We were not popular here. Husky, breathless voices whispered to us “to be away from here, quick. We would draw the fire. What did we want here now?”
“Have you any wounded?” we whispered in return.
“No, no,” the answer came. “Keep away from the moonlight.” The voices came to us connected sometimes with a nose, an eye, or a leg, often enough out of the heaven itself.
“There’s a man wounded behind the next lines,” some voice murmured.
We stumbled on and suddenly came to a river with very steep banks and a number of narrow and slender bridges. If this had in reality been a nightmare this river could not have obtruded itself more often than it did. We discovered to our dismay that our soldier-guide had disappeared (exactly as in a nightmare he would have done). We crossed the river (bathed of course in moonlight), the plank bridge shaking and quivering beneath us.
We had then a difficult task. Here a row of cottages beneath the very edge of the bank and in the cottage shadow the soldiers were ranged in a long line. Their boots stretched to the verge of the bank, which was slippery and uncertain. We had to walk on this with our stretchers, stepping between the boots, stumbling often and slipping down towards the water.
“Any wounded?” we whispered again and again.
“No,” the whisper came back. “Hasten. … Take care of the moonlight.”
And then, to my infinite relief and comfort, behind the cottages we found our wounded man. There was a dark yard here, apparently quite deserted. The Feldsher made an exclamation and stepped forward. Three bodies lay together, over one another; two men were dead and cold, the third stirred, very faintly, as we came up, opened his eyes, smiled and said:
“Eh, bojé moi … at last!”
As we moved him on to the stretcher, with a little sigh he fainted again. He had a bad stomach-wound. Before picking up the stretcher, the Feldsher wiped his forehead and crossed himself.
“It’s a heavy thing for two,” he said. “He’s a big man,” looking at the soldier. There was now somewhere, apparently not very far away, hot rifle fire. The crackle sparkled in the air, as though one were living in a world in which all the electricity was loose. The other firing seemed to have drawn away, and the Boom—Boom—boom in front of us was echo from the hill. …
We picked up the stretcher and started. It was fortunate for us that we had that difficult bit beside the river at the beginning of our journey. I don’t know how we managed it, stepping over the endless row of legs, with every side step the stretcher lurching over to the left and threatening to pitch us into the river. So slippery too was the ground that our boots refused to grip. The man on the stretcher was dreaming, making a little sound like an unceasing lullaby on two notes—“Na … na! Na … na! Na … na!”
We were compelled to cross the river twice, and the planks bent under our weight until I was assured that they would snap. My arms were beginning to ache and the sweat to trickle down my spine. My right boot had rubbed my heel. We left the river behind us and then, suddenly, my right hand began to slip off the iron handle of the stretcher.
“We’ll have to put it down a moment,” I said. We laid it on the ground and at the same instant a bullet sang so close to my ear that I felt it as though an insect had bitten me. Then a shell, exploding, as it seemed to us, amongst the very cottages where we had just been, startled us.
“We saved our man,” said the Feldsher, looking at the soldier, “but we’d better move on. It’s uncomfortable here.”
We picked the thing up and started again, and at once my hand began to slip away from its hold (nightmare sensation exactly). I bent my head down, managed to lick my hand without raising it, and stiffened the muscles of my arm. We were watched, once more, by a million eyes—again I stepped on a head of hair buried somewhere in the ground. Then some voice cried shrilly: “Ah! Ah!” … some man hit.
Every bone in my body began to ache. I was, of course, rottenly trained, without a sound muscle in my body, and my legs threatened cramp, my heel grated against my boot and sent a stab to my stomach with every movement, my shoulders seemed to pull away from the stretcher as though they would separately rebel against my orders … and my hand began again to slip. The Feldsher also began to feel the strain. Once he asked me to stop. He apologised; I could see the sweat pouring down his face: “A very big man’ ” he said.
Whether it were the echo, whether my ears had by this time been utterly deafened and confused I do not know, but now the shock and rumble of the cannon seemed to come directly from under my feet. I felt perhaps as though I were on one of those railways that I have seen in London at a fair when the ground shakes and quivers beneath you. It really would not have surprised me had the earth suddenly yawned and swallowed me. Every plague now beset me. My hand refused to hold the stretcher, my body was wet with perspiration, my face was for some reason covered with mud. … There was a snap and my braces burst. My belt was loose and my trousers, as though they had waited for
