I still had the strength to sit half up, and shout with all the breath that remained within me. Men were passing along in the distance picking up the wounded; they ran to us and placed us side by side on a stretcher.
“Comrade,” the colonel said to me during the journey, “Death will not have us. I owe you my life; I will pay my debt, whenever you have need of me. Give me your hand.”
I placed my hand in his, and it was thus that we reached the ambulances. They had lighted torches; the surgeons were cutting and sawing, amidst frightful yells; a sickly smell came from the blood-stained linen, whilst the torches cast dark rosy flakes into the basins.
The colonel bore the amputation of his arm with courage; I only saw his lips turn pale and a film come over his eyes. When it was my turn, a surgeon examined my shoulder.
“A shell did that for you,” he said; “an inch lower and your shoulder would have been carried away. The flesh, only, has suffered.”
And when I asked the assistant, who was dressing my wound, whether it was serious, he answered me with a laugh:
“Serious! you will have to keep to your bed for three weeks, and make new blood.”
I turned my face to the wall, not wishing to show my tears. And with my heart’s eyes I perceived Babet and my uncle Lazare stretching out their arms towards me. I had finished with the sanguinary struggles of my summer day.