The father, in Calais, got word that his boy was badly
injured and lying in a German hospital in Belgium. He was an only son.
I do not know how the frenzied father got into Belgium. Perhaps he
crept through the German lines. He may have gone to sea and landed on
the sand dunes near Zeebrugge. It does not matter how, for he found
his boy. He went to the German authorities and got permission to move
him to a private house. The boy was badly hurt. He had a bullet in the
wall of the carotid artery, for one thing, and a fractured thigh. The
father saw that his recovery, if it occurred at all, would be a matter
of skillful surgery and unremitting care, but the father had a post at
Calais and was badly needed.
He took a wagon to the hospital and got his boy. Then he drove,
disguised I believe as a farmer, over the frontier into Holland. The
boy was covered in the bottom of the wagon. In Holland they got a boat
and went to Calais. All this, with that sharp-pointed German bullet in
the carotid artery! And at Calais they took the plate I have mentioned
and got out the bullet.
The last time I saw that brave father he was sitting beside his son,
and the boy's hand was between both of his.
Nearly all the hospitals I saw had been schools. In one that I recall,
the gentle-faced nuns, who by edict no longer exist in France, were
still living in a wing of the school building.
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