“Yes,” answers the medical officer, at work at the other end of the barn. “Have you exposed the wounds?”
“Yes, Monsieur le Major.”
Oh yes, they are fully exposed. So is the wounded man! He had nothing on when he was brought in beyond a shirt and trousers. Now his shirt lacks an arm and most of the back, while his trousers have but one leg! Poor devils, whom the panic of retreat and the orderly’s knife have reduced to this condition. Such men as these may well speak of “havoc.”
And if the field hospital is in the hands of the enemy, the patients in this condition will have to endure two or three days of railway travelling, slowly jolted along in the foreigner’s cattle trucks.
Just now I was talking about our new comrades. They had known the extremity of wretchedness. Two or three weeks had passed. There they were, behind the curtain of Bavarian bayonets, standing on their own feet, their clothing a little worn; but they were full of pluck, and, considering everything, almost gay. Doubtless a Frenchman might see reason for surprise at their equipment, for this was somewhat unusual. But no German could find anything to laugh at; he could not but feel that he was looking at true French soldiers. I was grateful to our comrades for the spirit and ingenuity which had enabled them, by the use of chance expedients, to assume a military, a French aspect, under the eyes of the enemy. In certain conditions, coquetry is heroic.
Dominating the troop was a gigantic chasseur d’Afrique whose appearance drew the most indolent in the fort to look at him. Seen close at hand, he was simply a foot soldier of the 146th, from Toul, who had cut himself a chéchia [elongated fez] out of a red trouser-leg. Beside him was a dragoon, sporting an extremely elegant police-cap manufactured from the same cloth. A chasseur alpin partially concealed beneath his ample cloak a perfectly new pair of greenish trousers, bought from a sutler through the hospital gate at Ingolstadt. A colonial infantryman of the 6th, from Tarare, who had received a horrible wound in the shoulder, had a linesman’s coat and an artilleryman’s trousers. It was only his red-anchored képi, saved from the general wreck, which revealed him to be a marine. I regret to say that some of our warriors wore peaceful-looking civilian caps of grey cloth which would have given an unsoldierly appearance to Ney himself.
Nevertheless, this debris of broken regiments, rigged out at haphazard as it arrived from the battlefield, soiled, torn, and deplorable odds and ends collected from the abandoned slaughter-houses and thrown pell-mell into transport wagons, had now an appearance that was far from being filthy or wretched. Besides, the men were smiling.
On the other hand, the soldiers who come here direct from the battlefield are far from smiling! Their brains are filled with terrible visions. They anticipate cunning tortures. They are astonished that their throats have not yet been cut. I was struck by their aspect as of hunted beasts when the gate of the fort was opened wide to admit them.
I call to mind one of my comrades, an officer in the medical service. His red cross armlet protected him. Upon the roof of the field hospital he had with his own hands conspicuously unfurled the great neutral flag. I remember the circumstances perfectly. The cannonade had ceased. Our ears, which for three successive hours had been deafened by an infernal noise, were astonished by this sudden, palpitating, and immense silence. The men of our regiment, sent forward on a bayonet charge across the open, had been mowed down in masses. The survivors retreated in headless, incoherent, almost indifferent groups. While this was in progress I saw some of the men pause, quietly strike the plum-trees with their rifles, fill their mouths and their pockets with the unripe fruit, and continue on their way with the same careless gait as if at manœuvres. But the Prussians were in hot pursuit. We saw them advancing in regular order, close at hand, at first in open formation, and subsequently by sections. They halted, fired, bounded forward, fired again. Repeatedly they fired upon our field hospital, where the flood of bleeding flesh overflowed into the little garden behind the house. Dzing, dzing. Their bullets cannoned among our utensils, broke off limbs from the little fruit trees shading our wounded, and sometimes covered the poor hungry fellows with plum branches.
The whole of our staff was at work, and the work was overwhelming, utterly disproportionate to the equipment and the personnel. Yet it was all the better, for excessive labour blinds us to danger. When the body is utterly exhausted, this reacts upon the mind, which becomes dull and insensible, so that imagination is paralysed. No doubt when, all of a sudden, quite close to your ears, a passing bullet utters its sharp but gentle flute-like note, the mind starts and rears like a frightened horse. It is invaded by a flow of precise and positive thoughts of self-preservation. But this is for a moment only. The act upon which you are engaged is mechanically finished, and there you are at your post, just as before. Heroism? The word is too lofty. It is better to say simply that action is a vice which holds the mind in its powerful grip and prevents reflection. In actual warfare, all ordinary men are worth pretty much the same; all are, as circumstances vary, equally cowardly or equally courageous. But the leaders are different. I am now of opinion that the true leaders, those to whose troops panic is unknown, are those who never abandon their men’s minds to themselves even for a moment, who keep these minds permanently occupied, concentrated upon the immediate vision of some simple and direct action which has to be performed.