Since they had been dropped upon the stone floor they had not
moved, but lay in twisted, unnatural attitudes. Only their eyes showed
that they lived. These were turned beseechingly upon the French
Red Cross doctors, kneeling waist-high in the straw and unreeling
long white bandages. The wounded watched them drawing slowly
nearer, until they came, fighting off death, clinging to life as
shipwrecked sailors cling to a raft and watch the boats pulling toward
them.
A young German officer, his smart cavalry cloak torn and slashed,
and filthy with dried mud and blood and with his eyes in bandages,
groped toward a pail of water, feeling his way with his foot, his arms
outstretched, clutching the air. To guide him a priest took his arm, and
the officer turned and stumbled against him. Thinking the priest was
one of his own men, he swore at him, and then, to learn if he wore
shoulder-straps, ran his fingers over the priest's shoulders, and,
finding a silk cassock, said quickly in French: "Pardon me, my father;
I am blind."
As the young cure guided me through the wrecked cathedral his
indignation and his fear of being unjust waged a fine battle.
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