It lasted till we reached the little plantation by the roadside.
While it lasted you had the sense of touching Reality at its highest point in a secure and effortless consummation; so far were you from being strung up to any pitch.
Then came the plantation.
Behind the plantation, on a railway siding, a train came up from Lokeren with yet another load of wounded. And in the train there was confusion and agitation and fear. Belgian Red Cross men hung out by the doors of the train and clamoured excitedly for stretchers. There was only one stretcher, the one we had brought from the village.
Somebody complained bitterly: "C'est mal arrangé. Avec les Allemands sur nos dos!"
Somebody tried to grab our one stretcher. The two bearers seemed inclined to give it up. Nobody knew where our badly wounded man was. Nobody seemed very eager now to go and look for him. We three were surrounded and ordered to give up our stretcher. No use wasting time in hunting for one man, with the Germans on our backs.
None of the men we were helping out of the train were seriously hurt. I had to choose between my one badly wounded man, whom we hadn't found, and about a dozen who could stumble somehow into safety. But my two stretcher-bearers were wavering badly, and it was all I could do to keep them firmly to their job.
Then three women came out of a little house half hidden by the plantation. They spoke low, for fear the Germans should overhear them.
"He is here," they said; "he is here."
The stretcher-bearers hurried off with their stretcher. The train unloaded itself somehow.