Along our trenches in the field there was little to do. The dead were left for later burial by the peasants. The seriously wounded were carried back, about a third of a mile, to where two Red Cross motors waited on a cross road. Another contingent was working from some fields on our left. A full ambulance ran past us as we came out on one trip to the road. It was all done very quietly and efficiently. The only raised voices were those of two men with whom the fever of bad wounds was taking the form of the furious raving of anger.
In most cases the Turcos were stoical and silent. One or two of the more lightly wounded had only to be helped back, after the first aid had been given on the field. One of them, as he limped along with his arm round my shoulder, hissed a whispered account of the exact form of death he designed for the next German he fought. It was chiefly gesture; and the dark brown face, close to my own, with the startling white gleam of the eye, gave it an almost theatrical ferocity.
In the dark it was decided to make a further search. My car, which a soldier was dispatched to recover, was accepted to help in the task. It was a dark night, rather cold, but clear and starry. It was cheering to recognise the great planet which in Belgium we used to call the "Brussels star," because night after night Brussels used to stand in the streets watching it, never failing to recognise it as an approaching "Zeppelin." If you watch a star or lamp at night for long, it always seems to be in motion, backwards or forwards, up or down.
We crossed to where the Germans had retreated. The men carried acetylene lamps; two had electric flash-lamps, and another carried one of my car lights. It was a strange search, stumbling along the little pits of moist, cold earth in the dark. The lamps were masked, and flashed only occasionally, and downwards; and all talk was under the breath. It was uncertain that the Germans might not be somewhere near.
We stumbled upon five or six bodies, but the enemy had clearly had time to remove their wounded with them. Two, however, left for dead, had been revived by the cold of the night, and were groaning. We found them by the sound. They were back some way from the trench, in the wet grass. One had been hit behind the shoulder, presumably while he was retreating.
The dark chill of the night, with the little quick flashes of searching lights, and the mutter of occasional orders in the silence, lent additional impressiveness to the steady, business-like courage of the ambulance men. It is a work that requires very practised nerves under modern fighting conditions. None of the excitement of fighting for them, or the stimulus of "hitting back"; yet they get hit themselves often enough. These long days of furious bombardment, raking long lines of hidden positions, trench and village, must inevitably, and without intention, find shells dropping upon man, house or wagon, whose Red Cross is unseen or indistinguishable.
The greater credit to the men whose dangerous work and even occasional death can earn them no glory of individual exploit. Like the fishermen mine-trawlers in the North Sea, they are the nameless heroes of humanity on the edges of the shadow of inhuman war.
The firing began again before dawn, far to the south. When I left them, to convey two of the wounded Germans and an ambulance assistant back to the village, the surgeon and his party were getting hurriedly into two of the wagons, to follow up again behind the fighting line.
Boulogne, Friday.