Part 15 (2/2)

One morning, in the sorting room, I noticed a big, curly-haired fellow who had lost a foot, and had all sorts of wounds and fractures in both legs. All these had been hastily bound up, clothing and all, in the hollow of the stretcher, which was stiff with blood. When I called the stretcher-bearers and contemplated this picture, the big man raised himself on his elbow and said:

”Please give me a cigarette.”

Then he began to smoke, smiling cheerfully and telling absurd stories.

We took off one of his legs up to the thigh, and as soon as he recovered consciousness, he asked for another cigarette, and set all the orderlies laughing.

When, on leaving him, I asked this extraordinary man what his calling was, he replied modestly:

”I am one of the employees of the Vichy Company.”

The orderlies in particular, nearly all simple folks, had a desire to laugh, even when they were worn out with fatigue, which made a pretext of the slightest thing, and notably of danger. One of them, called Tailleur, a buffoon with the airs of an executioner's a.s.sistant, would call out at the first explosions of a hurricane of sh.e.l.ls:

”Number your arms and legs! Look out for your nuts! The winkles are tumbling about!”

All my little band would begin to laugh. And I had not the heart to check them, for their faces were drawn with fatigue, and this moment of doleful merriment at least prevented them from falling asleep as they stood.

When the explosions came very close, this same Tailleur could not help exclaiming:

”I am not going to be killed by a brick! I am going outside.”

I would look at him with a smile, and he would repeat: ”As for me, I'm off,” carefully rolling a bandage the while, which he did with great dexterity.

His mixture of terror and swagger was a perpetual entertainment to us.

One night, a hand-grenade fell out of the pocket of one of the wounded.

In defiance of orders, Tailleur, who knew nothing at all about the handling of such things, turned it over and examined it for some time, with comic curiosity and distrust.

One day a pig intended for our consumption was killed in the pig-sty by fragments of sh.e.l.l. We ate it, and the finding by one of the orderlies of some bits of metal in his portion of meat gave occasion for a great many jests.

For a fortnight we were unable to go beyond the hospital enclosure.

Our longest expedition was to the piece of waste ground which had been allotted to us for a burial ground, a domain the sh.e.l.ls were always threatening to plough up. This graveyard increased considerably. As it takes a man eight hours to dig a grave for his brother man, one had to set a numerous gang to work all day, to ensure a place for each corpse.

Sometimes we went into the wooden shed which served as our mortuary.

Pere Duval, the oldest of our orderlies, sewed there all day, making shrouds of coa.r.s.e linen for ”his dead.”

They were laid in the earth carefully, side by side, their feet together, their hands crossed on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, when indeed they still possessed hands and feet.... Duval also looked after the human debris, and gave it decent sepulture.

Thus our function was not only to tend the living, but also to honour the dead. The care of what was magniloquently termed their ”estate” fell to our manager, S----. It was he who put into a little canvas bag all the papers and small possessions found on the victims. He devoted days and nights to a kind of funereal bureaucracy, inevitable even under the fire of the enemy. His occupation, moreover, was not exempt from moral difficulties. Thus he found in the pocket of one dead man a woman's card which it was impossible to send on to his family, and in another case, a collection of songs of such a nature that after due deliberation it was decided to burn them.

Let us purify the memories of our martyrs!

We had several German wounded to attend. One of these, whose leg I had to take off, overwhelmed me with thanks in his native tongue; he had lain for six days on ground over which artillery played unceasingly, and contemplated his return to life and the care bestowed on him with a kind of stupefaction.

Another, who had a shattered arm, gave us a good deal of trouble by his amazing uncleanliness. Before giving him the anaesthetic, the orderly took from his mouth a set of false teeth, which he confessed he had not removed for several months, and which exhaled an unimaginable stench.

I remember, too, a little fair-haired chap of rather chilly demeanour, who suddenly said ”Good-bye” to me with lips that quivered like those of a child about to cry.

The interpreter from Headquarters, my friend C----, came to see them all as soon as they had got over their stupor, and interrogated them with placid patience, comparing all their statements in order to glean some trustworthy indication.

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