Which helped me, not him.
After the dressings are over we scrub the dishes and basins in the annexe.
In the annexe, except that there is nothing to sit on, there is leisure and an invitation to reflection.
Beneath the windows legions of white butterflies attack the cabbage-patch which divides us from the road; beyond the road there is a camp from which the dust flows all day.
When the wind is from the north the dust is worse than ever and breaks like a surf over the cabbages, while the butterflies try to rise above it; but they never succeed, and dimly one can see the white wings beating in the whirlpool.
I shall never look at white butterflies again without hearing the sounds from the camp, without seeing the ring of riders, without thinking, perhaps, of the dairyman and of the other "dairymen."
The butterflies do not care for noise. When, standing beside the cabbage-patch, the bugler blows the dinner-bugle, they race in a cloud to the far corner and hover there until the last note is sounded.
I think it is I who am wrong when I consider the men as citizens, as persons of responsibility, and the Sister right when she says "the boys."
Taken from their women, from their establishments, as monks or boys or even sheep are housed, they do not want, perhaps, to be reminded of an existence to which they cannot return; until a limb is off, or the war ends.
To what a point they leave their private lives behind them! To what a point their lives are suspended....