By evening there would be twenty shaped mounds of
clay where the twenty holes had been. The crop of the dead was the one
sure crop upon which embattled Europe might count. That harvest could
not fail the warring nations, however scanty other yields might be.
In the towns in occupied territory the cemeteries were the only actively
and constantly busy spots to be found, except the hospitals. Every
schoolhouse was a hospital; indeed I think there can be no schoolhouse
in the zone of actual hostilities that has not served such a purpose.
In their altered aspects we came to know these schoolhouses mighty well.
We would see the wounded going in on stretchers and the dead coming out
in boxes. We would see how the blackboards, still scrawled over perhaps
with the chalked sums of lessons which never were finished, now bore
pasted-on charts dealing in nurses' and surgeons' cipher-manual, with
the bodily plights of the men in the cots and on the mattresses beneath.
We would see classrooms where plaster casts and globe maps and dusty
textbooks had been cast aside in heaps to make room on desktops and
shelves for drugs and bandages and surgical appliances.
Pages:
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391