But when the quitting-time came, when war was over, what was going to happen then? Sheila wondered it about the boys who lay unconscious on their stretchers, packed in the room about her. She wondered it about the boys conscious in their cots below. Most of all she wondered it about Ward 7-A. It was going to hurt so many to have to look beyond the immediate day into a procession of numberless days stretching into years and years. The sudden relaxing from big efforts to little ones, that would hurt, too, like the uncramping of over-strained muscles. And the being thrown back on oneself to think, to act, to feel for oneself again—what of that? It was like dismembering a gigantic machine and scattering the infinitesimal parts of it broadcast over the earth to function alone. Only many of the parts would be imperfect, and all would have souls to reckon with.
But of the puzzle of it one fact stood out grippingly vital to Sheila. No soul must be thrown out of the melting-pot back into the old accustomed order of life and be left to feel unfit or unnecessary. There must be a big, compelling place for every man who came home. Of all the tragedies of war, she could conceive no greater one than to have these men who had put no limit to the price they were willing to pay to make the world safe for democracy sent back useless, to mark time to eternity.
But who was going to keep this from happening? How were the thousands of mutilés to be made free of the burden of dependence and toleration? Who was going to guard them against atrophy of spirit? The nurse gathered up the last of the instruments and threw them in the sterilizer. As she took off her apron and wiped the beads of sweat from her face, her chief eyed her suspiciously.
“Get your coffee before you touch those dressings in 7-A. Understand? When did you have your clothes off last?” He growled like a good-natured but spent old dog.
The girl gave her uniform a disgusted look. “Pretty bad, isn’t it? I put it on four—no, five days ago, but I’ve had my shoes off twice.” She laid an impulsive hand on the chief’s arm. “Promise about the coffee if you’ll promise to do the dressings with me instead of Captain Griggs. He calls them the ‘down-and-outers.’ I can’t quite stand for that.”
“Well, what would you call ’em?”
“The invincibles,” she declared. “Wouldn’t you?”
But for all her promise, Sheila O’Leary did not get past the door of 7-A without putting in her head and calling out a “good morning.” Whereupon twelve Irish tongues, dripping almost as many brogues, flung it back at her with a vengeance.
There were thirteen of them, all told, the remnants of a company of Royal Irish that had crossed the Scheldt with Haig. As Larry Shea had put it on the day of their arrival, they “made as grand leavin’s as one could expect under the circumstances.” The ambulances that had brought them, along with the additional seven who had gone west, had pivoted wrong at one of the crossroads, so that the American Military Hospital No. 10 had fallen heir to them instead of the B. H. T. It is recorded that even the chief showed consternation when he looked them over, and Larry, catching the look and being the only man conscious at the time, snorted indignantly:
“Well, sir, if ye think we’re a mess, ye should have seen the Fritzies we left behind. Furninst them we’re an ordther of perfectly decent lads.” And Larry had crumpled up into a grinning unconsciousness.