by Pete Ayrton
It is all arranged. Ten kilometres from here along the road is the place where men are wounded. This is the place where they are mended. We have all the things here for mending, the tables and the needles, and the thread and the knives and the scissors, and many curious things that you never use for your clothes.
We bring our men up along the dusty road where the bushes grow on either side and the green trees. They come by in the mornings in companies, marching with strong legs, with firm steps. They carry their knapsacks easily. Their knapsacks and their guns and their greatcoats are not heavy for them. They wear their caps jauntily, tilted to one side. Their faces are ruddy and their eyes bright. They smile and call out with strong voices. They throw kisses to the girls in the fields.
We send our men up the broken road between bushes of barbed wire and they come back to us, one by one, two by two in ambulances, lying on stretchers. They lie on their backs on the stretchers and are pulled out of the ambulances as loaves of bread are pulled out of the oven. The stretchers slide out of the mouths of the ambulances with the men on them. The men cannot move. They are carried into a shed, unclean bundles, very heavy, covered with brown blankets.
We receive these bundles. We pull off a blanket. We observe that this is a man. He makes feeble whining sounds like an animal. He lies still; he smells bad; he smells like a corpse; he can only move his tongue; he tries to moisten his lips with his tongue.
This is the place where he is to be mended. We lift him on to a table. We peel off his clothes, his coat and his shirt and his trousers and his boots. We handle his clothes that are stiff with blood. We cut off his shirt with large scissors. We stare at the obscene sight of his innocent wounds. He allows us to do this. He is helpless to stop us. We wash off the dry blood round the edges of his wounds. He suffers us to do as we like with him. He says no word except that he is thirsty and we do not give him to drink.
We confer together over his body and he hears us. We discuss his different parts in terms that he does not understand, but he listens while we make calculations with his heart beats and the pumping breath of his lungs.
We conspire against his right to die. We experiment with his bones, his muscles, his sinews, his blood. We dig into the yawning mouths of his wounds. Helpless openings, they let us into the secret places of his body. We plunge deep into his body. We make discoveries within his body. To the shame of the havoc of his limbs we add the insult of our curiosity and the curse of our purpose, the purpose to remake him. We lay odds on his chances of escape, and we combat with death, his Saviour.
It is our business to do this. He knows and he allows us to do it. He finds himself in the operating room. He lays himself out. He bares himself to our knives. His mind is annihilated. He pours out his blood unconscious. His red blood is spilled and pours over the table on to the floor while he sleeps.
After this, while he is still asleep, we carry him into another place and put him to bed. He awakes bewildered as children do, expecting, perhaps, to find himself at home with his mother leaning over him, and he moans a little and then lies still again. He is helpless, so we do for him what he cannot do for himself, and he is grateful. He accepts his helplessness. He is obedient. We feed him, and he eats. We fatten him up, and he allows himself to be fattened. Day after day he lies there and we watch him. All day and all night he is watched. Every day his wounds are uncovered and cleaned, scraped and washed and bound up again. His body does not belong to him. It belongs to us for the moment, not for long. He knows why we tend it so carefully. He knows what we are fattening and cleaning it up for; and while we handle it he smiles.
He is only one among thousands. They are all the same. They all let us do with them what we like. They all smile as if they were grateful. When we hurt them they try not to cry out, not wishing to hurt our feelings. And often they apologise for dying. They would not die and disappoint us if they could help it. Indeed, in their helplessness they do the best they can to help us get them ready to go back again.
It is only ten kilometres up the road, the place where they go to be torn again and mangled. Listen; you can hear how well it works. There is the sound of cannon and the sound of the ambulances bringing the wounded, and the sound of the tramp of strong men going along the road to fill the empty places.
Do you hear? Do you understand? It is all arranged just as it should be.
MARY BORDEN
IN THE OPERATING ROOM
from The Forbidden Zone
THE OPERATING ROOM is the section of a wooden shed. Thin partitions separate it from the X-ray room on one side, and the sterilizing room on the other. Another door communicates with a corridor. There are three wounded men on three operating tables. Surgeons, nurses and orderlies are working over them. The doors keep opening and shutting. The boiler is pounding and bubbling in the sterilizing room. There is a noise of steam escaping, of feet hurrying down the corridor, of ambulances rolling past the windows, and behind all this, the rhythmic pounding of the guns bombarding at a distance of ten miles or so.
1st Patient: Mother of God! Mother of God!
2nd Patient: Softly. Softly. You hurt me. Ah! You are hurting me.
3rd Patient: I am thirsty.
1st Surgeon: Cut the dressing, Mademoiselle.
2nd Surgeon: What’s his ticket say? Show it to me. What’s the X-ray show?
3rd Surgeon:Abdomen. Bad pulse. I wonder now?
1st Patient: In the name of God be careful. I suffer. I suffer.
1st Surgeon:At what time were you wounded?
1st Patient:At five this morning.
1st Surgeon: Where?
1st Patient: In the arm.
1st Surgeon:Yes, yes, but in what sector?
1st Patient: In the trenches near Besanghe.
1st Surgeon: Shell or bullet?
1st Patient: Shell. Merciful God, what are you doing?
A nurse comes in from the corridor. Her apron is splashed with blood.
Nurse:There’s a lung just come in. Haemorrhage. Can one of you take him?
1st Surgeon: In a few minutes. In five minutes. Now then, Mademoiselle, strap down that other arm tighter.
Nurse (in doorway) to 2nd Surgeon:There’s a knee for you, doctor, and three elbows. In five minutes I’ll send in the lung. (Exit.)
3rd Patient: I’m thirsty. A drink. Give me a drink.
3rd Surgeon: In a little while. You must wait a little.
2nd Patient: Mother of Jesus, not like that. Don’t turn my foot like that. Not that way. Take care. Great God, take care! I can’t bear it. I tell you, I can’t bear it!
2nd Surgeon:There, there, don’t excite yourself. You’ve got a nasty leg, very nasty. Smells bad. Mademoiselle, hold his leg up. It’s not pretty at all, this leg.
2nd Patient:Ah, doctor, doctor. What are you doing? Aiee—.
2nd Surgeon: Be quiet. Don’t move. Don’t touch the wound I tell you. Idiot! Hold his leg. Keep your hands off, you animal. Hold his leg higher. Strap his hands down.
3rd Patient (feebly): I am thirsty. I die of thirst. A drink! A drink!
2nd Patient (screaming):You’re killing me. Killing me! I’ll die of it! Aieeeee—.
3rd Patient (softly): I am thirsty. For pity a drink.
3rd Surgeon: Have you vomited blood, old man?
3rd Patient: I don’t know. A drink please, doctor.
3rd Surgeon: Does it hurt here?
3rd Patient: No, I don’t think so. A drink, sister, in pity’s name, a drink.
Nurse: I can’t give you a drink. It would hurt you. You are wounded in the stomach.
3rd Patient: So thirsty. Just a little drink. Just a drop. Sister for pity, just a drop.
3rd Surgeon: Moisten his lips. How long ago were you wounded?
3rd Patient: I don’t know. In the night. Some night.
3rd Surgeon: Last night?
3rd Patient: Perhaps last night. I don’t know. I lay in the mud a long time. Please sister a drink. Just a little drink.
1
st Patient:What’s in that bottle? What are you doing to me?
1st Surgeon: Keep still I tell you.
1st Patient: It burns! It’s burning me! No more. No more! I beg of you, doctor; I can’t bear any more!
1st Surgeon: Nonsense. This won’t last a minute. There’s nothing the matter with you. Your wounds are nothing.
1st Patient:You say it’s nothing. My God, what are you doing now? Ai—ee!
1st Surgeon: It’s got to be cleaned out. There’s a piece of shell, bits of coat, all manner of dirt in it.
2nd Patient: Jeanne, petite Marie, Jean, where are you? Little Jean, where are you?
2nd Surgeon:Your leg is not at all pretty, my friend. We shall have to take it off.
2nd Patient: Oh, my poor wife! I have three children, doctor. If you take my leg off what will become of them and of the farm? Great God, to suffer like this!
2nd Surgeon to 1st Surgeon: Look here a moment. It smells bad. Gangrenous. What do you think?
1st Surgeon: No good waiting.
2nd Surgeon:Well, my friend, will you have it off?
2nd Patient: If you say so, doctor. Oh, my poor wife, my poor Jeanne. What will become of you? The children are too little to work in the fields.
2nd Surgeon (to nurse): Begin with the chloroform. We’re going to put you to sleep, old man. Breathe deep. Breathe through the mouth. Is my saw there? Where is my amputating saw? Who’s got my saw?
3rd Patient (softly):A drink, a drink. Give me a drink.
3rd Surgeon: I can do nothing with a pulse like that. Give him serum, five hundred c.c.s and camphorated oil and strychnine. Warm him up a bit.
Door opens, nurse enters, followed by two stretcher bearers.
Nurse: Here’s the lung. Are you ready for it?
1st Surgeon: In a minute. One minute. Leave him there.
The stretcher bearers put their stretcher on the floor and go out.
2nd Patient (half under chloroform):Aha! Aha! Ahead there, you son of a— Forward! Forward! What a stink! I’ve got him! Now I’ve got you. Quick, quick! Let me go! Let me go! Jeannette, quick, quick, Jeannette! I’m coming. Marie? Little Jean, where are you?
2nd Surgeon:Tighten those straps. He’s strong, poor devil.
1st Patient: Is it finished?
1st Surgeon:Very nearly. Keep quite still. Now then, the dressings mademoiselle. There you are old man. Don’t bandage the arm too tight, mademoiselle. Get him out now. Hi, stretcher bearers, lift up that one from the floor, will you?
3rd Surgeon: It’s no use operating. Almost no pulse.
3rd Patient: For pity a drink!
3rd Surgeon: Give him a drink. It won’t matter. I can do nothing.
2nd Surgeon: I shall have to amputate above the knee. Is he under?
Nurse: Almost.
3rd Patient: For pity a drink.
Nurse: There, don’t lift your head; here is a drink. Drink this.
3rd Patient: It is good. Thank you, sister.
1st Surgeon:Take this man to Ward 3. Now then, mademoiselle, cut the dressings.
3rd Surgeon: I can do nothing here. Send me the next one.
3rd Patient: I cannot see. I cannot see any more. Sister, where are you?
1st Surgeon: How’s your spine case of yesterday?
3rd Surgeon: Just what you would expect – paralysed from the waist down.
1st Surgeon: They say the attack is for five in the morning.
3rd Surgeon: Orders are to evacuate every possible bed to-day.
3rd Patient: It is dark. Are you there, sister?
Nurse: Yes, old man, I’m here. Shall I send for a priest, doctor?
3rd Surgeon: Too late. Poor devil. It’s hopeless when they come in like that, after lying for hours in the mud. There, it’s finished. Call the stretcher bearers.
1st Surgeon: Quick, a basin! God! how the blood spouts. Quick, quick, quick! Three holes in this lung.
2nd Surgeon: Take that leg away, will you? There’s no room to move here.
3rd Surgeon: Take this dead man away, and bring the next abdomen. Wipe that table, mademoiselle, while I wash my hands. And you, there, mop up the floor a bit.
The doors open and shut. Stretcher bearers go out and come in. A nurse comes from the sterilizing room with a pile of nickel drums in her arms. Another nurse goes out with trays of knives and other instruments. The nurse from the corridor comes back. An officer appears at the window.
Nurse: Three knees have come in, two more abdomens, five heads.
Officer (through the window): The Médecin Inspecteur will be here in half an hour. The General is coming at two to decorate all amputés.
1st Surgeon:We’ll get no lunch to-day, and I’m hungry. There, I call that a very neat amputation.
2nd Surgeon:Three holes stopped in this lung in three minutes by the clock. Pretty quick, eh?
3rd Surgeon: Give me a light, some one. My experience is that if abdomens have to wait more than six hours it’s no good. You can’t do anything. I hope that chap got the oysters in Amiens! Oysters sound good to me.
Mary Borden was born into a wealthy Chicago family in 1886. In England at the outbreak of the war, she used her own money to equip and staff a field hospital close to the front in which she herself served as a nurse from 1915 until the end of the war. The stories in The Forbidden Zone are based on her experiences in the hospital. Published in 1929, the same year as All Quiet on the Western Front, The Forbidden Zone’s graphic descriptions of wounds and amputations were too shocking for many readers – and still are. The lack of sentimentality in the precise, sparse writing makes it all the more powerful. Like the art of a pointillist painter, the power of her writing is built up word by word, sentence by sentence.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Mary Borden set up the Hadfield-Spears Ambulance Unit, which accompanied the Free French in North Africa, Italy and France. Her book, Journey Down a Blind Alley, is the story of this campaign. She died in Berkshire in 1968.
EMILIO LUSSU
A REAL HERO
from A Soldier on the Southern Front
translated by Gregory Conti
THE LIEUTENANT GENERAL in command of the division, held to be responsible for the unjustified abandonment of Mount Fior, was given the ax. In his stead, the division command was taken over by Lieutenant General Leone. The daily order issued by the commandant of the Third Army presented him to us as ‘a soldier of proven tenacity and time-tested bravery.’ I met him for the first time on Mount Spill, near the battalion command. His orderly officer told me he was the new division commander and I introduced myself.
Standing at attention, I gave him the rundown on the battalion.
‘At ease,’ the general told me in a decorous and authoritative tone.
‘Where have you been until now in this war?’
‘Always with this brigade, on the Carso.’
‘Have you ever been wounded?’
‘No, sir, general.’
‘What, you’ve been on the front line for the entire war and you’ve never been wounded? Never?’
‘Never, general. Unless we want to consider a few flesh wounds that I’ve had treated here in the battalion, without going to the hospital.’
‘No, no, I’m talking about serious wounds, grave wounds.’
‘Never, general.’
‘That’s very odd. How do you explain that?’
‘The exact reason escapes me, general, but I’m certain that I’ve never been gravely wounded.’
‘Have you taken part in all the combat operations of your brigade?’
‘All of them.’
‘The “black cats”?’
‘The “black cats.”’
‘The “red cats”?’
‘And the “red cats,” general.’
‘Very odd indeed. Are you perhaps timorous?’
I thought:To put a guy like this in his place it would take at least a general in command of an army corps. Since I didn’t answer right away, the general, st
ill somber, repeated the question.
‘I believe not,’ I replied.
‘You believe or are you sure?’
‘In war, you can never be sure of anything,’ I replied politely, and added with the hint of a smile that was intended to be conciliatory, ‘not even that you’re sure.’
The general didn’t smile. No, I think smiling was almost impossible for him. He was wearing a steel helmet with the neck strap fastened, which gave his face a metallic look. His mouth was invisible, and if he hadn’t had a mustache you would have said he had no lips. His eyes were gray and hard, always open, like the eyes of a nocturnal bird of prey.
The general changed the subject.
‘Do you love war?’
I hesitated. Should I answer this question or not? There were officers and soldiers within earshot. I decided to respond.
‘I was in favor of the war, general, and at my university I was a representative of the interventionists.’
‘That,’ said the general in a tone that was chillingly calm, ‘pertains to the past. I’m asking you about the present.’
‘War is a serious thing, too serious, and it’s hard to say… it’s hard… Anyway, I do my duty.’ And since he was staring at me dissatisfied, I added, ‘All of my duty.’
‘I didn’t ask you,’ the general said, ‘if you do or do not do your duty. In war, everyone has to do his duty, because if you don’t, you risk being shot. You understand me. I asked you if you love or don’t love war.’
‘Love war!’ I exclaimed, a bit discouraged.
The general stared at me, inexorable. His eyes had grown larger. It looked to me like they were spinning in their sockets.
‘Can’t you answer?’ the general insisted.
‘Well, I believe… certainly… I think I can say… that I have to believe…’
I was looking for a possible answer.
‘Just what is it that you believe, then?’