He brushed aside my congratulations. "For
what?" he demanded. "I didn't go after the stories; they came to
me. The things I saw I had to see. Couldn't get away from them.
I've been with the British, serving in the R.A.M.C. Been hospital
steward, stretcher bearer, ambulance driver. I've been sixteen
months at the front, and all the time on the firing-line. I was in
the retreat from Mons, with French on the Marne, at Ypres, all
through the winter fighting along the Canal, on the Gallipoli
Peninsula, and, just lately, in Servia. I've seen more of this war
than any soldier. Because, sometimes, they give the soldier a
rest; they never give the medical corps a rest. The only rest I
got was when I was wounded."
He seemed no worse for his wounds, so again I tendered
congratulations. This time he accepted them. The recollection of
the things he had seen, things incredible, terrible, unique in
human experience, had stirred him. He talked on, not boastfully,
but in a tone, rather, of awe and disbelief, as though assuring
himself that it was really he to whom such things had happened.
"I don't believe there's any kind of fighting I haven't seen," he
declared; "hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets, grenades, gun
butts. I've seen 'em on their knees in the mud choking each other,
beating each other with their bare fists.
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