ugh and weep, and a penetrating odour of garlic and citric acid hung
about the ward for some time.

Many things we had perforce to leave to chance, and I thought, during
this alarm, of men just operated on, and plunged in the stupor of the
chloroform, whom we should have to allow to wake, and then mask them
immediately, or...

Ah, well!... in the midst of all this unimaginable tragedy,
laughter was not quite quenched. This phenomenon is perhaps one of
the characteristics, one of the greatnesses of our race--and in a more
general way, no doubt, it is an imperative need of humanity at large.

Certain of the wounded took a pride in cracking jokes, and they did so
in words to which circumstances lent a poignant picturesqueness. These
jests drew a laugh from us which was often closely akin to tears.

One morning, in the sorting room, I noticed a big, curly-haired fellow
who had lost a foot, and had all sorts of wounds and fractures in both
legs. All these had been hastily bound up, clothing and all, in the
hollow of the stretcher, which was stiff with blood. When I called the
stretcher-bearers and contemplated this picture, the big man raised
himself on his elbow and said:

"Please give me a cigarette."

Then he began to smoke, smiling cheerfully and telling absurd stories.
We took off one of his legs up to the thigh, and as soon as he recovered
consciousness, he asked for another cigarette, and set all the orderlies
laughing.

When, on leaving him, I asked this extraordinary man what his calling
was, he replied modestly:

"I am one of the employees of the Vichy Company."

The orderlies in particular, nearly all simple folks, had a desire to
laugh, even when they were worn out with fatigue, which made a pretext
of the slightest thing, and notably of danger. One of them, called
Tailleur, a buffoon with the airs of an executioner's assistant, would
call out at the first explosions of a hurricane of shells:

"Number your arms and legs! Look out for your nuts! The winkles are
tumbling about!"

All my little band would begin to laugh. And I had not the heart to
check them, for their faces were drawn with fatigue, and this moment of
doleful merriment at least prevented them from falling asleep as they
stood.

When the explosions came very close, this same Tailleur could not help
exclaiming:

"I am not going to be killed by a brick! I am going outside."

I would look at him with a smile, and he would repeat: "As