Complete Text (Part 5)

thought of being tired. Her devoted spirit found a way to cope with all the miscel- laneous tasks that the exigencies of the sta- tion gave rise to. Like a true general of France, she cleverly made the most of the zeal with which those about her stood ready to see her orders carried out. What curious things passed on all around her! What in- teresting personages filed through the little room — infirmary and kitchen in one — which was now her realm I They presented to me there one day, a good-looking young dragoon IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 69 who was on his way back to the front for the third time. Each time he came back he took every precaution, before he was fairly cured even, to see that he should be sent out again. His seventeenth scar was just heal- ing. When he gave out this figure some one cried: "But he's not a man; he's a skimmer." He joined in the other's amuse- ment with his clear French laugh, but said: "Just the same, how would you like to get seventeen holes shot in you like this and then be treated like a skimmer ?" One of the most interesting moments at the station was that in which the following episode took place. A sanitary train filled with wounded arrived unexpectedly. They were severe cases all, two hundred of them unable to sit up. They needed revictualing, but at the preceding station only bread and cheese had been given them — an extraordi- nary diet for people with fever, on the point of undergoing operations! But there was nothing else to give and they had accepted it, 70 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL in the best spirit. Diplomacy had to be used indeed to get these dangerous provisions away from them. They all protested — which was natural, for they had had nothing for many hours. They asked for milk and it was promised to them — most imprudently. The station master, who was undergoing days of real distress, had, as a matter of fact, only one jug of milk. One jug for five hundred invalids, and the train stopping for only half an hour I It was actually a physical impos- sibility to go to town and back in the half hour's time. What was to be done? People got together. People discussed the situation. Now it happened that opposite the convoy of wounded, a cattle train was stationed, due to start in a moment in the opposite direc- tion. There was one car full of cows, their good old heads looking so peaceful in these warlike times as they kept clumsily trying to thrust themselves through the openings, but never quite succeeded in doing so. The good herdsman, a native of our mountain heights, IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 7I blue-bloused, a big stick in his hand, came up and bowed awkwardly. "They're French, you know," he said, pointing to his beasts, "and they'll gladly give up their milk for the wounded sol- diers." His suggestion was received with acclama- tion. Everybody began to milk, and the spectacle of these improvised milkmen and milkmaids made our dear wounded men laugh. Well, it was not without its pic- turesqueness, after all. More than fifty jugs of milk were distributed in this way. It was really what one might call a providential revictualling. A FIRST COMMUNION In Sister Gabrielle's room one of the pa- tients was a kind of Apache, forty years old, a fighter with a most suspicious past, suffer- ing from a horrible wound in the right arm. After the severe operation that he had had 72 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL to submit to, we all saw him awaken out of a veritable crisis of madness, due to a state of habitual alcoholism. He was ap- parently bent on strangling the unfortunate interne who attended him, who would hardly have gotten safely out of it all without a bad wound, if the Sister had not thrown herself between them just in time. I must confess that the spectacle of this half-naked man, his body tattooed all over with women's pictures, drivelling, yelling and threateningly waving his bloodstained arms, was most impressive and repugnant. "You, Sister, I don't wish you any harm," he howled in his revolutionary way; "you are a benefactress of humanity; but not to be able to strangle this man, here, I who have stabbed people in all the cross-roads of Paris, who have killed policemen with my hands," etc., etc. And the Sister answered with her unvarying sweetness, "Your arm is very bad, my boy. You must lie down and keep quiet. I'm going to give you a drink, IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 73 and I shall stay now near by you. Come, now, be good." The Apache, who was so called even by the comrades, remained for a time a truly terrible patient. He never thanked anyone for the care that was taken of him, and never omitted to sneer at prayers. He called us sometimes to his bedside from the most pressing business, solely to say to us: "You know I don't believe in your good God." Orders were given by Sister Gabrielle never to make any answer to him, and to be just as scrupulously attentive to him as to the other wounded. Well, after a while our Apache, becom- ing little by little quieter and more polite, asked one day, in tears, if they wouldn't be so kind as to give him a catechism and some instruction in religion, that Catholic religion, that he had always attacked without any understanding of it. Last Sunday he made his first communion with touching fervour. So much for religious ceremonies in wartime. 74 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL CONVERSATION AS IT IS TO-DAY There's no useless visiting, no wasted time now in France. When one steals an hour from work to go and see one's friends it's only to find that glory has just touched them in some way — joy or sorrow. Women struck down by the most cruel grief — wives whose homes and hearts are broken forever; mothers who have felt their own blood flow away in the veins of their sons, and some part of their own lives extinguished in the last breath of these so dear lives — even such as these don't recognise the right to remain long idle. They hide their tears beneath their crepe and busy themselves doing things for the comrades of those who will never come back again. The thought of the war follows them in all these glorious tasks. Everything centres in "the front" hence- forth : sadness, happiness, hope, courage ; and all of our tenderness and compassion, all IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 75 our labours, go back there too. Our souls yearn toward those moving frontiers, those frontiers that are no longer composed of ma- terial French earth only, but of living Frenchmen, pressing forward, all the time. One doesn't talk any longer except of these big things. Last week at a big military clinic I went to see a young officer who had come back from the front for the second time, afflicted with a new wound, as he called it, and even with an old one yet, in spite of which he was insisting on going back too soon. There was quite a reunion there, and quite a good deal of talk and chat. At an- other time my arrival would have discon- certed them, but now their conversation was far removed from smoking room talk and dubious subjects. Young men and old, women and children, we could plainly read the thought of France in one another's eyes. Ah, beloved land, fated forever to unprece- dented adventures in the realm of morals as in that of glory, miraculous France of 1914, 76 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL who smilingly, despite the blood and tears, hears but a single rhythm beating in the re- united hearts of all her children ! At certain moments one feels such a glow of happiness at having her for one's native land that one simply must speak out about it. French, French — one is no longer surfeited with this word nowadays. That is certainly the view of the young officers, with their silent en- thusiasm. They were talking of "Her" steadily, when I came in. One of them was reading, from his war diary, a very interest- ing account of the battle of the Marne, of which I heard the following passage : "When General M took command of his troops he could see at once that their morale had suffered severely in the successive movements of retreat. The day when he ordered the offensive, that had now to be maintained at any price, the soldiers, down in their trenches, without absolutely refusing to obey him, couldn't make up their minds to budge, but lay there murmuring sullenly: IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 77 They whistle so, General, the bullets whis- tle so.' With that General M began to cast about him for some means, not to terrify them in the German manner, but to awaken the old careless French bravado in their better selves. This was what he did: he climbed up alone on the edge of the trenches in the bottom of which the soldiers lay. He stood there upright for ten minutes. He was literally enveloped in a hurricane of bullets and shrapnel, but God willed that he should step down again safe and sound. As he did so he remarked simply: 'They whistle, boys, but, as you see, they don't hurt you: they're harmless.' Since then orders have been issued to our officers not to expose themselves needlessly: their lives are too precious to us. But this act of sublime French folly so electrified the men of this regiment that it made them invincible." The other day, in an admirably French drawing-room, some one who knew this hero himself, recalled a will written in one line 78 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL and found by an unhappy father, Monsieur I , on his son's body: "If we are vic- torious, I beg my parents not to put on mourning for me." To what heights of for- getfulness of everything that is not "Hers" can they not climb ! Verily, verily, they love her as one can only love at twenty years — with no reserves — with all their youth. A SOLDIER'S COMPLIMENT AND SONG I FOUND myself once in a convalescent home at the hour when the Prefect had come to visit the wounded. After the customary distribution of cigarettes, one soldier, with his arm in a sling, rose, and amidst general emotion delivered the following compli- mentary speech: "Madame, in the name of my comrades, will you permit me to thank you for your amiable visit, and the presents that you spoil us with so? We are surrounded here with IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 79 such devoted care that our wounds heal as if by magic. Will you kindly express to the Prefect our patriotic sentiments, and tell him how proud we are to have had the honour of shedding our blood for France? Tell him of our ardent desire to return soon and take our places in the battle front among our com- rades; to chase these cursed, sanguinary, dev- astating Teutons away forever from our country's soil." That's what our soldiers are. The mo- ment they find themselves in the presence of some one who stands a little for the authority of France, they feel the need of putting into words their eager desire for victory at all costs, as if they talked to France herself, and renewed to her the offer of their lives in sacrifice. You ought really to see the ex- pression of their faces, the tears of energy and resolution that burn in their eyes, while the most lettered of the band speaks up for them. A moment later, as I looked at the good stove which warmed the room, and 8o IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL round which they spent the pleasant hours of their well-earned convalescence, some one re- marked dreamily: "You don't think of the trenches any more here, do you?" An indignant protest rose on all sides: "Don't think any more about the trenches? Why, that's as much as to say that's all you do think of I How could you forget the com- rades, with their feet freezing down there, while we warm ourselves here*?" The ward nurse told us there was a little infantryman among the wounded here who had a very pretty voice and knew a lot of songs. Immediately he was asked to give us one. The request made him very unhappy : he was not afraid to sing at the front before the Boches, but here really he did not dare. One entreaty made to him gave good reasons for our persistence. "Oh, please sing, we beg you to sing. They'll always sound so fine now — soldiers' songs." He sang, and his IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 81 young male voice made our hearts quiver with an emotion that no great artist could ever have given us with a song profane. For to him his song was a sacred thing. Just imagine the scene for yourself. We are in the year 1914, and he is a French soldier. From outside gay trumpet calls come in, those same calls perhaps that in certain places at the front summon men forth to die. Imag- ine that there is an audience of women, all whose tender thoughts go down there, and thirty wounded comrades who are getting ready like him to return to the firing line. Imagine this, and then think how his voice must stir them with his soldier's song: Soldiers brave, companions hardy, Lo, the glorious day is here. Hark ye now the clarion calling. Presaging your victory near. Fly, intrepid soldiers all! France is up, and watching there. When the sounds of combat call. In the vanguard do and dare. 82 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL REFRAIN Forward, forward, brave battalions. Jealous of our freedom be. If the enemy comes near us. Forward, forward and advance: Death to the enemies of France. When your rapid foot and true. Skims the soil and scales the height. One would think across the blue Eagles from the peaks took flight. In the vortex black you fly; Sometimes, unseen hounds of war. In the plough-share's path you lie. Rising fiercer than before. Heroes valiant and inspired. All the world our fathers won; And this world regenerate. Fecund is with every son. Noble grandsires, rest in peace; Sleep within each august grave, France can count upon us now. Sons shall worthy prove and brave. Caught and stricken to the heart. Mortal wounds, O France, you feel. On your bruised, blood-stained breast. Stamps the conqueror's brutal heel. IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 83 France, O France, lift up your head, From your face wash off the stain. Soon the dead our tread shall waken. Of Alsace and of Lorraine. ALWAYS SUFFERING Always and incessantly one returns to the subject of their sufferings. What an accu- mulation of sorrows, tragically varied, weighs down our unfortunate land ! Into Sis- ter Gabrielle's room to-day there came with radiant faces, a father and mother who had journeyed from the depths of the Correze — more than four hundred kilometres — in the sure belief that they should find with us their only son, from whom they had had no news for almost three months. By a cruel chance his exact name and regiment were those of another soldier, who was indeed here, and figured in the lists published by St. Dominic's Hospital. The unhappy parents, arriving full of joy, were confronted with a stranger's face. The group around his bed was heart- 84 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL rending. The young soldier who was the involuntary cause of this unutterable decep- tion wept with the father and mother. YOUNG RECRUITS AND TERRI- TORIALS At the beginning of the war one saw going out as our defenders, and coming back wounded, only the "little young ones" among our soldiers. Oh, these little young, how sympathetic and winning they were, with their irresistible gaiety in the face of every- thing, their bravado, their fine carelessness of life. By their side now a graver sacrifice is being made, one that is sadder and more conscious of itself, namely, that of the men no longer young, who have had to leave a wife and children, a home of which they were the support. Such as these lived tran- quilly, far from the movement of troops ; less than any one did they dream of war; and in truth one must needs admire them the more IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 85 for rising to such heights of sacrifice. In several places at the front people said their service had insured success. At the hospital I saw them suffer, die, alas, as veritable heroes of France, and I lost that slight ten- dency to irony with which one too readily looked upon them at their setting out. These men fulfilled their hard duties in the most unselfish and humble conditions possible: in one day their whole existence was upheaved, their laboriously acquired small property re- nounced, all their customary ways broken with ; and at a certain age this perhaps repre- sents the most painful phase of duty. They marched to death, in a word, who had had time to grow fixed in life. They had spread out the roots of their lives, and now they found themselves dependent on younger men, under the sway of younger men's careless enthusiasm and quite fresh physical forces, thanks to this new experience of war by which the younger are put first. But, for the rest, everything arranges itself quite mar- 86 IN A FRENCH