"And they thought we wouldn't fight"

by Floyd Phillips Gibbons

Days later when I looked on Johnson for the first time, I asked him if he wasn't Irish, and he said no. Then I asked him where he lost his arm and he replied, "At the yoint." And then I knew where he came from.

But concerning after-the-war occupations, I endeavoured that night to contribute something in a similar vein to the general discussion, and I suggested the possibility that I might return to give lessons on the monocle.

The prize prospect, however, was submitted by a man who occupied a bed far over in one corner of the room. He was the possessor of a polysyllabic name—a name sprinkled with k's, s's and z's, with a scarcity of vowels—a name that we could not pronounce, much less remember. On account of his size we called him "Big Boy." His was a peculiar story.

He had been captured by three Germans who were marching him back to their line. In telling me the story Big Boy said, "Mr. Gibbons, I made up my mind as I walked back with them that I might just as well be dead as to spend the rest of the war studying German."

So he had struck the man on the right and the one on the left and had downed both of them, but the German in back of him, got him with the bayonet. A nerve centre in his back was severed by the slash of the steel that extended almost from one shoulder to the other, and Big Boy had fallen to the ground, his arms and legs powerless. Then the German with the bayonet robbed him. Big Boy enumerated the loss to me,—fifty-three dollars and his girl's picture.

Although paralysed and helpless, there was nothing down in the mouth about Big Boy—indeed, he provided most of the fun in the ward. He had an idea all of his own about what he was going to do after the war and he let us know about it that night.

"All of you guys have told what you're going to do," he said, "now I'm going to tell you the truth. I'm going back to that little town of mine in Ohio and go down to the grocery store and sit there on a soap box on the porch.

"Then I'm going to gather all the little boys in the neighbourhood round about me and then I'm going to outlie the G. A. R."

There was one thing in that ward that nobody could lie about and that was the twitches of pain we suffered in the mornings when the old dressings of the day before were changed and new ones applied.

The doctor and his woman assistant who had charge of the surgical dressings on that corridor would arrive in the ward shortly after breakfast. They would be wheeling in front of them a rubber-tired, white-enamelled vehicle on which were piled the jars of antiseptic gauze and trays of nickel-plated instruments, which both the doctor and his assistant would handle with rubber-gloved hands. In our ward that vehicle was known as the "Agony Cart," and every time it stopped at the foot of a bed you would be pretty sure to hear a groan or a stifled wail in a few minutes.