You
have done your duty, and now you are to have a little rest. With a clear
conscience, you can sink back into laziness, far away from noise and
filth. Luck has come along and pulled the pack off your back, and the
responsibility from your sick mind. No weary city clerk ever went to his
seashore holiday with more blitheness than some of our wounded showed as
they came riding in from the Nieuport trenches at full length on the
stretcher, and singing all the way. What is a splintered forehead or a
damaged leg compared to the happiness of an honorable discharge? Nothing
to do for a month but lie quietly, and watch the wholesome, clean-clad
nurse. I am not forgetting the sadness of many men, nor the men hurt to
death, who lay motionless and did not sing, and some of whom died while
we were on the road to help. I am only trying to tell of the one man in
every four who was glad of his enforced rest, and who didn't let a
little thing like agony conquer his gaiety. Those men were the Joyous
Wounded. I have seldom seen men more light hearted.
Word came to my wife one day that several hundred wounded were
side-tracked at Furnes railway station. With two nurses she hurried to
them, carrying hot soup. The women went through the train, feeding the
soldiers, giving them a drink of cold water, and bringing some of them
hot water for washing. Then, being fed, they were ready for a smoke, and
my wife began walking down the foul-smelling ambulance car with boxes of
supplies, letting each man take out a cigarette and a match.
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