or thereabouts. And dying, obviously. As usual, the surgeon pulled and
twisted the long, black hairs on his hairy, bare arms, while he
considered what he should do. He considered for five minutes, and then
ordered the child to the operating room, and scrubbed and scrubbed his
hands and his hairy arms, preparatory to a major operation. For the
Belgian civilian, aged ten, had been shot through the abdomen by a
German shell, or piece of shell, and there was nothing to do but try to
remove it. It was a hopeless case, anyhow. The child would die without
an operation, or he would die during the operation, or he would die
after the operation. The French surgeon scrubbed his hands viciously,
for he was still greatly incensed over the English authorities who had
placed the case in his hands and then gone away again. They should have
taken him to one of the English bases, St. Omer, or Hazebrouck--it was
an imposition to have dumped him so unceremoniously here simply because
"here" was so many kilometres nearer. "Shirking," the surgeon called it,
and was much incensed.
After a most searching operation, the Belgian civilian was sent over to
the ward, to live or die as circumstances determined. As soon as he came
out of ether, he began to bawl for his mother. Being ten years of age,
he was unreasonable, and bawled for her incessantly and could not be
pacified. The patients were greatly annoyed by this disturbance, and
there was indignation that the welfare and comfort of useful soldiers
should be interfered with by the whims of a futile and useless civilian,
a Belgian child at that. The nurse of that ward also made a fool of
herself over this civilian, giving him far more attention than she had
ever bestowed upon a soldier. She was sentimental, and his little age
appealed to her--her sense of proportion and standard of values were all
awrong. The _Directrice_ appeared in the ward and tried to comfort the
civilian, to still his howls, and then, after an hour of vain effort,
she decided that his mother must be sent for. He was obviously dying,
and it was necessary to send for his mother, whom alone of all the world
he seemed to need. So a French ambulance, which had nothing to do with
Belgian civilians, nor with Ypres, was sent over to Ypres late in the
evening to fetch this mother for whom the Belgian civilian, aged ten,
bawled so persistently.
She arrived finally, and, it appeared, reluctantly. About ten o'clock in
the evening she arrived, and the moment she alighted from the big
ambulance sent to fetch her, she began complaining. She had complained
all the way over, said the chauffeur. She climbed down backward from the
front seat, perched for a moment on the hub, while one heavy leg, with
foot shod in slipping _sabot_, groped wildly for the ground. A soldier
with a lantern watched impassively, watched her solid splash into a mud
puddle that might have been avoided. So she continued her complaints.
She had been dragged away from her husband, from her other children, and
she seemed to have little interest in her son, the Belgian civilian,
said to be dying. However, now that she was here, now that she had come
all this way, she would go in to see him for a moment, since the
_Directrice_ seemed to think it so important. The _Directrice_ of this
French field hospital was an American, by marriage a British subject,
and she had curious, antiquated ideas. She seemed to feel that a
mother's place was with her child, if that child was dying. The
_Directrice_ had three children of her own whom she had left in England
over a year ago, when she came out to Flanders for the life and
adventures of the Front. But she would have returned to England
immediately, without an instant's hesitation, had she received word that
one of these children was dying. Which was a point of view opposed to
that of this Belgian mother, who seemed to feel that her place was back
in Ypres, in her home, with her husband and other children. In fact,
this Belgian mother had been rudely dragged away from her home, from her
family, from certain duties that she seemed to think important. So she
complained bitterly, and went into the ward most reluctantly, to see her
son, said to be dying.
She saw her son, and kissed him, and then asked to be sent back to
Ypres. The _Directrice_ explained that the child would not live through
the night. The Belgian mother accepted this statement, but again asked
to be sent back to Ypres. The _Directrice_ again assured the Belgian
mother that her son would not live through the night, and asked her to
spend the night with him in the ward, to assist at his passing. The
Belgian woman protested.
"If _Madame la Directrice_ commands, if she insists, then I must
assuredly obey. I have come all this distance because she commanded me,
and if she insists that I spend the night at this place, then I must do
so. Only if she does not insist, then I prefer to return to my home, to
my other children at Ypres."
However, the _Directrice_, who had a strong sense of a mother's duty to
the dying, commanded and insisted, and the Belgian woman gave way. She
sat by her son all night, listening to his ravings and bawlings, and was
with him when he died, at three o'clock in the morning. After which
time, she requested to be taken back to Ypres. She was moved by the
death of her son, but her duty lay at home. _Madame la Directrice_ had
promised to have a mass said at the burial of the child, which promise
having been given, the woman saw no necessity for remaining.
"My husband," she explained, "has a little _estaminet_, just outside of
Ypres. We have been very fortunate. Only yesterday, of all the long days
of the war, of the many days of bombardment, did a shell fall into our
kitchen, wounding our son, as you have seen. But we have other children
to consider, to provide for. And my husband is making much money at
present, selling drink to the English soldiers. I must return to assist
him."
So the Belgian civilian was buried in the cemetery of the French
soldiers, but many hours before this took place, the mother of the
civilian had departed for Ypres. The chauffeur of the ambulance which
was to convey her back to Ypres turned very white when given his
orders. Everyone dreaded Ypres, and the dangers of Ypres. It was the
place of death. Only the Belgian woman, whose husband kept an
_estaminet_, and made much money selling drink to the English soldiers,
did not dread it. She and her husband were making much money out of the
war, money which would give their children a start in life. When the
ambulance was ready she climbed into it with alacrity, although with a
feeling of gratitude because the _Directrice_ had promised a mass for
her dead child.
"These Belgians!" said a French soldier. "How prosperous they will be
after the war! How much money they will make from the Americans, and
from the others who come to see the ruins!"
And as an afterthought, in an undertone, he added: "_Ces sales
Belges!_"
THE INTERVAL
As an orderly, Erard wasn't much good. He never waited upon the patients
if he could help it, and when he couldn't help it, he was so
disagreeable that they wished they had not asked him for things. The
newcomers, who had been in the hospital only a few days, used to think
he was deaf, since he failed to hear their requests, and they did not
like to yell at him, out of consideration for their comrades in the
adjoining beds. Nor was he a success at sweeping the ward, since he did
it with the broom in one hand and a copy of the _Petit Parisien_ in the
other--in fact, when he sat down on a bed away at the end and frankly
gave himself up to a two-year-old copy of _Le Rire_, sent out with a lot
of old magazines for the patients, he was no less effective than when
he sulkily worked. There was just one thing he liked and did well, and
that was to watch for the Generals. He was an expert in recognizing them
when they were as yet a long way off. He used to slouch against the
window panes and keep a keen eye upon the _trottoir_ on such days or at
such hours as the Generals were likely to appear. Upon catching sight of
the oak-leaves in the distance, he would at once notify the ward, so
that the orderlies and the nurse could tidy up things before the General
made rounds. He had a very keen eye for oak-leaves--the golden
oak-leaves on the General's _képi_--and he never by any chance gave a
false alarm or mistook a colonel in the distance, and so put us to
tidying up unnecessarily. He did not help with the work of course, but
continued leaning against the window, reporting the General's progress
up the _trottoir_--that he had now gone into Salle III.--that he had
left Salle III. and was conversing outside Salle II.--that he was now,
positively, on his way up the incline leading into Salle I., and would
be upon us any minute. Sometimes the General lingered unnecessarily long
on the incline, the wooden slope leading up to the ward, in which case
he was not visible from the window, and Erard would amuse us by
regretting that he had no periscope for the transom over the door.
There were two Generals who visited the hospital. The big General, the
important one, the Commander of the region, who was always beautiful to
look upon in his tight, well-fitting black jacket, trimmed with
astrakhan, who came from his limousine with a Normandy stick dangling
from his wrist, and who wore spotless, clean gloves. This, the big
General, came to decorate the men who were entitled to the _Croix de
Guerre_ and the _Médaille Militaire_, and after he had decorated one or
two, as the case might be, he usually continued on through the
hospital, shaking hands here and there with the patients, and chatting
with the _Directrice_ and with the doctors and officers who followed in
his wake. The other General was not nearly so imposing. He was short and
fat and dressed in a grey-blue uniform, of the shade known as invisible,
and his _képi_ was hidden by a grey-blue cover, with a little square
hole cut out in front, so that an inch of oak-leaves might be seen. He
was much more formidable than the big General, however, since he was the
_Médecin Inspecteur_ of the region, and was responsible for all the
hospitals thereabouts. He made rather extensive rounds, closely
questioning the surgeons as to the wounds and treatment of each man, and
as he was a doctor as well, he knew how to judge of the replies. Whereas
the big General was a soldier and not a doctor, and was thus unable to
ask any disconcerting questions, so that his visits, while tedious,
were never embarrassing. When a General came on the place, it was a
signal to down tools. The surgeons would hurriedly finish their
operations, or postpone them if possible, and the dressings in the wards
were also stopped or postponed, while the surgeons would hurry after the
General, whichever one it was, and make deferential rounds with him, if
it took all day. And as it usually took at least two hours, the visits
of the Generals, one or both, meant considerable interruption to the
hospital routine. Sometimes, by chance, both Generals arrived at the
same time, which meant that there were double rounds, beginning at
opposite ends of the enclosure, and the surgeons were in a quandary as
to whose suite they should attach themselves. And the days when it was
busiest, when the work was hardest, when there was more work than double
the staff could accomplish in twenty-four hours, were the days that the
Generals usually appeared.
There are some days when it is very bad in a field hospital, just as
there are some days when there is nothing to do, and the whole staff is
practically idle. The bad days are those when the endless roar of the
guns makes the little wooden _baracques_ rock and rattle, and when
endless processions of ambulances drive in and deliver broken, ruined
men, and then drive off again, to return loaded with more wrecks. The
beds in the _Salle d'Attente_, where the ambulances unload, are filled
with heaps under blankets. Coarse, hobnailed boots stick out from the
blankets, and sometimes the heaps, which are men, moan or are silent. On
the floor lie piles of clothing, filthy, muddy, blood-soaked, torn or
cut from the silent bodies on the beds. The stretcher bearers step over
these piles of dirty clothing, or kick them aside, as they lift the
shrinking bodies to the brown stretchers, and carry them across, one
by one, to the operating room. The operating room is filled with
stretchers, lying in rows upon the floor, waiting their turn to be
emptied, to have their burdens lifted from them to the high operating
tables. And as fast as the stretchers are emptied, the stretcher-bearers
hurry back to the _Salle d'Attente_, where the ambulances dump their
loads, and come over to the operating room again, with fresh lots. Three
tables going in the operating room, and the white-gowned surgeons stand
so thick around the tables that you cannot see what is on them. There
are stretchers lying on the floor of the corridor, and against the walls
of the operating room, and more ambulances are driving in all the time.
From the operating room they are brought into the wards, these bandaged
heaps from the operating tables, these heaps that once were men. The
clean beds of the ward are turned back to receive them, to receive the
motionless, bandaged heaps that are lifted, shoved, or rolled from the
stretchers to the beds. Again and again, all day long, the procession of
stretchers comes into the wards. The foremost bearer kicks open the door
with his knee, and lets in ahead of him a blast of winter rain, which
sets dancing the charts and papers lying on the table, and blows out the
alcohol lamp over which the syringe is boiling. Someone bangs the door
shut. The unconscious form is loaded on the bed. He is heavy and the bed
sags beneath his weight. The _brancardiers_ gather up their red blankets
and shuffle off again, leaving cakes of mud and streaks of muddy water
on the green linoleum. Outside the guns roar and inside the _baracques_
shake, and again and again the stretcher bearers come into the ward,
carrying dying men from the high tables in the operating room. They are
all that stand between us and the guns, these wrecks upon the beds.
Others like them are standing between us and the guns, others like
them, who will reach us before morning. Wrecks like these. They are old
men, most of them. The old troops, grey and bearded.
There is an attack going on. That does not mean that the Germans are
advancing. It just means that the ambulances are busy, for these old
troops, these old wrecks upon the beds, are holding up the Germans.
Otherwise, we should be swept out of existence. Our hospital, ourselves,
would be swept out of existence, were it not for these old wrecks upon
the beds. These filthy, bearded, dying men upon the beds, who are
holding back the Germans. More like them, in the trenches, are holding
back the Germans. By tomorrow these others, too, will be with us,
bleeding, dying. But there will be others like them in the trenches, to
hold back the Germans.
This is the day of an attack. Yesterday was the day of an attack. The
day before was the day of an attack. The guns are raising Hell, seven
kilometres beyond us, and our _baracques_ shake and tremble with their
thunder. These men, grey and bearded, dying in our clean beds, wetting
our clean sheets with the blood that oozes from their dressings, have
been out there, moaning in the trenches. When they die, we will pull off
the bloody sheets, and replace them with fresh, clean ones, and turn
them back neatly, waiting for the next agonizing man. We have many beds,
and many fresh, clean sheets, and so we are always ready for these old,
hairy men, who are standing between us and the Germans.
They seem very weak and frail and thin. How can they do it, these old
men? Last summer the young boys did it. Now it is the turn of these old
men.
There are three dying in the ward today. It will be better when they
die. The German shells have made them ludicrous, repulsive. We see them
in this awful interval, between life and death. This interval when they
are gross, absurd, fantastic. Life is clean and death is clean, but this
interval between the two is gross, absurd, fantastic.
Over there, down at the end, is Rollin. He came in three days ago. A
piece of shell penetrated his right eyelid, a little wound so small that
it was not worth a dressing. Yet that little piece of _obus_ lodged
somewhere inside his skull, above his left ear, so the radiographist
says, and he's paralyzed. Paralyzed all down the other side, and one
supine hand flops about, and one supine leg flops about, in jerks. One
bleary eye stays open, and the other eyelid stays shut, over the other
bleary eye. Meningitis has set in and it won't be long now, before we'll
have another empty bed. Yellow foam flows down his nose, thick yellow
foam, bubbles of it, bursting, bubbling yellow foam. It humps up under
his nose, up and up, in bubbles, and the bubbles burst and run in
turgid streams down upon his shaggy beard. On the wall, above his bed,
hang his medals. They are hung up, high up, so he can see them. He can't
see them today, because now he is unconscious, but yesterday and the day
before, before he got as bad as this, he could see them and it made him
cry. He knew he had been decorated _in extremis_, because he was going
to die, and he did not want to die. So he sobbed and sobbed all the
while the General decorated him, and protested that he did not want to
die. He'd saved three men from death, earning those medals, and at the
time he never thought of death himself. Yet in the ward he sobbed and
sobbed, and protested that he did not want to die.
Back of those red screens is Henri. He is a priest, mobilized as
_infirmier_. A good one too, and very tender and gentle with the
patients. He comes from the ward next door, Salle II., and is giving
extreme unction to the man in that bed, back of the red screens. Peek
through the screens and you can see Henri, in his shirt sleeves, with a
little, crumpled, purple stole around his neck. No, the patient has
never regained consciousness since he's been here, but Henri says it's
all right. He may be a Catholic. Better to take chances. It can't hurt
him, anyway, if he isn't. I am glad Henri is back of those red screens.
A few minutes ago he came down the ward, in search of absorbent cotton
for the Holy Oils, and then he got so interested watching the doctors
doing dressings, stayed so long watching them, that I thought he would
not get back again, behind the screens, in time.
See that man in the bed next? He's dying too. They trepanned him when he
came. He can't speak, but we got his name and regiment from the medal on
his wrist. He wants to write. Isn't it funny! He has a block of paper
and a pencil, and all day long he writes, writes, on the paper. Always
and always, over and over again, he writes on the paper, and he gives
the paper to everyone who passes. He's got something on his mind that he
wants to get across, before he dies. But no one can understand him. No
one can read what he has written--it is just scrawls, scribbles,
unintelligible. Day and night, for he never sleeps, he writes on that
block of paper, and tears off the sheets and gives them to everyone
who passes. And no one can understand, for it is just illegible,
unintelligible scribbles. Once we took the paper away to see what he
would do and then he wrote with his finger upon the wooden frame of the
screen. The same thing, scribbles, but they made no mark on the screen,
and he seemed so distressed because they made no mark that we gave him
back his paper again, and now he's happy. Or I suppose he's happy. He
seems content when we take this paper and pretend to read it. He seems
happy, scribbling those words that are words to him but not to us.
Careful! Don't stand too close! He spits. Yes, all the time, at the end
of every line he spits. Far too. Way across the ward. Don't you see that
his bed and the bed next are covered with rubber sheets? That's because
he spits. Big spits, too, far across the ward. And always he writes,
incessantly, day and night. He writes on that block of paper and spits
way across the ward at the end of every line. He's got something on his
mind that he wants to get across. Do you think he's thinking of the
Germans? He's dying though. He can't spit so far today as he did
yesterday.
Death is dignified and life is dignified, but the intervals are awful.
They are ludicrous, repulsive.
Is that Erard, calling? Calling that the Generals are coming, both of
them, together? Hurry! Tidy up the ward! Rub away the froth from under
Rollin's nose! Pull his sheets straight! Take that wet towel, and clean
the mackintosh upon that bed and the bed adjoining. See if Henri's
finished. Take away the screens. Pull the sheets straight. Tidy up the
ward--tell the others not to budge! The Generals are coming!
PARIS,
9 May, 1916.
WOMEN AND WIVES
A bitter wind swept in from the North Sea. It swept in over many miles
of Flanders plains, driving gusts of rain before it. It was a biting
gale by the time it reached the little cluster of wooden huts composing
the field hospital, and rain and wind together dashed against the huts,
blew under them, blew through them, crashed to pieces a swinging window
down at the laundry, and loosened the roof of Salle I. at the other end
of the enclosure. It was just ordinary winter weather, such as had
lasted for months on end, and which the Belgians spoke of as vile
weather, while the French called it vile Belgian weather. The drenching
rain soaked into the long, green winter grass, and the sweeping wind was
bitter cold, and the howling of the wind was louder than the guns, so
that it was only when the wind paused for a moment, between blasts, that
the rolling of the guns could be heard.
In Salle I. the stove had gone out. It was a good little stove, but
somehow was unequal to struggling with the wind which blew down the
long, rocking stove pipe, and blew the fire out. So the little stove
grew cold, and the hot water jug on the stove grew cold, and all the
patients at that end of the ward likewise grew cold, and demanded hot
water bottles, and there wasn't any hot water with which to fill them.
So the patients complained and shivered, and in the pauses of the wind,
one heard the guns.
Then the roof of the ward lifted about an inch, and more wind beat down,
and as it beat down, so the roof lifted. The orderly remarked that if
this Belgian weather continued, by tomorrow the roof would be clean
off--blown off into the German lines. So all laughed as Fouquet said
this, and wondered how they could lie abed with the roof of Salle I.,
the Salle of the _Grands Blessés_, blown over into the German lines. The
ward did not present a neat appearance, for all the beds were pushed
about at queer angles, in from the wall, out from the wall, some
touching each other, some very far apart, and all to avoid the little
leaks of rain which streamed or dropped down from little holes in the
roof. This weary, weary war! These long days of boredom in the hospital,
these days of incessant wind and rain and cold.
Armand, the chief orderly, ordered Fouquet to rebuild the fire, and
Fouquet slipped on his _sabots_ and clogged down the ward, away outdoors
in the wind, and returned finally with a box of coal on his shoulders,
which he dumped heavily on the floor. He was clumsy and sullen, and the
coal was wet and mostly slate, and the patients laughed at his efforts
to rebuild the fire. Finally, however, it was alight again, and radiated
out a faint warmth, which served to bring out the smell of iodoform, and
of draining wounds, and other smells which loaded the cold, close air.
Then, no one knows who began it, one of the patients showed the nurse a
photograph of his wife and child, and in a moment every man in the
twenty beds was fishing back of his bed, in his _musette_, under his
pillow, for photographs of his wife. They all had wives, it seems, for
remember, these were the old troops, who had replaced the young Zouaves
who had guarded this part of the Front all summer. One by one they came
out, these photographs, from weatherbeaten sacks, from shabby boxes,
from under pillows, and the nurse must see them all. Pathetic little
pictures they were, of common, working-class women, some fat and
work-worn, some thin and work-worn, some with stodgy little children
grouped about them, some without, but all were practically the same.
They were the wives of these men in the beds here, the working-class
wives of working-class men--the soldiers of the trenches. Ah yes, France
is democratic. It is the Nation's war, and all the men of the Nation,
regardless of rank, are serving. But some serve in better places than
others. The trenches are mostly reserved for men of the working class,
which is reasonable, as there are more of them.