An ambulance had stopped and its
burden was being carried in. The bearers rested the stretcher gently
on the floor, and a nurse was immediately on her knees beside it.
"Shell!" she said.
The occupant was a boy of perhaps nineteen--a big boy. Some mother
must have been very proud of him. He was fully conscious, and he
looked up from his stained bandages with the same searching glance
that now I have seen so often--the glance that would read its chances
in the faces of those about. With his uninjured arm he threw back the
blanket. His right arm was wounded, broken in two places, but not
shattered.
"He'll do nicely," said the nurse. "A broken jaw and the arm."
His eyes were on me, so I bent over.
"The nurse says you will do nicely," I assured him. "It will take
time, but you will be very comfortable here, and--"
The nurse had been making further investigation. Now she turned back
the other end of the blanket His right leg had been torn off at the
hip.
That story has an end; for that boy died.
The drive back to Dunkirk was a mad one. Afterward I learned to know
that red-headed Flemish chauffeur, with his fiercely upcurled
moustache and his contempt of death. Rather, perhaps, I learned to
know his back. It was a reckless back. He wore a large army overcoat
with a cape and a cap with a tassel.
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