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102 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
another reason why the German Medical Corps treat the
French wounded with so much sympathy. I do not know how
many thousands of French soldiers are lying wounded at
German hospitals, but those who survive the complications
of their wounds and, when peace comes, return to their homes,
will be as many witnesses in the service of truth.
Thus charity, in the guise of medical science, follows in the
track of cruel and relentless war. What are all these doctors,
assistants, sick attendants, sisters of mercy, these endless
medical trains, but guardian angels wrestling with the angel
of death for the lives of the wounded ? What are the am-
bulance wagons, the stretchers and the faithful and intrepid
collies, but friends and allies of the poor wounded, bringing
in their harvest on the bloody battlefields ? Here is the atone-
ment which follows war hand in hand, just as the emblem
of the Red Cross combines the colour of blood with the symbol
of Christian love.
" Doesn’t the soldier get nervous and terrified at the sight
of all these dead ? I should have thought that he would realise
that the danger which he runs is just as great as that of those
who have already fallen ?
"
" No, he hardly notices the dead bodies. ’
You are dead,
you poor devils, but I am still alive and do not mean to die.’
That is how he reflects. It is as if the sight of the fallen had
steeled him in the face of the danger. And yet he may some-
times come across the bodies of friends so swollen that the
buttons burst from the uniforms, and with blackened, grinning
features staring up into the sun and rain."
" But surely the bodies are not left above ground ?
"
" No, as soon as the firing has died away on the battle-
field, the civil population, or, if it has fled, our own soldiers,
must inter the dead pell-mell in common pits, often without
any attempt at a burial service. This can follow afterwards.
The chief thing is that the dead disappear so as not to give
rise to sickness and epidemics by putrefaction."
The time was now approaching when I ought to be back at
Stenay. I said good-bye to the head surgeon of the Romagne
field hospital and hurried with Captain Suhlmann into the
car, where our seven invalids had been waiting. Our head-
lights had now been lit and once more we penetrated into the
maze of the never ending transport columns. Does night then
bring no rest at all ?
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