Soldiers -- Fiction; War stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
“There's a girl in the heart of Mary-land
With a heart that belongs to me-e.”
Then he discovered that he was groaning. His mind became entirely taken
up in the curious rhythm of his groans. The only parts of his body
that existed were his legs and something in his throat that groaned and
groaned. It was absorbing. White figures hovered about him, he saw the
hairy forearms of a man in shirt sleeves, lights glared and went out,
strange smells entered at his nose and circulated through his whole
body, but nothing could distract his attention from the singsong of his
groans.
Rain fell in his face. He moved his head from side to side, suddenly
feeling conscious of himself. His mouth was dry, like leather; he put
out his tongue to try to catch raindrops in it. He was swung roughly
about in the stretcher. He lifted his head cautiously, feeling a great
throb of delight that he still could lift his head.
“Keep yer head down, can't yer?” snarled a voice beside him. He had seen
the back of a man in a gleaming wet slicker at the end of the stretcher.
“Be careful of my leg, can't yer?” he found himself whining over and
over again. Then suddenly there was a lurch that rapped his head against
the crosspiece of the stretcher, and he found himself looking up at a
wooden ceiling from which the white paint had peeled in places. He smelt
gasoline and could hear the throb of an engine. He began to think back;
how long was it since he had looked at the little frogs in the puddle?
A vivid picture came to his mind of the puddle with its putty-colored
water and the little triangular heads of the frogs. But it seemed as
long ago as a memory of childhood; all of his life before that was not
so long as the time that had gone by since the car had started. And he
was jolting and swinging about in the stretcher, clutching hard with his
hands at the poles of the stretcher. The pain in his legs grew worse;
the rest of his body seemed to shrivel under it. From below him came a
rasping voice that cried out at every lurch of the ambulance. He fought
against the desire to groan, but at last he gave in and lay lost in the
monotonous singsong of his groans.
The rain was in his face again for a moment, then his body was tilted.
A row of houses and russet trees and chimney pots against a leaden sky
swung suddenly up into sight and were instantly replaced by a ceiling
and the coffred vault of a staircase. Andrews was still groaning softly,
but his eyes fastened with sudden interest on the sculptured rosettes of
the coffres and the coats of arms that made the center of each section
of ceiling. Then he found himself staring in the face of the man who
was carrying the lower end of the stretcher. It was a white face with
pimples round the mouth and good-natured, watery blue eyes. Andrews
looked at the eyes and tried to smile, but the man carrying the
stretcher was not looking at him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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