Produced by Meredith Bach, René Anderson Benitz and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Transcriber's Note: Variations in hyphenation and spelling have been
retained as in the original. Minor printer errors have been amended
without note.
_By Ellen N. La Motte_
The Tuberculosis Nurse
The Backwash of War
The
Backwash of War
The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield
as Witnessed by an American
Hospital Nurse
By
Ellen N. La Motte
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1916
Copyright, 1916
BY
ELLEN N. LA MOTTE
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
To
MARY BORDEN-TURNER
"The Little Boss"
TO WHOM I OWE MY EXPERIENCE IN
THE ZONE OF THE ARMIES
INTRODUCTION
This war has been described as "Months of boredom, punctuated by moments
of intense fright." The writer of these sketches has experienced many
"months of boredom," in a French military field hospital, situated ten
kilometres behind the lines, in Belgium. During these months, the
lines have not moved, either forward or backward, but have remained
dead-locked, in one position. Undoubtedly, up and down the long-reaching
kilometres of "Front" there has been action, and "moments of intense
fright" have produced glorious deeds of valour, courage, devotion, and
nobility. But when there is little or no action, there is a stagnant
place, and in a stagnant place there is much ugliness. Much ugliness is
churned up in the wake of mighty, moving forces. We are witnessing a
phase in the evolution of humanity, a phase called War--and the slow,
onward progress stirs up the slime in the shallows, and this is the
Backwash of War. It is very ugly. There are many little lives foaming up
in the backwash. They are loosened by the sweeping current, and float to
the surface, detached from their environment, and one glimpses them,
weak, hideous, repellent. After the war, they will consolidate again
into the condition called Peace.
After this war, there will be many other wars, and in the intervals
there will be peace. So it will alternate for many generations. By
examining the things cast up in the backwash, we can gauge the progress
of humanity. When clean little lives, when clean little souls boil up in
the backwash, they will consolidate, after the final war, into a peace
that shall endure. But not till then.
E. N. L. M.
CONTENTS
PAGE
HEROES 3
LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE 17
THE HOLE IN THE HEDGE 35
ALONE 49
A BELGIAN CIVILIAN 63
THE INTERVAL 77
WOMEN AND WIVES 95
POUR LA PATRIE 115
LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA 129
A SURGICAL TRIUMPH 143
AT THE TELEPHONE 159
A CITATION 167
AN INCIDENT 181
HEROES
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the
roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left
eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into
an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest
field hospital. The journey was made in double-quick time, over rough
Belgian roads. To save his life, he must reach the hospital without
delay, and if he was bounced to death jolting along at breakneck speed,
it did not matter. That was understood. He was a deserter, and
discipline must be maintained. Since he had failed in the job, his life
must be saved, he must be nursed back to health, until he was well
enough to be stood up against a wall and shot. This is War. Things like
this also happen in peace time, but not so obviously.
At the hospital, he behaved abominably. The ambulance men declared that
he had tried to throw himself out of the back of the ambulance, that he
had yelled and hurled himself about, and spat blood all over the floor
and blankets--in short, he was very disagreeable. Upon the operating
table, he was no more reasonable. He shouted and screamed and threw
himself from side to side, and it took a dozen leather straps and four
or five orderlies to hold him in position, so that the surgeon could
examine him. During this commotion, his left eye rolled about loosely
upon his cheek, and from his bleeding mouth he shot great clots of
stagnant blood, caring not where they fell. One fell upon the immaculate
white uniform of the Directrice, and stained her, from breast to shoes.
It was disgusting. They told him it was _La Directrice_, and that he
must be careful. For an instant he stopped his raving, and regarded her
fixedly with his remaining eye, then took aim afresh, and again covered
her with his coward blood. Truly it was disgusting.
To the _Médecin Major_ it was incomprehensible, and he said so. To
attempt to kill oneself, when, in these days, it was so easy to die with
honour upon the battlefield, was something he could not understand. So
the _Médecin Major_ stood patiently aside, his arms crossed, his supple
fingers pulling the long black hairs on his bare arms, waiting. He had
long to wait, for it was difficult to get the man under the anæsthetic.
Many cans of ether were used, which went to prove that the patient was a
drinking man. Whether he had acquired the habit of hard drink before or
since the war could not be ascertained; the war had lasted a year now,
and in that time many habits may be formed. As the _Médecin Major_
stood there, patiently fingering the hairs on his hairy arms, he
calculated the amount of ether that was expended--five cans of ether, at
so many francs a can--however, the ether was a donation from America, so
it did not matter. Even so, it was wasteful.
At last they said he was ready. He was quiet. During his struggles, they
had broken out two big teeth with the mouth gag, and that added a little
more blood to the blood already choking him. Then the _Médecin Major_
did a very skilful operation. He trephined the skull, extracted the
bullet that had lodged beneath it, and bound back in place that erratic
eye. After which the man was sent over to the ward, while the surgeon
returned hungrily to his dinner, long overdue.
In the ward, the man was a bad patient. He insisted upon tearing off his
bandages, although they told him that this meant bleeding to death. His
mind seemed fixed on death. He seemed to want to die, and was thoroughly
unreasonable, although quite conscious. All of which meant that he
required constant watching and was a perfect nuisance. He was so
different from the other patients, who wanted to live. It was a joy to
nurse them. This was the _Salle_ of the _Grands Blessés_, those most
seriously wounded. By expert surgery, by expert nursing, some of these
were to be returned to their homes again, _réformés_, mutilated for
life, a burden to themselves and to society; others were to be nursed
back to health, to a point at which they could again shoulder eighty
pounds of marching kit, and be torn to pieces again on the firing line.
It was a pleasure to nurse such as these. It called forth all one's
skill, all one's humanity. But to nurse back to health a man who was to
be court-martialled and shot, truly that seemed a dead-end occupation.
They dressed his wounds every day. Very many yards of gauze were
required, with gauze at so many francs a bolt. Very much ether, very
much iodoform, very many bandages--it was an expensive business,
considering. All this waste for a man who was to be shot, as soon as he
was well enough. How much better to expend this upon the hopeless
cripples, or those who were to face death again in the trenches.
The night nurse was given to reflection. One night, about midnight, she
took her candle and went down the ward, reflecting. Ten beds on the
right hand side, ten beds on the left hand side, all full. How pitiful
they were, these little soldiers, asleep. How irritating they were,
these little soldiers, awake. Yet how sternly they contrasted with the
man who had attempted suicide. Yet did they contrast, after all? Were
they finer, nobler, than he? The night nurse, given to reflection,
continued her rounds.
In bed number two, on the right, lay Alexandre, asleep. He had received
the _Médaille Militaire_ for bravery. He was better now, and that day
had asked the _Médecin Major_ for permission to smoke. The _Médecin
Major_ had refused, saying that it would disturb the other patients. Yet
after the doctor had gone, Alexandre had produced a cigarette and
lighted it, defying them all from behind his _Médaille Militaire_. The
patient in the next bed had become violently nauseated in consequence,
yet Alexandre had smoked on, secure in his _Médaille Militaire_. How
much honour lay in that?
Here lay Félix, asleep. Poor, querulous, feeble-minded Félix, with a
foul fistula, which filled the whole ward with its odour. In one
sleeping hand lay his little round mirror, in the other, he clutched his
comb. With daylight, he would trim and comb his moustache, his poor,
little drooping moustache, and twirl the ends of it.
Beyond lay Alphonse, drugged with morphia, after an intolerable day.
That morning he had received a package from home, a dozen pears. He had
eaten them all, one after the other, though his companions in the beds
adjacent looked on with hungry, longing eyes. He offered not one, to
either side of him. After his gorge, he had become violently ill, and
demanded the basin in which to unload his surcharged stomach.
Here lay Hippolyte, who for eight months had jerked on the bar of a
captive balloon, until appendicitis had sent him into hospital. He was
not ill, and his dirty jokes filled the ward, provoking laughter, even
from dying Marius. How filthy had been his jokes--how they had been
matched and beaten by the jokes of others. How filthy they all were,
when they talked with each other, shouting down the length of the ward.
Wherein lay the difference? Was it not all a dead-end occupation,
nursing back to health men to be patched up and returned to the
trenches, or a man to be patched up, court-martialled and shot? The
difference lay in the Ideal.
One had no ideals. The others had ideals, and fought for them. Yet had
they? Poor selfish Alexandre, poor vain Félix, poor gluttonous Alphonse,
poor filthy Hippolyte--was it possible that each cherished ideals,
hidden beneath? Courageous dreams of freedom and patriotism? Yet if so,
how could such beliefs fail to influence their daily lives? Could one
cherish standards so noble, yet be himself so ignoble, so petty, so
commonplace?
At this point her candle burned out, so the night nurse took another
one, and passed from bed to bed. It was very incomprehensible. Poor,
whining Félix, poor whining Alphonse, poor whining Hippolyte, poor
whining Alexandre--all fighting for _La Patrie_. And against them the
man who had tried to desert _La Patrie_.
So the night nurse continued her rounds, up and down the ward,
reflecting. And suddenly she saw that these ideals were imposed from
without--that they were compulsory. That left to themselves, Félix, and
Hippolyte, and Alexandre, and Alphonse would have had no ideals.
Somewhere, higher up, a handful of men had been able to impose upon
Alphonse, and Hippolyte, and Félix, and Alexandre, and thousands like
them, a state of mind which was not in them, of themselves. Base metal,
gilded. And they were all harnessed to a great car, a Juggernaut,
ponderous and crushing, upon which was enthroned Mammon, or the Goddess
of Liberty, or Reason, as you like. Nothing further was demanded of them
than their collective physical strength--just to tug the car forward, to
cut a wide swath, to leave behind a broad path along which could
follow, at some later date, the hordes of Progress and Civilization.
Individual nobility was superfluous. All the Idealists demanded was
physical endurance from the mass.
Dawn filtered in through the little square windows of the ward. Two of
the patients rolled on their sides, that they might talk to one another.
In the silence of early morning their voices rang clear.
"Dost thou know, _mon ami_, that when we captured that German battery a
few days ago, we found the gunners chained to their guns?"
PARIS,
18 December, 1915.
LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE
They brought him to the _Poste de Secours_, just behind the lines, and
laid the stretcher down gently, after which the bearers stretched and
restretched their stiffened arms, numb with his weight. For he was a big
man of forty, not one of the light striplings of the young classes of
this year or last. The wounded man opened his eyes, flashing black eyes,
that roved about restlessly for a moment, and then rested vindictively
first on one, then on the other of the two _brancardiers_.
"_Sales embusqués!_" (Dirty cowards) he cried angrily. "How long is it
since I have been wounded? Ten hours! For ten hours have I laid there,
waiting for you! And then you come to fetch me, only when it is safe!
Safe for you! Safe to risk your precious, filthy skins! Safe to come
where I have stood for months! Safe to come where for ten hours I have
laid, my belly opened by a German shell! Safe! Safe! How brave you are
when night has fallen, when it is dark, when it is safe to come for me,
ten hours late!"
He closed his eyes, jerked up his knees, and clasped both dirty hands
over his abdomen. From waist to knees the old blue trousers were soaked
with blood, black blood, stiff and wet. The _brancardiers_ looked at
each other and shook their heads. One shrugged a shoulder. Again the
flashing eyes of the man on the stretcher opened.
"_Sales embusqués!_" he shouted again. "How long have you been engaged
in this work of mercy? For twelve months, since the beginning of the
war! And for twelve months, since the beginning of the war, I have stood
in the first line trenches! Think of it--twelve months! And for twelve
months you have come for us--when it was safe! How much younger are you
than I! Ten years, both of you--ten years, fifteen years, or even more!
Ah, _Nom de Dieu_, to have influence! Influence!"
The flaming eyes closed again, and the bearers shuffled off, lighting
cheap cigarettes.
Then the surgeon came, impatiently. Ah, a _grand blessé_, to be hastened
to the rear at once. The surgeon tried to unbutton the soaking trousers,
but the man gave a scream of pain.
"For the sake of God, cut them, _Monsieur le Major_! Cut them! Do not
economize. They are worn out in the service of the country! They are
torn and bloody, they can serve no one after me! Ah, the little
economies, the little, false economies! Cut them, _Monsieur le Major_!"
An assistant, with heavy, blunt scissors, half cut, half tore the
trousers from the man in agony. Clouts of black blood rolled from the
wound, then a stream bright and scarlet, which was stopped by a handful
of white gauze, retained by tightly wrapped bands. The surgeon raised
himself from the task.
"_Mon pauvre vieux_," he murmured tenderly. "Once more?" and into the
supine leg he shot a stream of morphia.
Two ambulance men came in, Americans in khaki, ruddy, well fed,
careless. They lifted the stretcher quickly, skilfully. Marius opened
his angry eyes and fixed them furiously.
"_Sales étrangers!_" he screamed. "What are _you_ here for? To see me,
with my bowels running on the ground? Did you come for me ten hours ago,
when I needed you? My head in mud, my blood warm under me? Ah, not you!
There was danger then--you only come for me when it is safe!"
They shoved him into the ambulance, buckling down the brown canvas
curtains by the light of a lantern. One cranked the motor, then both
clambered to the seat in front, laughing. They drove swiftly but
carefully through the darkness, carrying no lights. Inside, the man
continued his imprecations, but they could not hear him.
"Strangers! Sightseers!" he sobbed in misery. "Driving a motor, when it
is I who should drive the motor! Have I not conducted a Paris taxi for
these past ten years? Do I not know how to drive, to manage an engine?
What are they here for--France? No, only themselves! To write a book--to
say what they have done--when it was safe! If it was France, there is
the Foreign Legion--where they would have been welcome--to stand in the
trenches as I have done! But do they enlist? Ah no! It is not safe! They
take my place with the motor, and come to get me--when it is too late."
Then the morphia relieving him, he slept.
* * * * *
In a field hospital, some ten kilometres behind the lines, Marius lay
dying. For three days he had been dying and it was disturbing to the
other patients. The stench of his wounds filled the air, his curses
filled the ward. For Marius knew that he was dying and that he had
nothing to fear. He could express himself as he chose. There would be no
earthly court-martial for him--he was answerable to a higher court. So
Marius gave forth freely to the ward his philosophy of life, his hard,
bare, ugly life, as he had lived it, and his comments on _La Patrie_ as
he understood it. For three days, night and day, he screamed in his
delirium, and no one paid much attention, thinking it was delirium. The
other patients were sometimes diverted and amused, sometimes exceedingly
annoyed, according to whether or not they were sleepy or suffering. And
all the while the wound in the abdomen gave forth a terrible stench,
filling the ward, for he had gas gangrene, the odour of which is
abominable.
Marius had been taken to the _Salle_ of the abdominal wounds, and on one
side of him lay a man with a fæcal fistula, which smelled atrociously.
The man with the fistula, however, had got used to himself, so he
complained mightily of Marius. On the other side lay a man who had been
shot through the bladder, and the smell of urine was heavy in the air
round about. Yet this man had also got used to himself, and he too
complained of Marius, and the awful smell of Marius. For Marius had gas
gangrene, and gangrene is death, and it was the smell of death that the
others complained of.
Two beds farther down, lay a boy of twenty, who had been shot through
the liver. Also his hand had been amputated, and for this reason he was
to receive the _Croix de Guerre_. He had performed no special act of
bravery, but all _mutilés_ are given the _Croix de Guerre_, for they
will recover and go back to Paris, and in walking about the streets of
Paris, with one leg gone, or an arm gone, it is good for the _morale_ of
the country that they should have a _Croix de Guerre_ pinned on their
breasts. So one night at about eight o'clock, the General arrived to
confer the _Croix de Guerre_ on the man two beds from Marius. The
General was a beautiful man, something like the Russian Grand Duke. He
was tall and thin, with beautiful slim legs encased in shining tall
boots. As he entered the ward, emerging from the rain and darkness
without, he was very imposing. A few rain drops sparkled upon the golden
oak leaves of his cap, for although he had driven up in a limousine, he
was not able to come quite up to the ward, but had been obliged to
traverse some fifty yards of darkness, in the rain. He was encircled in
a sweeping black cloak, which he cast off upon an empty bed, and then,
surrounded by his glittering staff, he conferred the medal upon the man
two beds below Marius. The little ceremony was touching in its dignity
and simplicity. Marius, in his delirium, watched the proceedings
intently.
It was all over in five minutes. Then the General was gone, his staff
was gone, and the ward was left to its own reflections.
Opposite Marius, across the ward, lay a little _joyeux_. That is to say,
a soldier of the _Bataillon d'Afrique_, which is the criminal regiment
of France, in which regiment are placed those men who would otherwise
serve sentences in jail. Prisoners are sent to this regiment in peace
time, and in time of war, they fight in the trenches as do the others,
but with small chance of being decorated. Social rehabilitation is their
sole reward, as a rule. So Marius waxed forth, taunting the little
_joyeux_, whose feet lay opposite his feet, a yard apart.
"_Tiens!_ My little friend!" he shouted so that all might hear. "Thou
canst never receive the _Croix de Guerre_, as François has received it,
because thou art of the _Bataillon d'Afrique_! And why art thou there,
my friend? Because, one night at a café, thou didst drink more wine than
was good for thee--so much more than was good for thee, that when an old
_boulevardier_, with much money in his pocket, proposed to take thy girl
from thee, thou didst knock him down and give him a black eye! Common
brawler, disturber of the peace! It was all due to the wine, the good
wine, which made thee value the girl far above her worth! It was the
wine! The wine! And every time an attempt is made in the Chamber to
abolish drinking the good wine of France, there is violent opposition.
Opposition from whom? From the old _boulevardier_ whose money is
invested in the vineyards--the very man who casts covetous eyes upon thy
Mimi! So thou goest to jail, then to the _Bataillon d'Afrique_, and the
wine flows, and thy Mimi--where is she? Only never canst thou receive
the _Croix de Guerre_, my friend--_La Patrie Reconnaissante_ sees to
that!"
Marius shouted with laughter--he knew himself so near death, and it was
good to be able to say all that was in his heart. An orderly approached
him, one of the six young men attached as male nurses to the ward.
"Ha! Thou bidst me be quiet, _sale embusqué_?" he taunted. "I will shout
louder than the guns! And hast thou ever heard the guns, nearer than
this safe point behind the lines? Thou art here doing woman's work!
Caring for me, nursing me! And what knowledge dost thou bring to thy
task, thou ignorant grocer's clerk? Surely thou hast some powerful
friend, who got thee mobilized as _infirmier_--a woman's task--instead
of a simple soldier like me, doing his duty in the trenches!"
Marius raised himself in bed, which the _infirmier_ knew, because the
doctor had told him, was not a right position for a man who has a wound
in his stomach, some thirty centimetres in length. Marius, however, was
strong in his delirium, so the _infirmier_ called another to help him
throw the patient upon his back. Soon three were called, to hold the
struggling man down.
Marius resigned himself. "Summon all six of you!" he shouted. "All six
of you! And what do you know about illness such as mine? You, a grocer's
clerk! You, barber! You, _cultivateur_! You, driver of the boat train
from Paris to Cherbourg! You, agent of the Gas Society of Paris! You,
driver of a Paris taxi, such as myself! Yet here you all are, in your
wisdom, your experience, to nurse me! Mobilized as nurses because you
are friend of a friend of a deputy! Whilst I, who know no deputy, am
mobilized in the first line trenches! _Sales embusqués! Sales
embusqués! La Patrie Reconnaissante!_"
He laid upon his back a little while, quiet. He was very delirious, and
the end could not be far off. His black eyebrows were contracted into a
frown, the eyelids closed and quivering. The grey nostrils were pinched
and dilated, the grey lips snarling above yellow, crusted teeth. The
restless lips twitched constantly, mumbling fresh treason, inaudibly.
Upon the floor on one side lay a pile of coverlets, tossed angrily from
the bed, while on each side the bed dangled white, muscular, hairy legs,
the toes touching the floor. All the while he fumbled to unloose the
abdominal dressings, picking at the safety-pins with weak, dirty
fingers. The patients on each side turned their backs to him, to escape
the smell, the smell of death.
A woman nurse came down the ward. She was the only one, and she tried to
cover him with the fallen bedding. Marius attempted to clutch her hand,
to encircle her with his weak, delirious, amorous arms. She dodged
swiftly, and directed an orderly to cover him with the fallen blankets.
Marius laughed in glee, a fiendish, feeble, shrieking laugh. "Have
nothing to do with a woman who is diseased!" he shouted. "Never! Never!
Never!"
So they gave him more morphia, that he might be quiet and less indecent,
and not disturb the other patients. And all that night he died, and all
the next day he died, and all the night following he died, for he was a
very strong man and his vitality was wonderful. And as he died, he
continued to pour out to them his experience of life, his summing up of
life, as he had lived it and known it. And the sight of the woman nurse
evoked one train of thought, and the sight of the men nurses evoked
another, and the sight of the man who had the _Croix de Guerre_ evoked
another, and the sight of the _joyeux_ evoked another. And he told the
ward all about it, incessantly. He was very delirious.
His was a filthy death. He died after three days' cursing and raving.
Before he died, that end of the ward smelled foully, and his foul words,
shouted at the top of his delirious voice, echoed foully. Everyone was
glad when it was over.
The end came suddenly. After very much raving it came, after terrible
abuse, terrible truths. One morning, very early, the night nurse looked
out of the window and saw a little procession making its way out of the
gates of the hospital enclosure, going towards the cemetery of the
village beyond. First came the priest, carrying a wooden cross that the
carpenter had just made. He was chanting something in a minor key, while
the sentry at the gates stood at salute. The cortège passed through,
numbering a dozen soldiers, four of whom carried the bier on their
shoulders. The bier was covered with the glorious tricolour of France.
She glanced instinctively back towards Marius. It would be just like
that when he died. Then her eyes fell upon a Paris newspaper, lying on
her table. There was a column headed, "_Nos Héros! Morts aux Champs
d'Honneur! La Patrie Reconnaissante._" It would be just like that.
Then Marius gave a last, sudden scream.
"_Vive la France!_" he shouted. "_Vive les sales embusqués! Hoch le
Kaiser!_"
The ward awoke, scandalized.
"_Vive la Patrie Reconnaissante!_" he yelled. "_Hoch le Kaiser!_"
Then he died.
PARIS,
19 December, 1915.
THE HOLE IN THE HEDGE
The field hospital stood in a field outside the village, surrounded by a
thick, high hedge of prickly material. Within, the enclosure was filled
by a dozen little wooden huts, painted green, connected with each other
by plank walks. What went on outside the hedge, nobody within knew. War,
presumably. War ten kilometres away, to judge by the map, and by the
noise of the guns, which on some days roared very loudly, and made the
wooden huts shake and tremble, although one got used to that, after a
fashion. The hospital was very close to the war, so close that no one
knew anything about the war, therefore it was very dull inside the
enclosure, with no news and no newspapers, and just quarrels and
monotonous work. As for the hedge, at such points as the prickly thorn
gave out or gave way, stout stakes and stout boarding took its place,
thus making it a veritable prison wall to those confined within. There
was but one recognized entrance, the big double gates with a sentry box
beside them, at which box or within it, according to the weather, stood
a sentry, night and day. By day, a drooping French flag over the gates
showed the ambulances where to enter. By night, a lantern served the
same purpose. The night sentry was often asleep, the day sentry was
often absent, and each wrote down in a book, when they thought it
important, the names of those who came and went into the hospital
grounds. The field ambulances came and went, the hospital motors came
and went, now and then the General's car came and went, and the people
attached to the hospital also came and went, openly, through the gates.
But the comings and goings through the hedge were different.
Now and then holes were discovered in the hedge. Holes underneath the
prickly thorn, not more than a foot high, but sufficient to allow a
crawling body to wriggle through on its stomach. These holes persisted
for a day or two or three, and then were suddenly staked up, with strong
stakes and barbed wire. After which, a few days later, perhaps, other
holes like them would be discovered in the hedge a little further along.
After each hole was discovered, curious happenings would take place
amongst the hospital staff.
Certain men, orderlies or stretcher bearers, would be imprisoned. For
example, the nurse of _Salle I._, the ward of the _grands blessés_,
would come on duty some morning and discover that one of her orderlies
was missing. Fouquet, who swept the ward, who carried basins, who gave
the men their breakfasts, was absent. There was a beastly hitch in the
ward work, in consequence. The floor was filthy, covered with cakes of
mud tramped in by the stretcher bearers during the night. The men
screamed for attention they did not receive. The wrong patients got the
wrong food at meal times. And then the nurse would look out of one of
the little square windows of the ward, and see Fouquet marching up and
down the plank walks between the _baracques_, carrying his eighty pounds
of marching kit, and smiling happily and defiantly. He was "in prison."
The night before he had crawled through a hole in the hedge, got blind
drunk in a neighbouring _estaminet_, and had swaggered boldly through
the gates in the morning, to be "imprisoned." He wanted to be. He just
could not stand it any longer. He was sick of it all. Sick of being
_infirmier_, of sweeping the floor, of carrying vessels, of cutting up
tough meat for sullen, one-armed men, with the _Croix de Guerre_ pinned
to their coffee-streaked night shirts. Bah! The _Croix de Guerre_
pinned to a night shirt, egg-stained, smelling of sweat!
Long, long ago, before any one thought of war--oh, long ago, that is,
about six years--Fouquet had known a deputy. Also his father had known
the deputy. And so, when it came time for his military service, he had
done it as _infirmier_. As nurse, not soldier. He had done stretcher
drill, with empty stretchers. He had swept wards, empty of patients. He
had done his two years military service, practising on empty beds, on
empty stretchers. He had had a snap, because of the deputy. Then came
the war, and still he had a snap, although now the beds and the wards
were all full. Still, there was no danger, no front line trenches, for
he was mobilized as _infirmier_, as nurse in a military hospital. He
stood six feet tall, which is big for a Frenchman, and he was big in
proportion, and he was twenty-five years old, and ruddy and strong. Yet
he was obliged to wait upon a little screaming man, five feet two,
whose nose had been shot away, exchanged for the _Médaille Militaire_
upon his breast, who screamed out to him: "Bring me the basin,
_embusqué_!" And he had brought it. If he had not brought it, the little
screaming man with no nose and the flat bandage across his face would
have reported him to the _Médecin Chef_, and in time he might have been
transferred to the front line trenches. Anything is better than the
front line trenches. Fouquet knew this, because the wounded men were so
bitter at his not being there. The old men were very bitter. At the end
of the summer, they changed the troops in this sector, and the young
Zouaves were replaced by old men of forty and forty-five. They looked
very much older than this when they were wounded and brought into the
hospital, for their hair and beards were often quite white, and besides
their wounds, they were often sick from exposure to the cold, winter
rains of Flanders. One of these old men, who were nearly always
querulous, had a son also serving in the trenches. He was very rude to
Fouquet, this old man. Old and young, they called him _embusqué_. Which
meant that they were jealous of him, that they very much envied him for
escaping the trenches, and considered it very unjust that they knew no
one with influence who could have protected them in the same way. But
Fouquet was very sick of it all. Day in and day out, for eighteen
months, or since the beginning of the war, he had waited upon the
wounded. He had done as the commonest soldier had ordered him, clodding
up and down the ward in his heavy wooden _sabots_, knocking them against
the beds, eliciting curses for his intentional clumsiness. There were
also many priests in that hospital, likewise serving as _infirmiers_.
They too, fetched and carried, but they did not seem to resent it. Only
Fouquet and some others resented it. Fouquet resented the war, and the
first line trenches, and the field hospital, and the wounded men, and
everything connected with the war. He was utterly bored with the war.
The hole in the hedge and the _estaminet_ beyond was all that saved him.
There was a priest with a yellow beard, who also used the hole in the
hedge. He used it almost every night, when it was open. He slipped out,
got his drink, and then slipped down to the village to spend the night
with a girl. Only he was crafty, and slipped back again through the hole
before daylight, and was always on duty again in the morning. True, he
was very cross and irritable, and the patients did without things rather
than ask him for them, and sometimes they suffered a great deal, doing
without things, on these mornings when he was so cross.
But with Fouquet, it was different. He walked in boldly through the
gates in the morning, and said that he had been out all night without
leave, and that he was bored to the point of death. So the _Médecin
Chef_ punished him. He imprisoned him, and as there was no prison, he
served his six days' sentence in the open air. He donned his eighty
pounds of marching kit, and tramped up and down the plank walks, and
round behind the _baracques_, in the mud, in full sight of all, so that
all might witness his humiliation. He did not go on duty again in the
ward, and in consequence, the ward suffered through lack of his
grudging, uncouth administration.
Sometimes he met the _Directrice_ as he trudged up and down. He was
always afraid to meet her, because once she had gone to the _Médecin
Chef_ and had him pardoned. Her gentle heart had been touched at the
sight of his public disgrace, so she had had his sentence remitted, and
he had been obliged to go back to the ward, to the work he loathed, to
the patients he despised, after only two hours' freedom in a rare
October sun. Since then, he had carefully avoided the _Directrice_ when
he saw her blue cloak in the distance, coming down the _trottoir_. Women
were a nuisance at the Front.
He frequently encountered the man who picked up papers, and frankly
envied him, for this man had a very easy post. He was mobilized as a
member of the _formation_ of Hospital Number ----, and his work consisted
in picking up scraps of paper scattered about the grounds within the
enclosure. He had a long stick with a nail in the end, and a small
basket because there wasn't much to pick up. With the nail, he picked up
what scraps there were, and did not even have to stoop over to do it. He
walked about in the clean, fresh air, and when it rained, he cuddled up
against the stove in the pharmacy. The present paper-gatherer was a
chemist; his predecessor had been a priest. It was a very nice position
for an able-bodied man with some education, and Fouquet greatly desired
it himself, only he feared he was not sufficiently well educated, since
in civil life he was only a farm hand. So in his march up and down the
_trottoir_ he cast envious glances at the man who picked up papers.
So, bearing his full-weight marching kit, he walked up and down, between
the _baracques_, dogged and defiant. The other orderlies and stretcher
bearers laughed at him, and said: "There goes Fouquet, punished!" And
the patients, who missed him, asked: "Where is Fouquet? Punished?" And
the nurse of that ward, who also missed Fouquet, said: "Poor Fouquet!
Punished!" But Fouquet, swaggering up and down in full sight of all, was
pleased because he had had a good drink the night before, and did not
have to wait upon the patients the day after, and to him, the only sane
thing about the war was the discipline of the Army.
ALONE
Rochard died to-day. He had gas gangrene. His thigh, from knee to
buttock, was torn out by a piece of German shell. It was an interesting
case, because the infection had developed so quickly. He had been placed
under treatment immediately too, reaching the hospital from the trenches
about six hours after he had been wounded. To have a thigh torn off, and
to reach first-class surgical care within six hours, is practically
immediately. Still, gas gangrene had developed, which showed that the
Germans were using very poisonous shells. At that field hospital there
had been established a surgical school, to which young men, just
graduated from medical schools, or old men, graduated long ago from
medical schools, were sent to learn how to take care of the wounded.
After they had received a two months' experience in this sort of war
surgery, they were to be placed in other hospitals, where they could do
the work themselves. So all those young men who did not know much, and
all those old men who had never known much, and had forgotten most of
that, were up here at this field hospital, learning. This had to be
done, because there were not enough good doctors to go round, so in
order to care for the wounded at all, it was necessary to furbish up the
immature and the senile. However, the _Médecin Chef_ in charge of the
hospital and in charge of the surgical school, was a brilliant surgeon
and a good administrator, so he taught the students a good deal.
Therefore, when Rochard came into the operating room, all the young
students and the old students crowded round to see the case. It was all
torn away, the flesh from that right thigh, from knee to buttock, down
to the bone, and the stench was awful. The various students came forward
and timidly pressed the upper part of the thigh, the remaining part, all
that remained of it, with their fingers, and little crackling noises
came forth, like bubbles. Gas gangrene. Very easy to diagnose. Also the
bacteriologist from another hospital in the region happened to be
present, and he made a culture of the material discharged from that
wound, and afterwards told the _Médecin Chef_ that it was positively and
absolutely gas gangrene. But the _Médecin Chef_ had already taught the
students that gas gangrene may be recognized by the crackling and the
smell, and the fact that the patient, as a rule, dies pretty soon.
They could not operate on Rochard and amputate his leg, as they wanted
to do. The infection was so high, into the hip, it could not be done.
Moreover, Rochard had a fractured skull as well. Another piece of shell
had pierced his ear, and broken into his brain, and lodged there. Either
wound would have been fatal, but it was the gas gangrene in his torn-out
thigh that would kill him first. The wound stank. It was foul. The
_Médecin Chef_ took a curette, a little scoop, and scooped away the dead
flesh, the dead muscles, the dead nerves, the dead blood-vessels. And so
many blood-vessels being dead, being scooped away by that sharp curette,
how could the blood circulate in the top half of that flaccid thigh? It
couldn't. Afterwards, into the deep, yawning wound, they put many
compresses of gauze, soaked in carbolic acid, which acid burned deep
into the germs of the gas gangrene, and killed them, and killed much
good tissue besides. Then they covered the burning, smoking gauze with
absorbent cotton, then with clean, neat bandages, after which they
called the stretcher bearers, and Rochard was carried from the
operating table back to the ward.
The night nurse reported next morning that he had passed a night of
agony.
"_Cela pique! Cela brule!_" he cried all night, and turned from side
to side to find relief. Sometimes he lay on his good side; sometimes he
lay on his bad side, and the night nurse turned him from side to side,
according to his fancy, because she knew that on neither one side nor
the other would he find relief, except such mental relief as he got by
turning. She sent one of the orderlies, Fouquet, for the _Médecin Chef_,
and the _Médecin Chef_ came to the ward, and looked at Rochard, and
ordered the night nurse to give him morphia, and again morphia, as often
as she thought best. For only death could bring relief from such pain as
that, and only morphia, a little in advance of death, could bring
partial relief.
So the night nurse took care of Rochard all that night, and turned him
and turned him, from one side to the other, and gave him morphia, as the
_Médecin Chef_ had ordered. She listened to his cries all night, for the
morphia brought him no relief. Morphia gives a little relief, at times,
from the pain of life, but it is only death that brings absolute relief.
When the day nurse came on duty next morning, there was Rochard in
agony. "_Cela pique! Cela brule!_" he cried. And again and again, all
the time, "_Cela pique! Cela brule!_", meaning the pain in his leg.
And because of the piece of shell, which had penetrated his ear and
lodged in his brain somewhere, his wits were wandering. No one can be
fully conscious with an inch of German shell in his skull. And there was
a full inch of German shell in Rochard's skull, in his brain somewhere,
for the radiographist said so. He was a wonderful radiographist and
anatomist, and he worked accurately with a beautiful, expensive
machine, given him, or given the field hospital, by Madame Curie.
So all night Rochard screamed in agony, and turned and twisted, first on
the hip that was there, and then on the hip that was gone, and on
neither side, even with many ampoules of morphia, could he find relief.
Which shows that morphia, good as it is, is not as good as death. So
when the day nurse came on in the morning, there was Rochard strong
after a night of agony, strong after many _picqures_ of strychnia, which
kept his heart beating and his lungs breathing, strong after many
_picqures_ of morphia which did not relieve his pain. Thus the science
of healing stood baffled before the science of destroying.
Rochard died slowly. He stopped struggling. He gave up trying to find
relief by lying upon the hip that was there, or the hip that was gone.
He ceased to cry. His brain, in which was lodged a piece of German
shell, seemed to reason, to become reasonable, with break of day. The
evening before, after his return from the operating room, he had been
decorated with the _Médaille Militaire_, conferred upon him, _in
extremis_, by the General of the region. Upon one side of the medal,
which was pinned to the wall at the head of the bed, were the words:
_Valeur et Discipline_. Discipline had triumphed. He was very good and
quiet now, very obedient and disciplined, and no longer disturbed the
ward with his moanings.
Little Rochard! Little man, gardener by trade, aged thirty-nine,
widower, with one child! The piece of shell in his skull had made one
eye blind. There had been a hæmorrhage into the eyeball, which was all
red and sunken, and the eyelid would not close over it, so the red eye
stared and stared into space. And the other eye drooped and drooped, and
the white showed, and the eyelid drooped till nothing but the white
showed, and that showed that he was dying. But the blind, red eye stared
beyond. It stared fixedly, unwinkingly, into space. So always the nurse
watched the dull, white eye, which showed the approach of death.
No one in the ward was fond of Rochard. He had been there only a few
hours. He meant nothing to any one there. He was a dying man, in a field
hospital, that was all. Little stranger Rochard, with one blind, red eye
that stared into Hell, the Hell he had come from. And one white, dying
eye, that showed his hold on life, his brief, short hold. The nurse
cared for him very gently, very conscientiously, very skilfully. The
surgeon came many times to look at him, but he had done for him all that
could be done, so each time he turned away with a shrug. Fouquet, the
young orderly, stood at the foot of the bed, his feet far apart, his
hands on his hips, and regarded Rochard, and said: "_Ah! La la! La
la!_" And Simon, the other orderly, also stood at the foot of the bed,
from time to time, and regarded Rochard, and said: "_Ah! C'est triste!
C'est bien triste!_"
So Rochard died, a stranger among strangers. And there were many people
there to wait upon him, but there was no one there to love him. There
was no one there to see beyond the horror of the red, blind eye, of the
dull, white eye, of the vile, gangrene smell. And it seemed as if the
red, staring eye was looking for something the hospital could not give.
And it seemed as if the white, glazed eye was indifferent to everything
the hospital could give. And all about him was the vile gangrene smell,
which made an aura about him, and shut him into himself, very
completely. And there was nobody to love him, to forget about that
smell.
He sank into a stupor about ten o'clock in the morning, and was
unconscious from then till the time the nurse went to lunch. She went
to lunch reluctantly, but it is necessary to eat. She instructed
Fouquet, the orderly, to watch Rochard carefully, and to call her if
there was any change.
After a short time she came back from lunch, and hurried to see Rochard,
hurried behind the flamboyant, red, cheerful screens that shut him off
from the rest of the ward. Rochard was dead.
At the other end of the ward sat the two orderlies, drinking wine.
PARIS,
April 15, 1915.
A BELGIAN CIVILIAN
A big English ambulance drove along the high road from Ypres, going in
the direction of a French field hospital, some ten miles from Ypres.
Ordinarily, it could have had no business with this French hospital,
since all English wounded are conveyed back to their own bases,
therefore an exceptional case must have determined its route. It was an
exceptional case--for the patient lying quietly within its yawning body,
sheltered by its brown canvas wings, was not an English soldier, but
only a small Belgian boy, a civilian, and Belgian civilians belong
neither to the French nor English services. It is true that there was a
hospital for Belgian civilians at the English base at Hazebrouck, and it
would have seemed reasonable to have taken the patient there, but it
was more reasonable to dump him at this French hospital, which was
nearer. Not from any humanitarian motives, but just to get rid of him
the sooner. In war, civilians are cheap things at best, and an immature
civilian, Belgian at that, is very cheap. So the heavy English ambulance
churned its way up a muddy hill, mashed through much mud at the entrance
gates of the hospital, and crunched to a halt on the cinders before the
_Salle d'Attente_, where it discharged its burden and drove off again.
The surgeon of the French hospital said: "What have we to do with this?"
yet he regarded the patient thoughtfully. It was a very small patient.
Moreover, the big English ambulance had driven off again, so there was
no appeal. The small patient had been deposited upon one of the beds in
the _Salle d'Attente_, and the French surgeon looked at him and wondered
what he should do. The patient, now that he was here, belonged as much
to the French field hospital as to any other, and as the big English
ambulance from Ypres had driven off again, there was not much use in
protesting. The French surgeon was annoyed and irritated. It was a
characteristic English trick, he thought, this getting other people to
do their work. Why could they not have taken the child to one of their
own hospitals, since he had been wounded in their lines, or else have
taken him to the hospital provided for Belgian civilians, where, full as
it was, there was always room for people as small as this. The surgeon
worked himself up into quite a temper. There is one thing about members
of the _Entente_--they understand each other. The French surgeon's
thoughts travelled round and round in an irritated circle, and always
came back to the fact that the English ambulance had gone, and here lay
the patient, and something must be done. So he stood considering.