Conservative
of the place seine boards , torn from the
shed itself , had boon placed upon two
trestles , and I his wasthe operating
table. J tried to shut my eyes as I saw
one form lifted oil and another lifted on ,
but I couldn't. The business-like
butchery of the surgeons fascinated mo
for a lime , prevented me from heeding
my own pain. Some kind of suspense
was inwrought with the hideousness of
it all. It would 1)0 my turn next. One
or two of the men died under the oper
ation , I could see that by the look of
the surgeon and the extra haste of the
attendants. One of the ambulance men ,
seeing mo sitting up , came over to me
and pushed mo back rather roughly.
"Keep still , " he said ; "you're all right
if you don't squirm that tourniquet oil' .
They've tied up your artery and you're
in hick. "
Some kind of
TIIB THIRST.
dnU tlmnkfnluesS )
like a glow , suffused mo , and at the
same time a dull pain made itself
known , accompanied by an intolerable
thirst. I tried to ask him to got mo a
drink , but my tongue stuck fast. "Keep
still , " he said ; "the Sanitary Commis
sion wagons will be hero soon with ice ,
and brandy , and women. "
A score of torn and dismembered
men were saj'ing things that no car
could disentangle , and yet they wounded
and stung you if you listened to them.
Other sounds , still more dreadful , came
from the mere automatism of muscles
that beat the floor with rhythmic heels
and bit at the planking in the paroxysm
of delirious pain.
The condition of nervous tension nat
urally affected my circulation and every
heart-beat made itself felt with a dagger-
thrust in that tied artery. I shut my
eyes with all my force in the effort to
calm myself. But it was of no use.
They came back slaringly to the rou
tine of those heroic doctors which wore
to mo the air of an inquisition.
JllBt
THE DELIRIUM. ,
the nature of one s
thoughts and reasoning processes is dis
torted or broken down while the body
is suffering from acute pain I am unable
to say , but I was conscious that I was
looking at what was going on through
some kind of medium that was new to
me. There was what I may call an
acute distortion of the relations and
values. This is the true shook of such
a scene. It reaches down to the etor
mil nature and harmony of things witl
a monstrous cruelty and an unanswerable
able interrogation. I knew that my
astonished senses wore in some waj
making me irrational , and that my out
raged sensibilities were producing some
thing like a sub-hysteria.
But so wide is the range of man's ca
pacity to suffer that no general route
can be mapped out for his feelings. In
sensibility very often passes forforti
tude , and a v dull nervous organization
or strength of will , just as the mental
listurbanco in the delirium of physical
inguish is mistaken for moral weakness.
. ' have scon in the ranks whore one
nan's susceptibilities tear him to pieces
eng before the shell docs , and another
ights automatically and curses with
lotianco while ho dies. The unlikonosM
of natures and frames thus brought to
gether in the concourse of war is height
ened to the last degree in the Held hos
pital. For the most part , sudden ex-
remity , without the relief of action ,
hrows back upon the conscious centres
i Hood of sensations that are wholly
without precedent in the man's exper
ience. Ho is stripped in an instant of
ho factitious glory of endeavor , the
whole symbolism and fervor of conflict
are wiped out as with a sponge , and he
is face to face with his own impotency ,
stripped of everything but the appalling
sense of weakness , wavering between
agony and extinction.
Nor was there
THE FLIES. the lcnst dtlompt
to screen , to mitigate , or to soften the
dire work that was going on. The
battle had come on unexpectedly , and ,
as usual , the hospital provision for it
was laggard and inadequate. Mercy
and tenderness had to bo practically
ruthless , and business-like , and off-hand.
Legless trunks were laid upon the reek
ing straw with the gentleness only of
expedition. The pile of limbs in the
center grow into a quivering mass , and
the flies , those invincible little harpies
of the shambles , added a million miser
ies of their own , as they lit on the dis
torted faces of armless men who could
not brush them off , and eddied in clouds
round the heads of the surgeons. Ono
of these surgeons , a white-whiskered ,
methodical man who had been through
( his experience before , had stuffed some
thing into his ears , which ho had to
take out when spoken to by the attend-
ante. His face and arms wore spattered
with blood , and some of it clung in little
clots to his white whiskers , but ho was
grim and tireless. It never , could have
occurred to him that glory had ended in
an abattoir.
Suddenly there
THE WOMEN. was a new kind of
commotion outside. My acute senses
told mo that vehicles heavier than the
ambulances had arrived. They should
also have told me that the cessation of
the mingled ribaldry and din of the
drivers foretold the arrival of some
thing else. It was the commission
Someone pulled aside the greasy armj
blanket that served as a door , and stood
with his hat in his hand ushering the
women. There wore four of them
Three wore middle-aged exports who
knew what to expect , and one was to
get her first lesson. They made no sal
utations. They had no curiosityand thej
gave wsiy to no emotions. Two of them
.Wore tying on. aprons asthey came in
very much as though they were going
into the kitchen to prepare a dinner.
They were the air of persons who
come to the inexplicable with an obed
ient but flexible routine. One of them
carried in her hand a bundle of palm-
leaf fans , and those cheap adjuncts , un
provided for in the camp equipment of
nan , were the instant symbols of a now
jonsidoration come into this don of
lorrors. Fans ! Never were trifles
so graciously exalted. I looked at the
face of the armless man nearest to mo ,
overed with crawling insects , and felt
i now admiration for woman , who in a
ninute was beside him with her exor-
jising wand.
The fourth and youngest woman col
lapsed after a minute of it. The pecul
iar odor , that hot smell of escaped vi
tality , so different from the septic taint
of disease , smote her sensibilities in spite
of her determination ; the many-stranded
sound of despair , desperation and dissolu
tion , woven into one indescribable croon ,
was too much for her. She staggered ;
some one caught her. Ono of her com
panions made a matter-of-fact sign to a
man to carry her out into the air ,
merely saying. "This is her first , " and
she disappeared. But it was only for
a while. She came back , white and wet ,
but indomitable , with her tooth sot , and
went through it like I came near say
ing , like a man for which , as a man ,
I ask pardon of her humbly as I pass
along.
Long afterwards
THE
I understood how
QUESTION. the presence of
women in the field hospital put some
kind of restraint oven upon the surgeons ,
and made the assistants feel that they
could no longer relieve their emotions
with graceless bravado. They naturally
felt that thoM > women were altogether
too exacting in their attention to unim
portant details , and it was out of this
fooling that there grow something like
an olllcial opposition to the presence of
women at the front. But I never heard
this feeling expressed by the wounded
men. On the contrary , the arrival of
woman , oven to the dying man , was
always in some sense a restoration of
conditions that the necessary violence
of war had abolished. Woman , cer
tainly in her countless relations of life ,
excites the noblest endeavors and the
most chivalric admiration in man. But
in the hospital she disengages herself
from all her previous relations , and
with one sweep of superlative strength
throws away all the conventional ad
justments of the sexes and presents her
self simply and unchangeably as an
angel of mercy. No one but the wounded
man knows how much softer her touch
is , how much more- quickly and how
unerringly she detects the pain and
rends the desire of the distorted face ,
and how gratefully the wrecked nias-.i
culinity leans up against the sympathy" "
and unutterable pity of those creatures
