Laurie Marr Wasmund's Blog
September 19, 2016
Excerpt from White Winter: To Do Justice
This is a brief section from the viewpoint of Paul Reston, who drives an ambulance for the French Army. The date is November 1917.
He climbed from the Packard. The ground shook beneath him as bombs fell along the trenches. Even from this distance, dirt and éclats swirled in the air. Along the Front, the phosphorus bursts kept the sky ablaze with sickly-white light. At a pool of mud, a gang of French soldiers gathered, watching intently as others stood knee-deep in the ooze and worked pieces of whatever could be salvaged from the ruin around them--boards, lengths of metal--into it. All that was visible in the mud was a man's back. The rest of his body had sunk beneath.
"Un, deux, trois!"
The soldiers leaned on the makeshift levers and tried to lift the man upward. Nothing happened, even after a second attempt. A soldier near Paul remarked calmly, "Trop nombreux ont sauté sur lui. Il est coincé indéfiniment."
Too many have stepped on him. He is stuck forever.
Evidently the officer in charge agreed, for the order was given to assemble and march. As Paul watched, the column tramped through the mud toward the Front. He stood transfixed, his eyes on the spot where the man had been lost, his stomach and heart knotted, a voice within him still crying, My God, you cannot leave him, you cannot refuse to rescue him.
To Do Justice Laurie Marr Wasmund
He climbed from the Packard. The ground shook beneath him as bombs fell along the trenches. Even from this distance, dirt and éclats swirled in the air. Along the Front, the phosphorus bursts kept the sky ablaze with sickly-white light. At a pool of mud, a gang of French soldiers gathered, watching intently as others stood knee-deep in the ooze and worked pieces of whatever could be salvaged from the ruin around them--boards, lengths of metal--into it. All that was visible in the mud was a man's back. The rest of his body had sunk beneath.
"Un, deux, trois!"
The soldiers leaned on the makeshift levers and tried to lift the man upward. Nothing happened, even after a second attempt. A soldier near Paul remarked calmly, "Trop nombreux ont sauté sur lui. Il est coincé indéfiniment."
Too many have stepped on him. He is stuck forever.
Evidently the officer in charge agreed, for the order was given to assemble and march. As Paul watched, the column tramped through the mud toward the Front. He stood transfixed, his eyes on the spot where the man had been lost, his stomach and heart knotted, a voice within him still crying, My God, you cannot leave him, you cannot refuse to rescue him.
To Do Justice Laurie Marr Wasmund
