As we stood in the street in the sun one hot afternoon, four men came
carrying a wounded man. The stretcher was growing red under its burden.
The man's face was greenish white, with a stubble of beard. The flesh of
his body was as white as snow from loss of blood. It was torn at the
chest and sides. They carried him to the dressing-station, and half an
hour later lifted him into our car. We carried him in for two miles.
Four flies fed on the red rim of his closed left eye. He lay silent,
motionless. Only a slight flutter of the coverlet, made by his
breathing, gave a sign of life. At the Red Cross post we stopped. The
coverlet still slightly rose and fell. The doctor, brown-bearded, in
white linen, stepped into the car, tapped the man's wrist, tested his
pulse, put a hand over his heart. Then the doctor muttered, drew the
coverlet over the greenish-white face, and ordered the marines to remove
him. In the moment of arrival the wounded man had died.
In the courtyard next our post two men were carrying in long strips of
wood. This wood was for coffins, and one of them would be his.
A funeral passes our car, one every day, sometimes two: a wooden cross
in front, carried by a soldier; the white-robed chaplain chanting; the
box of light wood, on a frame of black; the coffin draped in the
tricolor, a squad of twenty soldiers following the dead. That is the
funeral of the middle-aged man.
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