In the silence of the night those
who are delirious re-fight their recent battles. You're half-asleep,
when in the darkened ward some one jumps up in bed, shouting, "Hold
your bloody hands up." He thinks he's capturing a Hun trench, taking
prisoners in a bombed in dug-out. In an instant, like a mother with a
frightened child, she's bending over him; soon she has coaxed his head
back on the pillow. Men do not die in vain when they evoke such women.
And the men--the chaps in the cots! As a patient the first sight you
have of them is a muddy stretcher. The care with which the bearers
advance is only equalled by the waiters in old-established London
Clubs when they bring in one of their choicest wines. The thing on the
stretcher looks horribly like some of the forever silent people you
have seen in No Man's Land. A pair of boots you see, a British Warm
flung across the body and an arm dragging. A screen is put round a
bed; the next sight you have of him is a weary face lying on a white
pillow. Soon the chap in the bed next to him is questioning.
"What's yours?"
"Machine-gun caught me in both legs."
"Going to lose 'em?"
"Don't know. Can't feel much at present. Hope not."
Then the questioner raises himself on his elbow. "How's it going?"
_It_ is the attack. The conversation that follows is always how we're
hanging on to such and such an objective and have pushed forward three
hundred yards here or have been bent back there.
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