I remember reading that somewhere, and thinking it was just something somebody had thought pretty to write.
But it is one of the most true and simple and beautiful things that there can be in the world.
It is strange too. When they suffer desperately, they keep saying, "My mother, my poor mother," as if it were she who suffered. They seem to be grieving for her, not for themselves.
When they are frightened they call for her. Some of them are frightened of taking chloroform. They have fought and not been afraid, they would not be afraid to die, but chloroform is different.
Joseph opens the double doors of the ward and pushes the stretcher cart in and calls the number this or that.
Joseph lifts him from the bed to the cart. I double a pillow under his head and wrap the blanket over, and follow.
The doors at the other side of the hall are closed, and I run ahead to open them, and shut them behind again after the cart.
If I can make an excuse I go down the corridor and wait also at the door of the operating room. I know the men hate to wait there alone. Sometimes there is very long to wait. And Joseph has to go to do other things.
Sometimes the door of the operating room is ajar, and one can see in a little, and that is horrible. People go in and out, the doctors, and Madame Laure, fetching and carrying things. The stretcher of the man who has been taken in is left pulled back against the wall, by that of the man who is waiting his turn. I stand very close to my cart and pat the blankets.
The men like to have one wait with them. There is a thing many of them say. It is a dull thing, and touching, as sometimes dull things are. They will say, over and over, "If you were not here, I should be alone. If you were not here, I should be alone."
But when the doctors come, with the chloroform, it is only of his mother the man thinks. He says, "Oh, maman! Oh, maman!" and keeps all the time saying it till he sleeps.
The adjutant, the new Number 12, says that you can hear them calling maman all the time when they lie wounded between the trenches, wounded and one cannot get to them to pick them up. He says it is the last word they call before they are still.
I take off my cloak and blue veil in the patronne's room.