But they forced him back lest he would bleed to death. In the hospital they told him that now he might go home.
“Go home!” he cried. “Go home for the loss of a left hand! I’m not left-handed. Maybe I can’t carry a gun, but I can throw hand grenades!”
He went to the Major and the Major said also that he must go home.
The boy looked him straight in the eye:
“Excuse me, Major, saying I won’t. But I won’t let go your coat till you say I can stay,” and finally the Major had to give in and let him stay. He could not resist such pleading.
One poor fellow, wounded in his abdomen, was lying on a litter in a most uncomfortable position suffering awful pain. The lassie came near and asked if she could do anything for him. He told her he wanted to lie on his stomach, but the doctor, when she asked him, said “No” very shortly and told her he must lie on his back. She stooped and turned him so that his position was more comfortable, put his gas mask under his head, rolled his blanket so as to support his shoulders better, and turned to go to another, and the poor suffering lad opened his eyes, held out his hand and smiled as she went away.
The doctors said to the girls: “It is wonderful to have you around.”
The Red Cross men and their rolling kitchens came to the front, but no women. Somehow in pain and sickness no hand can sooth like a woman’s. Perhaps God meant it to be so. Here at Morte Fontaine was the first time a woman had ever worked in a field hospital.
The Salvation Army women worked all that drive.
It was a sad time, though, for the division went in to stay until they lost forty-five hundred men, but it stayed two days after reaching that figure and lost about seventy-five thousand.