 Chapter 9 of The Backwash of War by Ellen Neubald-Lamotte Chapter 9 Locomotor Ataxia Just inside the entrance gate, a big, flat-topped tent was pitched which bore over the low door a signboard on which was painted Triage number one, malade et blessé assis. This meant that those assis, able to travel in the ambulances as sitters, were to be deposited here for diagnosis and classification. Over beyond was the salle de temps, the hut for receiving the grand blessé, but a tent was sufficient for sick men and those slightly wounded. It was an old tent, weather-beaten, a dull, dirty gray. Within, the floor was of earth, and along each side ran long, narrow, backless benches on which the sick men and the slightly wounded sat, waiting, sorting. A gray twilight pervaded the interior, and the everlasting Belgian rain beat down upon the creaking gambas, beat down in gentle, dripping patters, or in hard, noisy gusts as it happened. It was always dry inside, however, and the earth floor was dusty, except at the entrance where a triangle of mud projected almost to the doctor's table in the middle. The salle de temps was different. It was more comfortable. The seriously wounded were unloaded carefully and placed upon beds covered with rubber sheeting and clean sacking, which protected the thin mattresses from blood. The patients were afterwards covered with red blankets, and stone hot water bottles were also given them sometimes, but in the sorting tent there were no such comforts. They were not needed. The sick men and the slightly wounded could sit very well on the backless benches till the Matitsaméor had time to come and examine them. Quite a company of sitters were assembled here one morning, helped out of two big ambulances that drove in within ten minutes of each other. They were a dejected lot, and they stumbled into the tent unsteadily, groping toward the benches, upon which they tried to pose their weary, old, fevered bodies in comfortable attitudes. And, as it couldn't be done, there was a continual shifting movement and unrest. Heavy legs and heavy wet boots were shoved stiffly forward, then dragged back again. Old, thin bodies bent forward, twisted sideways, coarse, filthy hands hung supine between spread knees, and then again the hands would change and support whiskered, discouraged faces. They were all uncouth, grotesque, dejected, and they smelt abominably, these poilus, these hairy, unkempt soldiers. At their feet their sacks lay bulging with their few possessions. They hadn't much, but all they had lay there, at their feet. Old, brown canvas sacks, bulging, muddy, worn, worn out, like their owners. Tied on the outside were water cans and extra boots and bayonets, and inside were socks and writing paper and photographs of ugly wives. Therefore the ungainly sacks were precious, and they hugged them with their tired feet, afraid that they might lose them. Then, finally, the mayor arrived and began the business of sorting them. He was brisk and alert, and he called them one by one to stand before him. They shuffled up to his little table, wavering, deprecating, humble, and answered his brief, impatient questions. And on the spot he made snap diagnoses, such as rheumatism, bronchitis, kicked by a horse, knocked down by dispatch rider, dysentery, and so on. A paltry, stupid lot of ailments and minor accidents, demanding a few days treatment. It was a dull service, this medical service, yet one had to be always on guard against contagion, so the surface was a responsible one. But the mayor worked quickly, sorted them out hastily, and then, one by one, they disappeared behind a hanging sheet, where the orderlies took off their old uniforms, washed the patients a little, and then led them to the wards. It was a stupid service, so different from that of the grand blessé. There were some interests in that. But this eclopé business, these minor ailments, these streams of petty sickness, petty accidents, dirty skin diseases, and vermin, all wore, if you like. But how banal! Later in the medical wards, the mayor made his rounds, to inspect more carefully the men upon whom he had made snap diagnoses, to correct the diagnosis, if need be, and to order treatment. The chief treatment they needed was a bath, a clean bed, and a week of sleep. But the doctor, being fairly conscientious, thought to hurry things a little, to hasten the return of these old, tired men to the trenches, so that they might come back to the hospital again, as a grand blessé, in which event they would be interesting. So he ordered a ventruse, or cupping, for the bronchitis cases. There is much bronchitis in Planders, in the trenches, because of the incessant Belgian rain. They are sick with it, too, poor devils. So said the mayor to himself, as he made his round. Five men here, lying in a row, all tomein poisoning, due to some rank tend to stuff they'd been eating. Yonder there, three men with itch. Filthy business, their hands all covered with it, tearing at their bodies with their black, claw-like nails. The orderlies had not washed them very thoroughly, small blame to them. So the mayor made his rounds, walked slowly, very bored, but conscientious. These dull wrecks were needed in the trenches. He must make them well. At bed nine, André stopped. Something different this time? He tried to recall it. Oh yes, in the sorting tent he'd noticed. Monsieur Mayor, a thin hand, clean and slim, rose to the salute. The bed covers were very straight, sliding neither to this side, nor to that, as covers slide under restless pain. I cannot walk, Monsieur Mayor. So André stopped attentive. The man continued. I cannot walk, Monsieur Mayor, because of that, from the trenches, I was removed a month ago. After that I was given a four-jean, a wagon in which to transport the loaves of bread. But soon it arrived that I could not climb to the high seat of my wagon, nor could I mount to the saddle of my horse. So I was obliged to lead my horses, stumbling at their bridles. So I have stumbled for the past four weeks. But now I cannot even do that. It is very painful. André passed a hand over his short, thick, upright hair, and smoothed his stiff brush reflectively. Then he put questions to the man, confidentially, and at the answers continued to rub backward his tight brush of hair, after which he disappeared from the ward for a time, but returned presently, bringing with him a pair of surgeon who happened to be visiting the front that day. There also came with him another little doctor of the hospital staff, who was interested in what André had told him of the case. The three stood together at the foot of the bed, stroking their beards, and their hair meditatively, while they plied the patient with questions, after which they directed Alphonse, this worthy, dark orderly, who looked like a brigand and Henri, the priest orderly, to help the patient to rise. They stood him barefoot upon the floor, supporting him slightly by each elbow. To his knees, or just above them, fell a scant, gay, pink flannel night-shirt, his sole garment. It was one of many warm, gay night-shirts, pink and cheerful, that some women of America had sent over to the wounded heroes of France. It made a bright spot of color in the sombre ward, and through the open window, one cog glimpses of green hop feels, and a windmill in the distance waving its slow arms. Walk, commanded André, walk to the door, turn and return. The man staggered between the beds, holding to them half bent over, fearful. Cool summer air blew in through the window, waving the pink night-shirt, making goose-flesh rise on the shapely white legs that wavered. Then he moved down the ward between the rows of beds, moving with uncertain, running, halting steps. Upon the linoleum, his bare feet flapped in soft thumps, groping wildly, interfering, knocking against each other. The man, drawing to control them, gazed in fright from side to side. Down to the door he padded, rocked, swayed, turned, and almost fell. Then back again he flapped. Dense stillness in the ward, broken only by the hard, unsteady thumping of the bare feet. The feet masterless, as the spirit had been masterless years ago. The three judges in white blouses stood with arms folded, motionless. The patients in the beds sat up and tittered. The man, who had been kicked by a horse, raised himself and smiled. He, who had been knocked down by a dispatch rider, sat up, as did those with bronchitis and those with tomein poisoning. They sat up, looked, and sniggered. They knew. So did André. So did the Paris surgeon and the little staff doctor, and the swarthy orderly and the priest orderly. They all knew. The patient knew, too. The laughter of his comrades told him. So he was to be released from the army, physically unfit. He could no longer serve his country. For many months he had faced death under the guns, a glorious death. Now he was to face death in another form. Not glorious, shameful. Only he didn't know much about it and couldn't visualize it. After all he might possibly escape. He, who had so loved life. So he was rather pleased to be released from service. The patients in the surrounding beds ceased laughing. They had other things to think about. As soon as they were cured of the dysentery and of the itch, they were going back again to the trenches under the guns. So they pitied themselves, and they rather envied him, being released from the army. They didn't know much about it either. They couldn't visualize an imbecile degrading, lingering death. They could only comprehend escape from sudden death under the guns. One way or another it is about the same. Tragedy, either way, and death, either way. But the tragedies of peace equal the tragedies of war. The sum total of suffering is the same. They balance up pretty well. Paris 18 June 1916 End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of The Backwash of War by Ellen Neubold Lamotte. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 10 A Surgical Triumph In the Latin Quarter, somewhere about the intersection of the Boulevard Montparnasse with the Rue d'Iran, it might have been even a little way back of the Guerre Montparnasse, or perhaps in the other direction, where the Rue van Beek cuts into the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs. Anyone who knows the Quarter will know about it at once. There lived a little hairdresser by the name of Antoine. Some ten years ago Antoine had moved over from Montmartre, for he was a good hairdresser and a thrifty soul, and he wanted to get on in life. And at that time nothing seemed to him so profitable an investment as to set up a shop in a neighborhood patronized by Americans. American students were always wanting their hair washed, so he was told, once a week at least, and in that they differed from the Russian and Polish and Romanian and other students of Paris, a fact which determined Antoine to go into business at the Montparnasse end of the Quarter rather than at the lower end, say, around the Pantheon and at Tien du Mont. And as he determined to put his prices low in order to catch the trade, so later on, when his business thrived enormously, he continued to keep them low in order to maintain his clients. For if you once get used to having your hair washed for two francs, and very well done at that, it is annoying to find that the price has gone overnight up to the prices one pays on the Boulevard Capucines. Therefore, for ten years Antoine continued to watch hair at two francs ahead, and at the same time he earned quite a reputation for himself as a marvelous good person when it came to waves and curls. So that when the war broke out and his American clients broke and ran, he had a neat tidy sum saved up and could be fairly complacent about it all. Moreover, he was a lame man, one leg being some three inches shorter than the other, due to an accident in childhood, so he had never done his military service in his youth. And while not over military age even yet, there was no likelihood of his ever being called upon to do it. So he stood in the doorway of his deserted shop for all his young assistants, his curlers and jampours had been mobilized and looked up and down the deserted street and congratulated himself that he was not in as bad a plight, financially and otherwise, as some of his neighbors. Next door to him was a restaurant where the students ate, many of them. It had enjoyed a high reputation for cheapness up to the war, and twice a day had been throng with a mixed crowd of sculptors and painters and writers, and just dilettance, which latter liked to patronize it for what they were pleased to call local color. Well, look at it now, thought the thrifty Antoine, everybody gone except a dozen stranded students who had not money enough to escape, and who, in the kindness of their hearts, continued to eat here on credit in order to keep the proprietor going. Even such a fool as the proprietor must see sooner or later that patronage of this sort could lead nowhere from the point of view of profits, in fact, it was ridiculous. Antoine, lounging in his doorway, thought of his son, his only son, who, thank God, was too young to enter the army. By the time he was old enough for his military service, the war would all be over. It could not last at the outside more than six weeks or a couple of months, so Antoine had no cause for anxiety on that account. The lad was a fine husky youth with a sprouting mustache, which made him look older than his seventeen years. He was being taught the art of washing hair and of curling and dying the same, on the human head or aside from it, as the case might be, and he could snap curling irons with a click to inspire confidence in the minds of the most fastidious, so altogether, thought Antoine, he had a good future before him. So the war had no terrors for Antoine, and he was able to speculate freely upon the future of his son, which seemed like a very bright, admirable future indeed, in spite of the disturbances of the moment. Nor did he need to close the doors of his establishment either, in spite of the loss of his assistants and the loss of his many customers, who kept those assistants, as well as himself, busy. For there still remained in Paris a good many American heads to be washed from time to time, rather foolhardy adventurous heads, curious sensation hunting heads, who had remained in Paris to see the war, or as much of it as they could, in order to enrich their own personal experience. With which point of view Antoine had no quarrel, although there were certain of his countrymen who wished these inquisitive foreigners would return to their native land for a variety of reasons. As the months rolled along, however, he who had been so far-seeing, so thrifty a businessman, seemed to have made a mistake. His calculations as to the duration of the war all went wrong. It seemed to be lasting an unconscionable time, and every day it seemed to present new phases, for which no immediate settlement offered itself. Thus a year dragged away, and Antoine's son turned eighteen, and his moustache grew to be so imposing that his father commanded him to shave it. At the end of another two months, Antoine found it best to return his son to short trousers, for although the boy was stout and fat, he was not tall, and in short trousers he looked merely an overgrown fat boy, and Antoine was growing rather worried, as he saw the lads of the young classes call to the colors. Somewhere in one of the merries of Paris, over Montmartre perhaps, where he had come from, or at the préfecture de police, or the cité, Antoine knew that there was a record of his son's age and attainments, which might be used against him at any moment, and as the weeks grew into months, it seemed certain that the class to which this precious boy belonged would be called on for military service. Then very hideous weeks followed for Antoine, weeks of nervous suspense and dread. Day by day, as the lad grew in proficiency and aptitude, as he became more and more expert in the matters of his trade, as he learned a delicate sure touch with the most refractory hair, and could expend the minimum of gas on the drying machine, and the minimum of soap lather and, with all, attain the best results in pleasing his customers, so grew the danger of his being snatched away from this wide life spread out before him, of being forced to fight for his glorious country, poor fat boy. On Sundays he used to parade the raspia with a German shepherd dog at his heels, bought two years ago as a German shepherd, but now called a Belgian police dog. How could he lay aside his little trousers and become a soldier of France? Yet every day that time drew nearer, till finally one day the summons came and the lad departed, and Antoine closed his shutters for a whole week, mourning desperately, and he was furious against England, which had not made her maximum effort, had not mobilized her men, had continued with business as usual, had made no attempt to end the war, wouldn't do so until France had become exhausted, and he was furious against Russia, swamped in a bog of political intrigue, which lacked organization and munitions and leadership, and was totally unable to drawing off the bosses on the other frontier and delivering a blow to smash them. In fact, Antoine was far more furious against the allies of France than against Germany itself, and his rage and grief absolutely overbalanced his pride in his son, or his ambitions as to his son's possible achievements. The boy himself did not mind going when he was called, for he was something of a fatalist being so young, and besides he could not foresee things, but Antoine, little lame man, had much imagination, and foresaw a great deal. Mercifully he could not foresee what actually happened. Thus it was a shock to him. He learned that his son was wounded, and then followed many long weeks, while the boy lay in hospital, during which time many kind-hearted Red Cross ladies wrote to Antoine telling him to be brave of heart and of good courage, and Antoine, being a rich man in a small hairdressing way, took quite large sums of money out of the bank from time to time, and sent them to the Red Cross ladies to buy for his son whatever might be necessary to his recovery. He heard from the hospital in the interior, for they were taking most of the wounded to the interior at that time, for fear of upsetting Paris by the sight of them in the streets, that artificial legs were costly. Thus he steeled himself to the fact that his son would be more hideously lame than he himself. There was some further consultation about artificial arms, rather vague, but Antoine was troubled. Then he learned that a marvelous operation had been performed upon the boy, known as plastic surgery, that is to say the rebuilding out of other parts of the body of certain features of the face that are missing. All this while he heard nothing directly from the lad himself, and in every letter from the Red Cross ladies dictated to them, the boy begged that neither his father nor his mother would make any attempt to visit him at the hospital in the interior till he was ready. Finally the lad was ready. He had been four or five months in hospital, and the best surgeons of the country had done for him the best they knew. They had not only saved his life, but thanks to his father's money, he had been fitted out with certain artificial age to the human body, which would go far towards making life supportable. In fact, they expressed themselves as extremely gratified with what they had been able to do for the poor young man. Nay, they were even proud of him. He was a surgical triumph, and as such they were returning him to Paris by such and such a train upon such and such a day, and Twan went to meet the train. In a little room back of the hairdressing shop, and Twan looked down upon the surgical triumph. This triumph was his son. The two were pretty well mixed up. A passion of love and a passion of furious resentment filled the breast of the little hairdresser. Two very expensive, very good artificial legs lay on the sofa beside the boy. They were nicely jointed and had cost several hundred francs. From the same firm it would also be possible to obtain two very nice artificial arms, light, easily adjustable, well hinged. A hideous, flabby heat, called a nose, fashioned by unique skill out of the flesh of his breast, replaced the little snub nose that Antoine remembered. The mouth they had done little with. All the front teeth were gone, but these could doubtless be replaced in time by others. Across the lad's forehead was a black silk bandage which could be removed later, and in his pocket there was an address from which artificial eyes might be purchased. They would have fitted him out with eyes in the provinces, except that such were better obtainable in Paris. Antoine looked down upon this wreck of his son that lay before him, and the wreck, not appreciating that he was a surgical triumph, kept sobbing, kept weeping out of his sightless eyes, kept jerking his four stumps in supplication, kept begging in agony, kill me papa. However, Antoine couldn't do this, for he was civilized. He was nearly dead anyway, so it didn't much matter. Although the chance they proposed to give him wasn't even a fighting chance, it was just one in a thousand. Some of them put it at one in ten thousand. Accordingly they cut his clothes off in the salle de temps, and carried him, very dirty and naked, to the operating room. Here they found that his ten thousand's chant would be diminished if they gave him a general anesthetic, so they dispensed with chloroform and gave him spinal anesthesia by injecting something into his spinal canal between two of the lower vertebra. This completely relieved him of pain, but made him talkative, and when they saw he was conscious like that, it was decided to hold a sheet across the middle of him so that he could not see what was going on on the other side of the sheet below his waist. The temperature in the operating room was stifling hot, and the sweat poured in drops from the brows of the surgeons so that it took an orderly with a piece of gauze to swab them constantly. However, for all the heat, the man was stone cold and ash and gray, and his nostrils were pinched and dilated while his breath came in gasps, forty to the minute. Yet, as I say, he was talkative, and his stream of little vapid remarks at his end of the sheet did much to drown the clicking and snapping of clamps on the other side of it, where the surgeons were working to give him his one chance. A nurse held the sheet on one side of the table, and a priest orderly held it on the other, and at his head stood a doctor and the directories and another nurse, answering the string of vapid remarks and trying to soothe him. And three feet farther along, hidden from him, and the little clustering company of people trying to distract his attention, stood the two surgeons and the two young students, and just the tops of their hair could be seen over the edge of the sheet. They whispered a little from time to time and worked very rapidly, and there was quite animated talk when the bone saw began to rasp. The man babbled of his home and of his wife. He said he wanted to see her again very much, and the priest orderly, who wanted to drop his end of the sheet and administer the last sacrament at once, grew very nervous and uneasy. So the man rambled on, gasping, and they replied to him in soothing manner and told him that there was a chance that he might see her again. So he talked about her incessantly and with affection, and his whispered words and the cheery replies quite drowned out the clicking and the snapping of the clamps. After a short while, however, his remarks grew less coherent, and he seemed to find himself back in the trenches telephoning. He tried hard to telephone. He tried hard to get the connection. The wires seemed to be cut, however, and he grew puzzled and knit his brows and store, and tried again and again over and over. He had something to say over the telephone, the trench communication wire, and his mind wandered, and he tried very hard in his wandering mind to get the connection. A shell had cut the line evidently. He grew annoyed and restless, engaged anxiously, and perplexedly at the white sheet, held so steadily across his middle. From the waist down he could not move, so all his restlessness took place on the upper side of the sheet, and he was unaware of what was going on on the other side of it, and so failed to hear the incessant rattle of clamps and the subdued whispers from the other side. He struggled hard to get the connection in his mind over the telephone. The wires seemed to be cut, and he cried out in anxiety and distress. Then he grew more and more feeble and gasped more and more, and became almost inarticulate in his efforts. He was distressed, but suddenly he got it. He screamed out, very loud, relieved, satisfied, triumphant, startling them all. Say yes, maintenant. Say yes, c'est le bon Dieu à l'appareil. All right now, all right, it is the good God at the telephone. A drop of blood spotted the sheet, a sudden vivid drop which spread rapidly coming through. The surgeon raised himself. Finished here, he exclaimed with satisfaction. Finished here, repeated the directories. Paris, 26 June 1916. End of Chapter 11. Chapter 12 of the Backwash of War by Ellen Neubald-Lamotte This LibreBox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 12. A Citation As a person, Grameau amounted to very little. In private life, before the war broke out, he had been an acrobat in the streets of Paris, and after that he became a hotel boy in some little fifth-rate hotel over behind the Guest in Le Zard. That had approved his undoing, for even the fifth-rate French traveling salesman and sharpers and adventurers who patronized the hotel had money enough for him to steal. He stole a little, favored by his position, as a garçon d'hôtel, and the theft had landed him, not in jail, but in the Batallion d'Afrique. He had served in that for two years, doing his military service in the Batallion d'Afrique, instead of jail. While working off his five-year sentence, and then war being declared, his regiment was transferred from Morocco to France to Flanders to the front-line trenches, and in course of time he arrived one day at the hospital with a piece of shell in his spleen. He was pretty ill when brought in, and if he had died promptly, as he should have done, it would have been better. But it happened at that time that there was a surgeon connected with the hospital who was meant on making a reputation for himself, and this consisted in trying to prolong the lives of wounded men who ought normally and naturally to have died. So this surgeon worked hard to save Gramein, and certainly succeeded in prolonging his life, and in prolonging his suffering over a very considerable portion of time. He worked hard over him, and he used on him everything he could think of, everything that money could buy. Every time he had a new idea as to treatment, no matter how costly it might be, he mentioned it to the directories who sent to Paris and got it. All the while Gramein remained in bed in very great agony, the surgeon making copious notes on the case, noting that under such and such circumstances, under conditions such as the following, such and such remedies and treatment proved futile and valueless. Gramein had a hole in his abdomen when he entered about an inch long. After about a month, this hole was scientifically increased to a foot in length, rubber drain stuck out in all directions, and went inwards as well, pretty deep, and his pain was enhanced a hundredfold, while his chances of recovery were not bright. But Gramein had a good constitution, and the surgeon worked hard over him, for if he got well it would be a wonderful case, and the surgeon's reputation would benefit. Gramein bore it all very patiently and did not ask to be allowed to die, as many of them did, for since he was of the Batallion d'Afrique, such a request would be equivalent to asking for a remission of sentence, a sentence which the courts have heard he justly deserved and merited. They took no account of the fact that his ethics were those of a wandering juggler turning somersaults on a carpet at the public fests of Paris, and had been polished off by contact with the men and women he had encountered in his capacity of garçon d'hôtel in a fifth-rate hotel near Montmartre. On the contrary, they rather expected of him the decencies and moralities that come from careful nurture, and these not being forthcoming, they had sent him to the Batallion d'Afrique, where his eccentricities would be of no danger to the public. So Gramein continued to suffer over a period of several long months, and he was sufficiently cynical owing to his short experience of life to realize that the surgeon who worked over him so constantly and solicitously was not solely and entirely disinterested in his efforts to make him well. Gramein had no life to return to, that was the trouble. Everyone knew it. The surgeon knew it, and the orderlies knew it, and his comrades in the adjoining beds knew it. He had absolutely no future before him, and there was not much sense in trying to make him well enough to return to Paris, a hopeless cripple. He lay in hospital for several months, suffering greatly about greatly patient. During that time he received no letters, where there was no one to write to him. He was an Apache. He belonged to a criminal regiment, and he had no family anyhow, and his few friends tattooed all over the body like himself were also members of the same regiment, and as such unable to do much for him in civil life after the war. Such it is to be a joye, to belong to a regiment of criminals, and to have no family to speak of. Gramein knew that it would be better for him to die, but he did not like to protest against this painful prolonging of his life. He was pretty well sick of life, but he had to submit to the kind treatment meted out to him, to twist his mouth into a wry smile when the directories asked him each day if he was not better, and to accept without wincing all the newest devices that the surgeon discovered for him. There was some sense in saving other people's lives, but there was no sense in saving his. But the surgeon, who was working for a reputation, worked hand in hand with the directories who wanted her hospital to make a reputation for saving the lives of the Grand Blessé. Gramein was the victim of circumstances, as usual, but it was all in his understanding of life, this being caught up in the ambitions of others, so he had to submit. After about three months of torture, during which time he grew weaker and smelled worse every day, it finally dawned on the nurse that perhaps this life-saving business was not wholly desirable. If he got well in the mildest acceptation of the term, he would be pretty well disabled and useless and good for nothing. And if he was never going to get well, for which the prospects seemed bright enough, why force him along through more weeks of suffering just to try out new remedies? Society did not want him, and he had no place in it. Besides, he had done his share in the trenches in protecting its best traditions. Then they all began to notice suddenly that in bed Gramein was displaying rather nice qualities such as you would not expect from a joyeux, a social outcast. He appeared to be extremely patient, and while his face twisted up into knots of pain most of the time, he did not cry out and disturb the ward as he might have done. This was nice and considerate, and other good traits were discovered too. He was not a nuisance, he was not exacting, he did not demand unreasonable things or refuse to submit to unreasonable things when these were demanded of him. In fact, he seemed to accept his pain as God-given, and with the fatalism which in some ways was rather admirable. He could not help smelling like that, for he was full of rubber drains and of gauze drains, and if the doctor was too busy to dress his wounds that day, and so put him off till the next, it was not his fault for smelling so vilely. He did not raise any disturbance nor make any complaint on certain days when he seemed to be neglected. Any extra discomfort that he was obliged to bear, he bore stoically. All together, after some four months of this, it was discovered that Grimond had rather a remarkable character, a character which merited some sort of recognition. He seemed to have rather heroic qualities of endurance, of bravery, of discipline. Nor were they the heroic qualities that suddenly develop in a moment of exaltation, but on the contrary they were developed by months of extreme agony, of extreme bodily pain. He could have been so disagreeable had he chosen, and as he cared so little to have his life saved, his goodness could not have been due to that. It seemed that he was merely very decent, very considerate of others, and wanted to give as little trouble as he could, no matter what took place. Only he got thinner and weaker and more and more gentle, and at last, after five months of this, the directories was touched by his conduct and suggested that here was a case of heroism, as well worthy of the Qua de Guerre, as were the more spectacular movements on the battlefield. It took a few weeks longer of gentle suggestion on her part to convey this impression to the general, but at last the general entered into correspondence with the officers of the regiment, to which Grimond belonged, and it then transpired that as the soldier Grimond had displayed, the same qualities of consideration for others and of discipline that he was now displaying in a hospital bed. Finally one day the news came that Grimond was to be decorated. Everyone else in the ward who deserved it had been decorated long ago, naturally, but they had not belonged to the Batallion d'Afrique. Their services had been recognized long ago. Now however, after these many months of suffering, Grimond was to receive the Qua de Guerre. He was nearly dead by this time. When told the news, he smiled faintly. He did not seem to care. It seemed to make very little impression upon him. Yet it should have made an impression, for he was a convicted criminal, and it was a condescension that he should be so honored at all. He had somehow won this honor, this token of forgiveness, by suffering so long, so uncomplainingly. However a long delay took place, although finally his papers came, his citation in which he was cited in the orders of the regiment, as having done a very brave deed under fire. He smiled a little at that. It had taken place so long ago, this time when he had done the deed, received the wound that kept him suffering so long. It seemed so little worthwhile to acknowledge it now, after all these months, when he was just ready to leave. Then more delay took place, and Grimond got weaker, and the orderlies said among themselves that if the general was ever going to decorate this man, that he had better hurry up. However, so long a time had passed, that it did not much matter. Grimond was pleased with his citation. It seemed to make it all right for him somehow. It seemed to give him standing among his fellow patients. The hideous tattoo marks on his arms and legs, chest and back, which proclaimed him an apache, which showed him such, every time his wound was dressed, were about to be overlaid with a decoration for bravery upon the field of battle. But still the general did not come. Grimond grew very weak and feeble, and his patients became exhausted. He held on as long as he could, so he died finally after a long pull, just twenty minutes before the general arrived with his medals. Paris. 27 June 1916. End of Chapter 12. Chapter 13 of The Backwash of War by Ellen Neubald Lamotte. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 13. An Incident. At the intersection of the Rue Debac and at the Boulevard Saint-Germain rises the statue of Claude Char. Rising like a rock in the midst of the stream of traffic, and like a rock splitting the stream and averting it into currents which flow east and west, north and south, smoothly and without collision. In guiding the stream of traffic and directing its orderly flow, the statue of Claude Char was greatly assisted by the presence of an agent, a police, with a picturesque cape and a picturesque sword, and who controls the flow of vehicles with as much precision as a London policeman, although there are those who profess that a London policeman is the only one who understands the business. Before the war when the omnibuses ran, the agent de police was always on duty. Since the war when the Paris omnibuses are all at the front, carrying meat to the soldiers, there are certain times during the day when the whole responsibility for traffic regulation falls upon the statue of Claude Char. It was at one of these times when Claude Char was standing, head in air as usual, and failed to regard the comings and goings of the street that this incident occurred. Down on the quay, an officer of the French army stepped into a little victoria, a shabby little voir tour de place, which trotted him up the route back and then assayed to take him along the Boulevard Saint-Germain to the Meniste de la Caire. Coming along the Boulevard in the opposite direction was a little Lad 15, bending low over the handlebars of a tricycle delivery wagon, the box of which contained enough kilos to have taxed a strong man or an old horse. Men are scarce in Paris, however, and the little delivery boy, who could not possibly have been available for the army for another three years, was doing a man's work or a horse's work, as you please. The French are a thrifty race, and the possibilities being that the war will all be over before that time, it mattered little whether this particular boy developed an hernia or tuberculosis or any other malady which might unfit him for future military service. At present he was earning money for his patron, which was all that really mattered. So the little boy on the tricycle, head down, ran squarely into the horse of the chaby Victoria, conveying the French officer and the agent a police was absent, and the statue of Claude Charpe stood, as usual, head in air. Quite a melee ensued, the old horse, which should long ago have been in a butcher's shop, avoided the tricycle with true French thrift, but stepped squarely upon the face of the little boy, sprawling under his hoofs. Another hoof planted itself on the fingers of the boy's right hand. War itself could not have been more disastrous. The youth rose to his feet, screaming. The cabbie cursed, a crowd collected, and the officer in the little carriage leaned back and twirled the ends of his neat moustache. The agent de police, who should have been on duty at the statue, arrived hastily from a nearby café. He always took two hours off for lunch, in good Parisian fashion, and he was obliged on this occasion to cut his lunch hours short by fifteen minutes. Everyone was frightfully annoyed, but no one was more annoyed than the officer in the cab on his way to the minister of war. He was so annoyed, so bored, that he sat impotervable, one arm lying negligently on the back of the seat, the fingers of the other hand caressing the cross of the Legion of Honor upon his breast. His eyes rolled upwards as if seeking the aeroplane, which was not, at that moment, flying over Paris. The cabbie got down from his seat, and with much vociferation, called upon the officer to witness that it was not his fault. The crowd, which had not witnessed the accident, crowded round the policemen, giving testimony to what they had not seen. The sobbing boy was led into a chemist. Still, the people did not disperse. They pressed round the cab and began shouting to the disinterested officer, the officer who cared not where the old horse had stepped, the officer who continued to law back against the shabby cushions, to look upward at the sky, to remain indifferent to the taximeter, which skipped briskly from eighty-five song themes to ninety-five song themes, and continued ticking on. Women crowded round the cab regarding its occupant. Was this one, who commanded their sons at the front, who had therefore seen so much, been through so much, that the sight of a little boy, stamped on, meant nothing to him? Had he seen so much suffering on grove, that it meant nothing to him on detail? Or was this his attitude to all suffering? Was this the nation's attitude to the suffering of their sons? Or was this officer one, who had never been to the front, an ambusque, one of the protected ones, who occupied soft snaps in the rear, safe places from which to draw their pay? The crowd increased every minute. They speculated volubly. They surrounded the cab, voicing their speculations. They finally became so unbearable that the officer's boredom vanished. His annoyance became such, his impatience at the delay became such, that he slid down from the shabby cushions, and without paying his fare, disappeared in the direction of the minister de la guerre. End of Chapter 13. End of The Backwash of War, The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield, as witnessed by an American hospital nurse by Ellen N. Lamont.