Meyer was cordially detested by the whole hospital staff, by reason of the contemptuous insolence of his manner. His hatred of the English was fanatical. Mme. Buquet once asked him if there was any prospect of an exchange. "Of the French, yes," he replied; "of the English, never!"
General Oberarzt Schmidt, Königliche Erste Bayrische
Reserve Corps.
General Oberarzt Schmidt, a very different type, was a tall, big-framed, and full-bodied man, large in the belly, bulging at the neck, with a pinky-red face and a large square head, bald on top, fringed with short-cut grey-blond hair. He spoke no English, and only a half-dozen words of French. It would be difficult to find an attractive feature in the face of General Oberarzt Schmidt. The large mouth which droops shapelessly to one side is decorated on the upper lip with a few clipped badly-grown blue-grey bristles. The eyes, small and shifting, are almost colourless. Whatever his true character may have been, to us at the 106 he was always courteous and well-behaved. He used to come to the Salle cinq every week, and often remained to talk to Mme. Buquet, who, owing to her fluent knowledge of German, was able to obtain from Dr Schmidt a certain amount of latitude regarding the question of the "transportables." It was thanks to Mme. Buquet that the two French captains, whose wounds were completely healed, were able to remain at 106 for several weeks after they were fit to travel.
At the Hôpital Civil, the German weekly inspection, when carried out by such men as Grigou, was a merciless visitation, and for those whose names went on the list there was no reprieve. But at the 106 we suffered from no such unreasoning severity. Doctor Schmidt was often induced to postpone the departure of any soldier really unfit for the journey.
"'Tetanus' made the night hideous with groaning and moaning, so that no one could get any sleep." This entry in my diary refers to a young Breton soldier who was isolated in a room opposite the Salle cinq. The word "room" gives a wholly wrong impression of the place where this unfortunate man had to be put. In one corner stood an old and useless bath, in another two broken bedsteads; the rough flooring was littered with rubbish. The walls had never been papered, the plaster still hung in patches, cracked and yellow with damp. A wooden partition half-way up to the ceiling divided the place off from the corridor, and thus the moans of the dying man could be heard distinctly in our room. There was no other accommodation in the hospital wherein a patient, such as this one, could be isolated. Tetanus was very common at Cambrai. We had eight cases at the Hôpital Civil, six of which died. Very little treatment could be given, as there was no anti-tetanus serum to be had. The horror of tetanus is unique, for there is no disease so insidious, so sudden in its effects, and so terrible in its end.
For three days the man lived in a semi-unconscious condition. The first evening we could hear him moaning, a low, steady, pitiful moan. About the middle of the night there was a sudden silence, then a crash, and a sound of struggling. M. Vampouille, who was on duty that night in our ward, rushed across the corridor and, by the light of a match, bent over the man's bed. It was empty! From the middle of the room came again the low moaning sound; the unfortunate man had struggled out of bed in a fit. The stitches of his leg, which was amputated above the knee, had burst, and he lay in a pool of blood. M. Vampouille's further description of the scene is too awful to dwell upon. From that evening of November 4 until the morning of November 7, almost without a stop day and night, there came from that room the most mournful lamentation, loud, deep, and sonorous, though it came through teeth clenched in the rigor of the dreadful disease. Through locked jaws and motionless lips came the sound that expressed the sole thought of his mind. There is no phrase or turn of writing that can express the pitiful, appealing, struggling effort of the dying soldier to articulate this dying call for his mother. For three days and three nights, first strong and loud, then weaker and weaker, his constant call was "Maman, Maman," expressed in this awful moaning. On the third day I went in to see him. A nurse was attempting to force some warm milk between his teeth, but with no success. It was better to let him die in peace. He did not look more than nineteen. Sweat ran in trickles down the pale face wrinkled in agony. His thick black hair fell low down over clammy forehead and temple. The blue-grey eyes stared fixed and sightless. The moaning was now low and weak, but one could hear that the call was still for "Maman, Maman." Early next morning I woke while it was still dark, sat up in bed and listened. From somewhere in the hospital there came a swishing, gurgling sound very like the whistling noise of a turbine engine. Still half asleep, I sat wondering what kind of engine it could be. When day dawned the swishing, whistling noise had ceased, and the suffering of the poor Breton boy was over. Mme. Buquet was very late in coming to the ward that morning. She told me that the last few minutes before the end were quite peaceful. M. le Vicaire-Général administered the Last Sacraments, and Captain Viguié spoke in the dying man's ear the only earthly consolation that remained: "Mon garçon, tu meurs pour la France."
In many respects life in the Salle cinq now began to be much easier. As a result of my insistent propaganda in favour of fresh air, I obtained some small concessions, and succeeded in obtaining a number of adherents to the policy of the open window. The worst cases in the ward had been taken away; those that were left gradually got better, and even No. 6 in the corner began to improve. In the afternoon I played bridge with the French captain and some other friends who used to pay me regular visits, or discussed the gossip and news of the town with Vampouille. First of all there was that most excellent M. Herbin, a big, strong, hearty man, certainly well past fifty, with honest brown eyes that looked you straight in the face, showing that his heart was in the right place, as the saying is. My friend was a man of few words. "Allons, mon pauvre vieux, ça va bien hein! la santé?" "Très bien, mon cher ami." "Tant mieux. Tant mieux." And the Boches? We used to talk of them.
Cambrai was like a city stricken by the plague. Most of the shops had their shutters up. No one went abroad for pleasure, one stayed at home these days; and the "place publique," with its German military band which played every day at 4 o'clock, the café where one used to take the evening "Pernod"—such places were now the haunt of the Boche.
M. Herbin owned a draper's shop, his speciality was ready-made clothes, and his business was practically at an end. At the time there was very little cash in circulation at Cambrai. Notes for 1, 2, and 5 francs were issued by the Town and the Chamber of Commerce, with an inscription stating that "this note will be cashed by the Chamber of Commerce 100 days after the signature of peace." The German usually paid for everything with "bons de réquisition." These vouchers were guaranteed by the German Government only when stamped by the Kommandantur.