Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind ThemRuhl, Arthur
History
Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them
Ruhl, Arthur
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The transport was late, the sun going, and I went down to the other end
of the yard to get a picture of some Russians I had seen two days
before. We had walked through their ward then, and I remembered one very
sick boy, to whom one of the nurses with us had given a flower she was
wearing, and how he had smiled as he put it to his face with his gaunt,
white hand. "It doesn't take long," she had said, "when they get like
that. They have so little vitality to go on, and some morning between
two and five"--and sure enough his bed was empty now.
A troop-train was rushing by, as I came back, covered with green
branches and flowers. They went by with a cheer--that cheer which
sounds like a cheer sometimes, and sometimes, when two trains pass on
adjoining tracks so fast that you only catch a blur of faces, like the
windy shriek of lost souls.
Then came a sound of band music, and down the road, outside the high
wire fence, a little procession led by soldiers in gray-blue, playing
Chopin's "Funeral March." Behind them came the hospital hearse, priests,
and a weeping peasant family. The little procession moved slowly behind
the wailing trumpets--it was an honor given to all who died here, except
the enemy--and must have seemed almost a sort of extravagance to the
convalescents crowding up to the fence who had seen scores of their
comrades buried in a common trench. Opposite us the drums rolled and
the band began the Austrian national hymn. Then they stopped; the
soldier escort fired their rules in the air. That ended the ceremony,
and the hearse moved on alone.
Then the convalescents drifted back toward us. Most of them would soon
be ready for the front again, and many glad of it, if only to be men in
a man's world again. One of the nurses spoke of some of the others she
had known. One man slashed his hand with his knife in the hope of
staying behind. Even the bravest must gather themselves together before
the leap. Only those who have seen what modern guns can do know how much
to fear them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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