“And you got the Croix in that time?” An exclamation forced out of the fellow’s astonishment, and bringing from Corey an answer without a hint of rebuff, yet certainly nothing that a man could call brag.
“You forget,” he said, with an almost imperceptible glance down at his two rows of medals—“I knew the ropes.”
The man had afterward said to Burke that he was sorry he’d asked. But he didn’t see anything to be ashamed of in the Croix—and Corey wore it where a fellow couldn’t help seeing. There was, Burke said, a queer kind of apology in it. No, there had been nothing like brag in Corey’s answer. There had been none of that in anything he had done. And he had been, according to Burke, the best surgeon of them all, the best man at his work. But of course he had come to disaster in the end. A man can’t go on ignoring danger like that.
They were stationed at Jubécourt, outside Verdun, and for months the struggle had raged, attack and counterattack, for the possession of Hill 304. Corey had gone up to the front poste de secour at Esnes, where in an underground shelter fitted up in what had been the basement of an ancient château, reduced now to ruins by the German shells, he was giving first aid to the wounded brought in from the trenches.
Word had come into the poste one night that an officer, lying in a trench dugout, was too far gone to move. And Corey had volunteered to go, alone, on foot, along the zigzag communication trench that led to the dugout, under the incessant shelling, and see what he could do. And early that morning, about three o’clock, they had been carried in, Corey and his officer—the only two who had come out of that trench alive.
From the officer they had the story of what Corey had done; not many words, to be sure, and little embellishment, but such accounts need no flowers, no figures of speech. The facts are enough, told in gasps, as this one was, hurriedly, while yet there was strength, as one pays a debt, all at once, for fear he may never again have gold to pay.
A trench torpedo had found its mark. And Corey, bending above him, had deliberately braced himself, holding his arms out, and had received in his stead the exploding pieces of shell. He raised himself on his elbow to look at Corey, unconscious, on the next stretcher. He wanted it understood. He sent for an orderly and dictated a message which he managed to sign, and despatched it post-haste to Staff Headquarters. And then he resigned himself to the hands of those about him.
The news had come in to Jubécourt by telephone, and just before dawn Burke had gone up to see what could be done. When he reached the poste Corey had regained consciousness, and was waiting for him. He had sent word ahead that he was coming. And Corey was wounded, Burke said, in a way no other man could have withstood. And the “queer” thing now was that he knew it, and when Burke leaned over him there was a gleam in his eyes as if he were keeping it there by his own will power.
He seemed relieved then, and began at once—he had saved a surprising amount of strength—to speak. He knew Burke planned to go to New York, and he wanted him to deliver some papers. They were in his bag, at Jubécourt; he told him where he should find the key, and then he asked Burke to write down Mr. Ewing’s name and address.
It was while Burke was crossing the dim, lamp-lighted room in search of a pencil or pen that some one had stopped him to say that the General was coming at eleven to confer upon Corey the Medaille Militaire. It had given Burke a distinct kind of shock. Could it be, he wondered, that that was what Corey had saved himself for? For Corey knew, as well as they, that the Medaille Militaire was the one decoration never conferred upon dead men. He had gone on and borrowed the pen, and on the way back had asked if he might be allowed to tell Corey. It might, he said, do him some good. That news had turned the balance for more than one man.