.

When I had finished he thanked me, wiped his hands, then turning round
at the door he said: "Why don't you go back to Mittoevo, Mr. ----
You're tired out."

"You know why," I answered, without looking at him He seemed then as
though he would speak, but he stopped himself and went away. I lay
down again and tried to sleep, but when I closed my eyes the green
beyond the window burnt through my eyelids--and then the fly (I am
sure it was the same fly) returned....

_Monday, August 16_.... Lord! but I am tired of this endless
bandaging, cleaning of filthy wounds, paring away of ragged ends of
flesh, smelling, breathing, drinking blood and dust and dirt. The poor
fellows! Their bravery is beyond any word of mine. They have come
these last few days with their eyes dazed and their ears deafened.
Indeed the roaring of the cannon has been since yesterday afternoon
incessant. They say that the Austrians are straining every nerve to
break through to the river and cross. We are doing what we can to
prevent them, but what can we do? There simply IS NOT AMMUNITION! The
officers here are almost crying with despair, and the men know it and
go on, with their cheerfulness, their obedience, their mild
kindliness--go into that green hell to be butchered, and come out of
it again, if they are lucky, with their bodies mangled and twisted,
and horror in their eyes. It's nobody's fault, I suppose, this
business. How easy to write in the daily papers that the Germans
prepared for war and that we did not, and that after a month or two
all will be well.... After a month or two! tell that to us here stuck
in this Forest and hear us how we laugh!...

Meanwhile, for the good of my health, I'm figuring very clearly to
myself all the physical features of this place. It's a long white
house, two-storied. The front door has broken glass over it and
there's a litter of tumbled bricks on the top step. After you've gone
through the front door you come into the hall where the wounded are as
thick as flies. You go through the hall and turn to the left. There's
a pantry place on your right all full of flies and when you open the
door they unsettle with a great buzz and shift into all sorts of
shapes and patterns. Next to them is our sitting-room, the horrid
place always dirty and stifling. Then there's the operating-room, then
another room for beds, then the kitchen. Outside to the right there's
the garden, dry now with the heat, and the orchard smell