A Captain stood up and beckoned to me:
"Come here, gunner, and I'll bandage you. Got your first-aid dressing?... In the inside pocket of your tunic?... Hallo, it's all torn! Been wounded in the chest? No?... Well, you're lucky!..."
He examined my hand.
"H'm ... nasty!... lot of earth and gun-grease got into it.... We must clean that off and disinfect the wound as soon as possible.... I'll take off the worst with some cotton-wool."
I was out of breath with running, and the blood was throbbing in my temples and buzzing in my ears. The instinct of self-preservation suddenly deserted me, and, as I stood motionless, I began to feel faint. My legs shook and gave way as though broken at the knees. The figure of the officer standing by me seemed to turn round and round.
"Hallo! Steady!" he cried.
He forced the neck of a flask between my lips and poured a draught of rum down my throat. I immediately felt strengthened from head to foot and laughed as I thanked him.
"That's all right!" said he as he finished dressing my hand.
The field-hospitals of the division were at Fresnières, and I started off in that direction. My hand felt as though it had turned to lead, and, as I walked across country, holding myself stiffly erect with a view to resisting another fainting fit, buoyed up by the thought that I should soon be under cover, far from the shells and the battle, an unwonted lassitude, a yearning for sleep and silence, a weakening of will-power suddenly took possession of me and seemed to penetrate to the very marrow of my bones. It seemed to me that when I got to the hospital I should sleep for days on end.
To sleep—to sleep—and, above all, no longer hear the guns, no longer hear anything. To live without thinking, and in absolute silence; to live after so many times having narrowly escaped death. Suddenly I remembered what the Captain of Tirailleurs had said—that my wound was dirty, infected with earth and horse's blood. The fear of gangrene, of lock-jaw, and of all other forms of hospital putrefaction gripped me by the throat.