These modern scientific bullets, these civilized bullets"--he laughed in
self-derision at the use of the word--"they are cruel and yet they are
merciful too. If they do not kill you outright they have a little way,
somehow, of not killing you at all."
"But the bayonet wounds and the saber wounds?" I said. "How about
them?"
"I have been here since the very first," he said; "since the day after
our troops took this town, and God knows how many thousands of wounded
men--Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Turcos, some Belgians--have passed
through my hands; but as yet I have to see a man who has been wounded by
a saber or a lance. I saw one bayonet wound yesterday or the day
before. The man had fallen on his own bayonet and driven it into his
side. Shrapnel wounds? Yes. Wounds from fragments of bombs? Again,
yes. Bullet wounds? I can't tell you how many of those I have seen, but
surely many thousands. But no bayonet wounds. This is a war of hot
lead, not of cold steel. I read of these bayonet charges, but I do not
believe that many such stories are true.
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