In the rush of battle it had been impossible to obtain food for the wounded, so that for days these men had gone hungry, and one heard the agonizing sound of dying men crying piteously for bread. The French attendants themselves went hungry in order to give their charges such small pittances of food as were obtainable. We watched an orderly who entered the church with a single loaf of bread which had just been secured and which was to be divided among several hundred wounded. He used a great knife as if he hoped to make up for the smallness of the supply by the largeness of the implement. Slowly and with sober care he cut slice after slice, each one so thin that the light shone through it. Every head was turned toward him and each burning pair of eyes was fixed upon the precious bread with an expression of animal dumbness, which reminded one of the intent eyes of a hungry dog as it watches a hoped-for morsel. As he advanced step by step, the wounded stretched up shriveled hands, or propped themselves on one elbow to make more appealing gestures, their faces all contorted by the pains the movement caused them. They made no sound, for their attention was too intently fixed upon that bread. One, however, who had been overlooked, burst into screams and wailings until the mistake had been properly remedied. We Americans held a Council of War and unanimously decided to contribute our jealously hoarded supply of provisions; we thereby became as angels in the eyes of those poor creatures. A French attendant remarked as he handed a sliver of our only loaf of bread to a shattered man: "Il va mourir tout à l'heure, mais cela lui fera grand plaisir en mourant!"
The dying are frightful sights, and parts of them are often already mortified, as they lie in the straw, entirely occupied with breathing. They breathe eternally little short breaths, a hundred or a hundred and ten to the minute, like some sort of pump. They wish passionately not to die, and yet they know with desperate certainty that they are going to die. They lie down there in a tiny, little black hell of their own and fight with all their might and main, feeling that they will die instantly if they skip one little short breath. (I was going to say they fight with all their soul and body, but they no longer really possess either of these). They have no time to speak, or listen, or move, or be helped, as every particle of energy must be used for the next respiration. A jumbled heap lies in the straw covered with a blanket to keep off the flies. An attendant looks at its side in search of the fluttering little pulsation of breath. If it is there, "he" is living; if all is still, "it" is dead, and they carry it out and dump it in the hall with the other bodies.