United States or Brunei ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He had the thick stolid body of the Russian peasant who is trained to any endurance, any misfortune that God might choose to send it. His attachment to Trenchard had been so unobtrusive that Molozov had officially permitted it without realising that he had permitted anything. It was so unobtrusive that I myself had not, during these last weeks, noticed it.
"Your doctors ..." the little officer repeated dreamily. "Very well...." But he continued with us. "I've had contusion," he said. "At M . Yes.... And now I don't quite know where I am. I'm very depressed and unhappy. What do you advise?" "There are our doctors," Molozov repeated rather irritably. "You'll find them ... behind there."
Our own immediate company numbered twenty or so Molozov, two doctors, myself, Trenchard and Andrey Vassilievitch, the two new Sisters and the three former ones, five or six young Russians, gentlemen of ease and leisure who had had some "bandaging" practice at the Petrograd hospitals, and three very young medical students, directly attached to our two doctors.
I have said earlier in this book that only upon one occasion have I seen Molozov utterly overcome, a defeated man. This was the occasion to which I refer. He stood there in the doorway, under a vulgar bevy of gilt and crimson cupids, his face dull paste in colour, his hands hanging like lead; he looked at us without seeing us.
Worked like a nigger from two to eight never stopped bandaging. About ten went off to the position with Molozov. Strange to be back in the little town under such different circumstances. Dark as pitch raining. Much noise, motors, soldiers like ghosts though shrapnel all the time. Tired, depressed and nervous. Horrid waiting doing nothing; two houses under the shrapnel.
Moreover one wore a uniform. Or if Molozov, our chief, were questioned he would most certainly say that war, as he saw it, was mainly a business of diplomacy, a business of keeping the people around one in good temper, the soldiers in good order, the generals and their staffs in good appetite, the other Red Cross organisations in good self-conceit, and himself in good health.
"Tell me frankly," Andrey Vassilievitch said at last, "am I of any use here?" "Of use?" I repeated, taken by surprise. "Yes. Am I doing only what any one else can do as well? Would it be better perhaps if another were here?" "No, certainly not," I answered warmly. "Your business training is of the greatest value to us. Molozov has said to me 'that he does not know what we should do without you."
Would we be close to the Front? How many versts? Would there be plenty of work, and would we really see things? We wanted to be useful, no use going if we were not to be useful. How many Sisters were there then already? Were they "sympathetic"? Was Molozov, the head of the Otriad, an agreeable man? Was he kind, or would he be angry about simply nothing?
We waited then for our orders, looking down from the windows on to what seemed a perfect babel of disorder and confusion. "We must be at X to-night," Molozov told us. "The Staff is on its way already. We should be moving in half an hour." We made our preparations.
At last Trenchard found himself with Molozov and Ivan Mihailovitch, the student like a fish, in the old black carriage. Molozov had "flung the world to the devil," Trenchard afterwards said, "and I sat there, you know, looking at his white face and wondering what I ought to talk about."
Word Of The Day