Part 14

I doubt if any four walls in all the world contain more human suffering than those of Hospital Number Eight at Bailleul, yet of all those shattered, broken, mangled men I heard only one utter a complaint or groan. He was a fair-haired giant, as are so many of these English fighting men. A bullet had splintered his spine and, with his hours numbered, he was suffering the most awful torment that a human being can endure. The sweat stood in beads upon his forehead. The muscles of his neck and arms were so corded and knotted that it seemed as though they were about to burst their way through the sun-tanned skin. His naked breast rose and fell in great sobs of agony. “Oh God! Oh God!” he moaned, “be merciful and take me—it hurts, it hurts—_it hurts me so_—my wife—the kiddies—for the love of Christ, doctor, give me a hypodermic and stop the pain—say good-by to them for me—tell them—oh, I _can’t_ stand it any longer—I’m not afraid to die, doctor, but I just can’t stand this pain—oh God, dear God, _won’t you please let me die_?”

When I went out of that room the beads of sweat were standing on _my_ forehead.

They took me down-stairs to show me what they call the “evacuation ward.” It is a big, barn-like room, perhaps a hundred feet long by fifty wide, and the floor was so thickly covered with blanketed forms on stretchers that there was no room to walk about among them. These were the men whose wounds had been treated, and who, it was believed, were able to survive the journey by hospital train to one of the base hospitals on the coast. It is a very grave case indeed that is permitted to remain for even a single night in the hospitals in Bailleul, for Bailleul is but a clearinghouse for the mangled, and its hospitals must always be ready to receive that unceasing scarlet stream which, day and night, night and day, comes pouring in, pouring in, pouring in.

Those of the wounded in the evacuation ward who were conscious were for the most part cheerful—as cheerful, that is, as men can be whose bodies have been ripped and drilled and torn by shot and shell, who have been strangled by poisonous gases, who are aflame with fever, who are faint with loss of blood, and who have before them a railway journey of many hours. This railway journey to the coast is as comfortable as human ingenuity can make it, the trains with their white enamelled interiors and swinging berths being literally hospitals on wheels, but to these weakened, wearied men it is a terribly trying experience, even though they know that at the end of it clean beds and cool pillows and soft-footed, low-voiced nurses await them.

The men awaiting transfer still wore the clothes in which they had been carried from the trenches, though in many cases they had been slashed open so that the surgeons might get at the wounds. They were plastered with mud. Many of them had had no opportunity to bathe for weeks and were crawling with vermin. Their underclothes were in such loathsome condition that when they were removed they fell apart. The canvas stretchers on which they lay so patiently and uncomplainingly were splotched with what looked like wet brown paint, and on this horrid sticky substance were swarms of hungry flies. The air was heavy with the mingled smells of antiseptics, perspiration, and fresh blood. In that room was to be found every form of wound which can be inflicted by the most hellish weapons the brain of man has been able to devise. The wounded were covered with coarse woollen blankets, but some of the men in their torment had kicked their coverings off, and I saw things which I have no words to tell about and which I wish with all my heart that I could forget. There were men whose legs had been amputated up to the thighs; whose arms had been cut off at the shoulder; there were men who had lost their eyesight and all their days must grope in darkness; and there were other men who had been ripped open from waist to neck so that they looked like the carcasses that hang in front of butcher-shops; while most horrible of all were those who, without a wound on them, raved and cackled with insane mirth at the horror of the things that they had seen.

We went out from that place of unforgettable horrors into the sunlight and the clean fresh air again. It was late afternoon, the birds were singing, a gentle breeze was whispering in the tree-tops; but from over there, on the other side of that green and smiling valley, still came the unceasing clatter of that grim harvester garnering its crop of death. On the ground, in the shade of a spreading chestnut-tree, had been laid a stretcher, and on it was still another of those silent, bandaged forms. “He is badly wounded,” said the surgeon, following the direction of my glance, “fairly shot to pieces. But he begged us to leave him in the open air. We are sending him on by train to Boulogne to-night, and then by hospital ship to England.” I walked over and looked down at him. He could not have been more than eighteen—just such a clean-limbed, open-faced lad as any girl would have been proud to call sweetheart, any mother son. He was lying very still. About his face there was a peculiar grayish pallor, and on his half-parted lips had gathered many flies. I beckoned to the doctor. “He’s not going to England,” I whispered; “he’s going to sleep in France.” The surgeon, after a quick glance, gave an order, and two bearers came and lifted the stretcher, and bore it to a ramshackle outhouse which they call the mortuary, and gently set it down at the end of a long row of other silent forms.

As I passed out through the gateway in the wall which surrounds Hospital Number Eight, I saw a group of children playing in the street. “Come on,” shrilled one of them, “let’s play soldier!”

BOOKS BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

THE LAST FRONTIER: THE WHITE MAN’S WAR FOR CIVILIZATION IN AFRICA. Illustrated. 8vo _net_ $1.50

GENTLEMEN ROVERS. Illustrated. 8vo _net_ $1.50

THE END OF THE TRAIL. Illustrated. 8vo _net_ $3.00

FIGHTING IN FLANDERS. Illustrated. 12mo _net_ $1.00

THE ROAD TO GLORY. Illustrated. 8vo _net_ $1.50

VIVE LA FRANCE! Illustrated. 12mo _net_ $1.00

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.