War CripplesBy Madeline Z. Doty(In “The New Republic.”)
By Madeline Z. Doty
(In “The New Republic.”)
France says little and does much. She is proud; she is heroic; she fights on. But the heart and life of France is being crushed. It is impossible to see this and do nothing. I offer my services as assistant nurse at the American ambulance and am accepted....
On the second morning as I hurry down a longhospital corridor I see a familiar face. A short, dark-haired, dark-eyed young man is coming toward me. He is one of the wounded and his right arm is gone. His eye catches mine. He stops bewildered. Then comes recognition. It is Zeni Peshkoff—Maxim Gorki’s adopted son. Eight years ago when this man was a boy I had known him in America. I grasp the left hand, and my eyes drop before the empty right sleeve. But Zeni Peshkoff is still gay, laughing Zeni. He makes light of his trouble. Not until later do I understand the terrible suffering there is from the missing arm or realize how he struggles to use what is not. Peshkoff had been in the trenches for months. He had been through battles and bayonet charges and escaped unhurt, but at last his day had come. A bursting shell destroyed the right arm. He knew the danger, and struggling to his feet, walked from the battlefield. With the left hand he supported the bleeding, broken right arm. As he stumbled back past trenches full of German prisoners his plight was so pitiful, his pluck so great, that instinctively these men saluted. At the Place de Secours eight hundred wounded had been brought in. There were accommodations for one hundred and fifty.
All night young Peshkoff lay unattended, for there were others worse hurt. Gangrene developed, and he watched it spread from fingers to hand and from hand to arm. In the morning a friendly lieutenant noticed him. “There’s one chance,” he said, “and that’s a hospital. If you can walk, come with me.” Slowly young Peshkoff arose. Half faintinghe dressed and went with the lieutenant—first by taxi to the train and then twelve torturing hours to Paris. As the hours passed the gangrene crept higher and higher. The sick man grew giddy with fever. At each station his carriage companions, fearing death, wished to leave him upon the platform. But the lieutenant was firm. The one chance for life was the hospital. Finally, Paris was reached; a waiting ambulance rushed him to the hospital. Immediately he was taken to the operating room and the arm amputated. A half hour more and his arm could not have been saved. But this dramatic incident is only one of many. The pluck of the average soldier is unbelievable. Operations are accepted without question. There are no protests—only the murmured “C’est la guerre, que voulez-vous.”
I asked Zeni Peshkoff, Socialist, what his sensations were when he went out to kill. “It didn’t seem real, it doesn’t now. Before my last charge the lieutenant and I were filled with the beauty of the night. We sat gazing at the stars. Then the command came, and we rushed forward. It did not seem possible I was killing human beings.” It is this unreality that sustains men. Germans are not human beings—only the enemy. For the wounded French soldier will tell you he loathes war and longs for peace. He fights for one object—a permanent peace. He fights to save his children from fighting.