One of Ours - Willa Cather (great book club books .TXT) 📗

reach the doctor. He began to wriggle and pull. The wet earth sucked at him; it was painful business. He braced himself with his elbows, but kept slipping back.

“I’m the only one left, then?” said the mournful voice below.

At last Claude worked himself out of his burrow, but he was unable to stand. Every time he tried to stand, he got faint and seemed to burst again. Something was the matter with his right ankle, too⁠—he couldn’t bear his weight on it. Perhaps he had been too near the shell to be hit; he had heard the boys tell of such cases. It had exploded under his feet and swept him down into the ravine, but hadn’t left any metal in his body. If it had put anything into him, it would have put so much that he wouldn’t be sitting here speculating. He began to crawl down the slope on all fours. “Is that the Doctor? Where are you?”

“Here, on a stretcher. They shelled us. Who are you? Our fellows got up, didn’t they?”

“I guess most of them did. What happened back here?”

“I’m afraid it’s my fault,” the voice said sadly. “I used my flash light, and that must have given them the range. They put three or four shells right on top of us. The fellows that got hurt in the gully kept stringing back here, and I couldn’t do anything in the dark. I had to have a light to do anything. I just finished putting on a Johnson splint when the first shell came. I guess they’re all done for now.”

“How many were there?”

“Fourteen, I think. Some of them weren’t much hurt. They’d all be alive, if I hadn’t come out with you.”

“Who were they? But you don’t know our names yet, do you? You didn’t see Lieutenant Gerhardt among them?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Nor Sergeant Hicks, the fat fellow?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“Abdominal. I can’t tell anything without a light. I lost my flash light. It never occurred to me that it could make trouble; it’s one I use at home, when the babies are sick,” the doctor murmured.

Claude tried to strike a match, with no success. “Wait a minute, where’s your helmet?” He took off his metal hat, held it over the doctor, and managed to strike a light underneath it. The wounded man had already loosened his trousers, and now he pulled up his bloody shirt. His groin and abdomen were torn on the left side. The wound, and the stretcher on which he lay, supported a mass of dark, coagulated blood that looked like a great cow’s liver.

“I guess I’ve got mine,” the Doctor murmured as the match went out.

Claude struck another. “Oh, that can’t be! Our fellows will be back pretty soon, and we can do something for you.”

“No use, Lieutenant. Do you suppose you could strip a coat off one of those poor fellows? I feel the cold terribly in my intestines. I had a bottle of French brandy, but I suppose it’s buried.”

Claude stripped off his own coat, which was warm on the inside, and began feeling about in the mud for the brandy. He wondered why the poor man wasn’t screaming with pain. The firing on the hill had ceased, except for the occasional click of a Maxim, off in the rocks somewhere. His watch said 12:10; could anything have miscarried up there?

Suddenly, voices above, a clatter of boots on the shale. He began shouting to them.

“Coming, coming!” He knew the voice. Gerhardt and his rifles ran down into the ravine with a bunch of prisoners. Claude called to them to be careful. “Don’t strike a light! They’ve been shelling down here.”

“All right are you, Wheeler? Where are the wounded?”

“There aren’t any but the Doctor and me. Get us out of here quick. I’m all right, but I can’t walk.”

They put Claude on a stretcher and sent him ahead. Four big Germans carried him, and they were prodded to a lope by Hicks and Dell Able. Four of their own men took up the doctor, and Gerhardt walked beside him. In spite of their care, the motion started the blood again and tore away the clots that had formed over his wounds. He began to vomit blood and to strangle. The men put the stretcher down. Gerhardt lifted the Doctor’s head. “It’s over,” he said presently. “Better make the best time you can.”

They picked up their load again. “Them that are carrying him now won’t jolt him,” said Oscar, the pious Swede.

B Company lost nineteen men in the raid. Two days later the Company went off on a ten-day leave. Claude’s sprained ankle was twice its natural size, but to avoid being sent to the hospital he had to march to the railhead. Sergeant Hicks got him a giant shoe he found stuck on the barbed wire entanglement. Claude and Gerhardt were going off on their leave together.

XII

A rainy autumn night; Papa Joubert sat reading his paper. He heard a heavy pounding on his garden gate. Kicking off his slippers, he put on the wooden sabots he kept for mud, shuffled across the dripping garden, and opened the door into the dark street. Two tall figures with rifles and kits confronted him. In a moment he began embracing them, calling to his wife:

“Nom de diable, Maman, c’est David, David et Claude, tous les deux!”

Sorry-looking soldiers they appeared when they stood in the candlelight⁠—plastered with clay, their metal hats shining like copper bowls, their clothes dripping pools of water upon the flags of the kitchen floor. Mme. Joubert kissed their wet cheeks, and Monsieur, now that he could see them, embraced them again. Whence had they come, and how had it fared with them, up there? Very well, as anybody could see. What did they want first⁠—supper, perhaps? Their room was always ready for them; and the clothes they had left were in the big chest.

David explained that their shirts had not once been dry