These women who have
pledged themselves to live among suffering, never allow themselves for
a moment to guess what the sight of them means to us chaps in the
cots. Perhaps that also is a part of their sacrifice. But we follow
them with our eyes, and we wish that they would allow themselves to
guess. For so many months we have not seen a woman; there have been so
many hours when we expected never again to see a woman. We're
Lazaruses exhumed and restored to normal ways of life by the fluke of
having collected a bit of shrapnel--we haven't yet got used to normal
ways. The mere rustle of a woman's skirt fills us with unreasonable
delight and makes the eyes smart with memories of old longings. Those
childish longings of the trenches! No one can understand them who has
not been there, where all personal aims are a wash-out and the courage
to endure remains one's sole possession.
The sisters at the Casualty Clearing Station--they understood. The
Casualty Clearing Station is the first hospital behind the line to
which the wounded are brought down straight from the Dressing-Stations.
All day and all night ambulances come lurching along shell-torn roads
to their doors. The men on the stretchers are still in their bloody
tunics, rain-soaked, pain-silent, splashed with the corruption of
fighting--their bodies so obviously smashed and their spirits so
obviously unbroken. The nurses at the Casualty Clearing Station can
scarcely help but understand.


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