Part 19 (1/2)
Ahead, men were fis.h.i.+ng in their sacks and throwing bombs like a pack of boys stoning a snake; I caught glimpses of them furiously at work from where I knelt beside one fallen man after another, desperately busy with my own business.
Bearers ran out where I was at work, not my own company but some French ambulance sections who served me as well as their own surgeons where, in a sh.e.l.l crater partly full of water, we found some shelter for the wounded.
Over us black smoke from the Jack Johnsons rolled as it rolls out of the stacks of soft-coal burning locomotives; the outrageous din never slackened, but our deafened ears had become insensible under the repeated blows of sound, yet not paralyzed. For I remember, squatting there in that sh.e.l.l crater, hearing a cricket tranquilly tuning up between the thunderclaps which shook earth and sods down on us and wrinkled the pool of water at our feet.
The Legion had taken the trench; but the place was a rabbit warren where hundreds of holes and burrows and ditches and communicating runways made a bewildering maze.
And everywhere in the dull, flame-shot obscurity, the Legionaries ran about like ghouls in their hoods and round, hollow eye-holes; masked faces, indistinct in the smoke, loomed grotesque and horrible as Ku-Klux where the bayonets were at work digging out the enemy from blind burrows, turning them up from their b.l.o.o.d.y forms.
Rifles blazed down into bomb-proofs, cracked steadily over the heads of comrades who piled up sandbags to block communication trenches; grenade-bombs rained down through the smoke into trenches, blowing b.l.o.o.d.y gaps in huddling ma.s.ses of struggling Teutons until they flattened back against the parados and lifted arms and gun-b.u.t.ts stammering out, ”Comrades! Comrades!”--in the ghastly irony of surrender.
A man whose entire helmet, gas-mask, and face had been blown off, and who was still alive and trying to speak, stiffened, relaxed, and died in my arms. As I rolled him aside and turned to the next man whom the bearers were lowering into the crater, his respirator and goggles fell apart, and I found myself looking into the ashy face of Duck Werner.
As we laid him out and stripped away iron helmet and tunic, he said in a natural and distinct voice.
”Through the belly, Doc. Gimme a drink.”
There was no more water or stimulant at the moment and the puddle in the crater was b.l.o.o.d.y. He said, patiently, ”All right; I can wait.... It's in the belly.... It ain't nothin', is it?”
I said something rea.s.suring, something about the percentage of recovery I believe, for I was exceedingly busy with Duck's anatomy.
”Pull me through, Doc?” he inquired calmly.
”Sure....”
”Aw, listen, Doc. Don't hand me no cones of hokey-pokey. Gimme a deck of the stuff. Dope out the c.o.ke. Do I get mine this trip?”
I looked at him, hesitating.
”Listen, Doc, am I hurted bad? Gimme a hones' deal. Do I croak?”
”Don't talk, Duck----”
”Dope it straight. _Do_ I?”
”Yes.”
”I thought you'd say that,” he returned serenely. ”Now I'm goin' to fool you, same as I fooled them guys at Bellevue the night that Mike the Kike shot me up in the subway.”
A pallid sneer stretched his thin and burning lips; in his ratty eyes triumph gleamed.
”I've went through worse than this. I ain't hurted bad. I ain't got mine just yet, old scout! Would I leave meself croak--an' that b.u.m, Mike the Kike, handin' me fren's the ha-ha! Gawd,” he muttered hazily, as though his mind was beginning to cloud, ”just f'r that I'll get up an'--an'
go--home--” His voice flattened out and he lay silent.
Working over the next man beyond him and glancing around now and then to discover a _brancardier_ who might take Duck to the rear, I presently caught his eyes fixed on me.