In one hospital
through which I passed there was a baby. It was a military hospital, and
no civilian had any right there, but the medical officers who inspected
the hospital were remarkably blind--none of them could ever see the
baby. One of the soldiers passing through a bombarded village saw a
little body lying in the mud, and although he believed the child to be
dead, he stooped down and picked it up. At the evacuating station the
baby and the soldier were sent to the hospital together; the doctors
operated upon the baby and took a piece of shrapnel from its back, and
once well and strong it constituted itself lord and master and king of
all it surveyed. When it woke in the morning it would call "Papa," and
twenty fathers answered to its call. All the pent-up love of the men for
their own little ones from whom they had been parted for so long they
lavished on the tiny stranger, but all his affection and his whole heart
belonged to the rough miner-soldier who had brought him in. As the
shadows fell one saw the man walking up and down the ward with the child
in his arms, crooning the Marseillaise until the tired little eyes
closed. He had obtained permission from the authorities to adopt the
child, as the parents could not be found, and remarked humorously:
"Mademoiselle, it is so convenient to have a family without the trouble
of being married!"
What we must remember is that the rough soldier, himself blinded with
blood and mud, uncertain whether he could ever reach a point of safety,
yet had time to stoop and pick that little flower of France and save it
from being crushed beneath the _camion_ wheels.
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