The Debacle - Emile Zola [123]
All three went in and found themselves confronted by Major Bouroche, the medical officer, who had already thrown his uniform jacket into a corner and put on a big white apron. His huge head with coarse bristling hair and leonine face seemed flaming with urgency and energy above all this still unstained whiteness. He struck them as so terrible that they were instantly subjugated, obeying his every sign and rushing to satisfy him.
‘We’ve got nothing… Give me some linen, try and find some more mattresses, show my chaps where the pump is…’
They rushed about busily and became simply his servants.
The mill was a very good choice for an ambulance station. There was in particular the drying-shed, an enormous room with glass at the end where there was ample room for a hundred beds, and at one side there was a shed which would be ideal for operating: a long table had been brought in, the pump was quite near, and those with minor injuries could wait on the lawn just near, which happened to be very pleasant, for the lovely old elms were delightfully shady.
Bouroche had preferred to establish himself straight away in Sedan, foreseeing the massacre and the appalling pressure that would force the troops back into the town. He had merely left, close to the 7th corps, behind Floing, two mobile ambulance units for first aid, from which the wounded could be sent on to him after emergency dressings. All the stretcher-bearing squads were out there with the job of picking up under fire any men who fell, and they had the carts and vans. And apart from two of his assistants left on the battlefield Bouroche had brought his staff, two assistant medical officers and three juniors, which might be enough to cope with the operations. In addition there were three dispensers and a dozen medical orderlies.
But he was still fuming, being a man unable to do anything without passion.
‘What are you up to now? Put those mattresses closer together… We’ll put some straw in that corner if necessary.’
The guns were roaring, and he knew that the work would be coming in at any moment now, vehicles full of bleeding flesh, and he was frantically fitting up the big and still empty room. Then there were other preparations going on in the shed: boxes of dressings and medicaments all open and set out on a plank, packets of lint, bandages, compresses, linen, splints for fractures; while on another shelf beside a large pot of ointment and a bottle of chloroform the sets of instruments were laid out, all of shining steel, probes, pincers, knives, scissors, saws, an arsenal of every kind of point and blade for probing, making incisions, slicing, cutting off. But there were no bowls.
‘You must have some basins, buckets, saucepans, any old thing… We can’t muck ourselves up with blood up to our eyes, can we? And sponges, try and get me some sponges!’
Madame Delaherche rushed off and came back followed by three maids loaded with all the bowls they could find. Standing by the instruments Gilberte had beckoned Henriette over and shown them to her with a little shudder. They held each other’s hands and stood there in silence, expressing with the pressure of their hands the vague terror, pity and anxiety overwhelming them.
‘Oh my dear, to think of having a limb cut off!’
‘Poor creatures!’
On the big table Bouroche had had a mattress put and was covering it with oilcloth when a clatter of horses’ hoofs was heard under the archway. It was the first ambulance coming into the courtyard, but it only contained ten slightly wounded men sitting facing each other, most of them with an arm in a sling, a few with head wounds and bandaged foreheads. They got out themselves with just a little help and the examination began.
As Henriette was gently helping a very young soldier with a bullet wound in his shoulder to get his cape off, which made him cry out in pain, she noticed the number of his regiment.
‘But you belong to the 106th! Are you in the Beaudoin company?’
No, he was in Ravaud’s. But he did know Corporal Jean Macquart, and thought he was right