The Backwash of War Part 1

The Backwash of War.

by Ellen N. La Motte.

INTRODUCTION

This war has been described as "Months of boredom, punctuated by moments of intense fright." The writer of these sketches has experienced many "months of boredom," in a French military field hospital, situated ten kilometres behind the lines, in Belgium. During these months, the lines have not moved, either forward or backward, but have remained dead-locked, in one position. Undoubtedly, up and down the long-reaching kilometres of "Front" there has been action, and "moments of intense fright" have produced glorious deeds of valour, courage, devotion, and n.o.bility. But when there is little or no action, there is a stagnant place, and in a stagnant place there is much ugliness. 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. They are loosened by the sweeping current, and float to the surface, detached from their environment, and one glimpses them, weak, hideous, repellent. After the war, they will consolidate again into the condition called Peace.

After this war, there will be many other wars, and in the intervals there will be peace. So it will alternate for many generations. 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. But not till then.

E. N. L. M.

HEROES

When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital. The journey was made in double-quick time, over rough Belgian roads. To save his life, he must reach the hospital without delay, and if he was bounced to death jolting along at breakneck speed, it did not matter. That was understood. He was a deserter, and discipline must be maintained. Since he had failed in the job, his life must be saved, he must be nursed back to health, until he was well enough to be stood up against a wall and shot. This is War. Things like this also happen in peace time, but not so obviously.

At the hospital, he behaved abominably. The ambulance men declared that he had tried to throw himself out of the back of the ambulance, that he had yelled and hurled himself about, and spat blood all over the floor and blankets--in short, he was very disagreeable. Upon the operating table, he was no more reasonable. He shouted and screamed and threw himself from side to side, and it took a dozen leather straps and four or five orderlies to hold him in position, so that the surgeon could examine him. During this commotion, his left eye rolled about loosely upon his cheek, and from his bleeding mouth he shot great clots of stagnant blood, caring not where they fell. One fell upon the immaculate white uniform of the Directrice, and stained her, from breast to shoes.

It was disgusting. They told him it was _La Directrice_, and that he must be careful. For an instant he stopped his raving, and regarded her fixedly with his remaining eye, then took aim afresh, and again covered her with his coward blood. Truly it was disgusting.

To the _Medecin Major_ it was incomprehensible, and he said so. To attempt to kill oneself, when, in these days, it was so easy to die with honour upon the battlefield, was something he could not understand. So the _Medecin Major_ stood patiently aside, his arms crossed, his supple fingers pulling the long black hairs on his bare arms, waiting. He had long to wait, for it was difficult to get the man under the anaesthetic.

Many cans of ether were used, which went to prove that the patient was a drinking man. Whether he had acquired the habit of hard drink before or since the war could not be ascertained; the war had lasted a year now, and in that time many habits may be formed. As the _Medecin Major_ stood there, patiently fingering the hairs on his hairy arms, he calculated the amount of ether that was expended--five cans of ether, at so many francs a can--however, the ether was a donation from America, so it did not matter. Even so, it was wasteful.

At last they said he was ready. He was quiet. During his struggles, they had broken out two big teeth with the mouth gag, and that added a little more blood to the blood already choking him. Then the _Medecin Major_ did a very skilful operation. He trephined the skull, extracted the bullet that had lodged beneath it, and bound back in place that erratic eye. After which the man was sent over to the ward, while the surgeon returned hungrily to his dinner, long overdue.

In the ward, the man was a bad patient. He insisted upon tearing off his bandages, although they told him that this meant bleeding to death. His mind seemed fixed on death. He seemed to want to die, and was thoroughly unreasonable, although quite conscious. All of which meant that he required constant watching and was a perfect nuisance. He was so different from the other patients, who wanted to live. It was a joy to nurse them. This was the _Salle_ of the _Grands Blesses_, those most seriously wounded. By expert surgery, by expert nursing, some of these were to be returned to their homes again, _reformes_, mutilated for life, a burden to themselves and to society; others were to be nursed back to health, to a point at which they could again shoulder eighty pounds of marching kit, and be torn to pieces again on the firing line.

It was a pleasure to nurse such as these. It called forth all one's skill, all one's humanity. But to nurse back to health a man who was to be court-martialled and shot, truly that seemed a dead-end occupation.

They dressed his wounds every day. Very many yards of gauze were required, with gauze at so many francs a bolt. Very much ether, very much iodoform, very many bandages--it was an expensive business, considering. All this waste for a man who was to be shot, as soon as he was well enough. How much better to expend this upon the hopeless cripples, or those who were to face death again in the trenches.

The night nurse was given to reflection. One night, about midnight, she took her candle and went down the ward, reflecting. Ten beds on the right hand side, ten beds on the left hand side, all full. How pitiful they were, these little soldiers, asleep. How irritating they were, these little soldiers, awake. Yet how sternly they contrasted with the man who had attempted suicide. Yet did they contrast, after all? Were they finer, n.o.bler, than he? The night nurse, given to reflection, continued her rounds.

In bed number two, on the right, lay Alexandre, asleep. He had received the _Medaille Militaire_ for bravery. He was better now, and that day had asked the _Medecin Major_ for permission to smoke. The _Medecin Major_ had refused, saying that it would disturb the other patients. Yet after the doctor had gone, Alexandre had produced a cigarette and lighted it, defying them all from behind his _Medaille Militaire_. The patient in the next bed had become violently nauseated in consequence, yet Alexandre had smoked on, secure in his _Medaille Militaire_. How much honour lay in that?

Here lay Felix, asleep. Poor, querulous, feeble-minded Felix, with a foul fistula, which filled the whole ward with its odour. In one sleeping hand lay his little round mirror, in the other, he clutched his comb. With daylight, he would trim and comb his moustache, his poor, little drooping moustache, and twirl the ends of it.

Beyond lay Alphonse, drugged with morphia, after an intolerable day.

That morning he had received a package from home, a dozen pears. He had eaten them all, one after the other, though his companions in the beds adjacent looked on with hungry, longing eyes. He offered not one, to either side of him. After his gorge, he had become violently ill, and demanded the basin in which to unload his surcharged stomach.

Here lay Hippolyte, who for eight months had jerked on the bar of a captive balloon, until appendicitis had sent him into hospital. He was not ill, and his dirty jokes filled the ward, provoking laughter, even from dying Marius. How filthy had been his jokes--how they had been matched and beaten by the jokes of others. How filthy they all were, when they talked with each other, shouting down the length of the ward.

Wherein lay the difference? Was it not all a dead-end occupation, nursing back to health men to be patched up and returned to the trenches, or a man to be patched up, court-martialled and shot? The difference lay in the Ideal.

One had no ideals. The others had ideals, and fought for them. Yet had they? Poor selfish Alexandre, poor vain Felix, poor gluttonous Alphonse, poor filthy Hippolyte--was it possible that each cherished ideals, hidden beneath? Courageous dreams of freedom and patriotism? Yet if so, how could such beliefs fail to influence their daily lives? Could one cherish standards so n.o.ble, yet be himself so ign.o.ble, so petty, so commonplace?

At this point her candle burned out, so the night nurse took another one, and pa.s.sed from bed to bed. It was very incomprehensible. Poor, whining Felix, poor whining Alphonse, poor whining Hippolyte, poor whining Alexandre--all fighting for _La Patrie_. And against them the man who had tried to desert _La Patrie_.

So the night nurse continued her rounds, up and down the ward, reflecting. And suddenly she saw that these ideals were imposed from without--that they were compulsory. That left to themselves, Felix, and Hippolyte, and Alexandre, and Alphonse would have had no ideals.

Somewhere, higher up, a handful of men had been able to impose upon Alphonse, and Hippolyte, and Felix, and Alexandre, and thousands like them, a state of mind which was not in them, of themselves. Base metal, gilded. And they were all harnessed to a great car, a Juggernaut, ponderous and crus.h.i.+ng, upon which was enthroned Mammon, or the G.o.ddess of Liberty, or Reason, as you like. Nothing further was demanded of them than their collective physical strength--just to tug the car forward, to cut a wide swath, to leave behind a broad path along which could follow, at some later date, the hordes of Progress and Civilization.

Individual n.o.bility was superfluous. All the Idealists demanded was physical endurance from the ma.s.s.

Dawn filtered in through the little square windows of the ward. Two of the patients rolled on their sides, that they might talk to one another.

In the silence of early morning their voices rang clear.

"Dost thou know, _mon ami_, that when we captured that German battery a few days ago, we found the gunners chained to their guns?"

PARIS, 18 December, 1915.

LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE

They brought him to the _Poste de Secours_, just behind the lines, and laid the stretcher down gently, after which the bearers stretched and restretched their stiffened arms, numb with his weight. For he was a big man of forty, not one of the light striplings of the young cla.s.ses of this year or last. The wounded man opened his eyes, flas.h.i.+ng black eyes, that roved about restlessly for a moment, and then rested vindictively first on one, then on the other of the two _brancardiers_.

"_Sales embusques!_" (Dirty cowards) he cried angrily. "How long is it since I have been wounded? Ten hours! For ten hours have I laid there, waiting for you! And then you come to fetch me, only when it is safe!

Safe for you! Safe to risk your precious, filthy skins! Safe to come where I have stood for months! Safe to come where for ten hours I have laid, my belly opened by a German sh.e.l.l! Safe! Safe! How brave you are when night has fallen, when it is dark, when it is safe to come for me, ten hours late!"

He closed his eyes, jerked up his knees, and clasped both dirty hands over his abdomen. From waist to knees the old blue trousers were soaked with blood, black blood, stiff and wet. The _brancardiers_ looked at each other and shook their heads. One shrugged a shoulder. Again the flas.h.i.+ng eyes of the man on the stretcher opened.

"_Sales embusques!_" he shouted again. "How long have you been engaged in this work of mercy? For twelve months, since the beginning of the war! And for twelve months, since the beginning of the war, I have stood in the first line trenches! Think of it--twelve months! And for twelve months you have come for us--when it was safe! How much younger are you than I! Ten years, both of you--ten years, fifteen years, or even more!

Ah, _Nom de Dieu_, to have influence! Influence!"

The flaming eyes closed again, and the bearers shuffled off, lighting cheap cigarettes.

Then the surgeon came, impatiently. Ah, a _grand blesse_, to be hastened to the rear at once. The surgeon tried to unb.u.t.ton the soaking trousers, but the man gave a scream of pain.

"For the sake of G.o.d, cut them, _Monsieur le Major_! Cut them! Do not economize. They are worn out in the service of the country! They are torn and b.l.o.o.d.y, they can serve no one after me! Ah, the little economies, the little, false economies! Cut them, _Monsieur le Major_!"

An a.s.sistant, with heavy, blunt scissors, half cut, half tore the trousers from the man in agony. Clouts of black blood rolled from the wound, then a stream bright and scarlet, which was stopped by a handful of white gauze, retained by tightly wrapped bands. The surgeon raised himself from the task.

"_Mon pauvre vieux_," he murmured tenderly. "Once more?" and into the supine leg he shot a stream of morphia.

Two ambulance men came in, Americans in khaki, ruddy, well fed, careless. They lifted the stretcher quickly, skilfully. Marius opened his angry eyes and fixed them furiously.

"_Sales etrangers!_" he screamed. "What are _you_ here for? To see me, with my bowels running on the ground? Did you come for me ten hours ago, when I needed you? My head in mud, my blood warm under me? Ah, not you!

There was danger then--you only come for me when it is safe!"

They shoved him into the ambulance, buckling down the brown canvas curtains by the light of a lantern. One cranked the motor, then both clambered to the seat in front, laughing. They drove swiftly but carefully through the darkness, carrying no lights. Inside, the man continued his imprecations, but they could not hear him.

"Strangers! Sightseers!" he sobbed in misery. "Driving a motor, when it is I who should drive the motor! Have I not conducted a Paris taxi for these past ten years? Do I not know how to drive, to manage an engine?

What are they here for--France? No, only themselves! To write a book--to say what they have done--when it was safe! If it was France, there is the Foreign Legion--where they would have been welcome--to stand in the trenches as I have done! But do they enlist? Ah no! It is not safe! They take my place with the motor, and come to get me--when it is too late."

Then the morphia relieving him, he slept.