“Then I expect we had best hurry,” Eugenia answered. Afterwards neither of them spoke again. Yet the young man looked at Eugenia admiringly. Perhaps she was not as much of a beauty as two of the other American Red Cross girls. Nevertheless, she wasn’t bad looking in her way, and certainly a man would like to have her take care of him if he happened to be bowled over. You could always count on her being right there when the time came, and knowing exactly what to do. One couldn’t help admiring efficiency in this world wherever one saw it.
Certainly the American boy had been right in his statement. Conditions at the field hospital were pretty bad when the four girls arrived there.
All the beds in the tents were filled with the wounded. Yet every five or ten minutes another injured soldier requiring immediate care would be borne to the hospital by his companions until long lines of them were stretched out upon the grass. Moreover, one knew that there were perhaps hundreds of others lying hurt in the trenches to whom no relief could be given until the fighting ceased.
Now there seemed little prospect that a lull could come until the night. Then perhaps the bombarding would not be so continuous.
However, the Germans must have previously located the weak points in the enemy’s defences since the cannonading had begun the night before.
Three or four hours passed and no one appeared to think there could be danger at the field hospital. Perhaps they were too busy to think at all. Besides, the firing seemed to be directed upon the trenches, so that only an occasional shell, failing to hit its mark, shrieked over them or burst at a distance too far away to cause alarm.
But it must have been about noon, though no one knew the exact hour, when suddenly news came that the French had been forced to retreat from the front trenches to the second line. Then immediately after the Germans directed a number of their large guns, not upon the trenches, but upon the little town of Le Prêtre, which lay behind the field hospital, the forest and the chateau of the Countess Amélie.
Nor did the shells and shrapnel continue to pass over the hospital. Indeed, they sometimes seemed to be the actual target of the great guns, though this was of course not true.
One of the white tents was torn to pieces and a doctor and two nurses hurt.
Barbara had just come out of this tent on an errand for the surgeon. After the explosion she found herself standing but a few yards from the débris, with Nona Davis running toward her.