I am
going. I am taking away the wounded--and all my stores. Those are
my orders.'
"'But, mon Commandant, you'll leave me some of your stores for the
grands blesses, whom you leave behind--whom you can't move? _What_!--you
must take it all away? Ah, ca--_non_! I don't want any extras--I won't
take your chloroform--I won't take your bistouris--I won't take your
electric things--but--hand over the iodine! (_en avant l'iode_!) hand
over the cotton-wool!--hand over the gauze! Come, my Sisters!' I can
tell you I plundered him!--and my Sisters came with their aprons, and
the linen-baskets--we carried away all we could."
Then she described the evacuation of the French wounded at night--300 of
them--all but the 19 worst cases left behind. There were no ambulances,
no proper preparation of any kind.
"Oh! it was a confusion!--an ugly business!" (_ce n'etait pas rose_!).
The Sisters tore down and split up the shutters, the doors, to serve as
stretchers; they tore sheets into long strips and tied "our poor
children" on to the shutters, and hoisted them into country carts of
every sort and description.
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