WOUNDED HEROES OF FRANCE
ABBÉ FELIX KLEIN
The descriptions which are to follow belong to history already ancient; to the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918. So rapid is the march of events with us now!
The enthusiasm of a wounded soldier in 1914.
The soldier wounded during the first months of the War came to us overflowing with enthusiasm, eager to express himself. His mind was full of picturesque and varied impressions and he asked for nothing better than to tell about them. Willingly he described the emotions and spirit of the moment of departure; his curiosity in the presence of the unknown, the shock of the first contact with the enemy, the dizzy joy of initial successes. He confessed the amazement and pain of the first checks and the headlong retreat which followed them. He spoke of the famous Joffre's "ordre du jour" when, in the battle of the Marne, the men were told to take the offensive. They stopped the enemy. They pursued him. They experienced the intoxication of a victory that gave back to France her old prestige and felt with certainty, although at first confusedly, that their battle was a decisive event in human history.
The wounded of 1918 reflect the long tragedy.
They have faced terrible new weapons.
To this brilliant and epic beginning succeeded a long and sombre tragedy, to this Iliad worthy of a Homer an Inferno worthy of a Dante. So we cannot wonder that the wounded of 1918 differed from those of 1914, and that their faces, like the face of the Florentine poet returning from hell, reflected the terrible things through which they had passed. The suffering of years, the eternal waiting for a decision of arms that did not come, the increasing horror of confronting weapons unknown in the early months—heavy artillery, gas, liquid fire, aëroplane attacks—left their mark upon our soldiers.
Dante imagines the terrible things he recounts. Our soldiers have seen them face to face. New Year after New Year has come and gone, and found them living underground, in constant danger of unseen and unavoidable forms of death, huddled together in damp, dark holes, exposed to rain and snow and shell fire. Rarely was there fighting—as we used to understand the term—but daily death took its toll, and ill and wounded were evacuated to the rear.