When the Baas returned, we covered the deserter with our coats and
fed him. Perhaps we did wrong to give him food, although I think now
that he was doomed before we found him. We did our best, but it was
not enough. In less than an hour, after a horrible spell of vomiting,
the poor man was beyond all help of ours. His eyes rolled desperately,
his breath came in horrid gasps, and he grew rigid like a man in an
epileptic fit.
We tore open the breast of his uniform to ease his labored breathing.
A metal identification disk hung on a cord from about his neck over
a chest which was like a wicker-work of ribs. His belly was sunken
until one almost saw the spinal column through it. His tortured lungs
subsided little by little, the terrifying sound of his breathing sank
to nothing, his head thrust far back and over to the right side, his
arms stiffened slowly, his mouth fell open.
We watched, as if fascinated, the pulsing vein in his emaciated neck,
still pumping blood through a body which had ceased to breathe. The top
of the blood column at last appeared, like mercury in a thermometer. It
fell half an inch with each stroke of the famished heart. It reached
the base of the neck and sank from sight, and still we stared and
stared. The man was dead, yet I seemed to have an awful vision of
billions of sentient cells, billions of little selfish lives which had
made up his life, fighting, choking, starving to death within that
cooling clay.
The Baas bent his head, uncovered, and crossed himself. With a quick
stooping motion, he closed the wide open eyes and straightened the bent
limbs. Then he rose to his full height and looked at me sadly. "This
man had a mother, monsieur," he said. "We must forget the rest."
In the pit where the other German had lain we buried the body of the
deserter, and we found and repaired the little lath cross and set it up
at the grave's head. But first I took from about the neck of the corpse
the oval medallion which told the man's name and regimental number. It
was a silver medal, finer than those usually worn by privates in the
German army. I have it by me as I write, and on it is etched the brave
sentence, "God shield you from all dangers of warfare, and render you
back to us safe and victorious!"
I was late for breakfast at the Château, but Van Steen kindly made room
for me at his right hand. "Aha, monsieur!" he called gaily, "we thought
you were helping to find the deserter."
"Wha-what, monsieur le Baron?" I stuttered in amazement.
"The German deserter. A file of soldiers woke us up at seven o'clock,
inquiring for one of their men who ran away from Mons a month ago. They
are searching the stables and the forest. They have traced him here to
our commune. I hope they catch him!"
My fingers clutched the silver disk in my pocket. "I think they will
not catch him, messieurs. He ran away a month ago, you say?"
"A month ago.... But it is nothing to us, eh? Let us eat our
breakfasts." The Baron bowed grandly to me. "Monsieur le Délégue," he
began in his smooth, formal voice, "once again we remind ourselves
that it is thanks to you and the generous American people that we have
bread. It is thanks to you that our noble Belgium is not starving....
Eh bien! Let us eat our breakfasts."
And so we did.
(Told in the _Red Cross Magazine_.)