The French wounded in the hospital at Neuilly—during the period when the German right wing was being beaten back from Paris—frequently accused the German regulars of wanton cruelty, but testified to the humanity of the reservists. The author relates several episodes illustrating both points. Here are two:
"The regulars are no good," said a brave peasant reservist. "They struck me with the butts of their rifles on my wound. They broke and threw away all that I had. The reserves arrive, and it is different; they take care of me. My comrade, wounded in the breast, was dying of thirst; he actually died of it a little while afterward. I dragged myself up to go and seek water for him; the young fellows aimed their guns at me. I was obliged to make a half-turn and lie down again."
Another, who also begins by praising the German field officers, saw soldiers of the active army stripping perfectly nude one of our men who had a perforated lung, and whom they had made prisoner after his wound:
"When they saw that they would have to abandon him, they took away everything from him, even his shirt, and it was done in pure wickedness, since they carried nothing away."
One of the most amazing escapes is that of a soldier from Bordeaux, told partly in his own racy idiom, and fully vouched for by the author. After relating how he left the railway at Nanteuil and traversed a hamlet pillaged by the Germans he continues:
We form ourselves into a skirmish line. The shells come. The dirt flies: holes to bury an ox? One can see them coming: zzz—boom! There is time to get out of the way.
Arrived at the edge of the woods, we separate as scouts. We are ordered to advance. But, mind you, they already have our range. The artillery makes things hum. My bugler, near me, is killed instantly; he has not said a word, poor boy! I am wounded in the leg. It is about two o'clock. As I cannot drag myself further, a comrade, before leaving, hides me under three sheaves of straw with my head under my knapsack. The shells have peppered it full of holes, that poor sack. Without it—ten yards away a comrade, who had his leg broken and a piece of shell in his arm, received seven or eight more wounds.
I stayed there all day. In the evening the soldiers of the 101st took me into the woods, where there were several French wounded and a German Captain, wounded the evening before. He was suffering too, poor wretch. About midnight the French soldiers came to seek those who were transportable. They left only my comrade, myself and the German Captain. There were other wounded further along, and we heard their cries. It was dreary.
These wounded men passed two whole days there without help. On the third day the Germans arrived and the narrator gave himself up for lost. But the German Captain, with whom the Frenchmen had divided their food and drink, begged that they be cared for. Ultimately they were taken to the German camp and their wounds attended to. But in a few minutes the camp became the centre of a violent attack, and again it looked as if the last day of the wounded prisoners had come.
Suddenly the Germans ran away and left everything. An hour later, when the firing ceased, they returned, carried away the wounded of both nationalities on stretchers, crowded about twenty-five of them into one wagon (the narrator's broken leg was not stretched out, and he suffered,) and all the way the wagon gave forth the odor of death. All day they rode without a bite to eat. At 1 o'clock at night they reached the village of Cuvergnon, where their wounds were well attended to. The following day the Germans departed without saying a word, but the villagers cared for the wounded, both friends and enemies, and in time the American automobiles carried them to Neuilly.