Among the
falsities of a book a thousand times too vaunted (falsities due not so
much to the lie direct as to the constant dwelling on odious details,
and the suppression of admirable facts), nothing is farther from the
truth than the picture of a hospital at the front where one hears and
sees only blaspheming and rebellious men. With most of the wounded who
have spoken to me about it in our hospital, and who certainly had the
right to bear witness, we proclaim loudly that if the French army had
been such as the work in question paints it in this passage and in many
others, the War would have ended long ago, and history would never have
known the names of the Marne, nor the Yser, nor Verdun, nor the
Chemin-des-Dames.
[Sidenote: A true picture of our Ambulance at the front.]
A true picture of an Ambulance at the front, overflowing with wounded
the evening of a battle, I find in these lines by an eyewitness: "Some
moderate complaints among the crowded stretchers: one asks for a drink,
one wants relief for pain, a bed, a dressing, to be quickly attended.
But let some story be told in the group, some incident come out like a
trumpet-call, all faces brighten, the men lift themselves a little, the
mirage of glory gives them heart again. I commemorate with piety the
anonymous example of a little Zouave, doubled over on himself, holding
his bullet-pierced abdomen in both hands, whom I heard gently asked:
'Well, little one, how goes it?' Oh, very well, _mon Lieutenant_, our
company has passed the road from B---- to the south; we had gotten there
when I was knocked out.
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