It is so very different from anything they know; so out of
proportion to the normal life of human beings.
[Sidenote: The wounded man does not like to think of war.]
To these intellectual motives may be added one of feeling. The wounded
soldier does not like to speak of the War because he does not like to
think of it: there are too many horrors; he has had to bear too many
privations, too much suffering. As soon as he finds himself out of it,
he tries to turn his mind away from it as much as possible, and to shake
off the impression of it, as the sick man in the morning shakes off his
fevered nightmare. Later on, doubtless, when his memories have lost
their keen edge, they may attract him again. All he asks for the moment
is to forget. One thing especially afflicts his heart and tightens his
lips: it is the thought of the comrades he has lost.
Such are the reasons why the later wounded, differing from those at the
beginning of the War, shut themselves up in a silence full of gravity.
[Sidenote: The men in hospital are grateful.]
[Sidenote: Infirmities are less felt.]
In spite of this, however, you would have a false idea of the military
hospital if you thought of it as a place of mournful desolation.
Doubtless our earlier patients regained their spirits more quickly,
having no years of suffering behind them. But the quiet and serious
resignation which reigns in the hospital of to-day does not exclude a
certain sweetness; the wounded man appreciates the intelligent and
devoted care lavished upon him, he congratulates himself and thanks God
for having escaped from mortal peril, for not having fallen to the
bottom of the abyss, for remounting now the slope at the summit of which
he has a glimpse of the recovery of his strength and activity.
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