They are all men from Verdun, wounded eight or fifteen days ago, who have been moved from one to another hospital of the Front. They do not want to talk about it. They want to just lie still with their eyes closed—except the one who screams, the 24.
The 24 screams and screams. He also has had a leg amputated. He is perhaps twenty years old. He is a big blonde boy. He clutches the bars of the top of the bed with his two hands, and drags all his rigid weight upon his hands, and screams, with wide-open eyes that stare and stare.
Also the man wounded in the head, the Number 6, lies with his eyes wide staring open and like glass. He has a colonial medal that I do not know, and the Croix de Guerre. They do not yet know if he can speak or not. Madame Marthe told me while she was washing her hands at the chariot that he may live quite long.
She said, "The chief is coming to see the wounds, we must cut all the dressings. Take your scissors, and begin to the right of the door."
The Chéchia, Monday, May 15th
I suppose because to-day the sunshine is happy, Charles, the little 11, who has been in his bed in the corner since the days of the Marne, has taken a fancy to have all his things got ready for him in case he wants to go out. He says that any day now he may be wanting to go out.
He is of the ler Zouaves, and it is a red cap he must have, a chéchia. Nobody knows what became of his, it is so long since he had worn it. He never thought of it himself until to-day. But to-day he thinks of nothing else.
Number 10 and Number 12—new these last days—say he waked them up talking about it. When Madame Marthe came on at six o'clock he beckoned to her at the door, and when she came, he whispered—did she think he might ask the American for it?
He was very red when he asked me, and then very white, and his hands clasped and unclasped.