were wrapped up in their clothes--the same old
clothes in which they had fought. The French are, apparently, not sure
that the Germans may not yet take Paris, for as a rule they do not
permit wounded to be sent to that city. Only those who are slightly
wounded in the hand or arm and able to walk, or, on the other hand,
those too desperately wounded to survive being moved farther, are
allowed to remain in Paris. All the others, although they have already
taken two or three days to arrive from the front, are allowed only
twelve hours "repose" before they are sent on to the south of France.
This "repose" is taken on the benches described above or in similar
situations. If the shed is already full and additional trains of
wounded arrive, the late comers are left in their cars. Why anyone
should consider a train which is standing still more reposeful than
one which is moving I cannot imagine. In Paris the wounded at least
get something to eat, usually coarse bread with meat and cheese. They
arrive in those silly little freight cars marked "eight horses," each
of which carries about eighteen wounded, twelve on stretchers in two
tiers in each end and some six more standing or sitting in the aisle,
which extends from door to door between the stretchers.

On arriving at the Aubervilliers station we were on duty all the
afternoon, and as no trains happened to arrive this meant standing in
the rain and doing nothing at all. After dark, however, three train
loads of wounded, each of some fifty cars, came in at intervals of
about an hour. The wounded are so many that one counts them by trains
and the trains come so often that one loses count even of them. No one
who has not seen them can possibly comprehend the human misery
contained in one such unit. The first train arrived at five o'clock
and brought five hundred cases. They had been two days on the way and
had had nothing at all to eat for the last nineteen hours.

Seventy-five of their number were unwounded, but had reached such a
state of nervous collapse that they could not endure life in the
trenches a minute longer, and had therefore, perforce, been sent to
the rear. I could not ascertain just how such cases were handled at
the front for the French were reluctant to discuss the matter. Certain
it is that the instances must have been numerous, for the punishment
usually prescribed in war for such delinquency in the face of the
enemy is death before a firing squad. The cases