World's War Events Volume III Part 17

The soldier wounded during the first months of the War came to us overflowing with enthusiasm, eager to express himself. His mind was full of picturesque and varied impressions and he asked for nothing better than to tell about them. Willingly he described the emotions and spirit of the moment of departure; his curiosity in the presence of the unknown, the shock of the first contact with the enemy, the dizzy joy of initial successes. He confessed the amazement and pain of the first checks and the headlong retreat which followed them. He spoke of the famous Joffre's "_ordre du jour_" when, in the battle of the Marne, the men were told to take the offensive. They stopped the enemy. They pursued him. They experienced the intoxication of a victory that gave back to France her old prestige and felt with certainty, although at first confusedly, that their battle was a decisive event in human history.

[Sidenote: The wounded of 1918 reflect the long tragedy.]

[Sidenote: They have faced terrible new weapons.]

To this brilliant and epic beginning succeeded a long and sombre tragedy, to this _Iliad_ worthy of a Homer an _Inferno_ worthy of a Dante. So we cannot wonder that the wounded of 1918 differed from those of 1914, and that their faces, like the face of the Florentine poet returning from h.e.l.l, reflected the terrible things through which they had pa.s.sed. The suffering of years, the eternal waiting for a decision of arms that did not come, the increasing horror of confronting weapons unknown in the early months--heavy artillery, gas, liquid fire, aeroplane attacks--left their mark upon our soldiers.

Dante imagines the terrible things he recounts. Our soldiers have seen them face to face. New Year after New Year has come and gone, and found them living underground, in constant danger of unseen and unavoidable forms of death, huddled together in damp, dark holes, exposed to rain and snow and sh.e.l.l fire. Rarely was there fighting--as we used to understand the term--but daily death took its toll, and ill and wounded were evacuated to the rear.

[Sidenote: Modern battle has become a scientific operation.]

Ardor they certainly retained for the a.s.sault, and heroism for confronting sheets of fire, or clouds of asphyxiating gas; but in the scientific operation which the modern battle has become, most things that are purely personal are more to be dreaded than desired, a fiery temper counts for much less than coolness, discipline, mastery of self, the spirit of abnegation and self-sacrifice. And when the battle was won, that is to say, when they had taken, not a town with a resounding name, but the ruins of a village, a treeless forest, a dismantled fort, a hill thirty metres high, the survivors still had a task before them which had lost none of its roughness or austerity. They had to organize the new position in haste, dig other shelters, undergo bombardments and reject counter-attacks, all the more violent because the enemy, supported in the rear by positions prepared in advance, was more furious than ever after defeat. Thus it continued--until now, even now, when under the irresistible pressure of the French, the English and the Americans, the German wall is crumbling. At last it will be broken, and the victorious flood of the armies of democracy will pa.s.s through. Then our invaded provinces and the sacred soil of Belgium will be freed; then the conditions of just and honorable peace among all the nations of the earth may be dictated on the banks of the Rhine--or farther, if necessary.

[Sidenote: Patience and tenacity are necessary.]

But to support, while we waited, the monotonous trench-life to accomplish the rapid nocturnal raids or the formidable exploits of the great days and weeks of offensive, required more than that brilliant quality of our fathers, the _furia francese_ that was the synonym of overwhelming courage and the ardor which commands victory. Patience to wait, resignation to accept, tenacity to prolong efforts, deliberate and indomitable will to overcome trials, within and without and to press on to the distant goal of final victory were above all things necessary.

[Sidenote: "To the end!"]

These qualities, summed up in one expression: "To the end!" so profoundly different from those which hitherto have pa.s.sed as characteristic of our race, were the ones most noticeable in our combatant of the fourth year of the War. Youthful enthusiasm was no more; each man numbered the dangers run, each man took clear account of those to come.

[Sidenote: Patriotism becomes a pa.s.sion.]

Only austere love of duty can sustain a man at such a height. A schoolmaster-sergeant of Lyon, Philippe Gonnard, voices it to a friend inclined to pity him: he was ill enough to get his freedom, but wished, nevertheless, to keep at his post until he was killed: "I intend to stay at the front.... Patriotism for me is a pa.s.sion. Does that mean that I am happy here far from all I love? You do not think that and I have often said I am not, in prose and verse. But from now until peace, no man of heart can be happy. If I came back, I should be still less happy, because instead of being dissatisfied with my lot, I should be dissatisfied with myself."

[Sidenote: Strong will and n.o.bility of soul.]

More or less consciously, this was the rock bottom of the character of the soldier of France after three and a half years of war: "Will always on the stretch, anguish conquered, melancholy transformed into n.o.bility of soul--as long as literature does not portray these essential traits of the soldier," says one of our best author-combatants, "all it creates will only be artificial and bear no relation to reality."

[Sidenote: "No matter, it is for France."]

"No matter, it is for France!" says the wounded soldier to the comrades bending over him, and if it is during an attack he tells them not to stop, not to carry him away "because it is no longer worth while," but to continue without him the n.o.ble work for which he is offering his life. Let a chaplain bring him divine help in time and he will die more than resigned, joyous and radiant in the faith of his childhood, bewailing his sins and kissing the crucifix like the French of the Middle Ages. How many times, in the horrible frame of modern war, have words been uttered, scenes enacted, agonies suffered which echoed the most sublime pa.s.sages of the _Chanson de Roland_!

[Sidenote: Most of the wounded recover.]

[Sidenote: Many times wounded.]

But, thank G.o.d, among those who fall without being killed outright, the minority are mortally wounded. Most of them are destined to get well or at least to survive: they know it, and are glad. As soon as they regain consciousness after the shock, the first idea is: "Am I really not dead?" To be wounded does not disconcert them at all. "We are here for that!" said, the other day, one of my young friends of the cla.s.s 1915, who by exception has been preserved until now. The alternative, in this present War, is not to come out of it wounded, or unwounded, but wounded or dead: to escape death is all that one can reasonably ask. Men who have only been wounded once, are more and more scarce, some have returned to the front four or five times. We had at the hospital a year ago an American sergeant of the Foreign Legion, engaged at Orleans in August, 1914, who having fought in Champagne, on the Somme and in Alsace, had received three wounds, the last at the end of 1915, at Belloy-en-Santerre, when a German bomb had badly damaged his left thigh: "the last" up to that time, for he had to go back under fire and will in all probability receive a fourth wound.

[Sidenote: The slightly wounded are lucky.]

[Sidenote: The most unfortunate.]

Those slightly wounded have not much merit, it must be confessed, in being resigned or even joyful. After a rapid dressing at the first station they will rest several days at the hospital at the front, and then get leave of convalescence which they will pa.s.s with their families. A wound for them, who can bear a little suffering, means an unexpected holiday and supplementary permission. They are only sorry if they are hit stupidly, out of action or at the beginning of a well-prepared attack, and prevented from going on with it. Let us leave them to their good luck, and stay longer with the severely wounded, those, for instance, who have a leg or arm broken, a fractured jaw, vertebra or ribs bruised, or are deprived of one of their senses--blind, deaf, paralyzed. We unhesitatingly acknowledge that these three last categories of wounded feel their misery profoundly, and need time to get used to it. Those, happily much more numerous, who have only temporarily or permanently lost the use of one of their limbs, generally consider themselves very fortunate. "I have the good wound!" they affect to say, meaning that the War is over for them. So at least they express themselves, not at all wishing to be admired, and trying as it were, to minimize their courage in bearing their trial.

[Sidenote: Self-sacrifice of the wounded.]

[Sidenote: "Arise, ye dead!"]

But aside from this paradoxical att.i.tude, they frequently speak and act in the most simple, touching way! It is common to hear one say to the stretcher-bearer who comes to fetch him: "Take my comrade here first; he is much more wounded than I; I can wait...." And that when it means lying on the ground under the bombardment, thirsty, feverish, feeling his strength ebb with his blood. Before any one comes back to get him, often he will try again, if he has a sound arm left, to fire his rifle or his machine-gun once more. Glory surrounds the epic incident of the trench where the only unwounded soldier, seeing the enemy arrive, cried out as if in delirium: "Arise, ye dead!" and the dying really rose, and succeeded, some of them, in firing once more before they fell again, and the a.s.sailants fled. A more recent and simpler deed is also worth recording.

[Sidenote: A dead observer protects his pilot.]

Returning from a bombardment of the enemy's factories in broad daylight, a French machine conducted by two men was attacked by several aviators.

The observer, hit by a ball in the chest, dropped down into the _carlingue_. The pilot seeing this prepared to turn back. But hearing his machine-gun firing again, he concluded that the observer was not seriously hurt. As soon as he landed in France: "Well, what about that wound?" he asked. No answer. He bent down and saw that his companion was dead. Even in his agony he had continued to protect his comrade.

In the beginning of the War the wounded stayed a long, a very long time without being rescued, at the place where they fell, or in the shelter to which they had been able to crawl. Our stretcher-bearers of the American Ambulance found, after the battle of the Marne, many who had lain for days and nights in sh.e.l.l holes, at the foot of trees, in ruined barns or churches! One may guess what the mortality might be!

Today, happily, it is no longer so. The field of action is more restricted and the aid is better organized.

[Sidenote: Transportation is painful and dangerous.]

[Sidenote: Relief at the first dressing station.]

[Sidenote: The nurses devoted and the sufferers resigned.]

If transportation, however, is less r.e.t.a.r.ded than three years ago, it is still painful and rather dangerous. Even when a special pa.s.sage has been dug before the attack for the evacuation of the wounded, all jolts are not avoided in this dark and narrow way; but in going through the ordinary pa.s.sage-ways, dangerous and unseen obstacles are often encountered--crumbling earth, perhaps, or convoys going in the opposite direction. If they heeded the wounded soldier, the stretcher-bearers would go on open ground. This he frequently does, if he is at all able to get on without aid; once hit he thinks himself invulnerable--a singular illusion which has brought about many catastrophes. At the first dressing-station and at the front hospital, relief begins. In ordinary times, this will be quite complete, and the wounded will not be carried to the rear until they are really able to stand the journey. But while the battle is on, they must go in the greatest haste: the worst cases are thoroughly cared for; the badly hurt who can be moved receive the attention which enables them to depart speedily; the slight cases have to be content with summary consideration. Here one sees the devotion of the nurses and the resignation of the sufferers, and better than resignation: the n.o.ble effort not to moan, the murmured prayer, the forgetfulness of self, eagerness to ask news of the fight. Among the falsities of a book a thousand times too vaunted (falsities due not so much to the lie direct as to the constant dwelling on odious details, and the suppression of admirable facts), nothing is farther from the truth than the picture of a hospital at the front where one hears and sees only blaspheming and rebellious men. With most of the wounded who have spoken to me about it in our hospital, and who certainly had the right to bear witness, we proclaim loudly that if the French army had been such as the work in question paints it in this pa.s.sage and in many others, the War would have ended long ago, and history would never have known the names of the Marne, nor the Yser, nor Verdun, nor the Chemin-des-Dames.

[Sidenote: A true picture of our Ambulance at the front.]

A true picture of an Ambulance at the front, overflowing with wounded the evening of a battle, I find in these lines by an eyewitness: "Some moderate complaints among the crowded stretchers: one asks for a drink, one wants relief for pain, a bed, a dressing, to be quickly attended.

But let some story be told in the group, some incident come out like a trumpet-call, all faces brighten, the men lift themselves a little, the mirage of glory gives them heart again. I commemorate with piety the anonymous example of a little Zouave, doubled over on himself, holding his bullet-pierced abdomen in both hands, whom I heard gently asked: 'Well, little one, how goes it?' Oh, very well, _mon Lieutenant_, our company has pa.s.sed the road from B---- to the south; we had gotten there when I was knocked out. It's all right; we are smashing them!"

[Sidenote: Their first thought for victory.]

I, personally, received such answers from wounded who came to us from the Chemin-des-Dames, or from the fort of Malmaison. When I asked for news, my mind preoccupied with their individual sufferings, their first thought was to tell me of the victory. The ordinary French phrase for "How are you? _Comment ca va-t-il?_" (literally: How goes it?) may apply to an event or to a person. This being so, it is never of himself that the newly-wounded soldier thinks, but of what is interesting to everybody--the common success. I went to welcome a patient brought in October 26th and asked: "You came tonight?"

"Yes, Father."

"Not too tired by the journey?"

"No, not too much."

"What wound?"

"Jaw pierced by a bullet, arm broken, wound in the thigh."

"How goes it?"

[Sidenote: The wounded are delighted with the success of the attack.]

"Very well! The wounded who came to the hospital at the front were delighted, we had gotten everything we were trying for!"

"You were in the attack?"

"Unfortunately no, I was wounded the day before."

"In the bombardment?"

"Yes, while we were filling up the trenches to make a way for the tanks toward the fort of Malmaison."