Ellen N. La Motte

“ More spectacular, I grant you, more acute,—that’s what interests us,—but for the sheer agony of life—oh, peace is way ahead!
War is so clean. Peace is so dirty. There are so many foul diseases in peace times. They drag on over so many years, too. No, war’s clean! I’d rather see a man die in prime of life, in war time, than see him doddering along in peace time, broken hearted,- 117 - broken spirited, life broken, and very weary, having suffered many things,—to die at last, at a good, ripe age! ”

“ It might be life in a big city hospital, so alike is the routine. Only the city hospitals are bigger, and better equipped, and the ambulances are smarter, and the patients don’t always come in ambulances—they walk in sometimes, or come in street cars, or in limousines, and they are of both sexes, men and women, and have ever so many things the matter with them—the hospitals of peace time are not nearly so stupid, so monotonous, as the hospitals of war. ”

“ The brancardiers gather up their red blankets and shuffle off again, leaving cakes of mud and streaks of muddy water on the green linoleum. Outside the guns roar and inside the baracques shake, and again and again the stretcher bearers come into the ward, carrying dying men from the high tables in the operating room. They are all that stand between us and the guns, these wrecks upon the beds. Others like them are standing between us and the guns, others like- 85 - them, who will reach us before morning. Wrecks like these. They are old men, most of them. ”

“ That, again, would be depressing to the country’s morale. It is rather paradoxical, but there are those who can explain it perfectly.
No, no, I don’t understand. It’s because everything has two sides. You would be surprised to pick up a franc, and find Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity on one side, and on the other, the image of the Sower smoothed out. A rose is a fine rose because of the manure you put at its roots. You don’t get a medal for sustained nobility. You get it for the impetuous action of the moment, an action quite out of keeping with the trend of one’s daily life. ”

“ It’s not the men’s fault that most of the women in the War Zone are ruined. Have you ever watched the village girls when a regiment comes through, or stops for a night or two, en repos, on its way to the Front? Have you seen the girls make fools of themselves over the men? Well, that’s why there are so many accessible for the troops. Of course the professional prostitutes from Paris aren’t admitted to the War Zone, but the Belgian girls made such fools of themselves, the others weren’t needed. ”

“ There are some days when it is very bad in a field hospital, just as there are some days when there is nothing to do, and the whole staff is practically idle. The bad days are those when the endless roar of the guns makes the little wooden baracques rock and rattle, and when endless processions of ambulances drive in and deliver broken, ruined men, and then drive off again, to return loaded with more wrecks. ”

“ In war, civilians are cheap things at best, and an immature civilian, Belgian at that, is very cheap. So the heavy English ambulance churned its way up a muddy hill, mashed through much mud at the entrance gates of the hospital, and crunched to a halt on the cinders before the Salle d’Attente, where it discharged its burden and drove off again. ”

“ Everyone dreaded Ypres, and the dangers of Ypres. It was the place of death. Only the Belgian woman, whose husband kept an estaminet, and made much money selling drink to the English soldiers, did not dread it. She and her husband were making much money out of the war, money which would give their children a start in life. When the ambulance was ready she climbed into it with alacrity, although with a feeling of gratitude because the Directrice had promised a mass for her dead child. ”

“ There is a dirty sediment at the bottom of most souls. War, superb as it is, is not necessarily a filtering process, by which men and nations may be purified. Well, there are many people to write you of the noble side, the heroic side, the exalted side of war. I must write you of what I have seen, the other side, the backwash. ”

“ By examining the things cast up in the backwash, we can gauge the progress of humanity. When clean little lives, when clean little souls boil up in the backwash, they will consolidate, after the final war, into a peace that shall endure. ”

“ She climbed down backward from the front seat, perched for a moment on the hub, while one heavy leg, with foot shod in slipping sabot, groped wildly for the ground. A soldier with a lantern watched impassively, watched her solid splash into a mud puddle that might have been avoided. So she continued her complaints. She had been dragged away from her husband, from her other children, and she seemed to have little interest in her son, the Belgian civilian, said to be dying. ”

“ What’s been saved them, those who die young, and clean and swiftly, here behind the guns. In the long run it dots up just the same. Only war’s spectacular, that’s all.
Well, he came in like the rest, only older than most of them. A shock of iron-grey hair, a mane of it, above heavy, black brows, and the brows were contracted in pain. Shot, as usual, in the abdomen. He spent three hours on the table after admission—the operating table—and when he came over to the ward, they said, not a dog’s chance for him. No more had he. When he came out of ether, he said he didn’t want to die. ”

“ Much ugliness is churned up in the wake of mighty, moving forces. We are witnessing a phase in the evolution of humanity, a phase called War—and the slow, onward progress stirs up the slime in the shallows, and this is the Backwash of War. It is very ugly. There are many little lives foaming up in the backwash. ”

“ The flaming eyes closed again, and the bearers shuffled off, lighting cheap cigarettes.
Then the surgeon came, impatiently. Ah, a grand blessé, to be hastened to the rear at once. The surgeon tried to unbutton the soaking trousers, but the man gave a scream of pain.
“For the sake of God, cut them, Monsieur le Major! Cut them! Do not economize. They are worn out in the service of the country! They are torn and bloody, they can serve no one after me! Ah, the little economies, the little, false economies! ”

“ Better ones for the officers, naturally, just as the officers’ mess is of better quality than that of the common soldiers. But always there are plenty of women. Never wives, who mean responsibility, but just women, who only mean distraction and amusement, just as food and wine. So wives are forbidden, because lowering to the morale, but women are winked at, because they cheer and refresh the troops. After the war, it is hoped that- 104 - all unmarried soldiers will marry, but doubtless they will not marry these women who have served and cheered them in the War Zone. ”

“ Always and always, over and over again, he writes on the paper, and he gives the paper to everyone who passes. He’s got something on his mind that he wants to get across, before he dies. But no one can understand him. No one can read what he has written—it is just scrawls, scribbles, unintelligible. Day and night, for he never sleeps, he writes on that block of paper, and tears off the sheets and gives them to everyone who passes. ”

“ And hast thou ever heard the guns, nearer than this safe point behind the lines? Thou art here doing woman’s work! Caring for me, nursing me! And what knowledge dost thou bring to thy task, thou ignorant grocer’s clerk? Surely thou hast some powerful friend, who got thee mobilized as infirmier—a woman’s task—instead of a simple soldier like me, doing his duty in the trenches!”- 28 -
Marius raised himself in bed, which the infirmier knew, because the doctor had told him, was not a right position for a man who has a wound in his stomach, some thirty centimetres in length. ”

“ Why should we all be bored with tales of Simon’s stupid wife, when that’s all she means to him? Only perhaps she means more. I told you I did not understand.
Then the Gestionnaire, the little fat man in khaki, who is purveyor to the hospital. Every night he commandeers an ambulance, and drives back into the country, to a village twelve miles away, to sleep with a woman. And the old doctor—he is sixty-four and has grandchildren—he goes down to our village for a little girl of fourteen. ”

“ Coarse, hobnailed boots stick out from the blankets, and sometimes the heaps, which are men, moan or are silent. On the floor lie piles of clothing, filthy, muddy, blood-soaked, torn or cut from the silent bodies on the beds. The stretcher bearers step over these piles of dirty clothing, or kick them aside, as they lift the shrinking bodies to the brown stretchers, and carry them across, one by one, to the operating room. ”

“ In guiding the stream of traffic and directing its orderly flow, the statue of Claude Chappe is greatly assisted by the presence of an agent de police, with a picturesque cape and a picturesque sword, and who controls the flow of vehicles with as much precision as a London policeman, although there are those who profess that a London policeman is the only one who understands the business. ”

“ Opposition from whom? From the old boulevardier whose money is invested in the vineyards—the very man who casts covetous eyes upon thy Mimi!- 27 - So thou goest to jail, then to the Bataillon d’Afrique, and the wine flows, and thy Mimi—where is she? Only never canst thou receive the Croix de Guerre, my friend—La Patrie Reconnaissante sees to that!”
Marius shouted with laughter—he knew himself so near death, and it was good to be able to say all that was in his heart. An orderly approached him, one of the six young men attached as male nurses to the ward. ”

“ Sometimes he lay on his good side; sometimes he lay on his bad side, and the night nurse turned him from side to side, according to his fancy, because she knew that on neither one side nor the other would he find relief, except such mental relief as he got by turning. She sent one of the orderlies, Fouquet, for the Médecin Chef, and the Médecin Chef came to the ward, and looked at Rochard, and ordered the night nurse to give him morphia, and again morphia, as often as she thought best. ”

“ There are three dying in the ward today. It will be better when they die. The German shells have made them ludicrous, repulsive. We see them in this awful interval,- 87 - between life and death. This interval when they are gross, absurd, fantastic. Life is clean and death is clean, but this interval between the two is gross, absurd, fantastic. ”

“ Letters can be censored and all disturbing items cut out, but if a wife is permitted to come to the War Zone, to see her husband, there is no censoring the things she may tell him. The disquieting, disturbing things. So she herself must be censored, not permitted to come. So for long weary months men must remain at the Front, on active inactivity, and their wives cannot come to see them. Only other people’s wives may come. ”

“ Every now and then, Armand, the orderly, goes to the village to get a bath. He comes back with very clean hands and nails, and says that it has greatly solaced him, the warm water. Then later, that same evening, he gets permission to be absent from the hospital, and he goes to our village to a girl. But he is always as eager, as nervous for his wife’s letter as ever. It is the same with Simon, the young surgeon. Only Simon keeps himself- 106 - pretty clean at all times, as he has an orderly to bring him pitchers of hot water every morning, as many as he wants. ”

“ Certain men, orderlies or stretcher bearers, would be imprisoned. For example, the nurse of Salle I., the ward of the grands blessés, would come on duty some morning and discover that one of her orderlies was missing. Fouquet, who swept the ward, who carried basins, who gave the men their breakfasts, was absent. There was a beastly hitch in the ward work, in consequence.- 38 - The floor was filthy, covered with cakes of mud tramped in by the stretcher bearers during the night. The men screamed for attention they did not receive. The wrong patients got the wrong food at meal times. ”

“ As nurse, not soldier. He had done stretcher drill, with empty stretchers. He had swept wards, empty of patients. He had done his two years military service, practising on empty beds, on empty stretchers. He had had a snap, because of the deputy. Then came the war, and still he had a snap, although now the beds and the wards were all full. Still, there was no danger, no front line trenches, for he was mobilized as infirmier, as nurse in a military hospital. ”

“ The youth rose to his feet, screaming. The cabby cursed. A crowd collected, and the officer in the little carriage leaned back and twirled the ends of his neat moustache. The agent de police, who should have been on duty at the statue, arrived hastily from a nearby café. He always took two hours off for lunch, in good Parisian fashion, and he was obliged on this occasion to cut his lunch hour short by fifteen minutes. Everyone was frightfully annoyed, but no one was more annoyed than the officer in the cab, on his way to the Minister of War. ”

“ The restless lips twitched constantly, mumbling fresh treason, inaudibly. Upon the floor on one side lay a pile of coverlets, tossed angrily from the bed, while on each side the bed dangled white, muscular, hairy legs, the toes touching the floor. All the while he fumbled to unloose the abdominal dressings, picking at the safety-pins with weak, dirty fingers. ”

“ Then very hideous weeks followed for Antoine, weeks of nervous suspense and dread. Day by day, as the lad grew in proficiency and aptitude, as he became more and more expert in the matters of his trade, as he learned a delicate, sure touch with the most refractory hair, and could expend the minimum of gas on the drying machine, and the minimum of soap lather, and withal- 150 - attain the best results in pleasing his customers, so grew the danger of his being snatched away from this wide life spread out before him, of being forced to fight for his glorious country. ”

“ They were the wives of these men in the beds here, the working-class wives of working-class men—the soldiers of the trenches. Ah yes, France is democratic. It is the Nation’s war, and all the men of the Nation, regardless of rank, are serving. But some serve in better places than others. The trenches are mostly reserved for men of the working class, which is reasonable, as there are more of them. ”