The man, horribly hurt, with a wound like a red pit below his shoulder-blades, was brought out and laid on the stretcher. He lay there, quietly, on his side, in a posture of utter resignation to anguish.
He was a Flamand, clumsily built; he had a broad, rather ugly face, narrowing suddenly as the fringe of his whiskers became a little straggling beard. But to me he was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And I loved him. I do not think it is possible to love, to adore any creature more than I loved and adored that clumsy, ugly Flamand.
He was my first wounded man.
For I tried, I still try, to persuade myself that if I hadn't bullied my two bearers and repulsed the attack on my stretcher, he would have been left behind in the little house in the plantation.
We got him out of the plantation all right and on to the paved road. Ursula Dearmer at Termonde with her Belgian officer, and at Zele with all her wounded, couldn't have been happier than I was with my one Flamand.
We got him a few yards down the road all right.
Then, to my horror, the bearers dumped him down on the paving-stones. They said he was much too heavy. They couldn't possibly carry him any more unless they rested.
I didn't think it was exactly the moment for resting, and I told them so. The Germans hadn't come round the turn, and probably never would come; still, you never know; and the general impression seemed to be that they were about due.
But the bearers stood stolidly in the middle of the road and mopped their faces and puffed. The situation began to feel as absurd and as terrible as a nightmare.
So I grabbed one end of the stretcher and said I'd carry it myself. I said I wasn't very strong, and perhaps I couldn't carry it, but anyhow I'd try.