We had had all the windows opened. From their beds, the wounded could see, through the dancing waves of heat, the heights of Berru and Nogent l'Abbesse, the towers of the Cathedral, still crouching like a dying lion in the middle of the plain of Reims, and the chalky lines of the trenches intersecting the landscape.
A kind of torpor seemed to hang over the battle-field. Sometimes, a perpendicular column of smoke rose up, in the motionless distance, and the detonation reached us a little while afterwards, as if astray, and ashamed of outraging the radiant silence.
It was one of the fine days of the summer of 1915, one of those days when the supreme indifference of Nature makes one feel the burden of war more cruelly, when the beauty of the sky seems to proclaim its remoteness from the anguish of the human heart.
We had finished our morning round when an ambulance drew up at the entrance.
"Doctor on duty!"
I went down the steps. The chauffeur explained:
"There are three slightly wounded men. I am going to take on further, and then there are some severely wounded..."
He opened the back of his car. On one side three soldiers were seated, dozing. On the other, there were stretchers, and I saw the feet of the men lying upon them. Then, from the depths of the vehicle came a low, grave, uncertain voice which said:
"I am one of the severely wounded, Monsieur."
He was a lad rather than a man. He had a little soft down on his chin, a well-cut aquiline nose, dark eyes to which extreme weakness gave an appearance of exaggerated size, and the grey pallor of those who have lost much blood.
"Oh! how tired I am!" he said.
He held on to the stretcher with both hands as he was carried up the steps. He raised his head a little, gave a glance full of astonishment, distress, and lassitude at the green trees, the smiling hills, the glowing horizon, and then he found himself inside the house.
Here begins the story of Gaston Leglise. It is a modest story and a very sad story; but indeed, are there any stories now in the world that are not sad?
I will tell it day by day, as we lived it, as it is graven in my memory, and as it is graven in your memory and in your flesh, my friend Leglise.
Leglise only had a whiff of chloroform, and he fell at once into a sleep closely akin to death.
"Let us make haste," said the head doctor. "We shall have the poor boy dying on the table."
Then he shook his head, adding:
"Both knees! Both knees! What a future!"
The burden of experience is a sorrowful one. It is always sorrowful to have sufficient memory to discern the future.
Small splinters from a grenade make very little wounds in a man's legs; but great disorders may enter by way of those little wounds, and the knee is such a complicated, delicate marvel!
Corporal Leglise is in bed now. He breathes with difficulty, and catches his breath now and again like a person who has been sobbing. He looks about him languidly, and hardly seems to have made up his mind to live. He contemplates the bottle of serum, the tubes, the needles, all the apparatus set in motion to revive his fluttering heart, and he seems bowed down by grief. He wants something to drink, but he must not have anything yet; he wants to sleep, but we have to deny sleep to those who need it most; he wants to die perhaps, and we will not let him.
He sees again the listening post where he spent the night, in advance of all his comrades. He sees again the narrow doorway bordered by sandbags through which he came out at dawn to breathe the cold air and look at the sky from the bottom of the communication-trench. All was quiet, and the early summer morning was sweet even in the depths of the trench. But some one was watching and listening for the faint sound of his footsteps. An invisible hand hurled a bomb. He rushed back to the door; but his pack was on his back, and he was caught in the aperture like a rat in a trap. The air was rent by the detonation, and his legs were rent, like the pure air, like the summer morning, like the lovely silence.
The days pass, and once more, the coursing blood begins to make the vessels of the neck throb, to tinge the lips, and give depth and brilliance to the eye.
Death, which had overrun the whole body like an invader, retired, yielding ground by degrees; but it has halted now, and makes a stand at the legs; these it will not relinquish; it demands something by way of spoil; it will not be baulked of its prey entirely.
We fight for the portion Death has chosen. The wounded Corporal looks on at our labours and our efforts, like a poor man who has placed his cause in the hands of a knight, and who can only be a spectator of the combat, can only pray and wait.
We shall have to give the monster a share; one of the legs must go. Now another struggle begins with the man himself. Several times a day I go and sit by his bed. All our attempts at conversation break down one by one. We always end in the same silence and anxiety. To-day Leglise said to me:
"Oh! I know quite well what you're thinking about!"
As I made no answer, he intreated:
"Perhaps we could wait a little longer? Perhaps to-morrow I may be better..."
Then suddenly, in great confusion:
"Forgive me. I do trust you all. I know what you do is necessary. But perhaps it will not be too late in two or three days...."
Two or three days! We will see to-morrow.
The nights are terribly hot; I suffer for his sake.
I come to see him in the evening for the last time, and encourage him to sleep. But his eyes are wide open in the night and I feel that they are anxiously fixed on mine.
Fever makes his voice tremble.
"How can I sleep with all the things I am thinking about?"
Then he adds faintly:
"Must you? Must you?"
The darkness gives me courage, and I nod my head: "Yes!"
As I finish his dressings, I speak from the depths of my heart:
"Leglise, we will put you to sleep to-morrow. We will make an examination without letting you suffer, and we will do what is necessary."
"I know quite well that you will take it off."
"We shall do what we must do."
I divine that the corners of his mouth are drawn down a little, and that his lips are quivering. He thinks aloud:
"If only the other leg was all right!"
I have been thinking of that too, but I pretend not to have heard. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
I spend part of the afternoon sewing pieces of waterproof stuff together. He asks me:
"What are you doing?"
"I am making you a mask, to give you ether."
"Thank you; I can't bear the smell of chloroform."
I answer "Yes, that's why." The real reason is that we are not sure he could bear the brutal chloroform, in his present state.
Leglise's leg was taken off at the thigh this morning. He was still unconscious when we carried him into the dark room to examine his other leg under the X-rays.
He was already beginning to moan and to open his eyes, and the radiographer was not hurrying. I did all I could to hasten the business, and to get him back into his bed. Thus he regained consciousness in bright sunshine.
What would he, who once again was so close to the dark kingdom, have thought if he had awakened in a gloom peopled by shadows, full of whisperings, sparks and flashes of light?
As soon as he could speak, he said to me:
"You have cut off my leg?"
I made a sign. His eyes filled, and as his head was low, the great tears trickled on to the pillow.
To-day he is calmer. The first dressings were very painful. He looked at the raw, bloody, oozing stump, trembling, and said:
"It looks pretty horrible!"
We took so many precautions that now he is refreshed for a few hours.
"They say you are to have the Military Medal," the head doctor told him.
Leglise confided to me later, with some hesitation:
"I don't suppose they would really give me the medal!"
"And why not?"
"I was punished; one of my men had some buttons off his overcoat."
Oh, my friend, scrupulous lad, could I love my countrymen if they could remember those wretched buttons for an instant?
"My men!" he said gravely. I look at his narrow chest, his thin face, his boyish forehead with the serious furrow on it of one who accepts all responsibilities, and I do not know how to show him my respect and affection.
Leglise's fears were baseless. General G——arrived just now. I met him on the terrace. His face pleased me. It was refined and intelligent.
"I have come to see Corporal Leglise," he said.
I took him into the ward, full of wounded men, and he at once went towards Leglise unhesitatingly, as if he knew him perfectly.
"How are you?" he asked, taking the young man's hand.
"Mon General, they've cut off my leg..."
"Yes, yes, I know, my poor fellow. And I have brought you the Military Medal."
He pinned it on to Leglise's shirt, and kissed my friend on both cheeks, simply and affectionately.
Then he talked to him again for a few minutes.
I was greatly pleased. Really, this General is one of the right sort.
The medal has been wrapped in a bit of muslin, so that the flies may not soil it, and hung on the wall over the bed. It seems to be watching over the wounded man, to be looking on at what is happening. Unfortunately, what it sees is sad enough. The right leg, the only leg, is giving us trouble now. The knee is diseased, it is in a very bad state, and all we have done to save it seems to have been in vain. Then a sore has appeared on the back, and then another sore. Every morning, we pass from one misery to another, telling the beads of suffering in due order.
So a man does not die of pain, or Leglise would certainly be dead. I see him still, opening his eyes desperately and checking the scream that rises to his lips. Oh! I thought indeed that he was going to die. But his agony demands full endurance; it does not even stupefy those it assails.
I call on every one for help.
"Genest, Barrassin, Prevot, come, all of you."
Yes, let ten of us do our best if necessary, to support Leglise, to hold him, to soothe him. A minute of his endurance is equal to ten years of such effort as ours.
Alas! were there a hundred of us he would still have to bear the heaviest burden alone.
All humanity at this hour is bearing a very cruel burden. Every minute aggravates its sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its aid?
We made an examination of the wounded man, together with our chief, who muttered almost inaudibly between his teeth:
"He must be prepared for another sacrifice."
Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely consummated.
But Leglise understood. He no longer weeps. He has the weary and somewhat bewildered look of the man who is rowing against the storm. I steal a look at him, and he says at once in a clear, calm, resolute voice:
"I would much rather die."
I go into the garden. It is a brilliant morning, but I can see nothing, I want to see nothing. I repeat as I walk to and fro:
"He would much rather die."
And I ask despairingly whether he is not right perhaps.
All the poplars rustle softly. With one voice, the voice of Summer itself, they say: "No! No! He is not right!"
A little beetle crosses the path before me. I step on it unintentionally, but it flies away in desperate haste. It too has answered in its own way: "No, really, your friend is not right."
"Tell him he is wrong," sing the swarm of insects that buzz about the lime-tree.
And even a loud roar from the guns that travels across the landscape seems to say gruffly: "He is wrong! He is wrong!"
During the evening the chief came back to see Leglise, who said to him with the same mournful gravity:
"No, I won't, Monsieur, I would rather die."
We go down into the garden, and the chief says a strange thing to me:
"Try to convince him. I begin at last to feel ashamed of demanding such a sacrifice from him."
And I too... am I not ashamed?
I consult the warm, star-decked night; I am quite sure now that he is wrong, but I don't know how to tell him so. What can I offer him in exchange for the thing I am about to ask him? Where shall I find the words that induce a man to live? Oh you, all things around me, tell me, repeat to me that it is sweet to live, even with a body so grievously mutilated.
This morning I extracted a little projectile from one of his wounds. He secretly concluded that this would perhaps make the great operation unnecessary, and it hurt me to see his joy. I could not leave him this satisfaction.
The struggle began again; this time it was desperate. For we have no time to lose. Every hour of delay exhausts our man further. A few days more, and there will be no choice open to him: only death, after a long ordeal....
He repeats:
"I am not afraid, but I would rather die."
Then I talk to him as if I were the advocate of Life. Who gave me this right? Who gave me eloquence? The things I said were just the right things, and they came so readily that now and then I was afraid of holding out so sure a promise of a life I am not certain I can preserve, of guaranteeing a future that is not in man's hands.
Gradually, I feel his resistance weakening. There is something in Leglise which involuntarily sides with me and pleads with me. There are moments when he does not know what to say, and formulates trivial objections, just because there are others so much weightier.
"I live with my mother," he says. "I am twenty years old. What work is there for a cripple? Ought I to live to suffer poverty and misery?"
"Leglise, all France owes you too much, she would blush not to pay her debt."
And I promise again, in the name of our country, sure that she will never fall short of what I undertake for her. The whole French nation is behind me at this moment, silently ratifying my promise.
We are at the edge of the terrace; evening has come. I hold his burning wrist in which the feeble pulse beats with exhausted fury. The night is so beautiful, so beautiful! Rockets rise above the hills, and fall slowly bathing the horizon in silvery rays. The lightning of the guns flashes furtively, like a winking eye. In spite of all this, in spite of war, the night is like waters dark and divine. Leglise breathes it in to his wasted breast in long draughts, and says:
"Oh, I don't know, I don't know!... Wait another day, please, please...."
We waited three whole days, and then Leglise gave in. "Well, do what you must. Do what you like."
On the morning of the operation, he asked to be carried down to the ward by the steps into the park. I went with him, and I saw him looking at all things round him, as if taking them to witness.
If only, only it is not too late!
Again he was laid on the table. Again we cut through flesh and bones. The second leg was amputated at the thigh.
I took him in my arms to lay him on his bed, and he was so light, so light....
This time when he woke he asked no question. But I saw his hands groping to feel where his body ended.
A few days have passed since the operation. We have done all it was humanly possible to do, and Leglise comes back to life with a kind of bewilderment.
"I thought I should have died," he said to me this morning, while I was encouraging him to eat.
He added:
"When I went down to the operation-ward, I looked well at everything, and I thought it was for the last time."
"Look, dear boy. Everything is just the same, just as beautiful as ever."
"Oh!" he says, going back to his memories, "I had made up my mind to die."
To make up one's mind to die is to take a certain resolution, in the hope of becoming quieter, calmer, and less unhappy. The man who makes up his mind to die severs a good many ties, and indeed actually dies to some extent.
With secret anxiety, I say gently, as if I were asking a question:
"It is always good to eat, to drink, to breathe, to see the light. ..."
He does not answer. He is dreaming. I spoke too soon. I go away, still anxious.
We have some bad moments yet, but the fever gradually abates. I have an impression that Leglise bears his pain more resolutely, like one who has given all he had to give, and fears nothing further.
When I have finished the dressing, I turned him over on his side, to ease his sore back. He smiled for the first time this morning, saying:
"I have already gained something by getting rid of my legs. I can lie on my side now."
But he cannot balance himself well; he is afraid of falling.
Think of him, and you will be afraid with him and for him.
Sometimes he goes to sleep in broad daylight and dozes for a few minutes. He has shrunk to the size of a child. I lay a piece of gauze over his face, as one does to a child, to keep the flies off. I bring him a little bottle of Eau de Cologne and a fan, they help him to bear the final assaults of the fever.
He begins to smoke again. We smoke together on the terrace, where I have had his bed brought. I show him the garden and say: "In a few days, I will carry you down into the garden." He is anxious about his neighbours, asks their names, and inquires about their wounds. For each one he has a compassionate word that comes from the depths of his being. He says to me:
"I hear that little Camus is dead. Poor Camus!"
His eyes fill with tears. I was almost glad to see them. He had not cried for so long. He adds:
"Excuse me, I used to see Camus sometimes. It's so sad."
He becomes extraordinarily sensitive. He is touched by all he sees around him, by the sufferings of others, by their individual misfortunes. He vibrates like an elect soul, exalted by a great crisis.
When he speaks of his own case, it is always to make light of his misfortune:
"Dumont got it in the belly. Ah, it's lucky for me that none of my organs are touched; I can't complain."
I watch him with admiration, but I am waiting for something more, something more....
His chief crony is Legrand.
Legrand is a stonemason with a face like a young girl. He has lost a big piece of his skull. He has also lost the use of language, and we teach him words, as to a baby. He is beginning to get up now, and he hovers round Leglise's bed to perform little services for him. He tries to master his rebellious tongue, but failing in the attempt, he smiles, and expresses himself with a limpid glance, full of intelligence.
Leglise pities him too:
"It must be wretched not to be able to speak."
To-day we laughed, yes, indeed, we laughed heartily, Leglise, the orderlies and I.
We were talking of his future pension while the dressings were being prepared, and someone said to him:
"You will live like a little man of means."
Leglise looked at his body and answered:
"Oh, yes, a little man, a very little man."
The dressing went off very well. To make our task easier, Leglise suggested that he should hold on to the head of the bed with both hands and throw himself back on his shoulders, holding his stumps up in the air. It was a terrible, an unimaginable sight; but he began to laugh, and the spectacle became comic. We all laughed. But the dressing was easy and was quickly finished.
The stumps are healing healthily. In the afternoon, he sits up in bed. He begins to read and to smoke, chatting to his companions.
I explain to him how he will be able to walk with artificial legs. He jokes again:
"I was rather short before; but now I can be just the height I choose."
I bring him some cigarettes that had been sent me for him, some sweets and dainties. He makes a sign that he wants to whisper to me, and says very softly:
"I have far too many things. But Legrand is very badly off; his home is in the invaded district, and he has nothing, they can't send him anything."
I understand. I come back presently with a packet in which there are tobacco, some good cigarettes, and also a little note....
"Here is something for Legrand. You must give it to him. I'm off."
In the afternoon I find Leglise troubled and perplexed.
"I can't give all this to Legrand myself, he would be offended."
So then we have to devise a discreet method of presentation.
It takes some minutes. He invents romantic possibilities. He becomes flushed, animated, interested.
"Think," I say, "find a way. Give it to him yourself, from some one or other."
But Leglise is too much afraid of wounding Legrand's susceptibilities. He ruminates on the matter till evening.
The little parcel is at the head of Legrand's bed. Leglise calls my attention to it with his chin, and whispers:
"I found some one to give it to him. He doesn't know who sent it. He has made all sorts of guesses; it is very amusing!" Oh, Leglise, can it be that there is still something amusing, and that it is to be kind? Isn't this alone enough to make it worth while to live?
So now we have a great secret between us. All the morning, as I come and go in the ward, he looks at me meaningly, and smiles to himself. Legrand gravely offers me a cigarette; Leglise finds it hard not to burst out laughing. But he keeps his counsel.
The orderlies have put him on a neighbouring bed while they make his. He stays there very quietly, his bandaged stumps in view, and sings a little song, like a child's cradle-song. Then, all of a sudden, he begins to cry, sobbing aloud.
I put my arm round him and ask anxiously: "Why? What is the matter?"
Then he answers in a broken voice: "I am crying with joy and thankfulness."
Oh! I did not expect so much. But I am very happy, much comforted. I kiss him, he kisses me, and I think I cried a little too.
I have wrapped him in a flannel dressing-gown, and I carry him in my arms. I go down the steps to the park very carefully, like a mother carrying her new-born babe for the first time, and I call out: "An arm-chair! An arm-chair."
He clings to my neck as I walk, and says in some confusion:
"I shall tire you."
No indeed! I am too well pleased. I would not let any one take my place. The arm-chair has been set under the trees, near a grove. I deposit Leglise among the cushions. They bring him a kepi. He breathes the scent of green things, of the newly mown lawns, of the warm gravel. He looks at the facade of the mansion, and says:
"I had not even seen the place where I very nearly died."
All the wounded who are walking about come and visit him; they almost seem to be paying him homage. He talks to them with a cordial authority. Is he not the chief among them, in virtue of his sufferings and his sacrifice?
Some one in the ward was talking this morning of love and marriage, and a home.
I glanced at Leglise now and then; he seemed to be dreaming and he murmured:
"Oh, for me, now..."
Then I told him something I knew: I know young girls who have sworn to marry only a mutilated man. Well, we must believe in the vows of these young girls. France is a country richer in warmth of heart than in any other virtue. It is a blessed duty to give happiness to those who have sacrificed so much. And a thousand hearts, the generous hearts of women, applaud me at this moment.
Leglise listens, shaking his head. He does not venture to say "No."
Leglise has not only the Military Medal, but also the War Cross. The notice has just come. He reads it with blushes.
"I shall never dare to show this," he says; "it is a good deal exaggerated."
He hands me the paper, which states, in substance, that Corporal Leglise behaved with great gallantry under a hail of bombs, and that his left leg has been amputated.
"I didn't behave with great gallantry," he says; "I was at my post, that's all. As to the bombs, I only got one."
I reject this point of view summarily.
"Wasn't it a gallant act to go to that advanced post, so near the enemy, all alone, at the head of all the Frenchmen? Weren't they all behind you, to the very end of the country, right away to the Pyrenees? Did they not all rely on your coolness, your keen sight, your vigilance? You were only hit by one bomb, but I think you might have had several, and still be with us. And besides, the notice, far from being exaggerated, is really insufficient; it says you have lost a leg, whereas you have lost two! It seems to me that this fully compensates for anything excessive with regard to the bombs."
"That's true!" agrees Leglise, laughing. "But I don't want to be made out a hero."
"My good lad, people won't ask what you think before they appreciate and honour you. It will be quite enough to look at your body."
Then we had to part, for the war goes on, and every day there are fresh wounded.
Leglise left us nearly cured. He left with some comrades, and he was not the least lively of the group.
"I was the most severely wounded man in the train," he wrote to me, not without a certain pride.
Since then, Leglise has written to me often. His letters breathe a contented calm. I receive them among the vicissitudes of the campaign; on the highways, in wards where other wounded men are moaning, in fields scoured by the gallop of the cannonade.
And always something beside me murmurs, mutely:
"You see, you see, he was wrong when he said he would rather die."
I am convinced of it, and this is why I have told your story. You will forgive me, won't you, Leglise, my friend?
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg