The Red Cross Barge

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

At last the French guns found another range, that of the German batteries, and as these replied, so strange and so exciting was the artillery duel, that women, and even children, crowded into the streets and, with upturned faces, watched the shells from the even then famous '75, and the heavier German missiles, go hurtling by overhead.

And then very soon, from the plains below and the woods above Valoise, the wounded came pouring in. They were brought in every kind of vehicle, from the luxurious motor ambulances belonging to the German Red Cross, to handcarts drawn by donkeys and by dogs.

At the end of the first hour, Jeanne Rouannès told herself that there was no room for more. But on and on they came, in a terrible, continuous procession, and place still had to be found for them. After the beds had all been filled, the stone floor, hastily covered with stacks of straw, had to serve as resting-place for many more. Very soon, too, all the houses, and the often more comfortable stables and out-buildings of the town, were also full and overfull....

The French Red Cross nurse was ordered to remain in the church, and reluctantly she found herself compelled to admire the energy, the method, the quick, if to her heartless, type of efficient intelligence, the German surgeons there brought to their terrible tasks. In whatever part of the church she happened to be, whatever the duty in which she was engaged, during those hours of horror and strain, when all the miraculous resources of youth—her fine health of body, and finer stoicism of soul—alone brought her through the awful ordeal, the Herr Doktor watched over, and as far as was in his power, helped her to perform her arduous, pitiful works of mercy.

Very soon—so soon that it seemed retrospectively to have been at the end of the first morning—everything a normal surgeon and his dressers require had been used up, and that though, by the forethought of Herr Doktor Max Keller, all the clean, looted linen which had been put safely away for transport to Germany had early been requisitioned by the Field Ambulance.

The German wounded far outnumbered the French, and at first the fact had filled the French Red Cross nurse with a relief of which she felt ashamed.

Then suddenly she understood the strange disparity! To these keen, clear-thinking German surgeons their own countrymen came first as a matter of course, and the best was naturally reserved for them. They were skilful, and as humane as it was in them to be, to all those whom they attended, but the grey-clad wounded were obviously the most important.

The knowledge that this was so filled Jeanne Rouannès with revolt, and bitter anger. As she half mechanically performed the duties set her, she thought of her own shattered countrymen, lying for the most part outside and unattended; and she was filled with repugnance, even horror, for all these Germans, both the wounded and the whole, who lay and stood about her. As far as was possible, she lavished the small surgical science she possessed, and the measureless pity and tenderness that was hers in ample measure, on the few French wounded who were brought into the church.

Then suddenly a strange thing happened. A dying German, to whom she had just given an injection of camphorated oil, held out his hand, gropingly. She took the rough, blackened hand in hers, and he murmured 'Mutter,' in a voice full of agonised longing and entreaty. From that moment Jeanne Rouannès no longer made, even in her inmost heart, any distinction between the French and German wounded. She tended them as far as was in her power, and in the measure of her strength, with the same kindness and untiring devotion.

In addition to the wounded—the wounded brought in from the scenes of the fierce rearguard actions now being fought round Valoise—were the injured townspeople, the old women and the little children who became unwitting targets for the bombs, the shells, and even the arrows, which now and again fell from the German aeroplanes circling in the air above.