"Yes," said the M. O., "they look bad, some of 'em, but youth is on
their side. I dare say seventy-five per cent. will get through. If it
wasn't for gas gangrene--"
He jerked his head to a boy sitting up in bed, smiling at the nurse
who felt his pulse.
"Looks fairly fit after the knife, doesn't he? But we shall have to
cut higher up. The gas again. I'm afraid he'll be dead before to-
morrow. Come into the operating-theater. It's very well equipped."
I refused that invitation. I walked stiffly out of the Butcher's Shop
of Corbie past the man who had lost both arms and both legs, that
vital trunk, past rows of men lying under blankets, past a stench of
mud and blood and anesthetics, to the fresh air of the gateway, where
a column of ambulances had just arrived with a new harvest from the
fields of the Somme.
"Come in again, any time!" shouted out the cheery colonel, waving his
hand.
I never went again, though I saw many other Butcher's Shops in the
years that followed, where there was a great carving of human flesh
which was of our boyhood, while the old men directed their sacrifice,
and the profiteers grew rich, and the fires of hate were stoked up at
patriotic banquets and in editorial chairs.
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