"While at battle of Luneville, with troop of about forty men stormed battery, capturing them, for which decorated with Iron Cross. Shifted to Carpathians. After march in severe cold, fingers and feet frozen."
"While in France attacking I was hit in head by shrapnel. In hospital fourteen days, then sent to Carpathians on December 7 with Austro-Hungarian troops. Wounded in arm and while creeping back hit five times in fifteen minutes. Lay all afternoon in trenches."
"I think those are the three who came in together one night, all singing 'Die Wacht am Rhein'; they all had the Iron Cross. They were a noisy lot. They all got well and went back to the front again."
Here were three pictures from the Galician fighting: "Wounded by shrapnel near Przemysl, bandaged by comrade, and helped to house; only occupant old woman. Lay on straw two days, no food. Called to men passing; they had me moved in cart seventy miles to hospital. Stayed eight days; started on train, then taken off for three days, then to Budapest."
"During fighting at Lupkow Pass I was wounded by two pistol-shots. First one, fired by Russian officer, hit me in chest. Ran back to my company and in darkness taken by one of our officers for Russian and shot in arm."
"While digging trenches struck by a rifle-bullet in two places. Lay in trench two hours when found by Russian infantrymen, who hurriedly dressed me and put me out of firing-range on horse blanket in old trench. Later found by our soldiers, carried to base, and dressed there, then to field-hospital, then in cart to railroad station. Went few kilometres by train, but became so ill had to be taken off for two days, then sent to Budapest. Seventeen days. Two months in hospital; returned to front."
"We called that man 'professor,'" said the nurse. "He was a teacher of some sort. There was a boy here at the same time, a Pole, but he could speak English: just out of the university—Cracow, I think. He was in Serbia, and was shot through the temple; he lost the sight of both eyes."
Several in the Serbian fighting had struck river mines. One, who had been ordered to proceed across the River Save near Sabac, remarked that he was "told afterward" they had struck a floating mine and that seven were killed and thirteen wounded. The Serbian campaign was not pleasant. The Serbians do not hold up their hands, as the big, childlike Russians sometimes seem to have done. They fight as long as they can stand. Then there was disease and lack of medical supplies and service. '"They came in covered with mud and with fractures done up with twigs—just as they had been dressed on the field. Sometimes a fractured hip would be bound with a good-sized limb from a tree reaching all the way from the man's feet to his waist."
Yet the wonder is what nature and the tough constitutions of these young men will do with intelligent help. We came to what they call a "face case." "Wounded November 4 in Galicia by rifle-fire on right side of face and right hand; dressed by comrade, then lost consciousness until arrived here. ('He probably means,' explained the nurse, 'that he was delirious and didn't realize the time.') Physical examination—right side of face blown away; lower jaw broken into several pieces, extending to left side; teeth on lower jaw loose; part of upper jaw gone, and tongue exposed. Infected. Operated—several pieces of lower jaw removed and two pieces wired together in front."
From the desk drawer the nurse picked out several photographs—X-ray pictures of little round shrapnel bullets embedded in flesh, of bone splintered by rifle-bullets and shot through the surrounding flesh as if they had been exploded; one or two black feet cut off above the ankles; one of a group of convalescents standing on the hospital steps.