"What will you do afterwards, my soldier?"
"That is as God wills, madame. Who knows? Can I even know where I shall be a week hence? All I want now is to get back to my regiment. To the front." With a military salute he left me.
At the hospital they were very busy. About 180 had just arrived from the great battle in Champagne; almost all wounded in the legs, many with only one to limp on.
"How comes it," I asked, "that you are all injured in the legs?"
"That is simple," answered a cheery looking fellow, "the boches just turned the mitrailleuses on us, like a man playing a hose on the lawn, but low down you see, so it caught us in the knees mostly. However, we have hands and arms still—a man can do a lot with them, even if he must have false legs or use crutches."
One pale, emaciated fellow said: "Madame, would you help me to the window to look at the sea. I have never seen it, and since, in July, I was wounded with 34 eclats d'obus (34 shell wounds) they have promised me, I should come to that great wonder, the sea!"
As I put my arm under his skeleton one, felt how thin and bony it was, looked at his poor pale young face and tried to realize what life in the future held for this battered young creature, my soul felt sick within me at all this useless waste and destruction. He did not complain, this little soldier. He only wanted to look on the cold northern ocean, which he had never before seen. The future was for him perhaps as gray, as cheerless, as sad, but, however despairing his thoughts may have been, he did not speak them. He did not whimper. Once for all he had given his all for France, and now in his feebleness he counted on kind souls to help him. Hundreds, nay thousands like him exist today, all over this sad old continent of Europe, vigorous young men now condemned forever to the dull and painful existence of a cripple. One hears on all sides of the courage and self-sacrifice of both the French and English Roman Catholic priests, how they cheer and encourage the men, bringing peace to the dying, nursing the wounded, holding services within the firing line, showing by example the highest patriotism.
An officer belonging to Nantes, in a letter to his wife on September 20th, describes a moving ceremony he had attended that morning:
"At 8 o'clock I heard a Mass said by the chaplain of the —th Territorials, a plank had been nailed up between two trees, and behind had been placed some leafy branches the best that our men could do under the circumstances. The chaplain began by addressing us a few words in which he told us that God would make allowance whilst work was being done for France; that he could not hear all our confessions, and that we should, therefore, make an act of contrition and a firm purpose of confessing our faults as soon as possible.
"All the 300 of us then signed that we wished to be included in the general absolution, which he gave us. After he exhorted all to receive the Holy Communion, which he would give us as he passed along the trenches. He then began the Mass, which was served by a lieutenant. Shells were bursting over-head as the Mass continued and during his short address after the Gospel. Never had I heard more fervent singing. At the Communion half of our number went up to the altar to receive, some with tears in their eyes, what was to many their Viaticum. The ceremony will be to me an unforgetable memory and a sweet consolation."