I study with emotion the admirable vision of the human soul which the
Sister of Charity and the wounded soldier set before me. It is a vision
which has intervened always, as with an element of the supernatural,
in our war-time pictures, and, behold, now we find it again, almost
miraculously, in the supreme struggle of 1914.
Sister Gabrielle, who has charge of my room, her identity quite hidden
as it is by her archangel's name, is the daughter of a general, as I
know. She has three brothers that have served beneath the colours. The
oldest, a quite young captain, has just met his death on the field
of honour. I happen to have learned the circumstances: how, covered
with blood already flowing from three different wounds, Captain X
nevertheless struggled on bravely at the head of his men, and after
several hours of conflict was struck by a bullet full in the breast.
He fell, crying: "Don't fall back! That's my last order!"
Sister Gabrielle was told only last week of the glorious grief that
had been thrust upon her, but no one around her would have guessed her
sorrow. Possibly her smile for the patients that day was a little more
compassionate and tender than usual, when she thought of her brother
enduring his moment of supreme agony alone down there in the forests of
the Vosges....
She is thin and frail--mortally ill herself, they say; she was quite
ill one month ago. But if you speak to her of her health she interrupts
you a little impatiently:
"We have given ourselves, body and soul, according to our vows. To last
a little longer or a little less doesn't matter. The main thing is to
fulfill our tasks. Besides," she adds, indicating her patients, "they
have given their lives for France. It is quite right, if it must be so,
that our lives be sacrificed to save them."...
In the lot of wounded that were sent in yesterday, forty came to Sister
Gabrielle directly from the Aisne. They arrived toward the close of the
day, and I shall never forget the spectacle of that room. One stretcher
succeeded another, all borne slowly by the litter-men and set down near
the hastily prepared beds. Here and there you caught a cry of pain that
could not be kept in, though there were no complaints, no continued
groanings. Yet now, when you lean over those glorious and lamentable
blue bonnets, cut as they are by bullets and stained with the mud of
the trenches, when you take off the caps that have grown stiff with
the dampness of the long rains, you perceive their suffering by the
glittering look in their fevered eyes, their poor, worn faces and
ravaged features, sunken and hollow with suffering. Then, all at once,
at the least word, the old gallantry that we know so well reasserts
itself. For example, they ask the most touching and childish favours of
us. Thus if a limb that hurts too much must be lifted, or a piece of
clothing that binds a wound eased up, they all ask:
"Not the orderly, not the orderly, please! the Sister or the lady."
The first words that the newcomers exchange with their cot neighbours
are not about their own hardships; they speak first, and before
anything else, of France.
"How are things going down there?"
"All right. We'll get them."
Then the newcomers, worn out as they are, sink into feverish sleep,
struggling sometimes for days between realities and the persistent
nightmare of the visions that pursue them. That night in the room that
was always so still, but that now seemed more feverish than usual, I
heard a sound of smothered sobs. It was Number 25, a big, good-looking
soldier, whom each day I had seen having his wound dressed, a real
torture, without a word, and who was sobbing now with his head in his
pillow, ashamed of his tears, but powerless to keep them back. I went
to him and tried to question him, but the soldiers don't readily speak
to you of the sorrows that touch their hearts the deepest and most
nearly.
"Thank you, lady; don't bother yourself about me. I don't need
anything."
"Is your pain worse, maybe?"
"I'm in pain, yes, terribly, but it isn't that."
"What is it, then? Won't you tell me?"
He denied me still, then, all at once, under the pressure of his grief,
he said:
"Oh, yes, I do feel like confiding in you. I'll tell you what it is.
The comrade who was waiting next to me till his bed was ready brought
me news of the death of my best friend. He was in his regiment and was
killed by his side. Oh, madame, he was such a fine fellow, so devoted
and full of courage. We were brought up together. He was more than my
chum; he was my friend."
He cried and cried. He had borne everything without giving way--the
continual nearness of death, the so hard life in the trenches, the
incessant physical suffering; but the death of his friend crushed him
and brought him down to earth. And while I murmured words that, alas,
were futile for any change they made in his sorrow, but which did some
good, just the same, I heard him sobbing in his pillow:
"My friend was killed. My friend was killed."
His friend--when one knows what the word _comrade_ means to them, one
divines all that word friend may mean, too.
Sister Gabrielle, whose infallible instinct brings her always to the
cots where the sickest of her children are, passed near Number 25 and
stopped a moment. She did not ask him anything. She just put her hand
caressingly on his brown head, so young and virile, and said in her
firm, sweet voice:
"All right, my boy, all right. Courage. Remember all this is for
France."
Then turning to me, she said:
"Before night-time wouldn't you like to play a game of dominoes with
this good boy? He'll represent the French forces, and in the morning he
must be able to tell me that he has won."
In the midst of his tears the young soldier, his heart swelling in his
distress, smiled at finding himself thus treated like a child. They
have such need of it, the soldiers, after having done so valiantly the
work of men!