The Red Cross Barge

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

1

The Herr Stabsarzt was enjoying a steaming cup of hot coffee under the porch of the church which had been his headquarters for five stirring days.

Everything was packed and ready for departure. And the German Red Cross surgeons and their staff were now only waiting for the return of the Herr Doktor Max Keller, and for the parish priest of Valoise.

All final directions had been given to, and intelligently noted down by, Mademoiselle Rouannès. Not that there was much to say or to hear. Patience and pity were all that seemed likely to be needed, for only the dying—those past hope of recovery either as fighters or as prisoners—were being left behind.

Suddenly a shell burst close to the porch under which the Herr Stabsarzt was eating his hasty breakfast. He uttered a quick, sharp exclamation of anger. It would indeed be rough luck if any of his wounded, the men now stretched out in motor ambulances, and in other less comfortable conveyances, were killed while waiting for the start!

'Any harm done?' he shouted, rising to his feet. But half a dozen reassuring voices answered him.

The foremost portion of the melancholy convoy, that is, the motor ambulances, crammed with the wounded men whose condition was considered too serious for the makeshift wagons or springless carts pressed into the Red Cross service, was already under way. Only one large grey motor, that reserved for the Herr Stabsarzt and his own personal assistants, stood waiting in the open space in front of the church. They would be the last Germans to leave Valoise.

As he sat there, under the grey stone porch—for he was a wise man, and as he had a great deal of enforced standing to do he never stood when he could sit—the Herr Stabsarzt felt more at ease, more 'zufrieden' than he had felt for a long time. A successful medical man—be he physician or surgeon—generally has a kindly, tolerant, understanding outlook on human nature. And this was so with the Herr Stabsarzt Octavius Mott of Ems. But as the minutes went by, and the screaming of the shells grew more insistent, and as they began bursting nearer to the quarter of Valoise they had hitherto spared, he blamed himself for having granted Max Keller's request.

'The poor devils out there, to say nothing of ourselves, will soon be in some danger if this goes on,' he observed to his chief orderly; 'it's time we were——' and then, before he could finish his sentence, there came an awful explosion, followed by the dull thuds of falling masonry, while from close by rose cries and shouts of fear, surprise, and pain.

An Englishman or a Frenchman would have instinctively rushed to see what damage had been done, and especially would he have done so had he been an English or French surgeon. But the Herr Stabsarzt did not move. He simply shrugged his shoulders. His professional labours in Valoise were at an end. If any civilian inhabitant had been wounded by that shell he, or more probably she, must wait for the French Red Cross.

There was a confused stir of sound—exclamations in French and in German. Someone had evidently been seriously hurt—someone was going to be taken into the church.

But what was this which was being borne along so carefully, and by four of his own orderlies, on one of the stretchers which fitted into his own motor ambulance? The Herr Stabsarzt stood up again, and looked anxiously towards the little procession coming slowly towards him. Presently, with surprise and consternation, he saw that the huddled up figure, of which the head, face, and breast were thickly covered with dust and blood, wore the same uniform as he did himself!

'It's surely the Herr Doktor Max Keller?' exclaimed the man by his side. 'Ach, poor fellow! What a sight!'

'Donnerwetter!' The Herr Stabsarzt was not given to swearing, still this piece of black bad luck was too much for his feelings, the more so that he knew his own sympathetic, sentimental heart was responsible.

But after he had bent over the mangled, moaning form of his unfortunate colleague, he softened. This, after all, was the fortune of war! If he had drunk his coffee rather more quickly, it might have happened to himself—it might happen yet.

But what was to be done with the Herr Doktor? Plainly the poor man was in no condition to be moved at all, still less to take a long journey. The Herr Stabsarzt made a brief, but still a very thorough, examination, out there in the wind and sunlight, and that examination made up his mind for him. The only thing to do was to leave Max Keller behind, to take his chance of meeting with a humane and skilful French surgeon. It looked as if at the best there was but very, very little that could be done for him.

Turning away with a troubled face, the Herr Stabsarzt pushed his way back into the church; and, as he did so, a feeling of acute nausea, of intense depression, came over him. How awful, how inhuman, above all how useless, all this was!

Then he told himself that he had been too long in the fresh air; that was why he suddenly found that subtle, sweetish, devilish, gangrene stench so foul, so trying.

He called out sharply from where he stood—'Mademoiselle? Mademoiselle Rouannès!'

Leaving the bedside of a dying German over whom she had been bending, the young Red Cross nurse hastened down the nave towards him. Her face was a little flushed, her eyes wet, from the piteous ordeal of trying to ease the last moments of a dying man with whose language she was unacquainted, whose last earnest messages she could never hope to transmit to those he loved. It was an ordeal she had gone through often during the last few days, but to which, as yet, she could not make herself grow callously accustomed; and now she was herself too shaken, too eager to get back to the man she had just left, to notice the disturbed expression of the German surgeon's face. Indeed, the meaning of the words he uttered, as he came up close to her, took some moments to penetrate her brain.

'There has been an accident, Mademoiselle. A shell burst close to the Herr Doktor Max Keller. He has been gravely injured, wounded by large fragments of shell in the face and head, while his right arm has been crushed by a piece of masonry or iron girder. He is not in a state to be moved. We must leave him behind in your care. For his sake, I hope a French Red Cross surgeon will soon be here.' He spoke quickly, pronouncing the name of his colleague in the German way, and to Jeanne Rouannès' ears the name, so uttered, suggested nothing.

'I will do my best to alleviate his pain and to make him comfortable,' she spoke mechanically, and her eyes wandered uncertainly. Where was this newly wounded man?

'I know right well that you will!' The Herr Stabsarzt looked at the French Red Cross nurse curiously. Was it possible that Max Keller's absorption in herself, his plainly-to-be-perceived state of 'Verliebtheit' was ignored by her? Why the poor fellow had been injured, practically killed, in her service! And where, by the way, was the old Curé?

'I ask myself, Mademoiselle, if there is any place other than here where the Herr Doktor could be taken—a place clean, quiet and, yes, airy?'

'The Herr Doktor?' She flushed a little. Then it was one of the German surgeons who had been injured? She had thought the man in question to be one of the orderlies.

'He had a great liking for the barge. More than once he expressed to me the opinion that it was the ideal place for wounded men. Could not room be found there for him?'

And then, at last, Jeanne Rouannès understood. 'Is it—is it he who has been hurt?' she asked. And now there was no lack of concern or distress in her voice.

'Yes, it is the Herr Doktor Max Keller—he who was in Valoise before we arrived here,' he answered gravely. 'And the thought of my good colleague dying in this disturbed and noisy place is painful to me.'

'He shall immediately be taken to the barge. I will come and see to everything. There is a small cabin where he will be quite comfortable, and very, very quiet.'

'And I have your promise to tend him till a French surgeon can take charge of him?'

'But certainly,' she answered. He noticed that she spoke a little breathlessly. 'I promise not to leave him till then.'

Again the Herr Stabsarzt looked at her curiously. Did her troubled face express only the natural sympathy of a sensitive, soft-hearted woman—or something more?

'I will myself accompany you to the barge. We will walk behind the stretcher. It is not very far. Do you wish to tell the women here where you will be?'

'No, Monsieur le Médecin,' and this time a wave of colour flooded her face. 'If I do that, they will constantly be sending for me. Everything is in order. There is nothing I could do, that they cannot do.'

She spoke with the decision, the simple directness, which the Herr Stabsarzt admired. What would he not give, in times of peace of course he meant, to have such a capable young woman as this French girl had proved herself to be, in charge of the nurses in his beloved clinik!