Out To Win: The Story of America in FranceDawson, Coningsby
History
Out To Win: The Story of America in France
Dawson, Coningsby
World War, 1914-1918 -- United States
I visited this Lighthouse; it is a place infinitely brave and
pathetic. Most of the men were picked heroes at the war; they wear
their decorations in proof of it. They are greater heroes than ever
now. Nothing has more deeply moved me than my few hours among those
sightless eyes. In many cases the faces are hideously marred, the
eyelids being quite grown together. In several cases besides the eyes,
the arms or legs have gone. I have talked and written a good deal
about the courage which this war has inspired in ordinary men; but the
courage of these blinded men, who once were ordinary, leaves me silent
and appalled. They are happy--how and why I cannot understand. Most
of them have been taught at the Lighthouse how to overcome their
disability and are earning their living as weavers, stenographers,
potters, munition-workers. Quite a number of them have families
to support. The only complaint that is made against them by their
brother-workmen is that they are too rapid; they set too strenuous
a pace for the men with eyes. It is a fact that in all trades where
sensitiveness of touch is an asset, blindness has increased their
efficiency. This is peculiarly so at the Sevres pottery-works where I
saw them making the moulds for retorts. A soldier, who was teaching a
seeing person Braille, explained his own quickness of perception when
he exclaimed, "Ah, madame, it is your eyes which prevent you from
seeing!"
I heard some of the stories of the men. There was a captain who, after
he had been wounded and while there was yet time to save his sight,
insisted on being taken to his General that he might inform him about
a German mine. When his mission was completed, his chance of seeing
was forever ended.
There was a lieutenant who was blinded in a raid and left for dead
out in No Man's Land. Just before he became unconscious, he placed
two lumps of earth in line in the direction which led back to his
own trenches. He knew the direction by the sound of the retreating
footsteps. Whenever he came to himself he groped his way a little
nearer to France and before he fainted again, registered the direction
with two more lumps of earth placed in line. It took him a day to
crawl back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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