. They developed a feeling
of kinship for the suffering, and a satisfaction in assuaging their pain
which was a greater compensation than anything they had ever had or
could ever have expected. I have known men to go over in the very
trenches themselves and there learn the lesson of self-control and
humility which is in reality learning to respect the rights of other
people; men who formerly had been accustomed to having their own way in
life.
[Illustration: _Copyright, Underwood & Underwood, N. Y._
A DRESSING STATION SET UP ON NEWLY CAPTURED GROUND.
In a very short time after the capture of new territory not only do the
infantry and the artillery move up to maintain the new position, but the
first-aid dressing stations take their places on the newly captured
ground also.]
Out there tonight there are wealthy land owners standing knee deep in
mud and water, side by side with their own stable boys and treating them
on an absolute equality with themselves. It's a matter of life and death
out there, and after all when it gets down to that very little else
counts. A stable boy's bullet from the enemy's lines will pick off the
wealthy magnate as quick as any other's, and the rich man's usefulness
is no greater than his servant's, in the trenches. So they realize this
fact and act as though it were true. The only place in all the world
today where we have a real Brotherhood of Man is in the Allies' trenches
on the Western front. Men display heroism there; but they don't know it.
Men are brave out there; but they don't think of it. It never enters a
man's head that he has been a hero, it's all duty, all just natural;
they couldn't do otherwise. As the wounded Frenchman said about the
worse wounded Paul, "I couldn't let that poor wounded fellow bleed to
death." There was duty. It had to be done. "So I took my socks and
pulled them on his feet. What else could I do?"
After all, heroism and heroes are not always shouted from the housetops
and oftener they pass by unmentioned. But Someone knows.