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The shells had passed over no more than clear of the cottage, and burst in the air just beyond, and for an instant the stretcher-bearers halted hesitatingly and the wounded shrank on their stretchers.
"Take him to room six," said the adjutant, indicating the speaker to a pair of stretcher-bearers. In the quieter pauses the rain was heard beating on the panes. There are certain streets in Paris, equally unknown to tourist and Parisian obscure, narrow, cobble-stoned lanes, lined by walls concealing little orchards and gardens.
M. le Comte very much upset and ruffled by all that he had heard came out of his room just in time to see the stretcher-bearers disappearing with their burden through the front door, and the door itself closed to with a bang by Crystal.
Also there are too many Frenchmen who have seen the horrors with their own eyes, too many doctors and stretcher-bearers shot down by those they were trying to aid, too many hospitals bombarded, too many wounded prisoners killed. The German atrocity is documented in France over and over, within the knowledge of millions.
Several of my boys came running out and tenderly picked me up. I was all in and could not move a muscle. My own boys would not allow the stretcher-bearers to touch me, but six of them put me on a stretcher and carried me over the top just as day was breaking.
This meant that the men supports, and food and water carriers, and stretcher-bearers were under a dangerous fire even at night in crossing the old 'neutral' ground, and it meant that one of the first jobs absolutely necessary to the holding of the captured trench was the making of a connecting path more or less safe for moving men, ammunition, and food by night or day.
The two stretcher-bearers now began to undress Klitzing with their practised hands, and the clerk was soon lying beneath the silken coverlet, the royal crown over his head. Then one of the men asked: "What shall we do now?" and the other answered: "Well, we'd better go back to the ambulance waggon, anyhow. The doctor will have arrived by this time.
And the Battery made shift to move its dead from amongst the gun and wagon wheels, to bandage and tie up its wounded with 'first field dressings, to shuffle and sort the detachments and redistribute the remaining men in fair proportion amongst the remaining guns, to telephone the Brigade Headquarters to ask for stretcher-bearers and ambulance, and more shells doing it all, as it were, with one hand while the other kept the guns going, and the shells pounding down their appointed paths.
The officer in command called for volunteers to carry the man out, remarking that, as it was Christmas Eve, he did not think even a German would shoot at a wounded man or unarmed stretcher-bearers. All hands offered to go and two were chosen. The officer went with them and they started down the road.
Pierre, however, was in despair and at the end of his strength, when some of the stretcher-bearers came to his aid by forming a path for the passage of the procession a path which Berthaud had ordered them to keep clear by means of cords, which they were to hold at intervals of a couple of yards.
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