Complete Text (Part 3)

when I hear him murmuring: "Just look ! When you think of the ones who stayed down there, ought you ever to groan"? We are happier here. It isn't right." Those who stayed down there! The im- agination recoils before the picture evoked by those simple words; those who stay be- hind down there in the cold and the night, under constant menace by the barbarian 34 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL enemy, who stay to suffer agonies alone, to die; to see their blood, without the help even of a single bandage, flow from their broken flesh and fall to the last drop upon the soil of France. I remember the words of an- other wounded soldier: "After the battle, that day, you couldn't hear yourselves talk any more in the trenches for the cries of the wounded. It was like one great uninterrupted wail. You could make out appeals, prayers, calls for help, women's names. Then, little by little, si- lence came again, as a good many of them died. What we heard sound longest on the battlefield, from one end to the other, was the word 'Mother!' It is always those who are dying who call like that; we know that well now." Alas I What do we not know now of the many-sided anguish and horror of death! We must certainly begin, like the little Turco, to qualify as lucky the fellows whom destiny delivers up to the hospital. And yet IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 35 how they suffer, even these. To physical tor- ture is added too often the worst tortures of the spirit. "In the two months I've been away, not one bit of news of my family has reached me," a soldier told me, "except a despatch announcing my father's death." Another had lost a fifteen-year-old son, whom he adored, two hours before his de- parture. "His body was still warm: my wife was as if mad with sorrow." They tell you these things without com- plaint. France called them: it was quite natural to answer h^r, to go to her out of the midst of the greatest sorrows, the deepest affections, the keenest happiness; sometimes, like that young engineer there of twenty, married eleven months ago to a girl of eigh- teen, to tear yourself away from a whole ro- mance! He had been rejected for defective vision, but, and his wife agreed, he decided this did not matter any more, now that 36 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL mobilisation was under way, and that he must go. Two days after the birth of a fine boy — a future soldier, the mother said — he left his life of ease and tenderness and re- ported at the barracks as a simple soldier; and he had been encouraged to do so by that little Parisienne whom we should have thought absorbed in nothing but society and dress. HOW THEY LOVE IN WAR TIME You curse this frightful war with all the instincts of your humanity, and yet, ten times a day, nay, twenty, you cannot help admiring the marvellous moral effects it pro- duces. "War is the scourge of God," the Scrip- ture tells us. Indeed the scourge must come even from God, its sufferings raise men's souls to such heights, souls that otherwise would have vegetated always in the mediocrity of their personal interests and IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 37 narrow points of view or vulgar pas- sions. It is the moral level of the whole na- tion which rises, and has risen steadily, for three months. This morning I heard a soldier of twenty- five, both his arms broken, ask an orderly to whom he might dictate some letters. "To the lady who comes each evening and makes the rounds for the letter writers. My poor old fellow, you'll have to send yours that way, too." "Very good, what difference does that make to me^" "Well, well," says the orderly with a sly look, "that depends on whom you're writing to." The other shrugged his shoulders with a movement of supreme disdain: "Any other time I wouldn't say anything, but at present, you see, it's different. In times of war, one thinks of one's mother, and that's all." Oh, dolorous but holy times of war, which 38 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL purify our youth, which summon up again all our effective faculties, passing them through a new crucible, from which they come out purified and nobly set ! Each one of us, it seems to me, could enumerate a certain number of acts and preoccupations in his secret life that "don't exist any more in times of war," if only, at the very least, be- cause they were tinctured with futility or unconscious egotism. THEIR PRIDE One doesn't enough realise how little our soldiers ask for, and what pride they have. I have learned it through my own experience. At my first appearance some of them gave me little commissions to do for them. "Would you bring me a package of tobacco, a tablet of chocolate'?" Quickly they searched for their purses under their pillows; but I naturally refused to take the money — refused also to let them pay me back. IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 39 When this way of doing things became known in the room the remedy was very simple. They didn't ask me any more for things. In vain I offered my services. I succeeded only in getting refusals. "Thank you very much, madame," they would say; "we don't need anything." And I used to see them, when they thought I wasn't looking, giving their orders to those male nurses who were the least under sus- picion of generosity. I had to mend my ways and promise to let myself be reim- bursed henceforth, even though I made a few little presents on my own account. The wounded who had been stripped by the Prussians on the battlefield and had nothing left — nothing, not even a handker- chief, not even two sous to buy a cigar with — went without everything, stoically, rather than express the least desire. They know perfectly well that their requests would be attended to in a hurry, but they know, too, that people's needs are immense, and they 40 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL think of others: always this school of war! I saw one of them once who started to get up and then sat there for hours without budging, his feet kept stubbornly under the bed. I learned finally from his neighbour that he would willingly have walked off, but that he hadn't any slippers, and didn't want to go about in his bare feet, because people would have given him a pair at once. "Well, why didn't you say so?" I asked him, as I brought him some slippers. "Oh, well, madame, we know there are so many other comrades who need them, too." They want to have things given to all or none. We have only to obey them and work, work for France. THE DEATH OF A SOLDIER The little soldier Mechin had a serious hemorrhage in the night; he was in the op- erating room when I arrived at the hospital IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 4I this morning. The Sister had sent his par- ents to pray in the chapel, they explained to me. The work of attending to the sick went on as usual ; nothing must be allowed to stop the movement of the wheels. Toward ten o'clock I saw the litter coming back, borne slowly and with infinite precautions. Sister Gabrielle walked quite near it, and never stopped repeating: "Gently, more gently still." The little soldier's face was as pale as a corpse; his eyes, which seemed to have sunk back in their orbits, were closed. When he was lifted up to put him on the bed, the shock, light as it was, brought on the su- preme crisis. His breath, slow and scarcely perceptible, quickened strangely. His can- did blue eyes opened, dilated, immense, as if looking for some one. "He wants his parents," the Sister said to me in a low voice. "Go and find them quickly. It's the end." In the quiet chapel that opened from the 42 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL big wards, the poor Mechins wept and prayed. I called them. The mother clasped her hands together, turning to me: "The operation was successful, wasn't it, madame?" Alas! I don't know, I fear not; but they must come quickly. Their tears blind them; she can't see her steps; she stumbles, and I have to give her my arm for support. The moment she approaches her son she recognises the shadow of death on his dear face, and would have given a cry of sorrow, but that Sister Gabrielle stops her, putting a finger on her lips. Soldiers who die must be surrounded by so great a peace. "Here is your mother, here quite near to you," says the calm voice of the Sister in the ear of the dying man. "She embraces you. Your father is here, too. And here is the crucified One, Our Lord, here on your lips." The little soldier kisses the cross and smiles at his mother; then his eyes, wide IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 43 open, and as if drawn by some invincible at- traction, turn and fix themselves on the open window opposite the bed, through which can be seen the infinite depths of the sky. Noth- ing again, till his last breath was drawn, could make his gaze turn elsewhere. Where have I already beheld a scene like this? I remember — it was in Greece, at Athens, last year. In the room of the tombs, a simple and admirable funeral monument represents death. A fine young man of twenty is stand- ing ready to depart. His parents, their faces torn with sorrow, stretch out their arms to him, calling him, but he, so calm in the purity of the white marble, his eyes as if fascinated, looks fixedly, with all his thought, into the distance, one knows not where. As we passed this masterpiece, the young Greek who was with me whispered to me: "Look at that boy there. He sees some' tiling else." Our little soldier, too, seemed to see some- 44 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL thing else. The chaplain gave him the last blessings. The mysterious shore drew nearer moment by moment. A deep silence, solemnly calm and very moving, fell sud- denly on the great room into which the ter- rible visitor was so soon to penetrate; truly he must die well, surrounded thus by his comrades, upheld until the end by a Sister of Charity. The wings of her white cornette tremble above the young face in its last agony. The Sister's voice, already a super- natural one, is the last of this world's voices that Private Mechin is to hear. She says, and he repeats slowly, the supreme invoca- tion: "O God, receive me into Thy Para- dise. Jesus, have mercy on me. Holy Mother of God, pray for us in the hour of our death." It is over . . . the last breath exhales gently. The young soldier's gaze is fixed forever on the great light of God. Sister Gabrielle gently closes his eyelids and places the crucifix on the boy's heart. All is so IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 45 calm, so evangelical, that the parents them- selves dare not weep. Ah, how truly he spoke, the chaplain who wrote from the front: "The soldiers of France die without pain, like angels." When the parents were led away for a while Sister Gabrielle piously replaced the sheet on the dead face, and said to me : "This is the time for the patients' dinners. If you will, we'll go and serve them, and then we'll come back and lay out the body of this poor lad here." I look at her wonderingly; she is very pale, and her eyes are full of unshed tears. She busies herself with the necessities of them all, with her usual clear-headedness. Have they already broken with everything of earth, these Sisters, lifted themselves for good above the most pardonable frailty*? 46 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL THE FUNERAL This morning the burial of Private Mechin took place. The modest procession assembled in the temporary burial court, a solitary enclosure planted with solemn pines, not lacking in poetry in spite of its tragic name. The body lay in the white chapel quite hidden beneath the trees. At the moment of raising the coffin, the com- mand, "Present arms!" sounded outside. The remains passed through the midst of comrades, their guns in their arms, who sa- luted before escorting them as far as the cemetery, the muzzles lowered in sign of mourning. The words, "Heroism" and "Our Country" showed in white letters on the black pall, whereon our three colours had been thrown. "It's a soldier I It's a soldier I" The further the procession passed the greater grew the crowd of strangers, who fol- IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 47 lowed weeping. A soldier! That touched every one. Everybody asked himself, "Where is my own now?" For our army, that serene and magnificent army, is built chiefly on the wreck of the most intimate happinesses, the profoundest feelings of ten- derness in those that are left behind. And yet to-day this reaction upon oneself, con- trary to the usual course of things, only begets a more vivid compassion toward these poor parents. They have taken each other's arms, according to their native habit. The mother has covered her white headdress with crepe. The crowd keeps at a respectful dis- tance from them, and they show out in full view, bent by age and sorrow, lamentable, leaning on each other, as they follow the body of their child, so young a body to go to its last resting place, surrounded by the military and blooming with flags. On Fa- ther Mechin's account they have called out the veterans of '70, and the oldest of them pronounced a simple and earnest discourse 48 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL over the lad's grave, "which his comrades shall avenge," he says. A tri-coloured rib- bon is tied to the wooden cross that marks the new grave; other ribbons like it are at- tached to the dther crosses roundabout. When they leave the cemetery the par- ents are led away by people they don't even know, who want to save them from the dreariness of an inn at such a time. "Let us do it for you. Do!" they say; "our boys, too, are down there ; we can guess what it must mean to you." Father Mechin's sorrow is momentarily alleviated by so much honour and sympathy. He weeps, but also he goes over his old cam- paign with these new friends, while the mother follows mechanically, seeing and un- derstanding nothing. Her head is bent, and she can talk only of her son, in a kind of dolorous soliloquy. I hear her murmur: "My dear little well-beloved son. I shan't leave you so far away from us. IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 49 When the war is over I'll come back and find you again; I'll keep your money and have a pretty little monument made for you, and when I have time I'll come and find you. I shall always be with you, always. ..." She disappears, and I think of so many other mothers in the cities and villages of France suffering this same martyrdom each day. But our young soldiers' graves are sepulchres that teem with life: France will come forth from them, stronger and greater, fecundated by so much blood and tears. A JUST REFLECTION When the work in the room by any chance leaves a few moments' leisure, we naturally chat a little with the soldiers. M. de Man found comfort in their talks that he could not find anywhere else, he wrote. What a school, indeed! Their simple re- citals, quite impregnated with heroism and 50 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL sorrow, follow one another from bed to bed with an admirable monotony, in the tenor of which France may well glory. One of our young wounded talked to me about the bearing of the Germans under fire: "They stand up well under the grape- shot," explained this veteran of twenty, who had sacrificed an arm for France. "They know besides that if they fall back they will be shot, even more surely than if they go forward. But in separate engagements, in hand-to-hand fighting, or when they are taken by surprise and have no officers over them, they surrender immediately." And with a perfectly incommunicable tone of disdain, he concluded : "You see, it's not the way it is with us; they're fellows who don't know how to get killed for nothing." IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL $1 A SIMPLE STORY I SET down here, just as I heard it, with- out running the risk of spoiling it by per- sonal reflections, the admirable story of the little Turco with the broken legs, whom I questioned about his adventures. "In war one naturally mustn't expect to get too much to eat; but I'm certain we've had our full share of suffering on that score. The worst time was in the Argonne once. For three days and a half we hadn't touched a thing: you really began to feel yourself disappear. My lieutenant, whom we liked, a fellow who knew how to march, I can tell you, got us together and asked : " 'Who has any rations in reserve*?' "No one answered, because to tell the truth, if we had any, it was a temptation to save it for yourself. Finally I made up my mind. I said, Tve a can of "monkey- meat," lieutenant. Here it is.' 52 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL "Three others, too, after me, gave up their