When they leave his hands, some of the wounded are swallowed up by
the black hole of the Refuge; others are sent back to the bigger
clearing-station contrived in the trench on the Bethune road.
In this confined cavity formed by the crossing of the ditches, in
the bottom of a sort of robbers' den, we waited two hours, buffeted,
squeezed, choked and blinded, climbing over each other like cattle,
in an odor of blood and butchery. There are faces that become more
distorted and emaciated from minute to minute. One of the patients
can no longer hold back his tears; they come in floods, and as he
shakes his head he sprinkles his neighbors. Another, bleeding like a
fountain, shouts, "Hey, there! have a look at me!" A young man with
burning eyes yells like a soul in hell, "I'm on fire!" and he roars
and blows like a furnace.
* * * * * *
Joseph is bandaged. He thrusts a way through to me and holds out his
hand: "It isn't serious, it seems; good-by," he says.
At once we are separated in the mob. With my last glance I see his
wasted face and the vacant absorption in his trouble as he is meekly
led away by a Divisional stretcher-bearer whose hand is on his
shoulder; and suddenly I see him no more. In war, life separates us
just as death does, without our having even the time to think about
it.
They tell me not to stay there, but to go down into the Refuge to
rest before returning. There are two entries, very low and very
narrow, on the level of the ground.
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