Ah! but the two last men, besides sweat, have broad smears of blood
across their faces and running down their necks. "Oh, nothing much the
matter with us, Colonel!" they tell me; "we got that as we came along.
We started to carry him along the 'guts,' but it shook him too much;
so we came on outside in the open." Poor, admirable dreamer! To save
their wounded man from jolting they have risked all their lives! Two
or three of these huge death beetles which ceaselessly hum past have
smashed themselves near them against the stones and have sprinkled them
with their fragments; the Germans do not take the trouble to shoot at
a single passerby like myself, but a group, and especially a litter,
is irresistible for them. Of the two who are streaming with blood, one
is, perhaps, not much the worse, but the other has an ear torn off, and
hanging only by a shred of skin.
"You must get your wound dressed by the surgeon immediately, my
friend," I say to him.
"Yes, Colonel, we are on our way there to the hospital. It suits
exactly."
That is the only thing that has occurred to him to say in complaint:
"It suits exactly." And he says it with such a fine, quiet smile, while
thanking me for taking an interest in him.
I hesitate to go closer to look at their gravely wounded man, who has
remained without stirring, for fear I might disturb his last thoughts.
I do go close to him, however, very gently, because they are going to
carry him away.
Ah! He is a mere lad! A village boy; one can guess that at once by his
bronzed cheeks, which have just begun to grow pale. The sun, as he
wishes, floods his handsome 20-year-old face, which is at the same time
vigorous and candid, and his hand is still held like a guard before his
eyes, which are set and seem no longer to perceive anything. They must
have given him morphine to keep him from suffering too much. Humble
child of our countryside, brief little life, what is he dreaming of, if
he is still dreaming? Perhaps of his kerchiefed mamma, who wept happy
tears every time she recognized his childish writing on an envelope
from the front? Or is he dreaming of the farm garden that held his
earliest years?
I see on his breast the handkerchief with which they tried to cover his
face; it is of fine linen, embroidered with a Marquis's coronet--the
coronet of one of his bearers. He had wanted "to go on seeing things,"
doubtless in his terror of the great night. But even this sun, which
must dazzle him, will soon cease suddenly to be recognizable for him;
to begin with, it will be the half-darkness of the hospital, and,
immediately afterward, will begin for him the long inexorable night, in
which no sun will ever dawn again.
"VIVE LA FRANCE"--HOW MEN DIE FOR THEIR COUNTRY
_Last Messages of French Soldiers_
_Told by Rene Bazin, Member of the French Academy_
Behind the dry official reports of military events is a vast fund
of emotional human stories. Glimpses of this side of the Great War
are found in private letters, personal experiences, and thrilling
episodes of courage, humor, or pathos which are being preserved in
the New York Times _Current History_.
I have heard magnificent sayings of our soldiers; others have been
written to me by those who heard them. I would not have them perish.
It seems to me that they naturally form a part of the epoch we are
living through; that they are good to read and meditate on, unconscious
testimonies of that which historians will call the new life of France,
of that which has ever been her deeper life, widened and developed in
this hour of trial.
Therefore I shall record here not all these sayings and traits, but
some of them.
At B., in the hospital of the Grand Hotel, a wounded soldier was to
have a limb amputated. But he was so weak that the surgeon hesitated.
"If we could only give him some blood!"
"If that is all that is needed I am ready to give it!" answers another
wounded soldier, a Breton.
The transfusion is made. The staff of the hospital, touched by the
devotion of this wounded soldier, who was known to be very poor, made
a little collection here and there, very quietly, and gathered five
hundred francs, which they took great satisfaction in offering to him.
One day one of them came close to his bed, spoke of the service he had
rendered, thanked him and offered him the money. Mark his answer:
"Oh, no! I give my blood; I do not sell it!"
A very young soldier from the North, with a beardless and rather
childish face, is stretched at the back of a trench, dying from a
terrible shell wound in the stomach. In spite of the frightful wound he
does not complain, he does not repine, and in his wide, upward-gazing
eyes one could just perceive the expression of sadness which he often
had. For since mobilizing he had received no news from his home in
the occupied territory. His comrades are doing what they can for him,
offering him water to drink, unbuttoning his tunic, trying to stanch
the blood. Opening his eyes, which he had kept for a long moment
closed, and no longer with an expression of suffering, he said to one
of his comrades, a big, hairy fellow who was bending over him:
"Friend, you must not tell mother what a frightful wound I had! A
bullet is better than what I have!" Then he distributed a few little
things he had in his pocket--his knife, his purse, a corkscrew, a
tinder-box--a last testament soon ended. Finally, with difficulty, he
opened his notebook and, setting himself to write, though he could no
longer see very clearly, he traced a few lines. When he had finished
his soul departed.... Three minutes later, as the word of his end
spread along the trench, at this time not under heavy bombardment by
the enemy, a Captain arrived, smeared with mud up to the shoulders. He
saw the soldier. "Oh, poor boy! One of my bravest!" Respectfully he
took the notebook, which had fallen on the ground, opened it and read:
"Au revoir, father; au revoir, mother; au revoir, little sisters; I am
dying for my country. Vive la France!"
Sergeant Raissac of Beziers was mortally wounded in an assault on
a German trench. When they lifted his body his hand still held a
photograph representing his mother, his sisters and himself, and on
the back of the picture he had managed to write, with his last effort,
"Adieu! No tears, but a Christian acceptance. I am at peace with God."
Yesterday, during his two days' leave, I met the son of a poor
countrywoman, a workman whom I have loved for a long time. When I took
leave of him, saying, "Good luck to you, Marcel!" he looked up with
unreproaching eyes and answered me: "On the one side, and on the other,
I fear nothing!" And this meant: "Life? Death? What does it matter? I
am ready!"
What does all this signify? It is the poetry of chivalry that
continues; it is the unfinished Crusade; it is God making Himself
manifest through purified France.
Those who seek the sublime will find nothing grander.