The first question that he asked as we stood by his cot, when he
again regained consciousness was: "How am I wounded?" When we
told him the misfortune which had befallen him, a shudder ran
through his frame as he repeated: "It is bad enough, but it
might have been worse." A shade of sadness spread over those
noble features but it was only for a moment, and he appeared
utterly resigned to his cruel fate.
Always there was that smile of appreciation as we moved among
the numerous cots of the suffering and dying. Whether in the
morning upon inquiring how he had spent the night, or after the
thick curtains were lowered at the windows, that no gleam of
light might reveal our location to hostile planes, or when we
paused at his bedside to wish him a painless night and restful
slumber, we were always greeted by kind words of hope and cheer
and a pleasant smile. How those cheery good-nights softened the
roaring cannon, and screaming shells into a mere echo, and that
smiling countenance made radiant the grim halls of indescribable
suffering and death!
Well do we remember that Lieut. Lady's concern was not for
himself but only for the welfare of others. As he looked across
the way where Private Everson of Company A, in the 26th
Division, who had been wounded in such a manner as to make it
impossible for him to lie down, sat propped up with blankets, he
exclaimed, "I pity that poor fellow so! Oh, how I wish I could
help him!" How self vanished like a blighted thing as we heard
those words of pity coming from one whose suffering was beyond
human words to express. Truly, a life like this had caught a
glow of that redeeming light which radiates from the cross
itself.
Again, we recalled that awful night in November when we moved
with hurried yet silent tread among the cots on which lay
figures in many uneasy attitudes, some brokenly slumbering and
muttering through helpless delirium; others uttering suppressed
moans as they lay tossing upon their cots.
Just as we were preparing to leave the ward to the night men,
after the temperatures and pulse rates of all the patients had
been taken and registered, the gas alarm sounded. Instantly we
made ready to put onto the patients the gas masks which were in
readiness at the head of each cot. Just then the cry of fire was
whispered to the ward men, who at once began preparations for
the removal of the patients to the opposite side of the hospital
grounds. All out of doors was intense blackness--a blackness
only relieved by the flashes of guns that made the eastern sky
blaze with their crimson light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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