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Updated: May 24, 2025
Afterwards he had suffered in Germany, and finally he had come back to France, mutilated, covered with wounds, and knowing that his wife and children were left without help and without resources in the invaded territory. Of all this Derancourt said not a word.
He remained calm and self-controlled as always, looking at the preparations for the operation with a kind of indifference. We put the chloroform pad under his nose; he drew two or three deep breaths, and then a strange thing happened: Derancourt began to sob in a terrible manner, and to talk of all those things he had never mentioned.
He sought solitude, and spent hours, turning his head slowly from side to side, contemplating the walls and the ceiling like one who sees things within himself. The day came when we had to operate on Derancourt, to make his stump of a thigh serviceable. He was laid on the table.
His leg had been cut off at the thigh, and this had not yet healed; he had, further, a number of other wounds which had closed more or less during his captivity. Derancourt never talked of himself, much less of his misfortune. I knew from his comrades that he had fought near Longwy, his native town, and that he had lain grievously wounded for nine days on the battlefield.
He moans at intervals, and stops suddenly to say: "It has taken fifty seconds to-day to loosen the dressings. Yesterday, you took sixty-two seconds." His first words after the operation were: "Will you please tell me how many minutes I was unconscious?" I first saw Derancourt in the room adjoining the chapel.
For months Derancourt had braced himself against despair, and now, all of a sudden, he gave way, and abandoned himself to poignant words and tears. The flood withdrew suddenly, leaving the horrible, chaotic depths beneath the sea visible. We ceased scrubbing our hands, and stood aghast and deeply moved, full of sadness and respect. Then some one exclaimed: "Quick! quick! More chloroform!
On a bench sat fifteen or twenty men with about a dozen legs between them. It was among these that I saw Derancourt. He was holding his crutches in one hand and looking round him, stroking his long fair moustache absently. Derancourt became my friend.
He apparently did not know how to complain, and he contemplated the surrounding wretchedness with a grave look, full of experience, which would have seemed a little cold but for the tremulous mobility of his features. Derancourt never played, never laughed.
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