The DeserterBy Ellen N. LaMotte(The story of the human wreckage of the battlefield, as witnessed by an American hospital nurse a few miles behind the French lines. From “The Backwash of War.â€[17])
By Ellen N. LaMotte
(The story of the human wreckage of the battlefield, as witnessed by an American hospital nurse a few miles behind the French lines. From “The Backwash of War.â€[17])
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital. The journey was made in double quick time, over rough Belgian roads. To save his life, he must reach the hospital without delay, and if he was bounced to death jolting along at break-neck speed, it did not matter. That was understood. He was a deserter, and discipline must be maintained. Since he had failed on the job, his life must be saved, he must be nursed back to health, until he was well enough tobe stood up against a wall and shot. This is War. Things like this also happen in peace time, but not so obviously.
At the hospital he behaved abominably. The ambulance men declared that he had tried to throw himself out of the back of the ambulance, that he had yelled and hurled himself about, and spat blood all over the floor and blankets—in short, he was very disagreeable. Upon the operating table he was no more reasonable. He shouted and screamed and threw himself from side to side, and it took a dozen leather straps and four or five orderlies to hold him in position, so that the surgeon could examine him. During this commotion his left eye rolled about loosely upon his cheek, and from his bleeding mouth he shot great clots of stagnant blood, caring not where they fell. One fell upon the immaculate white uniform of theDirectrice, and stained her from breast to shoes. It was disgusting. They told him it wasLa Directrice, and that he must be careful. For an instant he stopped his raving, and regarded her fixedly with his remaining eye, then took aim afresh, and again covered her with his cowardly blood. Truly it was disgusting.
To theMedecin Majorit was incomprehensible, and he said so. To attempt to kill oneself, when, in these days, it was so easy to die in honour upon the battlefield, was something he could not understand. So theMedecin Majorstood patiently aside, his arms crossed, his supple fingers pulling the long black hairs on his bare arms, waiting. He had long to wait, for it was difficult to get the man under theanesthetic. Many cans of ether were used, which went to prove that the patient was a drinking man. Whether he had acquired the habit of hard drink before or since the war could not be ascertained; the war had lasted a year now, and in that time many habits may be formed. As theMedecin Majorstood there, patiently fingering the hairs on his hairy arms, he calculated the amount of ether that was expended—five cans of ether, at so many francs a can—however, the ether was a donation from America, so it did not matter. Even so, it was wasteful.
At last they said he was ready. He was quiet. During his struggles he had broken out two big teeth with the mouth gag, and that added a little more blood to the blood already choking him. Then theMedecin Majordid a very skillful operation. He trephined the skull, extracted the bullet that had lodged beneath it, and bound back in place that erratic eye. After which the man was sent back to the ward, while the surgeon returned hungrily to his dinner, long overdue. In the ward, he was a bad patient. He insisted upon tearing off his bandages, although they told him that this meant bleeding to death. His mind seemed fixed on death. He seemed to want to die, and was thoroughly unreasonable, although quite conscious. All of which meant that he required constant watching and was a perfect nuisance. He was so different from the other patients, who wanted to live. It was a joy to nurse them. By expert surgery, by expert nursing, some of these were to be returned to their homes again,reformes, mutilated for life, a burden to themselves and to society;others were to be nursed back to health, to a point at which they could again shoulder eighty pounds of marching kit, and be torn to pieces again on the firing lines. It was a pleasure to nurse such as these. It called forth all one’s skill, all one’s humanity. But to nurse back to health a man who was to be court-martialled and shot, truly that was a dead-end occupation....
Dawn filtered in through the little square windows of the ward. Two of the patients rolled on their sides, that they might talk to one another. In the silence of early morning their voices rang clear.
“Dost thou know,mon ami, that when we captured that German battery a few days ago, we found gunners chained to their guns?â€
[17]Putnam Sons.
[17]Putnam Sons.
[17]Putnam Sons.