Twenty-six beds and ten stretcher beds all left empty.
Every one is gone, except little Charles who is dying, and 14, whose arm has just been amputated. I don't know where they are gone. Some to the Maison Blanche and some to St. Maurice, some to their dépôts, some to country hospitals. The patronne has had no time to tell me where they are gone. When she has time she will have forgotten, and cannot trouble to look up the lists of them. Madame Marthe does not know. She does not care. She is used to it.
But I—I am not used to it. I have loved them. I had nursed them so long, and done so many odds and ends of things for them, silly things and tragic things. I had helped them to get well. Really and truly I had helped them to get well. I had been so happy to have helped them. And now I do not know what has become of them.
Hospital—Arrival, Saturday, 6th
They are very tired. They want to be let alone. They do not care what happens to them, or to the little queer odds and ends of things in their bundles.
They were bathed in the admission room; Madame Marthe and Madame Alice were called there. Madame Madeline threw out their dirty torn clothes, and the boots of those who had boots, to Madame Bayle in the hall.
Madame Bayle made Joseph take all that away, and gave me each man's own little things to put on the night table of his bed, his képi and his béret, if it were not lost, a pipe, a tobacco pouch, perhaps a big nickel watch, some letters, the photograph of a girl or an old woman, a purse with a few sous in it. Several of them have medals, the Croix de Guerre and the military medal, and one had a chaplet that I had to hide under the photograph of an old woman in her best bonnet. "Number 9," says Madame Bayle, "Number 16, Number 8," and dumps the poor little handfuls of things into my apron.
"All your things are here," I say to the men, "look, Monsieur 8, I have put them so on the table. I will move the table to the other side because of your arm. Little Alpin, here is your béret hung on the knob at the top of the bed, waiting for you to go out into Paris. And you, my little one, here are your two medals, I pin them to the edge of your chart. How proud you must be!"
But he does not care at all. He is a little young child, of the class 16. He has a round, boy face and big, round, blue eyes like a child's. He only wants to lie with his eyes shut. He is the number 3. His right leg is amputated, and his left foot is in plaster.