DOOR CHALKED BY THE GERMANS.
One of the 100 houses in Termonde with the direction "Do not Burn" written in German. One thousand one hundred houses were burned, house by house. Photograph by Radclyffe Dugmore.
In that second of tension, it was a pleasant thing to draw in on a butt—to discharge the smoke, a second later, carelessly, as who should say, "It is nothing." The little cylinder was a lightning conductor to lead away the danger from a vital part. It let the nervousness leak off into biting and puffing, and making a play of fingering the stub, instead of striking into the stomach and the courage. It gave the troubled face something to do, and let the writhing hand busy itself. It saved me from knowing just how frightened I was.
But what of the wounded themselves? They have to endure all that dreariness of long waiting, and the pressure of danger, and then, for good measure, a burden of pain. So I come to the men who are revealing human nature at a higher pitch than any others in the war. The trench-digging, elderly chaps are patient and long-enduring, and the fighting men are as gallant as any the ballad-mongers used to rime about.
But it is of the wounded that one would like to speak in a way to win respect for them rather than pity. I think some American observers have missed the truth about the wounded. They have told of the groaning and screaming, the heavy smells, the delays and neglect. It is a picture of vivid horror. But the final impression left on me by caring for many hundred wounded men is that of their patience and cheeriness. I think they would resent having a sordid pen picture made of their suffering and letting it go at that. After all, it is their wound: they suffered it for a purpose, and they conquer their bodily pain by will power and the Gallic touch of humor. Suffering borne nobly merits something more than an emphasis on the blood and the moan. To speak of these wounded men as of a heap of futile misery is like missing the worthiness of motherhood in the details of obstetrics.
It was thought we moderns had gone soft, but it seems we were storing up reserves of stoic strength and courage. This war has drawn on them more heavily than any former test, and they have met all its demands. Sometimes, being tired, I would drop my corner of the stretcher, a few inches suddenly. This would draw a quick intake of the breath from the hurt man and an "aahh"—but not once a word of blame. I should want to curse the careless hand that wrenched my wound, but these soldiers of France and Belgium whom I carried had passed beyond littleness.
Once we had a French Zouave officer on the stretcher. He was wounded in the right arm and the stomach. Every careen of the ambulance over cobble and into shell-hole was a thrust into his hurt. We had to carry him all the way from the Nieuport cellar to Zuydcoote Hospital, ten miles. The driver was one more of the American young men who have gone over into France to pay back a little of what we owe her. I want to give his name, Robert Cardell Toms, because it is good for us to know that we have brave and tender gentlemen. On this long haul, as always, he drove with extreme care, changing his speed without the staccato jerk, avoiding bumps and holes of the trying road. When we reached the hospital, he ran ahead into the ward to prepare the bed. The officer beckoned me to him. He spoke with some difficulty, as the effort caught him in the wound of his stomach.
"Please be good enough," he said, "to give my thanks to the chauffeur. He has driven me down with much consideration. He cares for wounded men."
Where other races are grateful and inarticulate, the French are able to put into speech the last fine touch of feeling.