Lay Down Your Arms 46

Lay Down Your Arms 46

The anxious hour of waiting did, however, come to an end. They had

carried off the poor gurgling fellow. “Lay him on the bench there,” I

heard the regimental doctor order; “he is not to be brought back into

hospital. He is already three parts dead.” And yet he must surely have

still understood the words, this three-parts-dead man; for with a

despairing gesture he raised both his hands to heaven.

 

Now I was sitting in a carriage with the two physicians and four sisters

of mercy. It was stiflingly hot, and the carriage was filled with the

smell of the hospital and sacristy--carbolic acid and incense. I was

unspeakably ill. I leaned back in my corner, and shut my eyes.

 

The train began to move. That is just the time when every traveller

brings before his mind’s eye the object towards which he is being taken.

I had often before travelled over the same ground; and then there lay

before me a visit to a château full of guests, or a pleasant

bathing-place--my wedding-tour, a blessed memory, was made on this same

route, to meet with a brilliant and loving reception in the metropolis

of “Prussia”. What a different sound that last word has assumed since

then! And to-day? What is our object to-day? A battlefield and the

hospitals round it--the abodes of death and suffering. I shuddered----

 

“My dear lady,” said one of the physicians, “I think you are ill

yourself. You look so pale and so suffering.”

 

I looked up; the speaker had a friendly, youthful appearance. I guessed

that this was his first service on being recently promoted to the rank

of surgeon. It was good of him to devote his first service to this

dangerous and laborious duty! I felt grateful to these men who were

sitting in the carriage with me for the relief which they were in the

act of bringing to the sufferers. And to the self-sacrificing

sisters--really of mercy--I paid heartfelt admiration and thanks. Yet

what was it that each of these good men had to bestow? An ounce of help

for 1000 hundredweights of need. These courageous nuns must, I thought,

bear in their hearts for _all_ men that overmastering love which filled

mine for my own husband; as I had felt just now that if the fearfully

disfigured and repulsive soldier who was gurgling at my feet had been my

husband, all my repulsion would have vanished, so these women must have

felt towards every brother-man, and surely through the power of a higher

love--that for their chosen bridegroom, Christ. But alas! here also

these noble women brought an ounce only--one ounce of love to a place

where 1000 hundredweights of hatred were raging!

 

“No, doctor,” I replied to the sympathetic question of the young

physician. “I am not ill, only a little exhausted.”

 

The staff-surgeon now joined in the conversation.

 

“Your husband, madam, as Baron S---- told me, was wounded at Königgrätz,

and you are travelling thither to nurse him. Do you know in which of the

villages around he is lying?”

 

No, I did not know.

 

“My destination is Königinhof,” I replied. “There a physician awaits me

who is a friend of mine--Dr. Bresser.”

 

“I know him. He was with me when we made a three days’ examination of

the field of battle.”

 

“Examined the field of battle!” I repeated with a shudder. “Let us

hear.”

 

“Yes, yes, doctor, let us hear,” begged one of the nuns. “Our service

may bring us into the position of helping at an examination of the

kind.”

 

So the regimental surgeon began his narration. Of course I cannot give

the exact words of his description; and, again, he did not speak in a

single flow of words, but with frequent interruptions, and almost with

reluctance, being only compelled to speak by the persistent questions

with which the curious nuns and I assailed him. The narration, however,

though sketchy, formed a series of perfect pictures before my mind’s

eye, which impressed themselves so on my memory that I can even now make

them pass before me. In other circumstances I should not have so clearly

comprehended and retained the doctor’s sketches--one always forgets so

easily what one has heard or read--but at that time the narratives made

almost the impression of an experience. I was in a state of high nervous

tension and excitement. My fixed thought of Frederick, which had gained

the mastery over me, made me represent Frederick to myself as a person

concerned in each scene described; and on that account they remained

fixed in my mind as painful things I had myself experienced. Later on I

noted down the events related by the regimental surgeon in the red book,

just as if they had taken place before my own eyes.

 

* * * * *

 

The ambulance was placed behind a hillock which protected it. The battle

was raging on the other side. The ground quavered, and the heated air

quavered. Clouds of smoke were rising, the artillery was roaring. Now

the duty was to send out patrols to repair to the scene of battle, pick

out the badly wounded, and bring them in. Is there anything more heroic

than such going into the midst of the hissing rain of bullets, in the

face of all the horrors of the fight, exposed to all the perils of the

fight, without allowing oneself to be penetrated by its wild excitement?

According to military conceptions this office is not distinguished. On

“the Sanitary Corps” no smart, active, handy, young fellow will serve.

No man in it turns the girls’ heads. And a field doctor, even if one is

no longer called by that name, but “regimental surgeon,” can he

nevertheless hold a comparison with any cavalry lieutenant?

 

The corporal of the Sanitary Corps ordered his people towards some low

ground against which a battery had opened its fire. They marched through

the dark veil of the powder smoke and the dust and the scattered earth

to a point where a cannon ball, which struck the ground at their feet,

bounded in front of them. They had only gone a few paces when they

began to meet with wounded men, men slightly wounded, who were crawling

to the ambulance, either alone or in pairs, giving each other mutual

support. One sank down; but it was not his wounds which had sapped his

strength, it was exhaustion. “We have eaten nothing for two days, made a

forced march of twelve hours, got into the bivouac, and then, two hours

afterwards, came the alarm and the fight.”

 

The patrol went forward. These men would find their way for themselves,

and manage to take their exhausted comrade with them. Aid must be

reserved for others still more in need of aid.

 

On a heap of rocks, forming part of a precipitous declivity, lies a

bleeding mass. There are a dozen soldiers lying there. The sanitary

corporal stops and bandages one or two of them. But these wounded men

are not carried off; those must first be fetched in who have fallen in

the centre of the field. Then, perhaps, on their return march, these men

can be picked up here.

 

And again the patrol goes on, nearer to the battle. In ever thicker

swarms wounded men are tottering on, painfully creeping forward, singly

or together. These are such as can still walk. The contents of the field

flasks is distributed amongst these, a bandage is applied to such wounds

as are bleeding, and the way to the ambulance pointed out to them. Then

forward again. Over the dead--over hillocks of corpses. Many of these

dead show traces of horrible agonies. Eyes staring unnaturally, hands

grasping the ground, the hair of the beard staring out, teeth pressed

together, lips closed spasmodically, legs stiffly outstretched. So they

lie.

 

Now through a hollow way. Here they are lying in heaps, dead and wounded

together. The latter greet the sanitary patrol as angels of rescue, and

beg and shriek for help. With broken voices, weeping and lamenting, they

shout for rescue, for a gulp of water. But alas! the provisions are

almost exhausted, and what can these few men do? Each ought to have a

hundred arms to be able to rescue them all. Yet each does what he can.

Then sounds the prolonged tone of the sanitary call. The men stop and

break off from their work of aid. “Do not desert us! Do not desert us!”

the poor injured men cry; but the signal horn calls again and again, and

this, plainly distinguishable from all other noises, is evidently going

further afield. Then also an adjutant comes in hot haste. “Men of the

Sanitary Corps?” “At your command,” replies the corporal. “Follow me.”

 

Evidently a general wounded. It is necessary to obey and leave the rest.

“Patience, comrades, and keep a good heart; we will return.” Those who

hear and those who say it know that it is not true.

 

And again they go further: following the adjutant, at the double quick,

who spurs on in front and points the way. There is no halting on the

way, although on the right hand and on the left resound shrieks of woe

and cries for help; and although also many bullets fall among those who

are thus hurrying on, and stretch one and another on the ground--only

onwards and over everything. Over men writhing with the pain of their

wounds, men trodden down by horses tearing over them, or crushed by guns

passing over their limbs, and who, seeing the rescue corps, mutilated as

they are, rear themselves up for the last time. Over them, over them!

 

* * * * *

 

This sort of thing goes on for pages of the red book. The relation that

the regimental surgeon gave of the march of a sanitary patrol over the

battlefield contains many similar, and even more painful things, such as

the description of moments when bullets and shells fall in the midst of

the dressers and tear up new wounds; or when the course of the battle

brings the fight on to the dressing station itself, right up on to the

ambulance, and sucks in the whole _personnel_ of the sanitary corps,

with the physicians and with the patients into the whirl of the fighting

or fleeing or pursuing troops; or when frightened riderless horses all

abroad come across the way, and overturn the stretcher on which a

severely wounded man is lying, who is now dashed to the earth all

shattered. Or this, the most gruesome picture of all--a farmyard, into

which a hundred wounded men had been carried, bandaged, and made

comfortable--the poor wretches, glad and thankful that their rescue had

been effected. Then a shell came and set the whole on fire. A minute

afterwards the hospital was in flames. The shrieks, or rather the howls,

which resounded from this abode of despair, and which in its wild agony

drowned all the other noises, will remain for ever in the memory of any

one who heard it. Ah me! it remains for ever in my memory too, though I

did not hear it; for, as the regimental surgeon was telling it, I

fancied again that Frederick was there--that I heard his shriek out of

the burning place of torture.

 

“You are getting ill, dear madam,” said the narrator, breaking off. “I

must have tried your nerves too much.”

 

But I had not yet heard enough. I assured him that my momentary weakness

was the consequence merely of the heat and of a bad night, and I was not

too tired to ask for the rest. I kept feeling still that I had not yet

heard enough; that of the infernal circles that were being described,

the description had not yet been given of the lowest and most hellish;

and when once the thirst for the horrible has been awakened it is

impossible to stop till it has been slaked by the most horrible of all.

And I was right, for there is something more hideous than a battlefield

during the fight, _viz._, one afterwards.

 

No more thunder of artillery, no more blare of trumpets, no more beat of

drum; only the low moans of pain and the rattle of death. In the

trampled ground some redly-glimmering pools, lakes of blood; all the

crops destroyed, only here and there a piece of land left untouched, and

still covered with stubble; the smiling villages of yesterday turned

into ruins and rubbish. The trees burned and hacked in the forests, the

hedges torn with grape-shot. And on this battle-ground thousands and

thousands of men dead and dying--dying without aid. No blossoms of

flowers are to be seen on wayside or meadow; but sabres, bayonets,

knapsacks, cloaks, overturned ammunition waggons, powder waggons blown into the air, cannon with broken carriages. Near the cannon, whose muzzles are black with smoke, the ground is bloodiest.