Never did I see a man cling more passionately to life, and never had one stronger motives for so doing; but never again did I see a man so ill and yet so incredulous of his danger. Now in the stillness of this Christmas night I come to his bedside to see him die. For days and nights I have helped him all in my power; I have denied him nothing that I could give him; and he has always been so gentle and affectionate that every trouble I took for him was truly a pleasure. He speaks French and English fluently, is a graduate of the University of Bonn, and is young and good-looking. All through his illness he has had one thought in his mind, and that was his mother. He now complains of excessive weariness and pains in every part of his body. He is an Evangelical, and at my request the clergyman had visited him late that evening. I speak to him in a low voice, and tell him that I fear he is not better. It appears that his last efforts at speaking have been too much for him; he is now too weak and prostrate to do more than gasp out something about his mother, home, and Fatherland. Now his lips quiver, now they cease to move, and a cold sweat stands out in large beads over his face. I smoothe his pillow and wipe his forehead, as I had often done before.
This makes him alive to the fact that I am in my old place at his bedside. He takes my hand, presses it feebly in his, looks earnestly into my face, and becomes again unconscious. By this time several of the Sisters and one or two of the infirmarians have assembled around the bed of the dying man. For some minutes the brave fellow remains motionless; his breathing becomes shorter and shorter; when suddenly he starts convulsively forward, and makes an effort as it were to rise; his eyes, which are now fixed and glassy, stare out with a vacant expression, and he falls back heavily a corpse. As we gaze for a second, the old tower clock strikes the hour, the sentinel on watch cries out in reply to the challenge of his superior officer who is on his rounds, "One o'clock and all's well". Yes—all is well,—only a poor soldier has given up his life into the hands of his Maker, for his country's cause. One more German mother has lost her son,—one more German heart is desolate.
Not many minutes elapse before the fair youth of yesterday is lifted on a brancard, or stretcher, and conveyed to the dead-house. Here the bearers tumble the body on the cold shiny floor and leave it until morning, when the mayor's cart will convey it and the other lifeless remains in that ghastly chamber, to the brink of a deep pit at the back of the church, and into that they will be roughly heaved. A little quicklime will be thrown in, then a little earth; and the burial ceremony is over. Thus the scene closes for this brave lad, who was my friend as well as my patient. "Dulce et decorum est," wrote Horace. Here is the reality of that boast.
Having seen that all is quiet again, I return to my fireside in the sacristy. When I am once more in my cosy chair, the details of what I have witnessed,—to such scenes,—alas, I am now accustomed,—pass from my thoughts, and are replaced by others of a different and more agreeable nature. The little bunch of holly which is set above the Tabernacle on the High Altar reminds me that it is Christmas morning; the glow of the burning wood brings before me the recollection of that bright fireside at home across the water; and as my eyelids gradually close, many a well-known and much loved face appears before me as if to cheer me in this solitude.
I have slept thus for nearly two hours, when my pleasant dreams are put to flight for the second time by the infirmarian of the watch, who tells me in an excited manner that a young Bavarian soldier is bleeding profusely from the mouth, and cannot live if I delay many minutes. I despatch a messenger in haste to call Dr. May; and another second takes me to the bedside of the dying man.
This patient, a young Bavarian, has been shot through the open mouth. Curiously enough, the ball had traversed the substance of the tongue from apex to base, and had buried itself in the back of the throat, from which position it has hitherto been impossible to get it removed.
At once I compress the common artery of the neck with my thumbs, and while thus supporting him, kneeling up behind him in bed, I am able for the time being almost to stop the blood completely. But when I look into the basin that is placed beside me on a stool, I perceive to my horror that it is half full of what appears to be pure blood. I now ask the infirmarian why he had not made me aware of the fact, and called me sooner. He answers that some five minutes previously the sick man had sat up in bed, and had been, as he thought, very sick in his stomach. By the extremely faint light he had not perceived that what the sick man was ejecting was blood. Immediately upon discovering the true state of things, he had come for me.
In a few minutes Dr. May arrives; but he and I are both too late. The man becomes ghastly pale, and writhes as if in a fit, then he is still for an instant, and sinks heavily and without life into my arms.
A momentary feeling of sadness comes upon me, while I gaze on the remains of that unhappy young man, the victim of such an awful, such an unnatural death! But I must quickly repress my feelings; I have to see that these sleepy fellows remove the body, change the bedding, and clean the blood from the floor, so as to make way for another, who will at once occupy the place that has been thus left empty.