His convalescents can bask and promenade on the ramparts in the winter sunshine, and stroll healthfully through the groves and about the paths of the area. In the wide level, grassy, moat-basin the orderlies play their football matches and the C.O. takes his revolver practice.
The ghastliness of the wards is all out of harmony with this. There is a gas-ward, hideously filled—blackened faces above the ever-restless coverlets. The surgical wards in a station so near the line hold the grimmest cases—cases too critical for movement down to a base: head wounds, abdominal wounds, spinal cases that can bear transport no farther, and that have almost no hope of recovery as it is. Men plead piteously here for the limbs that a cruelly-kind surgeon can do nothing with but amputate. "Doctor, I've lost the arm; that won't be so bad if you'll only leave the leg." The plea is usually put in this form, which implies the power of choice in the M.O. between alternatives; whereas the gangrenous limb leaves him no room for debate.
In a station so close, too, the operating-theatre cannot afford to be either small or idle—no mere cubicle with two tables; but two large wards with six tables each, and (when a push has been made in the line) with every table in use late in the night: a bloody commentary on the righteousness of war.
CHAPTER IV
THE CAFÉ DU PROGRÈS
The Café de Progrès stands in the Rue de —— half-way down to the river. It's the place where merchants most do congregate. The manager of the Banque de —— leads them. The place that the first bank manager in the town frequents daily is thereby given a tone which no other café in D—— can have. So it is the first among the lounging-places only. That leads to a rough division of all the cafés in the town into two great classes: those you lounge and drink in, and those to which you go for a meal. In the one you will see the French relaxing (there are some rich "retired" gentlemen who do nothing but relax); in the other you will see the English officer satisfying his hunger more or less incontinently. Need I say which is the place of interest?
Our favourite seat used to be upon a small dais in recess overlooking the billiard-table immediately and the whole room generally. Its only disadvantage was that it did not overlook that other recess—separated from it by a partition—in which Thérèse mixed the drinks and brewed the coffee.
The billiard-table occupied one-half the room; the other half centred round the stove. The tables were arranged in concentric circles about it. The regular denizens of the place—the men who lived there—would, during the snow, come early, occupy the innermost circle of tables, and omit to move out until sundown. And sometimes they would stay far into the night. The retired business-man is more amenable to a sense of cosiness than any other mortal of his age. He would get Thérèse to bring him snacks—they were not meals—at intervals during the day. And there he would settle himself, with his boon companions, for twelve hours on end.