Wounded and a Prisoner of War, by an Exchanged Officer

by Malcolm V. Hay

It is a common failing of human nature to feel comforted at the sight of other people's misfortune. So it was that the sight of a French soldier who had been shot in the head aroused in me not only the interest of pity, but also, I must confess, a sense of superiority at finding some one worse off than myself. Jean was the name we called him by. No one knew his real name or his regiment, or the place where he was born, or any details of how he had been wounded. His wound in the head was on the left side, almost exactly in the same place as my own—the bullet had made the same furrow, all the symptoms were identical, the right leg dragging, the right arm hanging, the slow elephantine movement; but there was a difference, said Dr Debu, between the two points of impact. In the case of Jean the impact of the bullet was a hair's-breadth more to the front of the head, only the difference of perhaps a tenth of a millimetre. And so it was that poor Jean had lost not only the power of motion on the right side, but also speech, memory, and understanding.

A Ward at the "106."

All these faculties might return in time (doctors are optimists par métier), but at present understanding was limited to questions of the most primitive order—cold and heat, hunger and thirst; speech to a moan which signified no; memory to events of the past forty-eight hours, so that Jean knew nothing of the war, of his regiment, of his home; his face with his dropped jaw and vacant look was already the face of an idiot.

One morning in the refectory Jean fell off his chair on to the floor, grew purple in the face and foamed at the mouth. Urgent messengers flew off to fetch Dr Debu, and we all thought it was the end of Jean, until my nurse of the Salle cinq suggested epileptic fits, an opinion which was subsequently ratified by the doctor's verdict, "epilepsie Jacksonienne." Jean did not appear again in the yard until nearly a fortnight after this incident, and his place on the bench in the sun was taken by another whose name, according to his own statement, was "Mahamed, son of Mahamed."

Mahamed was still limping badly from a shot wound in the calf. He did not look more than nineteen, and came from near Oran. His knowledge of French was confined to "Merci le Madam," with a shining smile, and "Alleman grand cochon."

Mahamed, having discovered my knowledge of a few words of his native tongue and my acquaintance with his native country, followed me about like a shadow. For many months his feelings had perforce been suppressed, and now presuming too greatly on my supposed fluency in Arabic conversation, the poor fellow sat on the little bench in the sun pouring out his story.

We had the story nearly every day, and I began to put bits of it together. Of one thing he was quite certain, namely, that the "Alleman" was a pig and son of a pig, and that his other ancestors were of most infamous repute. In the mixed lingo of the bench, the same declaration was made every day at the close of the sitting, when the sun went behind the high wall: "Alleman no bon, kif kif cochon Yhoudi ben Yhoudi, Sheitan ben Sheitan, Halouf ben Halouf."

"Ça c'est tout de même vrai," said Picard the one-legged, patting his stump thoughtfully and pulling volcanoes of smoke from his clay pipe. "Alleman kif kif cochon." "Le Boche voyez vous," said Picard, addressing the bench party, which was slowly moving back to hospital, "le Boche ça a des petits yeux de cochon, c'est blanc et rose, comme le cochon, ça mange.... Ah, les Boches Halouf ben Halouf," and Picard hurriedly finished his discourse out of respect for M. le Vicaire-General, who had just joined the group.

"Bonjour, M. le Vicaire, you're just in time," I said. "Nous disions du mal de notre prochain." "Il n'y a pas de mal à ça, Monsieur le Curé," interrupted Picard, "puisque nous ne parlions que des Boches." "Voyons, M. le Curé," this aggressively, "the Gospel tells us to love our enemies. Do you love the Boches?" This question, and the spirit in which it was asked, was significant of the new atmosphere which had begun to permeate the Salle cinq after the arrival of the French soldier who had declared himself an enemy of fresh air. Gradually this man's evil influence pervaded the whole ward, just as the evil thing he stood for had permeated all France before the war.