It was the wildest confusion, but its impressions were absolutely photographic. I can see it all, again, this moment.
The Prussians were finally obliged to retire to their reserve trenches. We took their firing trench, but had to vacate it because it was subject to an enfilading fire from the enemy. As we retreated in company squads, we kept up a steady fire.
While making for our trenches, I shouted to one of the fellows on my left to keep down as we were drawing the enemy’s fire. The sentence was hardly completed, when something hot struck me on the left jaw. It seemed as if I had been hit with a sledge hammer. I spun round, stumbled, and fell to the ground. I realized that it was a bullet and tried to swear at the boches, but all I could do was to spit and cough, for the blood was almost choking me. The bullet, entering my cheek and shattering some of my teeth in passing, made its exit by way of my mouth. My warning, however, had saved the life of the lad I had shouted to. He flopped to the ground just in time to avoid a sweep of machine-gun fire, and managed to crawl to our trench, which was a very short distance off.
I was sent to the regimental dressing station. There were scores there more seriously wounded than I, and they were, of course, attended to first. By the time it was my turn, my face was so completely smeared with congealed blood that the orderly couldn’t locate the wound. He wiped my face with a bunch of grass and applied a dressing. I was relieved to hear that it was a clean wound.
In the dressing station, suffering as I was, I noticed two men forcibly controlling a wounded comrade. After a moment I recognized him as the little recruit who had prayed that the Germans might not pass the wire and come to bayonet fighting with us. His features were so changed that he seemed aged a dozen years and—believe it or not, as you will—his hair, which had been sleek and black, was entirely white. He had been only slightly wounded but the heavy bombardment had driven him entirely mad. He was continually crying for his mother. I afterward learned that he and his mother, who was blind, had lived together and had been warmly devoted to each other, but at the outbreak of the war, his mother felt it her duty to send him to fight. The boy recovered his mental faculties a month or two after being sent home.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After the first dressing of my wound, I was sent to our transport station, a short distance behind the lines, being told that in a few days I would be fit for duty again. There was a farm here. By the time I reached the farm house the pain of my wound was terrific. It was like a toothache all over my head and down into my neck and shoulders. Nevertheless, I threw myself onto a pile of straw in the barn and, after tossing about a while, managed to fall asleep.
When I awoke it was daylight again, the entire night having passed. Leaning over me was a little French girl—she must have been about eight years old—with a pitcher of milk, which she held out toward me. In spite of the condition of my mouth, I managed to swallow the milk. I was almost starved and very weak. I tried to persuade the little girl to accept a franc for the milk, but she shook her head, and skipped off. Following her out of the barn, I met her mother to whom, also, I offered payment; she, too, refused it.