"I should think so!..." said the other.
"Right. We'll cut that off for you at once," said the officer with the gold-rimmed glasses.
I protested:
"Cut off my thumb!"
"Yes, unless you want to keep it on like that. Here, wait a moment...."
A Colonial infantryman had just been brought in, the blood gushing from a large wound in his shoulder. The medical officer knelt down beside him and feverishly felt about with his fingers among the torn shreds of flesh, trying to pinch the artery.
"Cut off my thumb!..." echoed in my ears.
I quickly made up my mind. Seizing a compress and a strip of rolled lint from the table I managed with the aid of my left hand and teeth to bandage my wound in a rough-and-ready fashion, and without being observed by the officers, who were intent upon the severed artery, I slipped out of the hospital.
I knew that I should find the other divisional hospitals at Canny-sur-Matz, about a mile and a half from Fresnières.