World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The trains themselves were well equipped, though nothing to
the hospital trains of England. The more severe cases were
carried in long cars on a double row of stretchers, and they
looked very comfortable on a cold night, with their oil-lamps and
a coke stove in the centre of each car. A stretcher is, perhaps,
not exactly a bed of roses for a wounded man, but when one
considers what pain is involved in moving a man who is badly
wounded, there is obviously a great advantage in placing him
on a stretcher once for all on the battle-field, and never moving
him again until he can be actually placed in bed in a hospital.
On the train the men were looked after by the priests, splendid
fellows who never seemed tired of doing all they could for the
soldiers. One found the Belgian priest everywhere--in the
trenches, in the hospitals, and in the trains--unobtrusive,
always cheerful, always ready to help. From the brave Archbishop
Mercier to the humblest village cure, regardless of their comfort
and careless of their lives, they have stood by their people in
the hour of their trial. May their honour be great in the hour of
Belgium's triumph!
XIX. Furnes--The Town
Like so many of the cities of Belgium, Furnes is a town of the
past. To stand in the great square, surrounded by buildings
which would delight the heart of any artist, is to travel back
through three centuries of time. Spain and the Renaissance
surround us, and we look instinctively towards the Pavilion for
the soldiers of Philip, or glance with apprehension at the door of
the Palais de Justice for the sinister form of Peter Titelmann the
Inquisitor. Around this very square marched the procession of
the Holy Office, in all the insolent blasphemy of its power, and
on these very stones were kindled the flames that were to
destroy its victims. But all these have gone; the priest and his
victim, the swaggering bravo and the King he served, have
gone to their account, and Furnes is left, the record of a time
when men built temples like angels and worshipped in them like
devils.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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