"Are you not coming too?"
"No, mon lieutenant, I am not wounded."
"Good-night, then, and good luck."
I wait another hour. The ridge is still being held, otherwise the Germans would be here. I don't know where to put myself so as not to be in the way. I feel worse than I should with a bullet in my skin, but a sick man, surrounded by others suffering from bleeding wounds, must be aware that he is a bore and a nuisance.
An infantry sergeant, who has just been brought down on a stretcher, has a gaping wound in the abdomen, caused by a shell explosion. He wears a calm though sad expression, and scarcely seems to suffer at all; he simply turns his eyes to right and left, watching the movements of the attendant who is dressing the wound.
All the time cries and calls are heard alternating with the crash of explosions.
"You stretcher-bearers, go and fetch a cook who has just lost both his legs, close to the wash-house."
"And you others, don't stay in the yard; you'll get killed."
"The wounded, as they enter, must leave their rifles at the street-door."