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152 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
Some distance apart from the rest lay the patients suffering
from tetanus. It is only in rare cases that their lives can be
saved. One-half of those who died in hospital had succumbed
to tetanus. It is a terrible affliction. A surgeon who had
been at the front in Alsace and whom I met on a subsequent
occasion, thought he had noticed that this disease first appeared
when they had crossed the French frontier. It is generated
by the so-called tetanus bacillus, a bacillar microbe to be
found in the soil, chiefly mould. If such infected earth comes
into contact with a wound, say through a ricochet bullet, the
latter may carry the bacilli with it and by their poisonous
secretions induce this form of muscular catalepsy. We saw
a few tetanus patients, and the professor talked to them.
A young German had tetanus in the muscles of the mouth,
and his face became distorted as he attempted almost in-
audibly to speak. I was told that his life might possibly be
saved.
About the middle of September Professor Zinsser and his
colleagues had had a trjång time at the hospital. It was at
the time when, for strategical reasons, the army retired from
the Mame to the Aisne. The badly wounded men who could
not bear hasty removal involving discomfort, had to be left
in the care of surgeons, who thus voluntarily went into
captivity—surely one of the greatest sacrifices that could be
made in war.
The rest, who could bear being removed, were conveyed in
large numbers to these barracks, the floors of which had been
covered with straw. Professor Zinsser arrived there late one
night, in darkness and pouring rain, and at once proceeded to
the improvised hospital. No lights were to be had. But
wagon after wagon brought fresh wounded—would the stream
never end ? They were crammed in anywhere, anyhow, in
terrible confusion. Some died during the night. Others grew
worse. All were soaked with rain, their bandages were torn
to shreds and undone. There they lay, fifteen hundred, light
and grave cases, pell-mell. Here and there, among the living,
lay a body growing cold in death. A terrible smell pervaded
the atmosphere. Of course, none of the patients were able
to go outside. Their strength was utterly gone. It was a
pitch-dark night—the rain was pelting down ! But the
professor was powerless to relieve their distress ; he had no
alternative but to wait till the morning.
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