They can afford to be feminine to men
who are so weak. Moreover, they are near enough the Front to share in
the sublime exaltation of those who march out to die. They know when a
big offensive is expected, and prepare for it. They are warned the
moment it has commenced by the distant thunder of the guns. Then comes
the ceaseless stream of lorries and ambulances bringing that which has
been broken so quickly to them to be patched up in months. They work
day and night with a forgetfulness of self which equals the devotion
of the soldiers they are tending. Despite their orderliness they seem
almost fanatical in their desire to spend themselves. They are always
doing, but they can never do enough. It's the same with the surgeons.
I know of one who during a great attack operated for forty-eight hours
on end and finally went to sleep where he stood from utter weariness.
The picture that forms in my mind of these women is absurd, Arthurian
and exact; I see them as great ladies, mediaeval in their saintliness,
sharing the pollution of the battle with their champions.
Lying here with nothing to worry about in the green serenity of an
English summer, I realize that no man can grasp the splendour of this
war until he has made the trip to Blighty on a stretcher. What I mean
is this: so long as a fighting man keeps well, his experience of the
war consists of muddy roads leading up through a desolated country to
holes in the ground, in which he spends most of his time watching
other holes in the ground, which people tell him are the Hun
front-line.
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