Captivity and Escape

by Jean Martin

CHAPTER I

I WAS hit, I was conscious of being hit, and yet had not heard the bursting of the shell that caused my wound. I had an impression of my feet being violently swept from the ground, and then of my falling down heavily. I was overcome with a sense of paralysis. My legs were stiff and powerless. I felt them tingling.

I did not lose consciousness, however, and saw all that was surrounding me; there, a few paces away, was a dead horse, shattered by the shell that had struck me. Convinced that I was cut in two by the shell and hit in the region of the stomach, I believed I was destined to die where I was in a very short while.

The shells and bullets continued to rain, to whistle, to burst all around me, till at last I wished one of them would come and put an end to my sufferings, shortening the agony under which I was powerless. I had, nevertheless, kept the use of my arms, and after a long and painful effort succeeded in unbuckling the straps of my valise, the weight of which was crushing my back. Relieved by this, I began, to the sound of the shrapnel, to think of those dear to me, to whom I felt that I must in spirit say a last good-bye. That I was going to die, I had not a shadow of doubt. I must be frightfully wounded, and it was impossible for me to reach the small packet of first-aid dressing that perhaps would have stopped the hæmorrhage that was weakening me.

It was about five o’clock in the afternoon. I tried to imagine what my own people were doing at that hour. I thought of those who had been living close to where I had fallen—of those whose sons were being sacrificed—of those who, farther away and unaware of the French retreat, were still enjoying the soothing spectacle of a calm, blue sea—of all my relatives, parents, friends, and I rejoiced to think I should not have lived in vain, if the gift of my life served to protect them against the fury of these barbarous hordes, and spared them the sight of the atrocities of this war, which our enemies have wilfully made so horrible. Then my anxiety increased in regard to my young brother, who fought in my section. I had lost sight of him at the beginning of the engagement. From a plain soldier I had been promoted to section-leader, and had taken the place of our lieutenant who was disabled.

I could still hear the cries and groans of my wounded comrades, but, at least, I had no longer the terrible sight of those boys whom I loved and with whom I had lived for a year or two, who, wounded, had been obliged to remain under fire in a bare, unsheltered plain, without any relief to their suffering. What had become of my brother I did not know. At each advance made by our soldiers, it was possible for me, by throwing a rapid glance behind, to note the thinning of the line, but I was unable to say who had fallen and who remained.

I do not know why, but, being wounded myself, it seemed to me that, in spite of the great losses sustained by my section, my brother must be safe and sound. I made the following reflections: “The chances of falling or of escaping seem to be equal. I am wounded; therefore my brother is not”—absurd reasoning, but I wanted to believe in it. And I was glad, as much as it was possible to be glad while life and strength were ebbing away with my blood, that it was I who was stricken.

How long these reflections lasted I do not know, for a minute seemed centuries, and what I took for a long train of reasoning perhaps passed through my troubled mind in a second.