Tobacco--surely. You'd die if you didn't have a
smoke. But the rotten little cigarettes with no taste to them that smoke
like chopped hay. And the cigars made out of rags and shredded
toothpicks--"
"Here, have a cigarette," suggested the youngest doctor.
But the man was too busy in working out his own thoughts.
"The whole thing," he continued, "is a mixture of a morgue and a
hospital--only those places have running water, and people in white
aprons to tidy things up. And a battle--Three days under bombardment,
living in the cellar. The guns going off five, six times to the minute,
and then waiting a couple of hours and dropping one in, next door. The
crumpling noise when a little brick house caves in, like a man when you
hit him in the stomach, just going all together in a heap. And the sick
smell that comes out of the mess from plaster and brick dust.
"And getting wounded, that's jolly, isn't it? Rifle ball through your
left biceps. Dick walks you back to the dressing station. Doctor busy at
luncheon with a couple of visiting officers. Lie down in the straw.
Straw has a pleasant smell when it's smeared with iodine and blood. Wait
till the doctor has had his bottle of wine.
"'Nothing very much,' he says, when he gets around to you. Drops some
juice in, ties the white rag around, and you go back to your straw.
Three, four hours, and along come the body snatchers--the chauffeur chap
doesn't know how to drive, bumps into every shell hole for seven miles.
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