_Stories of a Nurse_
_By M. Eydoux-Demians--Translated by Betty Yeomans_
This is a wonderful revelation of the soul of France. It gives
"impressions of things actually seen and heard, revealing the
wonderful courage and emotion that exists to-day in a French
provincial hospital." These notes have been collected in a volume
dedicated: "To My Five Brothers Wounded in the Service of France."
These touching and inspiring stories of the wounded and nurses in a
French hospital and told with a dramatic and literary power which
make them little masterpieces. They form a most realistic picture of
the human side of the Great War. The selections herein given are from
the hundreds of thrilling anecdotes in the book, by courtesy of the
publishers, _Duffield and Company_: Copyrighted 1915.
[7] I--STORIES OF THE WOUNDED ON THEIR BEDS
On October sixth, (1914) last, I received a message from the directress
of the Hospital of Saint Dominic, reading as follows:
"A large number of wounded have just arrived. We can't take care of any
more ourselves, and the moment has come to call for volunteers. I shall
expect your help."
One hour later, as you can easily imagine, I was at Saint Dominic.
This specially privileged hospital is under the gentle management of
the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. Several years ago some of its
devoted trustees made one effort after another on its behalf in Paris,
and, after overcoming many difficulties, reëstablished the Sisters of
Charity amongst us once again. They had not a doubt even then that they
were working in the interests of France's soldiers, those same soldiers
whose faces light up now with such a special joy when they lie on their
painful stretchers, and catch sight, near the large entrance porch, of
the good white cornettes of the Sisters waiting for them.
With my heart beating fast I entered the room to which I had been
assigned. There they all were before me, these lads that had undergone
that terrible and fierce adventuring into war. I remember how they
went away in our wonderful mobilisation trains, those makeshift,
flower-bedecked trains that sped all of them to the same destination,
the same region of glory and bloodshed. One long war cry seemed to rise
up from them over all our land. Our young soldiers who went away in
them had acquired an entirely new way of shouting "_Vive la France_."
It was no longer as if they were on parade, notwithstanding all the
flowers that people tossed to them: it was already the cry of men who
were to lead in war's assaults, and make the supreme sacrifice of their
lives. I remember one little infantryman of twenty years, standing
erect with folded arms in the back of his compartment, his eyes
flashing, and all the muscles of his pale face taut. He kept repeating
threateningly, "_Vive la France--vive la France_," without a look
toward any one; saying it just to himself and for his country. And I
felt that it was as if he said: "We shall get them: we must get them,
no matter what it costs. As for me, well, you see, to begin with, my
life doesn't count any more." This very fellow is the one, perhaps, who
has come back now and sleeps here in this first cot, where a face both
energetic and infantile shows in the midst of the blood-stained linen.
Sister Gabrielle made a tour with me of all the patients. The memory of
certain of them particularly is fixed in my mind. There is number 3,
here, who got a bullet wound in the region of the liver, and has to lie
absolutely still, lest an internal hemorrhage may occur at any moment.
A warrior of twenty-three he is, with cheeks as rosy as a girl's, and
clear blue eyes. He fought like a lion, they say, but here nothing
could be gentler. His appreciation for the least thing that is done for
him is touching. Number 8, little eight, as they call him, a volunteer,
who seems about fifteen, and who has to live week after week propped
on his right side, on a hard hospital bed, on account of an abscess
following his wound. Number 12, an infantryman, who got a bullet in the
left temple; it was extracted from his right maxillary, and in passing
cut his tongue in two. "Everything has been put back," said the Sister,
"but he can't talk yet, and he'll have to learn to talk all over again,
like a little child. In taking care of him you must come every once in
a while and see if you can guess what he wants." Number 17, a brave
among the braves, who, under the enemy's fire, crawled ten kilometres
on his hands and knees, dragging his twice-wounded foot behind him,
to deliver an order that he had been charged with. His wounds cause
him cruel suffering, and yet he seems illuminated as with some strange
inward joy. Number 24, nicknamed the little sieve, because of his
fifteen wounds. Number 32, who suffers like a real martyr. His leg was
literally shattered by the fragments of a shell. It was a question
whether it could be saved at all, but following the directions of the
war surgeon, we are keeping up the attempt. Antiseptic injections are
made twice a day as deep as the bone. Number 30, who has lost an eye
and has two open fractures in his right arm. When I said to him: "You
have given a good deal for France," he answered, "It's the least I
could do." And he added, laughing, "I was so clumsy with my hands. This
will teach me to be clever even with my left one."...
One cannot repeat too often or too admiringly, "Our wounded." Our
wounded, that is to say, those men who have come back from that hell,
"whose horrors," they say themselves, "are indescribable;" those who
have marched beneath "that terrible, moving curtain of iron," to which
an officer compared the mass of balls and shells in battle, a mass so
compact that it obscured the very daylight on the firing line. Our
wounded! Those, in a word, who have brought back in their very flesh
the frightful scars of the enemy's iron, those who have cemented with
their own blood the human wall that is now our frontier. They have come
back, not with their courage drained, broken down, horror-stricken,
stunned--not at all. They forget themselves to talk smilingly of the
great hope in which we all share. They are touched, deeply touched, by
the few hours of fatigue we undergo for them each day--for them who
have given almost their lives.
My tasks were laid out for me, and I began work at once, thanked by the
soldiers almost in advance for my trouble.
"It's a bit too much to see you work like this for us."
"All the same, no one has ever been served like this."
They are not a bit difficult, but pleased with everything, these men
who suffer so much, who have such a right to every care. Alas, there
are too many of them (this hospital alone has as many as a thousand) to
permit of all the little comforting things that we should like to do
for them without stint. The Sister who cooks is sorely driven, and even
the prescribed dishes that she sends up for the sickest ones are often
far from appetizing. For instance, I have just taken Number 13, who is
consumed by a lingering fever (a bullet passed through his lung), a
milk soup that smelt badly burned, and in which pieces of half-cooked
rice floated round. I sighed a little about it as I put the napkin
on the bed. Did he understand what worried me? In any case, he shows
no distaste, and a quarter of an hour later, when I pass by him, he
motions to me, and says gently, "It was delicious, madame."
That's the way they all are--all of them.