We all knew what it meant. So did the man. When he got the medal, he knew too. He knew there wasn’t any hope. I held the medal before him, after the General had gone, in its red plush case. It looked cheap, somehow. The exchange didn’t seem even. He pushed it aside with a contemptuous hand sweep, a disgusted shrug.
“I’ve seen these things before!” he exclaimed. We all had seen them too. We all knew about them, he and the doctor, and the General and I. He knew and understood, most of all. And his tone was bitter.
After that, he knew the doctor couldn’t save him, and that he should not see his wife and children again. Whereupon he became angry with the treatment, and protested against it. The picqures hurt—they hurt very much, and he did not want them. Moreover, they did no good, for his pain was now very intense, and he tossed and tossed to get away from it.
So the third day dawned, and he was alive, and dying, and knew that he was dying. Which is unusual and disconcerting. He turned over and over, and black fluid vomited from his mouth into the white enamel basin. From time to time, the orderly emptied the basin, but always there was more, and always he choked and gasped and knit his brows in pain. Once his face broke up as a child’s breaks up when it cries. So he cried in pain and loneliness and resentment.
He struggled hard to hold on. He wanted very much to live, but he could not do it. He said: “Je ne tiens plus.”
Which was true. He couldn’t hold on. The pain was too great. He clenched his hands and writhed, and cried out for mercy. But what mercy had we? We gave him morphia, but it did not help. So he continued to cry to us for mercy, he cried to us and to God. Between us, we let him suffer eight hours more like that, us and God.
Then I called the priest. We have three priests on the ward, as orderlies, and I got one of them to give him the Sacrament. I thought it would quiet him. We could not help him with drugs, and he had not got it quite in his head that he must die, and when he said, “I am dying,” he expected to be contradicted. So I asked Capolarde to give him the Sacrament, and he said yes, and put a red screen around the bed, to screen him from the ward. Then Capolarde turned to me and asked me to leave. It was summer time. The window at the head of the bed was open, the hay outside was new cut and piled into little haycocks. Over in the distance the guns rolled. As I turned to go, I saw Capolarde holding a tray of Holy Oils in one hand, while with the other he emptied the basin containing black vomitus out the window.
No, it did not bring him comfort, or resignation. He fought against it. He wanted to live, and he resented Death, very bitterly. Down at my end of the ward—it was a silent, summer afternoon—I heard them very clearly. I heard the low words from behind the screen.
“Dites: ‘Dieu je vous donne ma vie librement pour ma patrie’” (God, I give you my life freely for my country). The priests usually say that to them, for death has more dignity that way. It is not in the ritual, but it makes a soldier’s death more noble. So I suppose Capolarde said it. I could only judge by the response. I could hear the heavy, laboured breath, the choking, wailing cry.
“Oui! Oui!” gasped out at intervals. “Ah mon Dieu! Oui!”