WHEN THERE WAS NO RED CROSS
In the year 1859 a wounded soldier lay upon a European battlefield. The battle was over and night was coming on. Only the dead and dying were left on the field.
“Water! Water!” the soldier moaned, but no one heard him.
His severe wound brought on a high fever and his lips became parched with thirst.
“Water! Water!” he cried again. “If I only had a drink of water!”
Then he heard a sound as if some one was creeping towards him.
Opening his eyes, he saw in the falling darkness another wounded soldier lying by his side.
This soldier reached over and held his water bottle to the feverish lips of his suffering comrade.
Eagerly he drank and then asked, “Have you enough for us both?”
“Yes, yes, drink!” was the answer. “You need it more than I!”
Again he drank and then fell back exhausted.
“I wonder if they will find us?” the second man said, and he too fell back exhausted with the effort he had made.
All that night they lay there, and all the next day; but no relief came. As the weary hours dragged by they tried to help each other; but it was little they could do, except to lie there and suffer.
The second night the severely wounded man died, and the one who had brought him water was left alone.
In the morning a kind farmer, who had been searching for the wounded, found him and carried him to his home. The farmer’s wife bound up his wounds with clean bandages and nursed him until the army surgeon arrived.
If help had been at hand, the lives of thousands of heroes who lay on that great battlefield would have been saved. But there were no plans of rescue and no care for the wounded such as we have to-day; there was no Red Cross.