"You cannot go out on this road," he said.
"We will be back before you know it," pleaded Hilda. "We will bring back your wounded. Let me show you."
"Report to me on your way back," he ordered. "My name is Fitzgerald, Captain Fitzgerald."
They rode on. All down the road, straggled wounded men, three miles of them limped, they held up a red hand, they carried a shattered arm in a sling. There was blood on their faces. They walked with bowed head, tired.
"These are the lucky ones," said Woffington, "they only got scotched."
That was the famous battle of Ypres. Of the dead there were more than the mothers of a countryside could replace in two generations. But death is war's best gift. War's other gifts are malicious—fever and plague, and the maiming of strength, and the fouling of beauty—shapely bodies tortured to strange forms, eager young faces torn away. Death is choicer than that, a release from the horror of life trampled like a filthy weed.
"Mons was a birthday party to this," said a Tommy to Hilda. "They're expecting too much of us. The whole thing is put on us to do, and it takes a lot of doing."
Dr. McDonnell and Woffington loaded the car with the severest of the cases, and returned to the white house of the Officer. He was waiting for them, grim, attentive.
Hilda flung up the hood:—two Tommies at length on the stretchers on one side of the car; opposite them, seven Tommies in a row with hand, arm, foot, leg, shoulder, neck and breast wounds. It was too good a piece of rescue work to be strangled with Red Tape. The Officer could not refrain from a smile of approval.
"You may work along this road," he said, "but look out for the other officers. They will probably stop you. But, remember, my permission holds good only for to-day. Then you must go back. This isn't according to regulations. Now, go on to the hospital."