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By Ellen N. La Motte

The Tuberculosis Nurse
The Backwash of War

The
Backwash of War

The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield

as Witnessed by an American

Hospital Nurse

By

Ellen N. La Motte

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London

XLbc fmfc?ierbocfter press

1916

COPTSIGHT, I916
BY

ELLEN N. LA MOTTE

Vbe ftnicherboclier pteu, Dew Kork

MARY BORDEN-TURNER

"The Little Boss"

to whom i owe bit experience in
the zone of the armies

INTRODUCTION

T^HIS war has been described as "Months
of boredom,- punctuated by moments
of intense fright." The writer of these
sketches has experienced many "months of
boredom," in a French military field hospi-
tal, situated ten kilometres behind the lines,
in Belgium. During these months, the lines
have not moved, either forward or backward,
but have remained dead-locked, in one posi-
tion. Undoubtedly, up and down the long-
reaching kilometres of "Front" there has
been action, and "moments of intense fright"
have produced glorious deeds of valour,
courage, devotion, and nobility. But when
there is little or no action, there is a stagnant
place, and in a stagnant place there is much
ugliness. Much ugliness is churned up in

V

vi Introduction

the wake of mighty, moving forces. We are
witnessing a phase in the evolution of hu-
manity, a phase called War — and the slow,
onward progress stirs up the slime in the shal-
lows, and this is the Backwash of War. It
is very ugly. There are many Httle lives
foaming up in the backwash. They are
loosened by the sweeping current, and float
to the surface, detached from their environ-
ment, and one glimpses them, weak, hideous,
repellent. After the war, they will consoH-
date again into the condition called Peace.

After this war, there will be many other
wars, and in the intervals there will be peace.
So it will alternate for many generations.
By examining the things cast up in the back-
wash, we can gauge the progress of humanity.
When clean little lives, when clean little
souls boil up in the backwash, they will
consolidate, after the final war, into a peace
that shall endure. But not till then.

E. N. L. M.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Heroes 3

La Patrie Reconnaissante .

17

The Hole in the Hedge

35

Alone ....

49

A Belgian Civilian

.

63

The Interval .

n

Women and Wives .

95

Pour la Patrie

. 115

Locomotor Ataxia .

129

A Surgical Triumph

143

At the Telephone .

. 159

A Citation

. 167

An Incident ,

. 181

Heroes

Heroes

\ A 7HEN he coiild stand it no longer, he
" " fired a revolver up through the roof
of his mouth, but he made a mess of it.
The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged
somewhere under his skull, so they bundled
him into an ambulance and carried him,
cursing and screaming, to the nearest field
hospital. The journey was made in double-
quick time, over rough Belgian roads. To
save his life, he must reach the hospital with-
out delay, and if he was bounced to death
jolting along at breakneck speed, it did not
matter. That was understood. He was a
deserter, and discipline must be maintained.
Since he had failed- in the job, his life must
be saved, he must be nursed back to health,
imtil he was well enough to be stood up

3

4 The Backwash of War

against a wall and shot. This is War.
Things like this also happen in peace time,
but not so obviously.

At the hospital, he behaved abominably.
The ambulance men declared that he had
tried to throw himself out of the back of the
ambulance, that he had yelled and hurled
himself about, and spat blood all over the
floor and blankets — ^in short, he was very
disagreeable. Upon the operating table,
he was no more reasonable. He shouted and
screamed and threw himself from side to
side, and it took a dozen leather straps and
four or five orderlies to hold him in position,
so that the surgeon could examine him.
During this commotion, his left eye rolled
about loosely upon his cheek, and from his
bleeding mouth he shot great clots of stag-
nant blood, caring not where they fell. One
fell upon the immaculate white uniform of the
Directrice, and stained her, from breast to
shoes. It was disgusting. They told him

Heroes 5

it was La Directrice, and that he must be
carefiil. For an instant he stopped his
raving, and regarded her fixedly with his
remaining eye, then took aim afresh, and
again covered her with his coward blood.
Truly it was disgusting.

To the Medecin Major it was incompre-
hensible, and he said so. To attempt to kill
oneself, when, in these days, it was so easy
to die with honour upon the battlefield, was
something he could not understand. So
the Medecin Major stood patiently aside,
his arms crossed, his supple fingers pulling
the long black hairs on his bare arms, wait-
ing. He had long to wait, for it was difficult
to get the man under the anaesthetic. Many
cans of ether were used, which went to prove
that the patient was a drinking man. Whether
he had acquired the habit of hard drink be-
fore or since the war could not be ascertained ;
the war had lasted a year now, and in that
time many habits may be formed. As the

6 The Backwash of War

MSdecin Major stood there, patiently finger-
ing the hairs on his hairy arms, he calculated
the amount of ether that was expended —
five cans of ether, at so many francs a can —
however, the ether was a donation from
America, so it did not matter. Even so,
it was wasteful.

At last they said he was ready. He was
quiet. During his struggles, they had broken
out two big teeth with the mouth gag, and
that added a little more blood to the blood
already choking him. Then the MSdecin
Major did a very skilful operation. He
trephined the skull, extracted the bullet
that had lodged beneath it, and bound back
in place that erratic eye. After which the
man was sent over to the ward, while the
surgeon returned hungrily to his dinner,
long overdue.

In the ward, the man was a bad patient.
He insisted upon tearing off his bandages,
although they told him that this meant

Heroes 7

bleeding to death. His mind seemed fixed
on death. He seemed to want to die, and
was thoroughly unreasonable, although quite
conscious. All of which meant that he re-
quired constant watching and was a perfect
nuisance. He was so different from the
other patients, who wanted to live. It was
a joy to nurse them. This was the Salh of
the Grands Blesses, those most seriously
woimded. By expert surgery, by expert
niirsing, some of these were to be returned
to their homes again, reformSs, mutilated for
life, a burden to themselves and to society;
others were to be nursed back to health, to a
point at which they could again shoulder
eighty pounds of marching kit, and be torn
to pieces again on the firing line. It was a
pleasure to nurse such as these. It called
forth all one's skill, all one's humanity.
But to nurse back to health a man who was
to be court -martialled and shot, truly that
seemed a dead-end occupation.

8 The Backwash of War

They dressed his wounds every day. Very
many yards of gauze were required, with
gauze at so many francs a bolt. Very much
ether, very much iodoform, very many band-
ages— it was an expensive business, con-
sidering. All this waste for a man who was
to be shot, as soon as he was well enough.
How much better to expend this upon the
hopeless cripples, or those who were to face
death again in the trenches.

The night nurse was given to reflection.
One night, about midnight, she took her
candle and went down the ward, reflecting.
Ten beds on the right hand side, ten beds
on the left hand side, all full. How pitiful
they were, these little soldiers, asleep. How
irritating they were, these little soldiers,
awake. Yet how sternly they contrasted
with the man who had attempted suicide.
Yet did they contrast, after all? Were they
finer, nobler, than he? The night nurse,
given to reflection, continued her rounds.

Heroes 9

In bed number two, on the right, lay
Alexandre, asleep. He had received the
Medaille Militaire for bravery. He was
better now, and that day had asked the
Medecin Major for permission to smoke.
The Medecin Major had refused, saying that
it would disturb the other patients. Yet
after the doctor had gone, Alexandre had
produced a cigarette and lighted it, defying
them all from behind his Medaille Militaire.
The patient in the next bed had become
violently nauseated in consequence, yet Alex-
andre had smoked on, secure in his Medaille
Militaire. How much honoiu- lay in that?

Here lay FeHx, asleep. Poor, querulous,
feeble-minded Felix, with a foul fistula, which
filled the whole ward with its pdour. In
one sleeping hand lay his little round mirror,
in the other, he clutched his comb. With
daylight, he would trim and comb his mous-
tache, his poor, little drooping moustache,
and twirl the ends of it.

10 The Backwash of War

Beyond lay Alphonse, drugged with mor-
phia, after an intolerable day. That morn-
ing he had received a package from home, a
dozen pears. He had eaten them all, one
after the other, though his companions in
the beds adjacent looked on with hungry,
longing eyes. He offered not one, to either
side of him. After his gorge, he had
become violently ill, and demanded the
basin in which to unload his surcharged
stomach.

Here lay Hippolyte, who for eight months
had jerked on the bar of a captive balloon,
until appendicitis had sent him into hospital.
He was not ill, and his dirty jokes filled the
ward, provoking laughter, even from dying
Marius. How filthy had been his jokes —
how they had been matched and beaten by
the jokes of others. How filthy they all were,
when they talked with each other, shouting
down the length of the ward.

Wherein lay the difference? Was it not

Heroes 1 1

all a dead-end occupation, nursing back to
health men to be patched up and returned
to the trenches, or a man to be patched up,
court-martialled and shot? The difference
lay in the Ideal.

One had no ideals. The others had ideals,
and fought for them. Yet had they? Poor
selfish Alexandre, poor vain Felix, poor
gluttonous Alphonse, poor filthy Hippolyte
— was it possible that each cherished ideals,
hidden beneath? Courageous dreams of
freedom and patriotism? Yet if so, how
could such beliefs fail to influence their daily
lives? Could one cherish standards so noble,
yet be himself so ignoble, so petty, so com-
monplace?

At this point her candle burned out, so
the night nurse took another one, and passed
from bed to bed. It was very incomprehen-
sible. Poor, whining Felix, poor whining
Alphonse, poor whining Hippolyte, poor
whining Alexandre — all fighting for La Patrie.

12 The Backwash of War

And against them the man who had tried
to desert La Patrie.

So the night nurse continued her rounds,
up and down the ward, reflecting. And
suddenly she saw that these ideals were
imposed from without — that they were com-
pulsory. That left to themselves, Felix,
and Hippolyte, and Alexandre, and Alphonse
would have had no ideals. Somewhere,
higher up, a handful of men had been able
to impose upon Alphonse, and Hippolyte,
and Felix, and Alexandre, and thousands like
them, a state of mind which was not in them,
of themselves. Base metal, gilded. And
they were all harnessed to a great car, a
Juggernaut, ponderous and crushing, upon
which was enthroned Mammon, or the God-
dess of Liberty, or Reason, as you like.
Nothing further was demanded of them than
their collective physical strength — just to
tug the car forward, to cut a wide swath, to
leave behind a broad path along which cotdd

Heroes 13

follow, at some later date, the hordes of
Progress and Civilization. Individual nobil-
ity was superfluous. All the Idealists de-
manded was physical endurance from the
mass.

Dawn filtered in through the little square
windows of the ward. Two of the patients
rolled on their sides, that they might talk
to one another. In the silence of early
morning their voices rang clear.

"Dost thou know, mon ami, that when we
captiired that German battery a few days
ago, we found the gunners chained to their
gtms?"

Paris,
18 December, 1915

La Patrie Reconnaissante

15

LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE

nPHEY brought him to the Poste de Secours,
* just behind the lines, and laid the
stretcher down gently, after which the
bearers stretched and restretched their stiff-
ened arms, numb with his weight. For he
was a big man of forty | not one of the light
striplings of the young classes of this year or
last. The wounded man opened his eyes,
flashing black eyes, that roved about rest-
lessly for a moment, and then rested vindic-
tively first on one, then on the other of the
two brancardiers.

"Sales embusgues!^* (Dirty cowards) he
cried angrily. "How long is it since I have
been wounded? Ten hours! For ten hours
have I laid there, waiting for you! And
then you come to fetch me, only when it is

a 17

1 8 The Backwash of War

safe! Safe for you! Safe to risk your pre-
cious, filthy skins! Safe to come where I
have stood for months ! Safe to come where
for ten hours I have laid, my belly opened
by a German shell ! Safe ! Safe ! How brave
you are when night has fallen, when it is
dark, when it is safe to come for me, ten hours
late!"

He closed his eyes, jerked up his knees,
and clasped both dirty hands over his abdo-
men. From waist to knees the old blue
trousers were soaked with blood, black
blood, stiff and wet. The brancardiers looked
at each other and shook their heads. One
shrugged a shoulder. Again the flashing
eyes of the man on the stretcher opened.

"Sales embusquSsI'* he shouted again.
"How long have you been engaged in this
work of mercy? For twelve months, since
the beginning of the war! And for twelve
months, since the beginning of the war, I
have stood in the first line trenches! Think

La Patrie Reconnaissante 19

of it — twelve months! And for twelve
months you have come for us — ^when it was
safe! How much younger are you than I!
Ten years, both of you — ten years, fifteen
years, or even more! Ah, Nom de Dieu, to
have influence ! Influence ! ' '

The flaming eyes closed again, and the
bearers shuffled off, lighting cheap cigarettes.

Then the siu*geon came, impatiently. Ah,
a grand blesse, to be hastened to the rear at
once. The surgeon tried to imbutton the
soaking trousers, but the man gave a scream
of pain.

"For the sake of God, cut them. Monsieur
le Major! Cut them! Do not economize.
They are worn out in the service of the coun-
try! They are torn and bloody, they can
serve no one after me ! Ah, the little econ-
omies, the Httle, false economies ! Cut them,
Monsieur le Major!'*

An assistant, with heavy, blunt scissors,
half cut, half tore the trousers from the man

20 The Backwash of War

in agony. Clouts of black blood rolled from
the wound, then a stream bright and scarlet,
which was stopped by a handful of white
gauze, retained by tightly wrapped bands.
The surgeon raised himself from the task.

** Mon pauvre vieux," he miuinured ten-
deriy. "Once more?" and into the supine
leg he shot a stream of morphia.

Two ambulance men came in, Americans
in khaki, ruddy, well fed, careless. They
lifted the stretcher quickly, skilfully. Marius
opened his angry eyes and fixed them
furiously.

"Sales Strangersr* he screamed. "What
are you here for? To see me, with my bowels
nmning on the ground? Did you come for
me ten hours ago, when I needed you? My
head in mud, my blood warm under me?
Ah, not you! There was danger then — you
only come for me when it is safe!"

They shoved him into the ambulance,
buckling down the brown canvas curtains

La Patrie Reconnaissante 21

by the light of a lantern. One cranked the
motor, then both clambered to the seat in
front, laughing. They drove swiftly but
carefully through the darkness, carrying no
lights. Inside, the man continued his impre-
cations, but they could not hear him.

"Strangers! Sightseers!" he sobbed in
misery. "Driving a motor, when it is I
who should drive the motor! Have I not
conducted a Paris taxi for these past ten
years? Do I not know how to drive, to
manage an engine? What are they here for
— France? No, only themselves! To write
a book — to say what they have done — when
it was safe! If it was France, there is the
Foreign Legion — where they would have been
welcome — to stand in the trenches as I have
done! But do they enlist? Ah no! It is not
safe! They take my place with the motor,
and come to get me — when it is too late."

Then the morphia relieving him, he slept.

22 The Backwash of War

In a field hospital, some ten kilometres
behind the lines, Marius lay dying. For
three days he had been dying and it was
disturbing to the other patients. The stench
of his wounds filled the air, his curses filled
the ward. For Marius knew that he was
dying and that he had nothing to fear. He
could express himself as he chose. There
would be no earthly court-martial for him —
he was answerable to a higher court. So
Marius gave forth freely to the ward his
philosophy of life, his hard, bare, ugly life,
as he had lived it, and his comments on La
Patrie as he understood it. For three days,
night and day, he screamed in his delirium,
and no one paid much attention, thinking
it was deliriimi. The other patients were
sometimes diverted and amused, sometimes
exceedingly annoyed, according to whether
or not they were sleepy or suffering. And
all the while the wound in the abdomen gave
forth a terrible stench, filling the ward, for

La Patrie Reconnaissante 23

he had gas gangrene, the odour of which is
abominable.

Marius had been taken to the Salle of the
abdominal wounds, and on one side of him
lay a man with a faecal fistula, which smelled
atrociously. The man with the fistula,
however, had got used to himself, so he com-
plained mightily of Marius. On the other
side lay a man who had been shot through
the bladder, and the smell of urine was heavy
in the air round about. Yet this man had
also got used to himself, and he too com-
plained of Marius, and the awful smell of
Marius. For Marius had gas gangrene, and
gangrene is death, and it was the smell of
death that the others complained of.

Two beds farther down, lay a boy of
twenty, who had been shot through the
liver. Also his hand had been amputated,
and for this reason he was to receive the
Croix de Gicerre. He had performed no
special act of bravery, but all mutiles are

24 The Backwash of War

given the Croix de Guerre, for they will re-
cover and go back to Paris, and in walking
about the streets of Paris, with one leg gone,
or an arm gone, it is good for the morale of
the country that they should have a Croix
de Gtierre pinned on their breasts. So one
night at about eight o'clock, the General
arrived to confer the Croix de Guerre on the
man two beds from Marius. The General
was a beautiful man, something like the
Russian Grand Duke. He was tall and
thin, with beautiful slim legs encased in
shining tall boots. As he entered the ward,
emerging from the rain and darkness without,
he was very imposing. A few rain drops
sparkled upon the golden oak leaves of his
cap, for although he had driven up in a lim-
ousine, he was not able to come quite up
to the ward, but had been obliged to traverse
some fifty yards of darkness, in the rain.
He was encircled in a sweeping black cloak,
which he cast off upon an empty bed, and

La Patrie Reconnaissante 25

then, surrounded by his ghttering staff, he
conferred the medal upon the man two beds
below Marius. The little ceremony was
touching in its dignity and simplicity.
Marius, in his delirium, watched the pro-
ceedings intently.

It was all over in five minutes. Then the
General was gone, his staff was gone, and
the ward was left to its own reflections.

Opposite Marius, across the ward, lay a
little joyeux. That is to say, a soldier of
the Bataillon d'Afrique, which is the criminal
regiment of France, in which regiment are
placed those men who would otherwise serve
sentences in jail. Prisoners are sent to this
regiment in peace time, and in time of war,
they fight in the trenches as do the others,
'but with small chance of being decorated.
Social rehabilitation is their sole reward,
as a rule. So Marius waxed forth, taunting
the little joyeux, whose feet lay opposite his
feet, a yard apart.

26 The Backwash of War

*'Tiensf My little friend!" he shouted
so that all might hear. "Thou canst never
receive the Croix de Guerre, as Frangois has
received it, because thou art of the Bataillon
d'AfriqueJ And why art thou there, my
friend? Because, one night at a caf6, thou
didst drink more wine than was good for
thee — so much more than was good for thee,
that when an old boulevardier, with much
money in his pocket, proposed to take thy
girl from thee, thou didst knock him down
and give him a black eye! Common braw-
ler, distiirber of the peace! It was all due
to the wine, the good wine, which made thee
value the girl far above her worth! It was
the wine! The wine! And every time an
attempt is made in the Chamber to abolish
drinking the good wine of France, there is
violent opposition. Opposition from whom?
From the old boulevardier whose money is
invested in the vineyards — the very man
who casts covetous eyes upon thy Mimi!

La Patrie Reconnaissante 27

So thou goest to jail, then to the Bataillon
d'Afriqiie, and the wine flows, and thy Mimi
— where is she? Only never canst thou re-
ceive the Croix de Guerre, my friend — La
Patrie Reconnaissante sees to that!"

Marius shouted with laughter — he knew
himself so near death, and it was good to be
able to say all that was in his heart. An
orderly approached him, one of the six young
men attached as male nurses to the ward.

"Ha! Thou bidst me be quiet, sale em-
busque?" he taunted. **I will shout louder
than the guns! And hast thou ever heard
the guns, nearer than this safe point behind
the lines? Thou art here doing woman's
work! Caring for me, nursing me! And
what knowledge dost thou bring to thy task,
thou ignorant grocer's clerk? Surely thou
hast some powerful friend, who got thee
mobiUzed as infirmier — a woman's task —
instead of a simple soldier like me, doing his
duty in the trenches ! "

28 The Backwash of War

Marius raised himself in bed, which the
infirmier knew, because the doctor had told
him, was not a right position for a man who
has a wound in his stomach, some thirty
centimetres in length. Marius, however,
was strong in his delirium, so the infirmier
called another to help him throw the patient
upon his back. Soon three were called, to
hold the struggling man down.

Marius resigned himself. "Summon all
six of you!" he shouted. "All six of you!
And what do you know about illness such as
mine? You, a grocer's clerk! You, barber!
You, cultivateur I You, driver of the boat
train from Paris to Cherbourg! You, agent
of the Gas Society of Paris! You, driver of
a Paris taxi, such as myself! Yet here you
all are, in your wisdom, your experience, to
nurse me! Mobilized as nurses because
you are friend of a friend of a deputy!
Whilst I, who know no deputy, am mobi-
lized in the first line trenches! Sales

La Patrie Reconnaissante 29

emhusgues! Sales embusquSsI La Patrie
Reconnaissantel"

He laid upon his back a little while, quiet.
He was very delirious, and the end could
not be far off. His black eyebrows were
contracted into a frown, the eyelids closed
and quivering. The grey nostrils were
pinched and dilated, the grey lips snarling
above yellow, crusted teeth. The restless
lips twitched constantly, mumbling fresh
treason, inaudibly. Upon the floor on one
side lay a pile of coverlets, tossed angrily
from the bed, while on each side the bed
dangled white, muscular, hairy legs, the toes
touching the floor. All the while he fumbled
to unloose the abdominal dressings, picking
at the safety-pins with weak, dirty fingers.
The patients on each side turned their backs
to him, to escape the smell, the smell of
death.

A woman nurse came down the ward. She
was the only one, and she tried to cover him

30 The Backwash of War

with the fallen bedding. Marius attempted
to clutch her hand, to encircle her with his
weak, delirious, amorous arms. She dodged
swiftly, and directed an orderly to cover him
with the fallen blankets.

Marius laughed in glee, a fiendish, feeble,
shrieking laugh. "Have nothing to do with
a woman who is diseased!" he shouted.
' ' Never ! Never ! Never ! ' '

So they gave him more morphia, that he
might be quiet and less indecent, and not
disturb the other patients. And all that
night he died, and all the next day he died,
and all the night following he died, for he was
a very strong man and his vitality was won-
derful. And as he died, he continued to
pour out to them his experience of life, his
summing up of life, as he had lived it and
known it. And the sight of the woman nurse
evoked one train of thought, and the sight
of the men nurses evoked another, and the
sight of the man who had the Croix de Guerre

La Patrie Reconnaissante 31

evoked another, and the sight of the joyeux
evoked another. And he told the ward all
about it, incessantly. He was very delirious.

His was a filthy death. He died after
three days' cursing and raving. Before he
died, that end of the ward smelled foully,
and his foul words, shouted at the top of his
delirious voice, echoed foully. Everyone
was glad when it was over.

The end came suddenly. After very much
raving it came, after terrible abuse, terrible
truths. One morning, very early, the night
nurse looked out of the window and saw a
little procession making its way out of the
gates of the hospital enclosure, going towards
the cemetery of the village beyond. First
came the priest, carrying a wooden cross
that the carpenter had just made. He was
chanting something in a minor key, while
the sentry at the gates stood at salute. The
cortege passed through, numbering a dozen
soldiers, four of whom carried the bier on

32 The Backwash of War

their shoulders. The bier was covered with
the glorious tricolour of France. She glanced
instinctively back towards Marius. It would
be just like that when he died. Then her
eyes fell upon a Paris newspaper, lying on
her table. There was a column headed,
"Nos Ilerosf Morts aux Champs d'Honneur;
La Patrie Reconnaissante.'' It would be
just like that.

Then Marius gave a last, sudden scream.

" Vive la France!'^ he shouted. " Vive les
sales embusquSsI Hoch le Kaiser 1"

The ward awoke, scandalized.

" Vive la Patrie Reconnaissante!" he yelled.
''HochleKaiserr

Then he died.

Paris,
19 December, 1915

The Hole in the Hedge

33

THE HOLE IN THE HEDGE

nPHE field hospital stood in a field outside
■*- the village, surrounded by a thick,
high hedge of prickly material. Within, the
enclosure was filled by a dozen little wooden
huts, painted green, connected with each
other by plank walks. What went on out-
side the hedge, nobody within knew. War,
presumably. War ten kilometres away, to
judge by the map, and by the noise of the
gims, which on some days roared very loudly,
and made the wooden huts shake and tremble,
although one got used to that, after a fashion.
The hospital was very close to the war, so
close that no one knew anything about the
war, therefore it was very dull inside the
enclosure, with no news and no newspapers,
and just quarrels and monotonous work.

a

36 The Backwash of War

As for the hedge, at such points as the prickly
thorn gave out or gave way, stout stakes
and stout boarding took its place, thus mak-
ing it a veritable prison wall to those confined
within. There was but one recognized en-
trance, the big double gates with a sentry
box beside them, at which box or within it,
according to the weather, stood a sentry,
night and day. By day, a drooping French
flag over the gates showed the ambulances
where to enter. By night, a lantern served
the same purpose. The night sentry was
often asleep, the day sentry was often absent,
and each wrote down in a book, when they
thought it important, the names of those
who came and went into the hospital groimds.
The field ambulances came and went, the hos-
pital motors came and went, now and then the
General's car came and went, and the people
attached to the hospital also came and went,
openly, through the gates. But the comings
and goings through the hedge were different.

The Hole in the Hedge 37

Now and then holes were discovered in
the hedge. Holes underneath the prickly
thorn, not more than a foot high, but suffi-
cient to allow a crawling body to wriggle
through on its stomach. These holes per-
sisted for a day or two or three, and then
were suddenly staked up, with strong stakes
and barbed wire. After which, a few days
later, perhaps, other holes like them would
be discovered in the hedge a little fiirther
along. After each hole was discovered,
curious happenings would take place amongst
the hospital staff.

Certain men, orderlies or stretcher bear-
ers, would be imprisoned. For example,
the nurse of Salle I., the ward of the grands
hlessSs, would come on duty some morning
and discover that one of her orderlies was
missing. Fouquet, who swept the ward,
who carried basins, who gave the men their
breakfasts, was absent. There was a beastly
hitch in the ward work, in consequence.

38 The Backwash of War

The floor was filthy, covered with cakes of
mud tramped in by the stretcher bearers
during the night. The men screamed for
attention they did not receive. The wrong
patients got the wrong food at meal times.
And then the nurse would look out of one
of the little square windows of the ward, and
see Fouquet marching up and down the
plank walks between the baracques, carrying
his eighty pounds of marching kit, and smil-
ing happily and defiantly. He was "in
prison." The night before he had crawled
through a hole in the hedge, got blind drunk
in a neighbouring estaminet, and had swag-
gered boldly through the gates in the morn-
ing, to be "imprisoned." He wanted to be.
He just could not stand it any longer. He
was sick of it all. Sick of being infirmier,
of sweeping the floor, of carrying vessels,
of cutting up tough meat for sullen, one-
armed men, with the Croix de Guerre pinned
to their coffee-streaked night shirts. Bah!

The Hole in the Hedge 39

The Croix de Guerre pinned to a night shirt,
egg-stained, smelling of sweat !

Long, long ago, before any one thought of
war — oh, long ago, that is, about six years —
Fouquet had known a deputy. Also his
father had known the deputy. And so, when
it came time for his military service, he had
done it as infirmier. As nurse, not soldier.
He had done stretcher drill, with empty
stretchers. He had swept wards, empty of
patients. He had done his two years mili-
tary service, practising on empty beds, on
empty stretchers. He had had a snap, be-
cause of the deputy. Then came the war,
and still he had a snap, although now the
beds and the wards were all full. Still,
there was no danger, no front line trenches,
for he was mobilized as infirmier, as nurse in
a military hospital. He stood six feet tall,
which is big for a Frenchman, and he was
big in proportion, and he was twenty-five
years old, and ruddy and strong. Yet he

40 The Backwash of War

was obliged to wait upon a little screaming
man, five feet two, whose nose had been shot
away, exchanged for the Medaille Militaire
upon his breast, who screamed out to him:
"Bring me the basin, embusquel" And he
had brought it. If he had not brought it,
the little screaming man with no nose and
the flat bandage across his face would have
reported him to the Medecin Chef, and in
time he might have been transferred to the
front line trenches. Anything is better
than the front line trenches. Fouquet knew
this, because the wounded men were so bitter
at his not being there. The old men were
very bitter. At the end of the summer,
they changed the troops in this sector, and
the young Zouaves were replaced by old
men of forty and forty-five. They looked
very much older than this when they were
wounded and brought into the hospital,
for their hair and beards were often quite
white, and besides their wounds, they were

The Hole in the Hedge 41

often sick from exposure to the cold, winter
rains of Flanders. One of these old men,
who were nearly always querulous, had a
son also serving in the trenches. He was
very rude to Fouquet, this old man. Old
and young, they called him embusque. Which
meant that they were jealous of him, that
they very much envied him for escaping the
trenches, and considered it very unjust that
they knew no one with influence who could
have protected them in the same way. But
Fouquet was very sick of it all. Day in and
day out, for eighteen months, or since the
beginning of the war, he had waited upon
the wounded. He had done as the common-
est soldier had ordered him, clodding up and
down the ward in his heavy wooden sabots,
knocking them against the beds, eliciting
curses for his intentional clumsiness. There
were also many priests in that hospital, like-
wise serving as infirmiers. They too, fetched
and carried, but they did not seem to resent

42 The Backwash of War

it. Only Fouquet and some others resented
it. Fouquet resented the war, and the first
line trenches, and the field hospital, and the
wounded men, and everything connected
with the war. He was utterly bored with
the war. The hole in the hedge and the
estaminet beyond was all that saved him.

There was a priest with a yellow beard,
who also used the hole in the hedge. He
used it almost every night, when it was open.
He slipped out, got his drink, and then slipped
down to the village to spend the night with
a girl. Only he was crafty, and slipped back
again through the hole before daylight, and
was always on duty again in the morning.
True, he was very cross and irritable, and
the patients did without things rather than
ask him for them, and sometimes they
suffered a great deal, doing without things,
on these mornings when he was so cross.

But with Fouquet, it was different. He
walked in boldly through the gates in the

The Hole in the Hedge 43

morning, and said that he had been out all
night without leave, and that he was bored
to the point of death. So the MSdecin Chef
punished him. He imprisoned him, and as
there was no prison, he served his six days'
sentence in the open air. He donned his
eighty pounds of marching kit, and tramped
up and down the plank walks, and round
behind the baracques, in the mud, in full
sight of all, so that all might witness his
humiliation. He did not go on duty again
in the ward, and in consequence, the ward
suffered through lack of his grudging, un-
couth administration.

Sometimes he met the Directrice as he
trudged up and down. He was always afraid
to meet her, because once she had gone to
the Medecin Chef and had him pardoned.
Her gentle heart had been touched at the
sight of his public disgrace, so she had had
his sentence remitted, and he had been
obliged to go back to the ward, to the work he

44 The Backwash of War

loathed, to the patients he despised, after
only two hours' freedom in a rare October sun.
Since then, he had carefully avoided the
Directrice when he saw her blue cloak in the
distance, coming down the trottoir. Women
were a nuisance at the Front.

He frequently encountered the man who
picked up papers, and frankly envied him,
for this man had a very easy post. He was
mobilized as a member of the formation of

Hospital Number , and his work consisted

in picking up scraps of paper scattered about
the groimds within the enclosure. He had a
long stick with a nail in the end, and a small
basket because there wasn't much to pick
up. With the nail, he picked up what scraps
there were, and did not even have to stoop
over to do it. He walked about in the clean,
fresh air, and when it rained, he cuddled up
against the stove in the pharmacy. The
present paper-gatherer was a chemist; his
predecessor had been a priest. It was a

The Hole in the Hedge 45

very nice position for an able-bodied man
with some education, and Fouquet greatly-
desired it himself, only he feared he was not
sufficiently well educated, since in civil life
he was only a farm hand. So in his march
up and down the trottoir he cast envious
glances at the man who picked up papers.

So, bearing his full-weight marching kit,
he walked up and down, between the ha-
racques, dogged and defiant. The other or-
derlies and stretcher bearers laughed at
him, and said: "There goes Fouquet, pun-
ished!" And the patients, who missed him,
asked: "Where is Fouquet? Pimished?"
And the nurse of that ward, who also missed
Fouquet, said : ' ' Poor Fouquet ! Pimished !' '
But Fouquet, swaggering up and down in
full sight of all, was pleased because he had
had a good drink the night before, and did
not have to wait upon the patients the day
after, and to him, the only sane thing about
the war was the discipline of the Army.

Alone

47

ALONE

DOCHARD died to-day. He had gas
*■ ^ gangrene. His thigh, from knee to but-
tock, was torn out by a piece of German shell.
It was an interesting case, because the infec-
tion had developed so quickly. He had been
placed tmder treatment immediately too,
reaching the hospital from the trenches
about six hours after he had been wounded.
To have a thigh torn off, and to reach first-
class surgical care within six hoiirs, is practi-
cally immediately. Still, gas gangrene had
developed, which showed that the Germans
were using very poisonous shells. At that
field hospital there had been established a
surgical school, to which young men, just
graduated from medical schools, or old men,
graduated long ago from medical schools,
4 49

50 The Backwash of War

were sent to leam how to take care of the
wounded. After they had received a two
months' experience in this sort of war surgery,
they were to be placed in other hospitals,
where they could do the work themselves.
So all those young men who did not know
much, and all those old men who had never
known much, and had forgotten most of that,
were up here at this field hospital, learning.
This had to be done, because there were not
enough good doctors to go round, so in order
to care for the wotmded at all, it was neces-
sary to furbish up the immature and the
senile. However, the MSdecin Chef in charge
of the hospital and in charge of the surgical
school, was a brilliant surgeon and a good
administrator, so he taught the students a
good deal. Therefore, when Rochard came
into the operating room, all the young stu-
dents and the old students crowded round
to see the case. It was all torn away, the
flesh from that right thigh, from knee to

Alone 51

buttock, down to the bone, and the stench
was awful. The various students came for-
ward and timidly pressed the upper part of
the thigh, the remaining part, all that re-
mained of it, with their fingers, and little
crackling noises came forth, like bubbles.
Gas gangrene. Very easy to diagnose. Also
the bacteriologist from another hospital in
the region happened to be present, and he
made a culture of the material discharged
from that wound, and afterwards told the
Medecm Chef that it was positively and
absolutely gas gangrene. But the Medecin
Chef had already taught the students
that gas gangrene may be recognized by
the crackling and the smell, and the fact
that the patient, as a rule, dies pretty
soon.

They could not operate on Rochard and
amputate his leg, as they wanted to do.
The infection was so high, into the hip, it
could not be done. Moreover, Rochard had

52 The Backwash of War

a fractured skull as well. Another piece of
shell had pierced his ear, and broken into
his brain, and lodged there. Either wound
would have been fatal, but it was the gas
gangrene in his torn-out thigh that would
kill him first. The wound stank. It was
foul. The Medecin Chef took a curette, a
little scoop, and scooped away the dead flesh,
the dead muscles, the dead nerves, the dead
blood-vessels. And so many blood-vessels
being dead, being scooped away by that
sharp curette, how could the blood circulate
in the top half of that flaccid thigh? It
couldn't. Afterwards, into the deep, yawn-
ing wound, they put many compresses of
gauze, soaked in carbolic acid, which acid
burned deep into the germs of the gas gan-
grene, and killed them, and killed much
good tissue besides. Then they covered the
burning, smoking gauze with absorbent cot-
ton, then with clean, neat bandages, after
which they called the stretcher bearers, and

Alone 53

Rochard was carried from the operating
table back to the ward.

The night nurse reported next morning
that he had passed a night of agony.

'^Cela pique! Cela brulef*' he cried all
night, and turned from side to side to find
reUef. Sometimes he lay on his good side;
sometimes he lay on his bad side, and the
night nurse turned him from side to side,
according to his fancy, because she knew that
on neither one side nor the other would he
find relief, except such mental relief as he
got by turning. She sent one of the order-
lies, Fouquet, for the Medecin Chef, and the
Midecin Chef came to the ward, and looked
at Rochard, and ordered the night nurse to
give him morphia, and again morphia, as
often as she thought best. For only death
could bring relief from such pain as that,
and only morphia, a little in advance of
death, could bring partial relief.

So the night nurse took care of Rochard

54 The Backwash of War

all that night, and turned him and turned
him, from one side to the other, and gave him
morphia, as the Medecin Chef had ordered.
She listened to his cries all night, for the
morphia brought him no relief. Morphia
gives a little relief, at times, from the pain
of life, but it is only death that brings
absolute relief.

When the day nurse came on duty next
morning, there was Rochard in agony.
*'Cela pique! Cela brulel" he cried. And
again and again, all the time, " Cela piquel
Cela brulel*', meaning the pain in his leg.
And because of the piece of shell, which had
penetrated his ear and lodged in his brain
somewhere, his wits were wandering. No
one can be fully conscious with an inch of
German shell in his skull. And there was a
full inch of German shell in Rochard's skull,
in his brain somewhere, for the radiographist
said so. He was a wonderful radiographist
and anatomist, and he worked accurately

Alone 55

with a beautiful, expensive machine, given
him, or given the field hospital, by Madame
Ciuie.

So all night Rochard screamed in agony,
and turned and twisted, first on the hip that
was there, and then on the hip that was gone,
and on neither side, even with many ampoules
of morphia, could he find relief. Which
shows that morphia, good as it is, is not as
good as death. So when the day ntuse came
on in the morning, there was Rochard strong
after a night of agony, strong after many
picqures of strychnia, which kept his heart
beating and his limgs breathing, strong
after many picqures of morphia which did
not relieve his pain. Thus the science of
heaHng stood baffled before the science of
destroying.

Rochard died slowly. He stopped strug-
gling. He gave up trying to find relief by
lying upon the hip that was there, or the hip
that was gone. He ceased to cry. His

56 The Backwash of War

brain, in which was lodged a piece of German
shell, seemed to reason, to become reasonable,
with break of day. The evening before,
after his return from the operating room, he
had been decorated with the Medaille Mill-
taire, conferred upon him, in extremis, by
the General of the region. Upon one side
of the medal, which was pinned to the wall
at the head of the bed, were the words:
Valeur et Discipline. Discipline had tri-
umphed. He was very good and quiet now,
very obedient and disciplined, and no longer
disturbed the ward with his moanings.

Little Rochard! Little man, gardener
by trade, aged thirty-nine, widower, with
one child! The piece of shell in his skull
had made one eye blind. There had been
a haemorrhage into the eyeball, which was all
red and sunken, and the eyelid would not
close over it, so the red eye stared and stared
into space. And the other eye drooped and
drooped, and the white showed, and the

Alone 57

eyelid drooped till nothing but the white
showed, and that showed that he was dying.
But the blind, red eye stared beyond. It
stared fixedly, unwinkingly, into space. So
always the niu-se watched the dull, white eye,
which showed the approach of death.

No one in the ward was fond of Rochard.
He had been, there only a few hours. He
meant nothing to any one there. He was a
dying man, in a field hospital, that was all.
Little stranger Rochard, with one blind,
red eye that stared into Hell, the Hell he
had come from. And one white, dying eye,
that showed his hold on life, his brief, short
hold. The nurse cared for him very gently,
very conscientiously, very skilfully. The
surgeon came many times to look at him,
but he had done for him all that could be
done, so each time he turned away with a
shrug. Fouquet, the young orderly, stood
at the foot of the bed, his feet far apart, his
hands on his hips, and regarded Rochard,

SS The Backwash of War

and said: "Ah! La la! La la/'* And
Simon, the other orderly, also stood at the
foot of the bed, from time to time, and
regarded Rochard, and said: "Ah/ Cest
triste/ Cest bien triste/**

So Rochard died, a stranger among stran-
gers. And there were many people there to
wait upon him, but there was no one there
to love him. There was no one there to see
beyond the horror of the red, blind eye, of
the dull, white eye, of the vile, gangrene
smell. And it seemed as if the red, staring
eye was looking for something the hospital
could not give. And it seemed as if the
white, glazed eye was indifferent to every-
thing the hospital could give. And all about
him was the vile gangrene smell, which made
an aura about him, and shut him into him-
self, very completely. And there was nobody
to love him, to forget about that smell.

He sank into a stupor about ten o'clock
in the morning, and was unconscious from

Alone 59

then till the time the nurse went to lunch.
She went to lunch reluctantly, but it is neces-
sary to eat. She instructed Fouquet, the
orderly, to watch Rochard carefully, and to
call her if there was any change.

After a short time she. came back from
lunch, and hurried to see Rochard, hurried
behind the flamboyant, red, cheerful screens
that shut him off from the rest of the ward.
Rochard was dead.

At the other end of the ward sat the two
orderlies, drinking wine.

Paris,
April 15, 1915.

A Belgian Civilian

61

A BELGIAN CIVILIAN

A BIG English ambulance drove along the
'** high road from Ypres, going in the
direction of a French field hospital, some ten
miles from Ypres. Ordinarily, it could have
had no business with this French hospital,
since all English wounded are conveyed back
to their own bases, therefore an exceptional
case must have determined its route. It was
an exceptional case — ^for the patient lying
quietly within its yawning body, sheltered
by its brown canvas wings, was not an
English soldier, but only a small Belgian
boy, a civihan, and Belgian civilians belong
neither to the French nor English services.
It is true that there was a hospital for Bel-
gian civilians at the English base at Haze-
brouck, and it would have seemed reasonable
63

64 The Backwash of War

to have taken the patient there, but it was
more reasonable to dump him at this French
hospital, which was nearer. Not from any
humanitarian motives, but just to get rid
of him the sooner. In war, civilians are
cheap things at best, and an immature civil-
ian, Belgian at that, is very cheap. So the
heavy English ambulance churned its way
up a muddy hill, mashed through much mud
at the entrance gates of the hospital, and
crunched to a halt on the cinders before the
Salle d'Attente, where it discharged its bur-
den and drove off again.

The surgeon of the French hospital said:
"What have we to do with this?" yet he
regarded the patient thoughtfully. It was
a very small patient. Moreover, the big
English ambulance had driven off again, so
there was no appeal. The small patient
had been deposited upon one of the beds in
the Salle cTAttente, and the French surgeon
looked at him and wondered what he should

A Belgian Civilian 65

do. The patient, now that he was here,
belonged as much to the French field hospital
as to any other, and as the big English am-
bulance from Ypres had driven off again,
there was not much use in protesting. The
French surgeon was annoyed and irritated.
It was a characteristic English trick, he
thought, this getting other people to do their
work. Why could they not have taken the
child to one of their own hospitals, since he
had been wounded in their lines, or else have
taken him to the hospital provided for Bel-
gian civilians, where, full as it was, there
was always room for people as small as
this. The surgeon worked himself up
into quite a temper. There is one thing
about members of the Entente — they un-
derstand each other. The French surgeon's
thoughts travelled round and round in
an irritated circle, and always came back
to the fact that the English ambulance
had gone, and here lay the patient, and

66 The Backwash of War

something must be done. So he stood
considering.

A Belgian civilian, aged ten. Or there-
abouts. Shot through the abdomen, or there-
abouts. And dying, obviously. As usual,
the surgeon pulled and twisted the long,
black hairs on his hairy, bare arms, while he
considered what he should do. He consid-
ered for five minutes, and then ordered the
child to the operating room, and scrubbed
and scrubbed his hands and his hairy arms,
preparatory to a major operation. For the
Belgian civilian, aged ten, had been shot
through the abdomen by a German shell, or
piece of shell, and there was nothing to do
but try to remove it. It was a hopeless case,
anyhow. The child would die without an
operation, or he would die during the opera-
tion, or he would die after the operation.
The French surgeon scrubbed his hands vi-
ciously, for he was still greatly incensed over
the English authorities who had placed the

A Belgian Civilian 67

case in his hands and then gone away again.
They should have taken him to one of the
EngHsh bases, St. Omer, or Hazebrouck —
it was an imposition to have dumped him
so unceremoniously here simply because
"here" was so many kilometres nearer.
"Shirking," the surgeon called it, and was
much incensed.

After a most searching operation, the Bel-
gian civilian was sent over to the ward, to
live or die as circumstances determined.
As soon as he came out of ether, he began to
bawl for his mother. Being ten years of age,
he was unreasonable, and bawled for her
incessantly and could not be pacified. The
patients were greatly annoyed by this dis-
turbance, and there was indignation that the
welfare and comfort of useful soldiers should
be interfered with by the whims of a futile
and useless civilian, a Belgian child at that.
The nurse of that ward also made a fool of
herself over this civilian, giving him far more

68 The Backwash of War

attention than she had ever bestowed upon
a soldier. She was sentimental, and his
little age appealed to her — her sense of pro-
portion and standard of values were all
awrong. The Directrice appeared in the
ward and tried to comfort the civilian, to
still his howls, and then, after an hour of
vain effort, she decided that his mother must
be sent for. He was obviously dying, and
it was necessary to send for his mother,
whom alone of all the world he seemed to
need. So a French ambulance, which had
nothing to do with Belgian civilians, nor with
Ypres, was sent over to Ypres late in the
evening to fetch this mother for whom the
Belgian civilian, aged ten, bawled so persis-
tently.

She arrived finally, and, it appeared, re-
luctantly. About ten o'clock in the evening
she arrived, and the moment she alighted
from the big ambulance sent to fetch her,
she began complaining. She had complained

A Belgian Civilian 69

all the way over, said the chauffeur. She
climbed down backward from the front seat,
perched for a moment on the hub, while one
heavy leg, with foot shod in slipping sabot,
groped wildly for the ground. A soldier
with a lantern watched impassively, watched
her solid splash into a mud puddle that might
have been avoided. So she continued her
complaints. She had been dragged away
from her husband, from her other children,
and she seemed to have little interest in her
son, the Belgian civilian, said to be dying.
However, now that she was here, now that
she had come all this way, she would go in
to see him for a moment, since the Directrice
seemed to think it so important. The Di-
rectrice of this French field hospital was an
American, by marriage a British subject,
and she had curious, antiquated ideas. She
seemed to feel that a mother's place was with
her child, if that child was dying. The
Directrice had three children of her own whom

70 The Backwash of War

she had left in England over a year ago, when
she came out to Flanders for the life and
adventures of the Front. But she would
have returned to England immediately,
without an instant's hesitation, had she re-
ceived word that one of these children was
dying. Which was a point of view opposed
to that of this Belgian mother, who seemed
to feel that her place was back in Ypres, in
her home, with her husband and other child-
ren. In fact, this Belgian mother had been
rudely dragged away from her home, from
her family, from certain duties that she
seemed to think important. So she com-
plained bitterly, and went into the ward most
reluctantly, to see her son, said to be dying.
She saw her son, and kissed him, and then
asked to be sent back to Ypres. The Direc-
trice explained that the child would not live
through the night. The Belgian mother
accepted this statement, but again asked to
be sent back to Ypres. The Directrice again

A Belgian Civilian 71

assured the Belgian mother that her son
would not live through the night, and asked
her to spend the night with him in the ward,
to assist at his passing. The Belgian woman
protested.

"If Madame la Directrice commands, if
she insists, then I must assiiredly obey. I
have come all this distance because she com-
manded me, and if she insists that I spend
the night at this place, then I must do so.
Only if she does not insist, then I prefer to
return to my home, to my other children
at Ypres."

However, the Directrice, who had a strong
sense of a mother's duty to the dying, com-
manded and insisted, and the Belgian woman
gave way. She sat by her son all night,
listening to his ravings and bawlings, and
was with him when he died, at three o'clock
in the morning. After which time, she re-
quested to be taken back to Ypres. She
was moved by the death of her son, but her

72 The Backwash of War

duty lay at home. Madame la Directrice
had promised to have a mass said at the
burial of the child, which promise having
been given, the woman saw no necessity for
remaining.

"My husband," she explained, "has a
little estaminet, just outside of Ypres. We
have been very fortimate. Only yesterday,
of all the long days of the war, of the many
days of bombardment, did a shell fall into
our kitchen, wounding our son, as you have
seen. But we have other children to con-
sider, to provide for. And my husband is
making much money at present, selling drink
to the English soldiers. I must return to
assist him."

So the Belgian civilian was buried in the
cemetery of the French soldiers, but many
hoiu-s before this took place, the mother of
the civilian had departed for Ypres. The
chauffeur of the ambulance which was to
convey her back to Ypres turned very white

A Belgian Civilian 73

when given his orders. Everyone dreaded
Ypres, and the dangers of Ypres. It was
the place, of death. Only the Belgian woman,
whose husband kept an estaminet, and made
much money selling drink to the English
soldiers, did not dread it. She and her hus-
band were making much money out of the
war, money which would give their children
a start in life. When the ambulance was
ready she climbed into it with alacrity, al-
though with a feeling of gratitude because
the Directrice had promised a mass for her
dead child.

"These Belgians!" said a French soldier.
*' How prosperous they will be after the war !
How much money they will make from the
Americans, and from the others who come
to see the ruins ! "

And as an afterthought, in an undertone,
he added: '' Ces sales Beiges!''

The Interval

75

THE INTERVAL

A S an orderly, Erard wasn't much good.
** He never waited upon the patients
if he could help it, and when he couldn't
help it, he was so disagreeable that they
wished they had not asked him for things.
The newcomers, who had been in the hospital
only a few days, used to think he was deaf,
since he failed to hear their requests, and
they did not like to yell at him, out of con-
sideration for their comrades in the adjoin-
ing beds. Nor was he a success at sweeping
the ward, since he did it with the broom in
one hand and a copy of the Petit Parisien
in the other — in fact, when he sat down on a
bed away at the end and frankly gave himself
up to a two-year-old copy of Le Rire, sent
out with a lot of old magazines for the patients,
77

78 The Backwash of War

he was no less effective than when he sulkily
worked. There was just one thing he liked
and did well, and that was to watch for the
Generals. He was an expert in recognizing
them when they were as yet a long way off.
He used to slouch against the window panes
and keep a keen eye upon the trottoir on such
days or at such hours as the Generals were
likely to appear. Upon catching sight of
the oak-leaves in the distance, he would at
once notify the ward, so that the orderlies
and the nurse could tidy up things before the
General made roimds. He had a very keen
eye for oak-leaves — the golden oak -leaves
on the General's kepi — and he never by any
chance gave a false alarm or mistook a colonel
in the distance, and so put us to tidying up
unnecessarily. He did not help with the
work of course, but continued leaning against
the window, reporting the General's progress
up the trottoir — that he had now gone into
Salle HI.— that he had left Salle III. and

The Interval 79

was conversing outside Salle II. — that he
was now, positively, on his way up the incline
leading into Salle I., and would be upon us
any minute. Sometimes the General lin-
gered unnecessarily long on the incline, the
wooden slope leading up to the ward, in
which case he was not visible from the win-
dow, and Erard would amuse us by regret-
ting that he had no periscope for the transom
over the door.

There were two Generals who visited the
hospital. The big General, the important
one, the Commander of the region, who was
always beautiful to look upon in his tight,
well-fitting black jacket, trimmed with astra-
khan, who came from his limousine with a
Normandy stick dangling from his wrist,
and who wore spotless, clean gloves. This,
the big General, came to decorate the men
who were entitled to the Croix de Guerre and
the Medaille Militaire, and after he had de-
corated one or two, as the case might be, he

8o The Backwash of War

usually continued on through the hospital,
shaking hands here and there with the pa-
tients, and chatting with the Directrice and
with the doctors and officers who followed in
his wake. The other General was not nearly
so imposing. He was short and fat and
dressed in a grey-blue uniform, of the shade
known as invisible, and his Mpi was hidden
by a grey-blue cover, with a little square hole
cut out in front, so that an inch of oak-leaves
might be seen. He was much more formid-
able than the big General, however, since he
was the Medecin Inspecteur of the region, and
was responsible for all the hospitals there-
abouts. He made rather extensive rounds,
closely questioning the surgeons as to the
wounds and treatment of each man, and as
he was a doctor as well, he knew how to
judge of the replies. Whereas the big Gen-
eral was a soldier and not a doctor, and was
thus unable to ask any disconcerting ques-
tions, so that his visits, while tedious, were

The Interval 8i

never embarrassing. When a General came
on the place, it was a signal to down tools.
The surgeons would hurriedly finish their
operations, or postpone them if possible,
and the dressings in the wards were also
stopped or postponed, while the surgeons
would hurry after the General, whichever
one it was, and make deferential rounds
with him, if it took all day. And as it usu-
ally took at least two hours, the visits of the
Generals, one or both, meant considerable
interruption to the hospital routine. Some-
times, by chance, both Generals arrived at
the same time, which meant that there were
double rounds, beginning at opposite ends
of the enclosure, and the surgeons were in
a quandary as to whose suite they should
attach themselves. And the days when it was
busiest, when the work was hardest, when
there was more work than double the staff
could accomplish in twenty-four hours, were
the days that the Generals usually appeared.

82 The Backwash of War

There are some days when it is very bad in
a field hospital, just as there are some days
when there is nothing to do, and the whole
staff is practically idle. The bad days are
those when the endless roar of the guns makes
the little wooden baracgues rock and rattle,
and when endless processions of ambulances
drive in and deliver broken, ruined men, and
then drive off again, to return loaded with
more wrecks. The beds in the Salle d'At-
tente, where the ambulances unload, are
filled with heaps under blankets. Coarse,
hobnailed boots stick out from the blankets,
and sometimes the heaps, which are men,
moan or are silent. On the floor lie piles
of clothing, filthy, muddy, blood-soaked, torn
or cut from the silent bodies on the beds.
The stretcher bearers step over these piles
of dirty clothing, or kick them aside, as they
lift the shrinking bodies to the brown stretch-
ers, and carry them across, one by one, to
the operating room. The operating room

The Interval 83

is filled with stretchers, lying in rows upon
the floor, waiting their turn to be emptied,
to have their burdens lifted from them to
the high operating tables. And as fast as
the stretchers are emptied, the stretcher-
bearers hurry back to the Salle d'Attentet
where the ambulances dump their loads, and
come over to the operating room again, with
fresh lots. Three tables going in the operat-
ing room, and the white-gowned surgeons
stand so thick around the tables that you
cannot see what is on them. There are
stretchers lying on the floor of the corridor,
and against the walls of the operating room,
and more ambulances are driving in all the
time.

From the operating room they are brought
into the wards, these bandaged heaps from
the operating tables, these heaps that once
were men. The clean beds of the ward are
turned back to receive them, to receive the
motionless, bandaged heaps that are lifted,

84 The Backwash of War

shoved, or rolled from the stretchers to the
beds. Again and again, all day long, the
procession of stretchers comes into the wards.
The foremost bearer kicks open the door with
his knee, and lets in ahead of him a blast of
winter rain, which sets dancing the charts
and papers lying on the table, and blows out
the alcohol lamp over which the syringe is
boiling. Someone bangs the door shut. The
unconscious form is loaded on the bed. He
is heavy and the bed sags beneath his weight.
The hrancardiers gather up their red blan-
kets and shuflfle off again, leaving cakes of
mud and streaks of muddy water on the
green Hnoleum. Outside the gims roar and
inside the haracques shake, and again and
again the stretcher bearers come into the
ward, carrying dying men from the high tables
in the operating room. They are all that
stand between us and the guns, these wrecks
upon the beds. Others like them are stand-
ing between us and the guns, others like

The Interval 85

them, who will reach us before morning.
Wrecks like these. They are old men, most
of them. The old troops, grey and bearded.

There is an attack going on. That does
not mean that the Germans are advancing.
It just means that the ambulances are busy,
for these old troops, these old wrecks upon
the beds, are holding up the Germans.
Otherwise, we should be swept out of exist-
ence. Our hospital, ourselves, would be
swept out of existence, were it not for these
old wrecks upon the beds. These filthy,
bearded, dying men upon the beds, who are
holding back the Germans. More like them,
in the trenches, are holding back the Ger-
mans. By tomorrow these others, too, will
be with us, bleeding, dying. But there will
be others like them in the trenches, to held
back the Germans.

This is the day of an attack. Yesterday
was the day of an attack. The day before
was the day of an attack. The guns are

86 The Backwash of War

raising Hell, seven kilometres beyond us,
and our haracques shake and tremble with
their thunder. These men, grey and bearded,
dying in oiu" clean beds, wetting our clean
sheets with the blood that oozes from their
dressings, have been out there, moaning in
the trenches. When they die, we will pull
off the bloody sheets, and replace them with
fresh, clean ones, and turn them back neatly,
waiting for the next agonizing man. We have
many beds, and many fresh, clean sheets,
and so we are always ready for these old,
hairy men, who are standing between us and
the Germans.

They seem very weak and frail and thin.
How can they do it, these old men? Last
summer the young boys did it. Now it is
the turn of these old men.

There are three dying in the ward today.
It will be better when they die. The Ger-
man shells have made them ludicrous, re-
pulsive. We see them in this awful interval.

The Interval 87

between life and death. This interval when
they are gross, absurd, fantastic. Life is
clean and death is clean, but this interval
between the two is gross, absurd, fantastic.

Over there, down at the end, is Rollin.
He came in three days ago. A piece of shell
penetrated his right eyelid, a little wound
so small that it was not worth a dressing.
Yet that little piece of obus lodged somewhere
inside his skull, above his left ear, so the
radiographist says, and he's paralyzed. Par-
alyzed all down the other side, and one supine
hand flops about, and one supine leg flops
about, in jerks. One bleary eye stays open,
and the other eyelid stays shut, over the
other bleary eye. Meningitis has set in and
it won't be long now, before we'll have an-
other empty bed. Yellow foam flows down
his nose, thick yellow foam, bubbles of it,
bursting, bubbling yellow foam. It humps
up tmder his nose, up and up, in bubbles,
and the bubbles burst and run in turgid

88 The Backwash of War

streams down upon his shaggy beard. On
the wall, above his bed, hang his medals.
They are hung up, high up, so he can see
them. He can't see them today, because
now he is unconscious, but yesterday and
the day before, before he got as bad as this,
he could see them and it made him cry. He
knew he had been decorated in extremis, be-
cause he was going to die, and he did not
want to die. So he sobbed and sobbed all
the while the General decorated him, and
protested that he did not want to die. He'd
saved three men from death, earning those
medals, and at the time he never thought
of death himself. Yet in the ward he sobbed
and sobbed, and protested that he did not
want to die.

Back of those red screens is Henri. He is
a priest, mobilized as infirmier. A good one
too, and very tender and gentle with the
patients. He comes from the ward next
door, Salle II., and is giving extreme unction

The Interval 89

to the man in that bed, back of the red
screens. Peek through the screens and you
can see Henri, in his shirt sleeves, with a
little, crumpled, purple stole around his
neck. No, the patient has never regained
consciousness since he's been here, but Henri
says it's all right. He may be a Catholic.
Better to take chances. It can't hurt him,
anyway, if he isn't. I am glad Henri is
back of those red screens. A few minutes
ago he came down the ward, in search of
absorbent cotton for the Holy Oils, and then
he got so interested watching the doctors
doing dressings, stayed so long watching
them, that I thought he would not get back
again, behind the screens, in time.

See that man in the bed next? He's dying
too. They trepanned him when he came.
He can't speak, but we got his name and
regiment from the medal on his wrist. He
wants to write. Isn't it funny! He has a
block of paper and a pencil, and all day long

90 The Backwash of War

he writes, writes, on the paper. Always and
always, over and over again, he writes on the
paper, and he gives the paper to everyone who
passes. He's got something on his mind that
he wants to get across, before he dies. But no
one can understand him. No one can read
what he has written — it is just scrawls, scrib-
bles, unintelligible. Day and night, for he
never sleeps, he writes on that block of paper,
and tears off the sheets and gives them to
everyone who passes. And no one can under-
stand, for it is just illegible, unintelligible
scribbles. Once we took the paper away to see
what he would do and then he wrote with his
finger upon the wooden frame of the screen.
The same thing, scribbles, but they made no
mark on the screen, and he seemed so dis-
tressed because they made no mark that
we gave him back his paper again, and now
he's happy. Or I suppose he's happy. He
seems content when we take this paper and
pretend to read it. He seems happy, scrib-

The Interval 91

bling those words that are words to him but
not to us. Careful! Don't stand too close!
He spits. Yes, all the time, at the ^id of
every line he spits. Far too. Way across
the ward. Don't you see that his bed and
the bed next are covered with rubber sheets?
That's because he spits. Big spits, too,
far across the ward. And always he writes,
incessantly, day and night. He writes on
that block of paper and spits way across the
ward at the end of every line. He's got
something on his mind that he wants to get
across. Do you think he's thinking of the
Germans? He's dying though. He can't
spit so far today as he did yesterday.

Death is dignified and life is dignified, but
the intervals are awful. They are ludicrous,
repulsive.

Is that Erard, calling? Calling that the
Generals are coming, both of them, together?
Hurry! Tidy up the ward! Rub away the
froth from under RoUin's nose! Pull his

92 The Backwash of War

sheets straight! Take that wet towel, and
clean the mackintosh upon that bed and the
bed adjoining. See if Henri's finished.
Take away the screens. Pull the sheets
straight. Tidy up the ward — tell the others
not to budge ! The Generals are coming !

Paris,
9 May, 1916.

Women and Wives

93

WOMEN AND WIVES

A BITTER wind swept in from the North
'** Sea. It swept in over many miles of
Flanders plains, driving gusts of rain before
it. It was a biting gale by the time it reached
the little cluster of wooden huts composing
the field hospital, and rain and wind together
dashed against the huts, blew under them,
blew through them, crashed to pieces a swing-
ing window down at the laundry, and loos-
ened the roof of Salle I. at the other end of
the enclosure. It was just ordinary winter
weather, such as had lasted for months on
end, and which the Belgians spoke of as vile
weather, while the French called it vile
Belgian weather. The drenching rain soaked
into the long, green winter grass, and the
sweeping wind was bitter cold, and the howl-
95

96 The Backwash of War

ing of the wind was louder than the guns, so
that it was only when the wind paused for
a moment, between blasts, that the rolling
of the guns could be heard.

In Salle I. the stove had gone out. It was
a good little stove, but somehow was un-
equal to struggling with the wind which blew
down the long, rocking stove pipe, and blew
the fire out. So the little stove grew cold,
and the hot water jug on the stove grew cold,
and all the patients at that end of the ward
likewise grew cold, and demanded hot water
bottles, and there wasn't any hot water with
which to fill them. So the patients com-
plained and shivered, and in the pauses of
the wind, one heard the guns.

Then the roof of the ward lifted about an
inch, and more wind beat down, and as it
beat down, so the roof lifted. The orderly
remarked that if this Belgian weather contin-
ued, by tomorrow the roof would be clean
off — blown off into the German lines. So

Women and Wives 97

all laughed as Fouquet said this, and wondered
how they could lie abed with the roof of
Salle I., the Salle of the Grands Blesses, blown
over into the German lines. The ward did
not present a neat appearance, for all the
beds were pushed about at queer angles, in
from the wall, out from the wall, some
touching each other, some very far apart,
and all to avoid the little leaks of rain
which streamed or dropped down from
little holes in the roof. This weary, weary
war! These long days of boredom in the
hospital, these days of incessant wind and
rain and cold.

Armand, the chief orderly, ordered Fou-
quet to rebuild the fire, and Fouquet slipped
on his sabots and clogged down the ward,
away outdoors in the wind, and returned
finally with a box of coal on his shoulders,
which he dumped heavily on the floor. He
was clumsy and sullen, and the coal was wet
and mostly slate, and the patients laughed

98 The Backwash of War

at his efforts to rebuild the fire. Finally,
however, it was alight again, and radiated
out a faint warmth, which served to bring
out the smell of iodoform, and of draining
wounds, and other smells which loaded the
cold, close air. Then, no one knows who
began it, one of the patients showed the nurse
a photograph of his wife and child, and in
a moment every man in the twenty beds was
fishing back of his bed, in his musette, under
his pillow, for photographs of his wife. They
all had wives, it seems, for remember, these
were the old troops, who had replaced the
young Zouaves who had guarded this part
of the Front all summer. One by one they
came out, these photographs, from weather-
beaten sacks, from shabby boxes, from imder
pillows, and the nurse must see them all.
Pathetic little pictures they were, of common,
working-class women, some fat and work-
worn, some thin and work-worn, some with
stodgy little children grouped about them,

Women and Wives 99

some without, but all were practically the
same. They were the wives of these men
in the beds here, the working-class wives of
working-class men — the soldiers of the
trenches. Ah yes, France is democratic.
It is the Nation's war, and all the men of the
Nation, regardless of rank, are serving. But
some serve in better places than others.
The trenches are mostly reserved for men of
the working class, which is reasonable, as
there are more of them.

The rain beat down, and the little stove
glowed, and the afternoon drew to a close,
and the photographs of the wives continued
to pass from hand to hand. There was much
talk of home, and much of it was longing,
and much of it was pathetic, and much of it
was resigned. And always the little, ugly
wives, the stupid, ordinary wives, represented
home. And the words home and wife were
interchangeable and stood for the same
thing. And the glories and heroisms of war

loo The Backwash of War

seemed of less interest, as a factor in life,
than these stupid little wives.

Then Armand, the chief orderly, showed
them all the photograph of his wife. No one
knew that he was married, but he said yes,
and that he received a letter from her every
day — sometimes it was a postcard. Also
that he wrote to her every day. We all
knew how nervous he used to get, about
letter time, when the vaguemestre made his
rounds, every morning, distributing letters
to all the wards. We all knew how impa-
tient he used to get, when the vaguemestre
laid his letter upon the table, and there it
lay, on the table, while he was forced to
make rounds with the surgeon, and could
not claim it until long afterwards. So it
was from his wife, that daily letter, so anx-
iously, so nervously awaited !

Simon had a wife too. Simon, the young
surgeon, German-looking in appearance, six
feet of blond brute. But not blond brute

Women and Wives loi

really. Whatever his appearance, there was
in him something finer, something tenderer,
something nobler, to distingmsh him from
the brute. About three times a week he
walked into the ward with his fountain pen
between his teeth — he did not smoke, but
he chewed his fountain pen — and when the
dressings were over, he would tell the nurse,
shyly, accidentally, as it were, some little
news about his home. Some little incident
concerning his wife, some affectionate anec-
dote about his three young children. Once
when one of the staff went over to London
on vacation, Simon asked her to buy for his
wife a leather coat, such as EngHsh women
wear, for motoring. Always he thought of
his wife, spoke of his wife, planned some
thoughtful little surprise or gift for her.

You know, they won't let wives come to
the Front. Women can come into the War
2k)ne, on various pretexts, but wives cannot.
Wives, it appears, are bad for the morale of

102 The Backwash of War

the Army. They come with their troubles,
to talk of how business is failing, of how things
are going to the bad at home, because of the
war; of how great the struggle, how bitter
the trials and the poverty and hardship.
They establish the connecting link between
the soldier and his life at home, his life that
he is compelled to resign. Letters can be
censored and all disturbing items cut out,
but if a wife is permitted to come to the War
Zone, to see her husband, there is no censor-
ing the things she may tell him. The dis-
quieting, disturbing things. So she herself
must be censored, not permitted to come.
So for long weary months men must remain
at the Front, on active inactivity, and their
wives cannot come to see them. Only other
people's wives may come. It is not the
woman but the wife that is objected to.
There is a difference. In war, it is very
great.

There are many women at the Front.

Women and Wives 103

How do they get there, to the Zone of the
Armies? On various pretexts — to see sick
relatives, in such and such hospitals, or to
see other relatives, brothers, uncles, cousins,
other people's husbands — oh, there are many
reasons which make it possible for them to
come. And always there are the Belgian
women, who live in the War Zone, for at
present there is a little strip of Belgitun left,
and all the civilians have not been evacuated
from the Army Zone. So there are plenty
of women, first and last. Better ones for
the officers, naturally, just as the officers'
mess is of better quality than that of the
common soldiers. But always there are
plenty of women. Never wives, who mean
responsibility, but just women, who only
mean distraction and amusement, just as
food and wine. So wives are forbidden,
because lowering to the morale, but women
are winked at, because they cheer and refresh
the troops. After the war, it is hoped that

104 The Backwash of War

all unmarried soldiers will marry, but doubt-
less they will not marry these women who
have served and cheered them in the War
Zone. That, again, would be depressing to
the country's morale. It is rather paradox-
ical, but there are those who can explain
it perfectly.

No, no, I don't understand. It's because
everything has two sides. You would be
surprised to pick up a franc, and find Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity on one side, and
on the other, the image of the Sower smoothed
out. A rose is a fine rose because of the
manure you put at its roots. You don't
get a medal for sustained nobility. You
get it for the impetuous action of the moment,
an action quite out of keeping with the trend
of one's daily life. You speak of the young
aviator who was decorated for destroying
a Zeppelin single-handed, and in the next
breath you add, and he killed himself, a few
days later, by attempting to fly when he was

Women and Wives 105

drunk. So it goes. There is a dirty sedi-
ment at the bottom of most sotils. War,
superb as it is, is not necessarily a filtering
process, by which men and nations may be
purified. Well, there are many people to write
you of the noble side, the heroic side, the ex-
alted side of war. I must write you of what
I have seen, the other side, the backwash.
They are both true. In Spain, they bang
their silver coins upon a marble slab, ac-
cepting the stamp upon both sides, and then
decide whether as a whole they ring true.
Every now and then, Armand, the orderly,
goes to the village to get a bath. He comes
back with very clean hands and nails, and
says that it has greatly solaced him, the warm
water. Then later, that same evening, he
gets permission to be absent from the hospi-
tal, and he goes to our village to a girl. But
he is always as eager, as nervous for his wife's
letter as ever. It is the same with Simon,
the young surgeon. Only Simon keeps him-

io6 The Backwash of War

self pretty clean at all times, as he has an
orderly to bring him pitchers of hot water
every morning, as many as he wants. But
Simon has a girl in the village, to whom he
goes every week. Only, why does he talk
so incessantly about his wife, and show her
pictures to me, to everyone about the place?
Why should we all be bored with tales of
Simon's stupid wife, when that's all she
means to him? Only perhaps she means
more. I told you I did not understand.

Then the Gestionnaire, the little fat man
in khaki, who is purveyor to the hospital.
Every night he commandeers an ambulance,
and drives back into the country, to a village
twelve miles away, to sleep with a woman.
And the old doctor — he is sixty-four and
has grandchildren — he goes down to our
village for a little girl of fourteen. He was
decorated with the Legion of Honour the
other day. It seems incongruous.

Oh yes, of course these were decent girls

Women and Wives 107

at the start, at the beginning of the war.
But you know women, how they run after
men, especially when the men wear uniforms,
all gilt buttons and braid. It's not the men's
fault that most of the women in the War
Zone are ruined. Have you ever watched
the village girls when a regiment comes
through, or stops for a night or two, en repos,
on its way to the Front? Have you seen
the girls make fools of themselves over the
men? Well, that's why there are so many
accessible for the troops. Of course the
professional prostitutes from Paris aren't
admitted to the War Zone, but the Belgian
girls made such fools of themselves, the
others weren't needed.

Across the lines, back of the German lines,
in the invaded districts, it is different. The
conquering armies just ruined all the women
they could get hold of. Any one will tell
you that. Ces sales Bosches! For it is
inconceivable how any decent girl, even a

io8 The Backwash of War

Belgian, could give herself up voluntarily
to a Hun! They used force, those brutes!
That is the difference. It's all the difference
in the world. No, the women over there
didn't make fools of themselves over those
men — how could they ! No, no. Over there,
in the invaded districts, the Germans forced
those girls. Here, on this side, the girls
cajoled the men till they gave in. Can't
you see? You must be pro-German! Any
way, they are all ruined and not fit for any
decent man to mate with, after the war.

They are pretty dangerous, too, some of
these women. No, I don't mean in that
way. But they act as spies for the Germans
and get a lot of information out of the men,
and send it back, somehow, into the German
lines. The Germans stop at nothing, noth-
ing is too dastardly, too low, for them to
attempt. There were two Belgian girls
once, who lived together in a room, in a little
village back of our lines. They were natives,

Women and Wives 109

and had always lived there, so of course
they were not turned out, and when the
village was shelled from time to time, they
did not seem to mind and altogether they
made a lot of money. They only received
officers. The common soldiers were just
dirt to them, and they refused to see them.
Certain women get known in a place, as
those who receive soldiers and those who
receive officers. These girls were intelligent,
too, and always asked a lot of intelligent,
interested questions, and you know a man
when he is excited will answer unsuspectingly
any question put to him. The Germans
took advantage of that. It is easy to be a
spy. Just know what questions you must
ask, and it is surprising how much informa-
tion you can get. The thing is, to know
upon what point information is wanted.
These girls knew that, it seems, and so they
asked a lot of intelligent questions, and as
they received only officers, they got a good

1 10 The Backwash of War

lot of valuable information, for as I say,
when a man is excited he will answer many-
questions. Besides, who could have sus-
pected at first that these two girls were spies?
But they were, as they found out finally,
after several months. Their rooms were
one day searched, and a mass of incriminat-
ing papers were discovered. It seems the
Germans had taken these girls from their
families — held their families as hostages —
and had sent them across into the English
lines, with threats of vile reprisals upon their
families if they did not produce information
of value. Wasn't it beastly ! Making these
girls prostitutes and spies, upon pain of
reprisals upon their families. The Germans
knew they were so attractive that they would
receive only officers. That they would
receive many cUents, of high rank, of much
information, who would readily fall victims
to their wiles. Theyarevery vile themselves,
these Germans. The curious thing is, how

Women and Wives iii

well they understand how to bait a trap for
their enemies. In spite of having nothing
in common with them, how well they under-
stand the nature of those who are fighting
in the name of Justice, of Liberty and
Civilization.

Paris,
4 May, 19 16.

Pour la Patrie

"3

POUR LA PATRIE

T^HIS is how it was. It is pretty much
■*• always Hke this in a field hospital.
Just ambulances rolling in, and dirty, dying
men, and the guns off there in the distance!
Very monotonous, and the same, day after
day, till one gets so tired and bored. Big
things may be going on over there, on the
other side of the captive balloons that we
can see from a distance, but we are always
here, on this side of them, and here, on this
side of them, it is always the same. The
weariness of it — the sameness of it! The
same ambulances, and dirty men, and groans,
or silence. The same hot operating rooms,
the same beds, always full, in the wards.
This is war. But it goes on and on, over
and over, day after day, till it seems like
"5

ii6 The Backwash of War

life. Life in peace time. It might be life
in a big city hospital, so alike is the routine.
Only the city hospitals are bigger, and better
equipped, and the ambulances are smarter,
and the patients don't always come in am-
bulances— they walk in sometimes, or come
in street cars, or in limousines, and they are
of both sexes, men and women, and have
ever so many things the matter with them
— the hospitals of peace time are not nearly
so stupid, so monotonous, as the hospitals
of war. Bah! War's humane compared
to peace! More spectacular, I grant you,
more acute, — that's what interests us, — ^but
for the sheer agony of life — oh, peace is way
ahead !

War is so clean. Peace is so dirty. There
are so many foul diseases in peace times.
They drag on over so many years, too. No,
war's clean! I'd rather see a man die in
prime of life, in war time, than see him dod-
dering along in peace time, broken hearted,

Pour la Patrie 117

broken spirited, life broken, and very weary,
having suffered many things, — to die at
last, at a good, ripe age! How they have
suffered, those who drive up to our city
hospitals inlimousines, in peace time. What's
been saved them, those who die young,
and clean and swiftly, here behind the
guns. In the long run it dots up just
the same. Only war's spectacular, that's
all.

Well, he came in like the rest, only older
than most of them. A shock of iron-grey
hair, a mane of it, above heavy, black brows,
and the brows were contracted in pain.
Shot, as usual, in the abdomen. He spent
three hours on the table after admission —
the operating table — and when he came over
to the ward, they said, not a dog's chance
for him. No more had he. When he came
out of ether, he said he didn't want to die.
He said he wanted to live. Very much. He
said he wanted to see his wife again and his

ii8 The Backwash of War

children. Over and over he insisted on this,
insisted on getting well. He caught hold
of the doctor's hand and said he must get
well, that the doctor must get him well.
Then the doctor drew away his slim fingers
from the rough, imploring grasp, and told
him to be good and patient.

"Be good! Be patient!" said the doctor,
and that was all he could say, for he was
honest. What else could he say, knowing
that there were eighteen little holes, cut by
the bullet, leaking poison into that gashed,
distended abdomen? When these little holes,
that the doctor could not stop, had leaked
enough poison into his system, he would die.
Not today, no, but day after tomorrow.
Three days more.

So all that first day, the man talked of
getting well. He was insistent on that. He
was confident. Next day, the second of the
three days the doctor gave him, very much
pain laid hold of ^ him. His black brows

Pour la Patrie . 119

bent with pain and he grew puzzled. How
could one live with such pain as that?

That afternoon, about five o'clock, came
the General. The one who decorates the
men. He had no sword, just a riding whip,
so he tossed the whip on the bed, for you
can't do an accolade with anything but a
sword. Just the Medaille Militaire. Not
the other one. But the Medaille Militaire
carries a pension of a hundred francs a year,
so that's something. So the General said,
very briefly: "In the name of the Republic
of France, I confer upon you the Medaille
Militaire." Then he bent over and kissed
the man on his forehead, pinned the medal
to the bedspread, and departed.

There you are! Just a brief little cere-
mony, and perfunctory. We all got that
impression. The General has decorated so
many dying men. And this one seemed so
nearly dead. He seemed half-conscious.
Yet the General might have put a little more

120 The Backwash of War

feeling into it, not made it quite so perfunc-
tory. Yet he's done this thing so many,
many times before. It's all right, he does
it differently when there are people about,
but this time there was no one present — just
the doctor, the dying man, and me. And so
we four knew what it meant — just a widow's
pension. Therefore there wasn't any reason
for the accolade, for the sonorous, ringing
phrases of a dress parade

We all knew what it meant. So did the
man. When he got the medal, he knew too.
He knew there wasn't any hope. I held the
medal before him, after the General had
gone, in its red plush case. It looked cheap,
somehow. The exchange didn't seem even.
He pushed it aside with a contemptuous
hand sweep, a disgusted shrug.

"I've seen these things before!" he
exclaimed. We all had seen them too.
We all knew about them, he and the doc-
tor, and the General and I. He knew and

Pour la Patxie I2i

understood, most of all. And his tone was
bitter.

After that, he knew the doctor couldn't
save him, and that he should not see his wife
and children again. Whereupon he became
angry with the treatment, and protested
against it. The picqures hurt — they hurt
very much,andhe did not want them. More-
over, they did no good, for his pain was now
very intense, and he tossed and tossed to
get away from it.

So the third day dawned, and he was alive,
and dying, and knew that he was dying.
Which is unusual and disconcerting. He
turned over and over, and black fluid vomited
from his mouth into the white enamel basin.
From time to time, the orderly emptied the
basin, but always there was more, and always
he choked and gasped and knit his brows in
pain. Once his face broke up as a child's
breaks up when it cries. So he cried in pain
and loneliness and resentment.

122 The Backwash of War

He struggled hard to hold on. He wanted
very much to live, but he could not do it.
He said: '^ Je ne tiens plus.**

Which was true. He couldn't hold on.
The pain was too great. He clenched his
hands and writhed, and cried out for mercy.
But what mercy had we? We gave him
morphia, but it did not help. So he con-
tinued to cry to us for mercy, he cried to us
and to God. Between us, we let him suffer
eight hours more like that, us and God.

Then I called the priest. We have three
priests on the ward, as orderlies, and I got
one of them to give him the Sacrament. I
thought it would quiet him. We could not
help him with drugs, and he had not got
it quite in his head that he must die, and
when he said, "I am dying," he expected to
be contradicted. So I asked Capolarde to
give him the Sacrament, and he said yes,
and put a red screen around the bed, to
screen him from the ward. Then Capolarde

Pour la Patrie 123

turned to me and asked me to leave. It was
summer time. The window at the head of
the bed was open, the hay outside was new
cut and piled into Uttle haycocks. Over in
the distance the gims rolled. As I turned
to go, I saw Capolarde holding a tray of Holy
Oils in one hand, while with the other he
emptied the basin containing black vomitus
out the window.

No, it did not bring him comfort, or resigna-
tion. He fought against it. He wanted to
hve, and he resented Death, very bitteriy.
Down at my end of the ward — it was a silent,
summer afternoon — I heard them very clearly.
I heard the low words from behind the screen.

"Dites: *Dieu je vous donne ma vie Ubre-
ment pour ma patrie'' (God, I give you my
life freely for my coimtry). The priests
usually say that to them, for death has more
dignity that way. It is not in the ritual,
but it makes a soldier's death more noble.
So I suppose Capolarde said it. I could only

124 The Backwash of War

judge by the response. I could hear the heavy,
laboured breath, the choking, wailing cry.

"Ouil Old!'' gasped out at intervals.
"AhmonDieu! Ouif*

Again the mumbling, guiding whisper.

"Out — ouir* came sobbing, gasping, in
response.

So I heard the whispers, the priest's whis-
pers, and the stertorous choke, the feeble,
wailing, rebellious wailing in response. He
was being forced into it. Forced into accept-
ance. Beaten into submission, beaten into
resignation.

"Oui, out" came the protesting moans.
"Ah, ouif'

It must be dawning upon him now. Capo-
larde is making him see.

"Out! Oui!" The choking sobs reach
me. "Ah, mon Dieu, out!" Then very
deep, panting, crying breaths :

"Dieu — je — vous — donne — ma — vie — libre-
ment — pour — ma — patriel ' '

Pour la Patrie 125

" Librement! Lihrement! Ah,ouil Out!**
He was beaten at last. The choking, dying,
bewildered man had said the noble words.

"God, I give you my life freely for my
country!"

After which came a volley of low toned
Latin phrases, rattling in the stillness like
the popping of a mitrailleuse.

Two hours later he was still alive, restless,
but no longer resentful. "It is difficult to
go," he murmured, and then: "Tonight, I
shall sleep well." A long pause followed, and
he opened his eyes.

"Without doubt, the next world is more
chic than this," he remarked smiling, and
then:

"I was mobilized against my inclination.
Now I have won the Medaille Militaire.
My Captain won it for me. He made me
brave. He had a revolver in his hand."

Locomotor Ataxia

127

LOCOMOTOR ATAXIA

JUST inside the entrance gates a big, flat-
^ topped tent was pitched, which bore
over the low door a signboard on which was
painted, Triage No. i. Malades et Blesses
Assis. This meant that those assis, able
to travel in the ambulances as "sitters,"
were to be deposited here for diagnosis and
classification. Over beyond was the Salle
d*AUente, the hut for receiving the grands
blessSs, but a tent was sufficient for sick men
and those slightly wounded. It was an old
tent, weatherbeaten, a dull, dirty grey.
Within the floor was of earth, and along
each side ran long, narrow, backless benches,
on which the sick men and the slightly
woimded sat, waiting sorting. A grey
twilight pervaded the interior, and the

9 "9

130 The Backwash of War

everlasting Belgian rain beat down upon
the creaking canvas, beat down in gentle,
dripping patters, or in hard, noisy gusts, as
it happened. It was always dry inside,
however, and the earth floor was dusty,
except at the entrance, where a triangle of
mud projected almost to the doctor's table,
in the middle.

The Salle d'Attente was different. It was
more comfortable. The seriously wounded
were unloaded carefully and placed upon
beds covered with rubber sheeting, and clean
sacking, which protected the thin mattresses
from blood. The patients were afterwards
covered with red blankets, and stone hot
water bottles were also given them, some-
times. But in the sorting tent there were
no such comforts. They were not needed.
The sick men and the slightly woimded could
sit very well on the backless benches till the
Medecin Major had time to come and examine
them.

Locomotor Ataxia 131

Quite a company of "sitters" were as-
sembled here one morning, helped out of two
big ambulances that drove in within ten
minutes of each other. They were a dejected
lot, and they stumbled into the tent unstead-
ily, groping towards the benches, upon which
they tried to pose their weary, old, fevered
bodies in comfortable attitudes. And as it
couldn't be done, there was a continual
shifting movement, and unrest. Heavy legs
in heavy wet boots were shoved stiffly for-
ward, then dragged back again. Old, thin
bodies bent forward, twisted sideways,
coarse, filthy hands hung supine between
spread knees, and then again the hands
would change, and support whiskered, dis-
coiu-aged faces. They were all imcouth,
grotesque, dejected, and they smelt abom-
inably, these poilus, these hairy, unkempt
soldiers. At their feet, their sacks lay,
bulging with their few possessions. They
hadn't much, but all they had lay there, at

132 The Backwash of War

their feet. Old brown canvas sacks, bulg-
ing, muddy, worn, worn-out, like their own-
ers. Tied on the outside were water cans,
and extra boots, and bayonets, and inside
were socks and writing paper and photographs
of ugly wives. Therefore the ungainly sacks
were precious, and they hugged them with
their tired feet, afraid that they might lose
them.

Then finally the Major arrived, and began
the business of sorting them. He was brisk
and alert, and he called them one by one to
stand before him. They shuffled up to his
little table, wavering, deprecating, humble,
and answered his brief impatient questions.
And on the spot he made snap diagnoses,
such as rheumatism, bronchitis, kicked by a
horse, knocked down by despatch rider,
dysentery, and so on — a paltry, stupid lot
of ailrrients and minor accidents, demanding
a few days, treatment. It was a dull service,
this medical service, yet one had to be always

Locomotor Ataxia 133

on guard against contagion, so the service was
a responsible one. But the Major worked
quickly, sorted them out hastily, and then
one by one they disappeared behind a hang-
ing sheet, where the orderlies took off their
old uniforms, washed the patients a little,
and then led them to the wards. It was a
stupid service! So different from that of
the grands blesses! There was some interest
in that! But this eclope business, these
minor ailments, this stream of petty sick-
ness, petty accidents, dirty skin diseases, and
vermin — all war, if you like, but how hanalel

Later, in the medical wards, the Major
made his rounds, to inspect more carefully
the men upon whom he had made snap diag-
noses, to correct the diagnosis, if need be,
and to order treatment. The chief treat-
ment they needed was a bath, a clean bed,
and a week of sleep, but the doctor, being
fairly conscientious, thought to hurry things

134 The Backwash of War

a little, to hasten the return of these old,
tired men to the trenches, so that they might
come back to the hospital again as grands
blessSs. In which event they would be
interesting. So he ordered ventouses or
cupping, for the bronchitis cases. There is
much bronchitis in Flanders, in the trenches,
because of the incessant Belgian rain. They
are sick with it too, poor devils. So said the
Major to himself as he made his rounds.

Five men here, lying in a row, all ptomaine
poisoning, due to some rank tinned stuff
they'd been eating. Yonder there, three
men with itch — filthy business ! Their hands
all covered with it, tearing at their bodies
with their black, claw-like nails ! The order-
lies had not washed them very thoroughly
— small blame to them ! So the Major made
his rounds, walking slowly, very bored, but
conscientious. These dull wrecks were
needed in the trenches. He must make
them well.

Locomotor Ataxia 135

At Bed 9, Andre stopped. Something
different this time'. He tried to recall it.
Oh yes — in the sorting tent he'd noticed

"Monsieur Major!** A thin hand, clean
and sHm, rose to the salute. The bed covers
were very straight, sliding neither to this
side nor to that, as covers slide under restless
pain.

"I cannot walk. Monsieur Major.**

So Andre stopped, attentive. The man
continued.

"I cannot walk, Monsieur Major. Be-
cause of that, from the trenches I was re-
moved a month ago. After that I was given
a fourgon, a wagon in which to transport
the loaves of bread. But soon it arrived
that I could not climb to the high seat of my
wagon, nor could I mount to the saddle of
my horse. So I was obliged to lead my
horses, stiunbling at their bridles. So I have
stumbled for the past four weeks. But now
I cannot even do that. It is very painful."

136 The Backwash of War

Andr6 passed a hand over his short, thick,
upright hair, and smoothed his stiff brush
reflectively. Then he put questions to the
man, confidentially, and at the answers con-
tinued to rub backward his tight brush of
hair. After which he disappeared from the
ward for a time, but returned presently,
bringing with him a Paris surgeon who hap-
pened to be visiting the Front that day.
There also came with him another little
doctor of the hospital staff, who was inter-
ested in what Andr6 had told him of the
case. The three stood together at the foot
of the bed, stroking their beards and their
hair meditatively, while they plied the patient
with questions. After which they directed
Alphonse, the swarthy, dark orderly, who
looked like a brigand, and Henri, the priest-
orderly, to help the patient to rise.

They stood him barefoot upon the floor,
supporting him slightly by each elbow. To
his knees, or just above them, fell a scant,

Locomotor Ataxia 137

gay, pink flannel nightshirt, his sole garment.
It was one of many warm, gay nightshirts,
pink and cheerful, that some women of
America had sent over to the wounded heroes
of France. It made a bright spot of colour
in the sombre ward, and through the open
window, one caught glimpses of green hop
fields, and awindmill in the distance, waving
its slow arms.

"Walk," commanded Andr6. "Walk to
the door. Turn and return."

The man staggered between the beds,
holding to them, half bent over, fearful.
Cool summer air blew in through the window,
waving the pink nightshirt, making goose
flesh rise on the shapely white legs that
wavered. Then he moved down the ward,
between the rows of beds, moving with un-
certain, running, halting steps. Upon the
linoleum, his bare feet flapped in soft thiunps,
groping wildly, interfering, knocking against
each other. The man, trying to control

138 The Backwash of War

them, gazed in fright from side to side.
Down to the door he padded, rocked, swayed,
turned and almost fell. Then back again
he flapped.

Dense stillness in the ward, broken only
by the hard, unsteady thumping of the bare
feet. The feet masterless, as the spirit had
been masterless, years ago. The three judges
in white blouses stood with arms folded,
motionless. The patients in the beds sat
up and tittered. The man who had been
kicked by a horse raised himself and smiled.
He who had been knocked down by a de-
spatch rider sat up, as did those with
bronchitis, and those with ptomaine
poisoning. They sat up, looked, and snig-
gered. They knew. So did Andre. So
did the Paris surgeon, and the little staff
doctor, and the swarthy orderly and the
priest-orderly. They all knew. The patient
knew too. The laughter of his comrades
told him.

Locomotor Ataxia 139

So he was to be released from the army,
physically unfit. He could no longer serve
his country. For many months he had faced
death under the guns, a glorious death.
Now he was to face death in another form.
Not glorious, shameful. Only he didn't
know much about it, and couldn't visualize
it — after all, he might possibly escape. He
who had so loved life. So he was rather
pleased to be released from service.

The patients in the surrounding beds
ceased laughing. They had other things to
think about. As soon as they were cured of
the dysentery and of the itch, they were
going back again to the trenches, imder the
guns. So they pitied themselves, and they
rather envied him, being released from the
army. They didn't know much about it,
either. They couldn't visualize an imbecile,
degrading, lingering death. They could only
comprehend escape from sudden death, under
the guns.

140 The Backwash of War

One way or another, it is about the same.
Tragedy either way, and death either way.
But the tragedies of peace equal the tragedies
of war. The sum total of suffering is the
same. They balance up pretty well.

Paws,
i8 June, 1916.

A Surgical Triumph

HI

A SURGICAL TRIUMPH

TN the Latin Quarter, somewhere about
^ the intersection of the Boulevard Mont-
parnasse with the rue de Rennes — it might
have been even a little way back of the Gare
Montpamasse, or perhaps in the other direc-
tion where the rue Vabin cuts into the rue
Notre-Dame-des-Champs — any one who
knows the Quarter will know about it at
once — there lived a little hairdresser by the
name of Antoine. Some ten years ago
Antoine had moved over from Montmartre,
for he was a good hairdresser and a thrifty
soul, and he wanted to get on in life, and at
that time nothing seemed to him so profitable
an investment as to set up a shop in the
neighbourhood patronized by Americans.
American students were always wanting
143

144 The Backwash of War

their hair washed, so he was told — once a
week at least — and in that they differed from
the Russian and Polish and Roumanian and
other students of Paris, a fact which deter-
mined Antoine to go into business at the
Montparnasse end of the Quarter, rather
than at the lower end, say round the Pan-
theon and Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. And as
he determined to put his prices low, in order
to catch the trade, so later on when his busi-
ness thrived enormously, he continued to
keep them low, in order to maintain his
clients. For if you once get used to having
your hair washed for two francs, and very
well done at that, it is ann03ring to find that
the price has gone up over night to the prices
one pays on the Boulevard Capucines.
Therefore for ten years Antoine continued
to wash hair at two francs a head, and at the
same time he earned quite a reputation for
himself as a marvellous good person when it
came to waves and curls. So that when the

A Surgical Triumph 145

war broke out, and his American clients
broke and ran, he had a neat, tidy sum saved
up, and could be fairly complacent about it
all. Moreover, he was a lame man, one leg
being some three inches shorter than the
other, due to an accident in childhood, so he
had never done his military service in his
youth, and while not over military age, even
yet, there was no likelihood of his ever being
called upon to do it. So he stood in the
doorway of his deserted shop, for all his
young assistants, his curlers and shampooers,
had been mobilized, and looked up and down
the deserted street, and congratulated him-
self that he was not in as bad a plight,
financially and otherwise, as some of his
neighbours.

Next door to him was a restaurant where
the students ate, many of them. It had
enjoyed a high reputation for cheapness, up
to the war, and twice a day had been thronged
with a mixed crowd of sculptors and painters

146 The Backwash of War

and writers, and just dilettantes, which
latter liked to patronize it for what they were
pleased to call "local colour." Well, look
at it now, thought the thrifty Antoine.
Everyone gone, except a dozen stranded
students who had not money enough to
escape, and who, in the kindness of their
hearts, continued to eat here "on credit,"
in order to keep the proprietor going. Even
such a fool as the proprietor must see, sooner
or later, that patronage of this sort could
lead nowhere, from the point of view of
profits — in fact, it was ridiculous.

Antoine, lounging in his doorway, thought
of his son. His only son, who, thank God,
was too young to enter the army. By the
time he was old enough for his military
service, the war would all be over — it could
not last, at the outside, more than six weeks
or a couple of months — so Antoine had no
cause for anxiety on that accoimt. The lad
was a fine, husky youth, with a sprouting

A Surgical Triumph 147

moustache, which made him look older than
his seventeen years. He was being taught
the art of washing hair, and of curling and
dyeing the same, on the himian head or aside
from it, as the case might be, and he could
snap curling irons with a click to inspire
confidence in the minds of the most fastidious,
so altogether, thought Antoine, he had a good
future before him. So the war had no terrors
for Antoine, and he was able to speculate
freely upon the future of his son, which
seemed like a very bright, admirable futtue
indeed, in spite of the distiubances of the
moment. Nor did he need to close the doors
of his establishment either, in spite of the
loss of his assistants, and the loss of his
many customers who kept those assistants as
well as himself busy. For there still remained
in Paris a good many American heads
to be washed, from time to time —
rather foolhardy, adventiu-ous heads, curious,
sensation hunting heads, who had remained

148 The Backwash of War

in Paris to see the war, or as much of it as
they could, in order to enrich their own per-
sonal experience. With which point of view
Antoine had no quarrel, although there
were certain of his countrymen who wished
these inquisitive foreigners would retiim to
their native land, for a variety of reasons.

As the months rolled along, however, he
who had been so farseeing, so thrifty a busi-
ness man, seemed to have made a mistake.
His calculations as to the duration of the
war all went wrong. It seemed to be lasting
an unconscionable time, and every day it
seemed to present new phases for which no
immediate settlement offered itself. Thus a
year dragged away, and Antoine's son
turned eighteen, and his moustache grew to
be so imposing that his father commanded
him to shave it. At the end of another two
months, Antoine found it best to return his
son to short trousers, for although the boy
was stout and fat, he was not tall, and in

A Surgical Triumph 149

short trousers he looked merely an overgrown
fat boy, and Antoine was growing rather
worried as he saw the lads of the young
classes called to the colours. Somewhere,
in one of the Mairies of Paris — over at Mont-
martre, perhaps, where he had come from,
or at the Prefecture de Police, or the Cite —
Antoine knew that there a record of his son's
age and attainments, which might be used
against him at any moment, and as the
weeks grew into months, it seemed certain
that the class to which this precious son
belonged would be called on for military
service. Then very hideous weeks followed
for Antoine, weeks of nervous suspense and
dread. Day by day, as the lad grew in
proficiency and aptitude, as he became more
and more expert in the matters of his trade,
as he learned a delicate, sure touch with the
most refractory hair, and could expend the
minimum of gas on the drying machine, and
the minimum of soap lather, and withal

150 The Backwash of War

attain the best results in pleasing his custom-
ers, so grew the danger of his being snatched
away from this wide life spread out before
him, of being forced to fight for his glorious
country. Poor fat boy! On Sundays he
used to parade the Raspail with a German
shepherd dog at his heels — bought two years
ago as a German shepherd, but now called
a Belgian Police dog — how could he lay aside
his little trousers and become a soldier of
France! Yet every day that time drew
nearer, till finally one day the summons
came, and the lad departed, and Antoine
closed his shutters for a whole week, mourn-
ing desperately. And he was furious against
England, which had not made her maximum
effort, had not mobilized her men, had con-
tinued with business as usual, had made no
attempt to end the war — wouldn't do so,
until France had become exhausted. And
he was furious against Russia, swamped in a
bog of political intrigue, which lacked organi-

A Surgical Triumph 151

zation and munitions and leadership, and
was totally unable to drawing off the Bosches
on the other frontier, and delivering a blow
to smash them. In fact, Antoine was far
more furious against the Allies of France than
against Germany itself. And his rage and
grief absolutely overbalanced his pride in his
son, or his ambitions as to his son's possible
achievements. The boy himself did not
mind going, when he was called, for he was
something of a fataUst, being so young, and
besides, he could not foresee things. But
Antoine, little lame man, had much imagina-
tion and foresaw a great deal.

Mercifully, he could not foresee what
actually happened. Thus it was a shock to
him. He learned that his son was wounded,
and then followed many long weeks while
the boy lay in hospital, during which time
many kind-hearted Red Cross ladies wrote
to Antoine, telling him to be of brave heart
and of good courage. And Antoine, being

152 The Backwash of War

a rich man, in a small hairdressing way,
took quite large sums of money out of the
bank from time to time, and sent them to the
Red Cross ladies, to buy for his son whatever
might be necessary to his recovery. He
heard from the hospital in the interior — for
they were taking most of the wounded to
the interior, at that time, for fear of upsetting
Paris by the sight of them in the streets —
that artificial legs were costly. Thus he
steeled himself to the fact that his son would
be more hideously lame than he himself.
There was some further consultation about
artificial arms, rather vague, but Antoine
was troubled. Then he learned that a mar-
vellous operation had been performed upon
the boy, known as plastic surgery, that is to
say, the rebuilding, out of other parts of the
body, of certain features of the face that are
missing. All this while he heard nothing
directly from the lad himself, and in every
letter from the Red Cross ladies, dictated

A Surgical Triumph 153

to them, the boy begged that neither his
father nor his mother would make any at-
tempt to visit him at the hospital, in the
interior, till he was ready.

Finally, the lad was "ready." He had
been four or five months in hospital, and the
best surgeons of the country had done for
him the best they knew. They had not
only saved his life, but, thanks to his father's
money, he had been fitted out with certain
artificial aids to the human body which
would go far towards making life supportable.
In fact, they expressed themselves as ex-
tremely gratified with what they had been
able to do for the poor young man, nay,
they were even proud of him. He was a siu:-
gical triumph, and as such they were re-
turning him to Paris, by such and such a
train, upon such and such a day. Antoine
went to meet the train.

In a little room back of the hairdressing
shop, Antoine looked down upon the surgical

154 The Backwash of War

triumph. This triumph was his son. The
two were pretty well mixed up. A passion
of love and a passion of furious resentment
filled the breast of the little hairdresser.
Two very expensive, very good artificial
legs lay on the sofa beside the boy. They
were nicely jointed and had cost several
hundred francs. From the same firm it
would also be possible to obtain two very
nice artificial arms, light, easily adjustable,
well hinged. A hideous flabby heap, called
a nose, fashioned by unique skill out of the
flesh of his breast, replaced the Uttle snub
nose that Antoine remembered. The mouth
they had done little with. All the front teeth
were gone, but these could doubtless be
replaced, in time, by others. Across the
lad's forehead was a black silk bandage,
which could be removed later, and in his
pocket there was an address from which
artificial eyes might be purchased. They
woiild have fitted him out with eyes, in the

A Surgical Triumph 155

provinces, except that such were better ob-
tainable in Paris. Antoine looked down
upon this wreck of his son that lay before
him, and the wreck, not appreciating that he
was a surgical triumph, kept sobbing, kept
weeping out of his sightless eyes, kept jerking
his four stumps in supplication, kept begging
in agony:

"Kill me. Papa!"

However, Antoine couldn't do this, for he
was civilized.

At the Telephone

157

AT THE TELEPHONE

A S he hadn't died in the ambulance, com-
^^ ing from the Poste de Secours, the
surgeons concluded that they would give
him another chance, and risk it on the operat-
ing table. He was nearly dead, anyway,
so it didn't much matter, although the
chance they proposed to give him wasn't
even a fighting chance — it was just one in a
thousand, some of them put it at one in ten
thousand. Accordingly, they cut his clothes
off in the Salle d'AUente, and carried him,
very dirty and naked, to the operating room.
Here they found that his ten-thousandth
chance would be diminished if they gave him
a general anaesthetic, so they dispensed with
chloroform and gave him spinal anaesthesia,
159

i6o The Backwash of War

by injecting something into his spinal canal,
between two of the low vertebrae. This
completely relieved him of pain, but made
him talkative, and when they saw he was
conscious like that, it was decided to
hold a sheet across the middle of him,
so that he could not see what was going
on, on the other side of the sheet, below his
waist.

The temperature in the operating room
was stifling hot, and the sweat poured in
drops from the brows of the surgeons, so
that it took an orderly, with a piece of gauze,
to swab them constantly. However, for all
the heat, the man was stone cold and ashen
grey, and his nostrils were pinched and
dilated, while his breath came in gasps, forty
to the minute. Yet, as I say, he was talk-
ative, and his stream of little, vapid re-
marks, at his end of the sheet, did much
to drown the clicking and snapping of
clamps on the other side of it, where the

At the Telephone i6i

surgeons were working to give him his one
chance.

A nurse held the sheet on one side of the
table, and a priest-orderly held it at the
other, and at his head stood a doctor, and
the Directrice and another nurse, answering
the string of vapid remarks and trying to
sooth him. And three feet farther along,
hidden from him and the little clustering
company of people trying to distract his
attention, stood the two surgeons, and the
two young students, and just the tops of their
hair could be seen over the edge of the sheet.
They whispered a little from time to time,
and worked very rapidly, and there was quite
animated talking when the bone saw began
to rasp.

The man babbled of his home, and of his
wife. He said he wanted to see her again,
very much. And the priest-orderly, who
wanted to drop his end of the sheet and ad-
minister the last Sacrament at once, grew

i62 The Backwash of War

very nervous and uneasy. So the man
rambled on, gasping, and they replied to him
in soothing manner, and told him that there
was a chance that he might see her again.
So he talked about her incessantly, and with
affection, and his whispered words and the
cheery replies quite drowned out the clicking
and the snapping of the clamps. After a
short while, however, his remarks grew less
coherent, and he seemed to find himself
back in the trenches, telephoning. He tried
hard to telephone, he tried hard to get the
connection. The wires seemed to be cut,
however, and he grew puzzled, and knit his
brows and swore, and tried again and again,
over and over. He had something to say
over the telephone, the trench communica-
tion wire, and his mind wandered, and he
tried very hard, in his wandering mind, to
get the connection. A shell had cut the
line evidently. He grew annoyed and rest-
less, and gazed anxiously and perplexedly

At the Telephone 163

at the white sheet, held so steadily across
his middle. From the waist down he could
not move, so all his restlessness took place
on the upper side of the sheet, and he was
tmaware of what was going on on the other
side of it, and so failed to hear the incessant
rattle of clamps and the subdued whispers
from the other side.

He struggled hard to get the connection,
in his mind, over the telephone. The wires
seemed to be cut, and he cried out in anxiety
and distress. Then he grew more and more
feeble, and gasped more and more, and
became almost inarticulate, in his efforts.
He was distressed. But suddenly he got it.
He screamed out very loud, relieved, satis-
fied, triumphant, startling them all.

^' Ca y est, maintenant! Ca y est! Cest
le hon Dieu cL Vappareill^' (All right now!
All right! It is the good God at the
telephone!)"

A drop of blood spotted the sheet, a sudden

i64 The Backwash of War

vivid drop which spread rapidly, coming
through. The surgeon raised himself.

"Finished here!" he exclaimed with satis-
faction.

"Finished here," repeated the Directrice.

Paris,
26 June, 19 16.

A Citation

^65

A CITATION

A S a person, Grammont amounted to very
'**■ little. In private life, before the war
broke out, he had been an acrobat in the
streets of Paris, and after that he became a
hotel boy in some little fifth-rate hotel over
behind the Gare St. Lazare. That had
proved his undoing, for even the fifth-rate
French travelling salesmen and sharpers and
adventurers who patronized the hotel had
money enough for him to steal. He stole a
little, favoured by his position as gargon
d'hotel, and the theft had landed him, not
in jail, but in the Bataillon d'AJrique. He
had served in that for two years, doing his
military service in the Bataillon d'Afrique
instead of jail, while working off his five
year sentence, and then war being declared,
167

1 68 The Backwash of War

his regiment was transferred from Morocco
to France, to Flanders, to the front line
trenches, and in course of time he arrived
one day at the hospital with a piece of shell
in his spleen.

He was pretty ill when brought in, and
if he had died promptly, as he should have
done, it would have been better. But it
happened at that time that there was a sur-
geon connected with the hospital who was
bent on making a reputation for himself,
and this consisted in trying to prolong the
lives of wounded men who ought normally
and naturally to have died. So this surgeon
worked hard to save Grammont, and cer-
tainly succeeded in prolonging his life, and
in prolonging his suffering, over a very con-
siderable portion of time. He worked hard
over him, and he used on him everything
he could think of, everything that money
could buy. Every time he had a new idea
as to treatment, no matter how costly it

A Citation 169

might be, he mentioned it to the Directrice,
who sent to Paris and got it. All the while
Grammont remained in bed, in very great
agony, the surgeon making copious notes on
the case, noting that under such and such
circumstances, under conditions such as
the following, such and such remedies and
treatment proved futile and valueless.
Grammont had a hole in his abdomen, when
he entered, about an inch long. After about
a month, this hole was scientifically increased
to a foot in length, rubber drains stuck out
in all directions, and went inwards as well,
pretty deep, and his pain was enhanced a
hundredfold, while his chances of recovery
were not bright. But Grammont had a
good constitution, and the surgeon worked
hard over him, for if he got well, it woidd be
a wonderful case, and the surgeon's reputa-
tion would benefit. Grammont bore it all
very patiently, and did not ask to be allowed
to die, as many of them did, for since he was

170 The Backwash of War

of the Bataillon d'Afrique, such a request
would be equivalent to asking for a remission
of sentence — a sentence which the courts
averred he justly deserved and merited.
They took no account of the fact that his
ethics were those of a wandering juggler,
turning somersaults on a carpet at the public
fetes of Paris, and had been polished off by
contact with the men and women he had
encountered in his capacity of gargon d'hotel,
in a fifth-rate hotel near Montmartre. On
the contrary, they rather expected of him
the decencies and moralities that come from
careful nurture, and these not being forth-
coming, they had sent him to the Bataillon
d'Afrique, where his eccentricities would be
of no danger to the public.

So Grammont continued to suffer, over a
period of several long months, and he was
sufficiently cynical, owing to his short experi-
ence of life, to realize that the surgeon, who
worked over him so constantly and solici-

A Citation 171

tously, was not solely and entirely disin-
terested in his efforts to make him well.
Grammont had no life to return to, that was
the trouble. Everyone knew it. The
siu-geon knew it, and the orderlies knew it,
and his comrades in the adjoining beds knew
it — he had absolutely no future before him,
and there was not much sense in trying to
make him well enough to return to Paris, a
hopeless cripple. He lay in hospital for
several months, suffering greatly, but greatly
patient. During that time, he received no
letters, for there was no one to write to him.
He was an apache, he belonged to a criminal
regiment, and he had no family anyhow, and
his few friends, tattooed all over the body
like himself, were also members of the same
regiment, and as such, unable to do much for
him in civil life after the war. Such it is to
be ajoyeux, to belong to a regiment of crimi-
nals, and to have no family to speak of.
Grammont knew that it would be better

172 The Backwash of War

for him to die, but he did not like to protest
against this painful prolonging of his Hfe.
He was pretty well sick of life, but he had
to submit to the kind treatment meted out
to him, to twist his mouth into a wry smile
when the Directrice asked him each day if
he was not better, and to accept without
wincing all the newest devices that the
siu-geon discovered for him. There was some
sense in saving other people's lives, but there
was no sense in saving his. But the surgeon,
who was working for a reputation, worked
hand in hand with the Directrice who wanted
her hospital to make a reputation for saving
the lives of the grands blesses. Grammont
was the victim of circumstances, as usual,
but it was all in his understanding of life,
this being caught up in the ambitions of
others, so he had to submit.

After about three months of torture, during
which time he grew weaker and smelled
worse every day, it finally dawned on the

A Citation I73

nurse that perhaps this life-saving business
was not wholly desirable. If he got "well,"
in the mildest acceptation of the term, he
would be pretty well disabled, and useless
and good for nothing. And if he was never
going to get well, for which the prospects
seemed bright enough, why force him along
through more weeks of suffering, just to try
out new remedies? Society did not want
him, and he had no place in it. Besides,
he had done his share, in the trenches, in
protecting its best traditions.

Then they all began to notice, suddenly,
that in bed Grammont was displaying rather
nice quaHties, such as you would not expect
from Sijoyeux, a social outcast. He appeared
to be extremely patient, and while his face
twisted up into knots of pain, most of the
time, he did not cry out and disturb the ward
as he might have done. This was nice and
considerate, and other good traits were dis-
covered too. He was not a nuisance, he was

174 The Backwash of War

not exacting, he did not demand unreason-
able things, or refuse to submit to imreason-
able things, when these were demanded of
him. In fact, he seemed to accept his pain
as God-given, and with a fataHsm which
in some ways was rather admirable. He
could not help smelling like that, for he was
full of rubber drains and of gauze drains, and
if the doctor was too busy to dress his woimds
that day, and so put him off till the next, it
was not his fault for smelling so vilely. He
did not raise any disturbance, nor make any
complaint, on certain days when he seemed
to be neglected. Any extra discomfort that
he was obliged to bear, he bore stoically.
Altogether, after some four months of this,
it was discovered that Grammont had rather
a remarkable character, a character which
merited some sort of recognition. He seemed
to have rather heroic qualities of endurance,
of bravery, of discipline. Nor were they
the heroic qualities that suddenly develop

A Citation I75

in a moment of exaltation, but on the con-
trary, they were developed by months of
extreme agony, of extreme bodily pain. He
could have been so disagreeable, had he
chosen. And as he cared so little to have
his life saved, his goodness could not have
been due to that. It seemed that he was
merely very decent, very considerate of others,
and wanted to give as little trouble as he
coiild, no matter what took place. Only
he got thinner and weaker, and more and
more gentle, and at last after five months
of this, the Directrice was touched by his
conduct and suggested that here was a case
of heroism as well worthy of the Croix de
Guerre as were the more spectacular move-
ments on the battlefield. It took a few
weeks longer, of gentle suggestion on her
part, to convey this impression to the Gene-
ral, but at last the General entered into cor-
respondence with the officers of the regiment
to which Grammont belonged, and it then

176 The Backwash of War

transpired that as a soldier Grammont had
displayed the same qualities of consideration
for others and of discipline, that he was now
displaying in a hospital bed. Finally one
day, the news came that Grammont was to
be decorated. Everyone else in the ward,
who deserved it, had been decorated long
ago, naturally, for they had not belonged to
the Bataillon d'Afrique. Their services had
been recognized long ago. Now, however,
after these many months of suffering, Gram-
mont was to receive the Croix de Guerre.
He was nearly dead by this time. When
told the news, he smiled faintly. He did
not seem to care. It seemed to make very
little impression upon him. Yet it should
have made an impression, for he was a con-
victed criminal, and it was a condescension
that he should be so honoured at all. He
had somehow won this honour, this token of
forgiveness, by suffering so long, so uncom-
plainingly. However, a long delay took

A Citation 177

place, although finally his papers came, his
citation, in which he was cited in the orders
of the regiment as having done a very brave
deed, imder fire. He smiled a Httle at that.
It had taken place so long ago, this time
when he had done the deed, received the
wound that kept him suffering so long. It
seemed so little worth while to acknowledge
it now, after all these months, when he was
just ready to leave.

Then more delay took place, and Gram-
mont got weaker, and the orderlies said
among themselves that if the General was
ever going to decorate this man, that he had
better hurry up. However, so long a time
had passed that it did not much matter.
Grammont was pleased with his citation.
It seemed to make it all right for him, some-
how. It seemed to give him standing among
his fellow patients. The hideous tattoo
marks on his arms and legs, chest and back,
which proclaimed him an apache, which

178 The Backwash of War

showed him such every time his wound was
dressed, were about to be overlaid with a
decoration for bravery upon the field of
battle. But still the General did not come.
Grammont grew very weak and feeble and
his patience became exhausted. He held
on as long as he could. So he died finally,
after a long pull, just twenty minutes before
the General arrived with his medals.

Paris,
27 June, 1916

An Incident

179

AN INCIDENT

A T the intersection of the rue du Bac and
■^^ the Boulevard St. Germain rises the
statue of Claude Chappe, rising like a rock in
the midst of the stream of traffic, and like
a rock splitting the stream and diverting
it into currents which flow east and west,
north and south, smoothly and without
collision. In guiding the stream of traffic
and directing its orderly flow, the statue of
Claude Chappe is greatly assisted by the
presence of an agent de police, with a pic-
turesque cape and a pictiuresque sword, and
who controls the flow of vehicles with as
much precision as a London policeman,
although there are those who profess that
a London policeman is the only one who
understands the business. Before the war,
i8i

1 82 The Backwash of War

when the omnibuses ran, the agent de police
was always on duty ; since the war, when the
Paris omnibuses are all at the Front, carry-
ing meat to the soldiers, there are certain
times dining the day when the whole respon-
sibility for traffic regulation falls upon the
statue of Claude Chappe. It was at one of
these times, when Claude Chappe was stand-
ing head in air as usual, and failed to regard
the comings and goings of the street, that
this incident occurred.

Down on the Quai, an officer of the French
army stepped into a little victoria, a shabby
little voiture de place, which trotted him up
the rue du Bac and then essayed to take him
along the Boulevard St. Germain to the
Ministhe de la Guerre. Coming along the
boiilevard in the opposite direction, was a
little lad of fifteen, bending low over the
handle bars of a tricycle delivery wagon,
the box of which contained enough kilos to
have taxed a strong man or an old horse.

An Incident 183

Men are scarce in Paris, however, and the
little delivery boy, who could not possibly
have been available for the army for another
three years, was doing a man's work, or a
horse's work, as you please. The French
are a thrifty race, and the possibilities being
that the war will all be over before that time,
it mattered little whether this particular boy
developed a hernia, or tuberculosis, or any
other malady which might unfit him for
future military service. At present he was
earning money for his patron , which was all
that really mattered. So the little boy on
the tricycle, head down, ran squarely into the
horse of the shabby victoria, conveying
the French officer, and the agent de police
was absent, and the statue of Claude Chappe
stood, as usual, head in air.

Quite a melee ensued. The old horse,
which should long ago have been in a butch-
er's shop, avoided the tricycle, with true
French thrift, but stepped squarely upon the

1 84 The Backwash of War

face of the little boy sprawling under its
hoofs. Another hoof planted itself on the
fingers of the lad's right hand. War itself
could not have been more disastrous. The
youth rose to his feet, screaming. The
cabby cursed. A crowd collected, and the
officer in the little carriage leaned back and
twirled the ends of his neat moustache.
The agent de police, who should have been on
duty at the statue, arrived hastily from a
nearby caf 6. He always took two hours off
for lunch, in good Parisian fashion, and he
was obliged on this occasion to cut his lunch
hour short by fifteen minutes. Everyone
was frightfully annoyed, but no one was more
annoyed than the officer in the cab, on his
way to the Minister of War.

He was so annoyed, so bored, that he sat
impertiu-bable, one arm lying negligently
along the back of the seat, the fingers of the
other hand caressing the Cross of the Legion
of Honour, upon his breast. His eyes rolled

An Incident 185

upwards, as if seeking the aeroplane which
was not, at that moment, flying over Paris.
The cabby got down from his seat, and with
much vociferation called upon the officer
to witness that it was not his fault. The
crowd, who had not witnessed the accident,
crowded round the policeman, giving testi-
mony to what they had not seen. The sob-
bing boy was led into a chemist's. Still the
people did not disperse. They pressed round
the cab, and began shouting to the disin-
terested officer. The officer who cared not
where the old horse had stepped. The officer
who continued to loll back against the shabby
cushions, to look upward at the sky, to
remain indifferent to the taximeter, which
skipped briskly from eighty -five centimes to
ninety-five centimes, and continued ticking
on. Women crowded round the cab, regard-
ing its occupant. Was this one who com-
manded their sons at the Front, who had
therefore seen so much, been through so

1 86 The Backwash of War

much, that the sight of a Httle boy stamped
on meant nothing to him? Had he seen so
much suffering en gros that it meant nothing
to him en detail? Or was this his attitude
to all suffering? Was this the Nation's atti-
tude to the suffering of their sons? Or was
this oflBcer one who had never been to the
Front, an embusque, one of the protected
ones, who occupied soft snaps in the rear,
safe places from which to draw their pay?
The crowd increased every minute. They
speculated volubly. They surrounded the
cab, voicing their speculations. They finally
became so unbearable that the officer's bore-
dom vanished. His annoyance became such,
his impatience at the delay became such that
he slid down from the shabby cushions, and
without paying his fare, disappeared in the
direction of the Ministhre de la Guerre,

A Selection from the
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The Night Cometh

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surgeon and a young wounded officer,
whose fervent Catholic piety is in
sharp contrast with the doctor's philo-
sophic materialism. Death threatens
both, and their opposing theories with
regard to it are displayed in their re-
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A volume comparable to Auat Sarah and
the War from the pen of the author of that
book. The scene is laid in a hospital, but the
cases recorded are those of men who, though
wounded in body, are spiritually whole. It is
the ideals of England, — the essential England
that, when the hour strikes, is all courage —
that manifest themselves throughout. And be
it said that it is an epitome not only of the
spirit of England but of the United Kingdom,
with the emphasis on the united. There is a
fine strain of kindness and broad sympathy
running through the book, and much of poign-
ancy in the personal dramas glimpsed through
its pages.

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York London

A TALL SHIP

ON OTHER NAVAL OCCASIONS
BY BARTIMEUS

i2°, PICTURE WRAPPER. $100

Tales descriptive of life in the British
Navy under stress of war-time condi-
tions— the life of the officers' mess, and
the stoke-hole— the grime as well as the
glory. Vivid pictures of the ache of
parting, of the strain of long waiting
for the enemy, of sinking ships and
struggles in the waves— and also of
the bright side that not even war can
extinguish.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON

News from
Somewhere

By
James Milne

Author of "The Romance of a Pro-Consul,'' etc

12'*. $1.50 net. Frontispiece

" Many things seen, heard, and thought
during travels at home, on sea and oversea,
in the war-time which we rail 'Armageddon.*
It is a chronicle of war impressions gathered
during travel, near and far, on its edges red
and jagged. **

" This indeed is a book of the war but it is
not like the others. There is in it nothing
that is harsh, cruel, ugly, such as there must
be in nearly every other volume that is
wrought about Armageddon. There is sad-
ness in it but it is a sweet sadness. There is
an immensity of pathos. There is much that
is beautiful. And all of it is true. " — The
Daily Telegraph, ^

" Great m spirit ... a book that will surely
outlive the war. " — The Graphic,

G. p. Putnam's Sons

New York London

University of Caiifomia

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