Long before the tornado3 of the war burst over the world, Paris knew her in many varying phases which now, as we look back, we see to have been the unconscious preparation for the hour of crisis. Personally I knew of her, casually4, as the public-spirited young doctor who[40] was attached to the Paris lycée where my children go to school, and who was pushing the “fresh-air” movement for the city poor. People who met her in a social way knew her as an attractive woman with a well-proportioned figure, lovely hair, and clear brown eyes, whom one met once or twice a week at the theater or in the homes of mutual5 friends, and who enjoyed a hearty6 laugh and cheerful, chatting talk. Other people who saw her every morning in her laboratory garb7, serious, intent, concentrated, knew her as one of those scientific investigators8 who can not rest while the horrible riddle9 of cancer is unsolved.
Those who saw her in the afternoon among the swarming10 sick and poor of the clinique of the great Beaujon Hospital, knew her as one of those lovers of their kind who can not rest as long as the horrible apathy11 of public opinion about tuberculosis12 continues. People who investigated cures for city ills and who went to visit the model tenement13 house for the very poor, near the St. Ouen gate of Paris, knew her as the originator and planner of that admirable enterprise,[41] whose energy and forcefulness saw it financed and brought to practical existence. Observers who knew her in the big international Feminist14 Conferences in European capitals, saw an alert, upright, quick-eyed Parisienne, whose pretty hats showed no sign of the erudition of the head under them. Friends knew her as the gently bred woman who, although driven by no material necessity, renounced15 the easy, sheltered, comfortable life of the home-keeping woman for an incessant16, beneficent activity, the well-ordered regularity17 of which alone kept it from breaking down her none too robust18 health. And those intimates who saw her in her home, saw her the most loved of sisters and daughters, the most devoted19 of mothers, adored by the little son to whom she has been father and mother ever since he was four years old.
No one dreamed of war, but if the very day and hour had been known for years, Dr. Girard-Mangin could hardly have prepared herself more completely for the ordeal20. Unconsciously she had “trained” for it, as the runner trains for his race. She was not very strong, slightly built,[42] with some serious constitutional weakening, but she filled every day full to the brim with exacting21 and fatiguing22 work. She had two great factors in her favor. One of them was that enviable gift which Nature gives occasionally to remarkable23 people, the capacity to live with very little sleep. The other is even more noteworthy in a doctor—in whom close acquaintance with the laws of health seems often to breed contempt.
Dr. Girard-Mangin is that rare bird, a doctor who believes profoundly, seriously, in the advice which she gives to others, in the importance of those simple, humdrum25 laws of daily health which only very extraordinary people have the strength of mind to obey. Never, never, she says, as though it were a matter of course, has she allowed fatigue27, or overoccupation, or inertia28, or boredom29 to interfere30 with her early morning deep-breathing and physical exercises, and her tonic31 cold bath. Never, never, no matter how long or exhausting the day, has she rolled into bed, dead beat, too tired to go through the simple processes of the toilet, which make sleep so much more refreshing32. No matter how absorbed[43] in her work, she has always taken the time at regular intervals33 to relax, to chat sociably34 with quite ordinary people, to go to the theater, to hear music. She has always breakfasted and lunched with her little boy, has steered35 him through his spelling and arithmetic, has gone on walks with him, has been his comrade and “pal.” This has been as good for her as for him, naturally. Every summer she has had the courageous36 good sense to take a vacation in the country. In short, she is a doctor who takes to her own heart the advice about rational life which doctors so often reserve for their patients.
To this woman, tempered to a steel-like strength by self-imposed discipline and by a regular, well-ordered life, came the great summons. And it found her ready to the last nerve in her strong, delicate little hand. You have read, probably, how on that “Day of Doom” when France called out her men, a concierge37 received, among mobilization papers for all the men in the big apartment house, one sending Dr. Girard-Mangin (presumably also a man, by the name) out to a military hospital in the Vosges[44] mountains. The notice of mobilization was handed to a woman, a patriotic38 woman who long ago had heard the call to fight for France’s best interests. She had seen her brother go before her into the fighting ranks and she followed him, into danger and service. She said a quick good-by to her friends, to her parents, to her son, her only child, a fine boy of fourteen then, from whom she had never before been separated.
Will every mother who reads these lines stop here and think what this means?
There is no need to repeat in detail here what has already been told of the first three months of her service—her arrival at the field hospital, disorganized, submerged by the terrible, ever-renewed flood of wounded men, of the astonishment39 of the doctor in charge. “What, a woman! This is no place for a woman. But, good God! if you know anything about surgery, roll up your sleeves and stay!”
There she stayed for three months, those blasting first three months of the war, when French people put forth40 undreamed-of strength to meet a crisis of undreamed-of horror. Out there in[45] that distant military hospital, toiling41 incessantly42 in great heat, with insufficient43 supplies, bearing the mental and moral shock of the first encounter with the incredible miseries44 of war, that modern, highly organized woman, separated for the first time from her family, from her child, fearing everything for them and for her country, had no word, no tidings whatever, till the 28th of August. Then no knowledge of her son, of her parents, only a notice that the Government had retreated from Paris to Bordeaux! Comforting news that, for the first! Next they knew that Rheims was taken. Then one of the men whose wounds she dressed told her that he had been able to see the Eiffel Tower from where he fell. This sounded as though the next news could be nothing but the German entry into Paris.
All France throbbed45 with straining, despairing effort, far beyond its normal strength, during those first three months; and to do the man’s part she took, the delicate woman doctor, laboring46 incessantly among the bleeding wrecks47 of human bodies, needed all her will-power to pull her through.
[46]Then the wild period of fury and haste and nervous, emotional exaltation passed, and France faced another ordeal, harder for her temperament48 even than the first fierce onset49 of the unequal struggle—the long period of patient endurance of the unendurable. The miracle of the Marne had been wrought50; Paris was saved; the sting and stimulant51 of immediate52, deadly danger was past; the fatigue from the supernatural effort of those first months dimmed every eye, deadened all nerves. Then France tapped another reservoir of national strength and began patiently, constructively53 to “organize” the war. And that daughter of France bent54 her energies to help in this need, as in the first.
A rough rearrangement of competences55 was attempted everywhere on the front. Dentists no longer dug trenches57, bakers58 were set to baking instead of currying59 horses, and expert telegraphers stopped making ineffectual efforts to cook. It came out then that the real specialty60 of the valiant61 little woman doctor who had been doing such fine work in the operating-room was not surgery at all. “I’m no surgeon, you[47] know!” she says, and leaves it to her friends to tell you of the extraordinary record of her efficiency in that field, the low percentage of losses in her surgical62 cases. If you mention this, she says, “Ah, that’s just because I’m not a born surgeon. I have to take very special care of my cases to be equal to the job.” It was discovered that her great specialty was contagious63 diseases. There was great need for a specialist of that sort out at Verdun, where, alas64! a typhoid epidemic65 had broken out. This was before the extra precautions about inoculations, which were taken later.
Dr. Girard-Mangin was sent to Verdun on November 1st, 1914, and was there steadily66 for more than a year, until the 28th of February, 1916. She found her sick men on mattresses67, in tents, on such low ground that they were often literally69 in water. Whenever there was freezing weather, those who cared for them slid about on sheets of ice. Above them, on higher ground, were some rough old barracks, empty, partly remodeled, said to have been left there by the Prussians in 1871. “Why don’t we move the[48] sick up there?” she asked, and was met by all the usual dragging, clogging70 reasons given by administrative71 inertia.
The sheds were not ready to occupy; there were no expert carpenters to get them ready; it would be impossible to heat them; no order for the change had come from Headquarters—furthermore, a reason not mentioned, the sheds, being on higher ground, were more exposed to shell-fire. Dr. Girard-Mangin had had some experience with administrative inertia in her struggles for better housing for the poor; and long before the war she had known what it was to put herself voluntarily in danger—the scar from a bad tubercular infection on her hand is the honorable proof of that. She knew that the sick men would be better off in the barracks on higher ground. So she took them there. Just like that.
She was to have the entire care of the typhoid epidemic, and the only help which could be given her was to come from twenty men, absolutely unassorted—such a score as you would gather by walking down any street and picking up the[49] first twenty men you met. There were several farm-laborers, a barber, an accountant, miscellaneous factory hands. The only person remotely approaching a nurse was a man who had had the training for a pharmacist, but as he had never been able to stay sober long enough to take his examinations, you may not be surprised that he was the least useful of them all.
These twenty casually selected human beings went unwillingly72 up the hill toward the barracks, ironic74, mocking, lazy, indifferent, as human beings unelectrified by purpose are apt to be. But, although they did not know it, there marched at their head an iron will, a steel-like purpose, and an intelligence which was invincible75. They took this to be but a smallish, youngish woman in uniform, and were all in great guffaws76 at the comic idea of being under her orders.
Of course, to begin with, she did not know one of her men from another, but she studied them closely as they worked, driven along by her direction, setting up the rough camp-stoves, stopping[50] the worst of the holes in the walls, arranging the poor apologies for mattresses, and cutting off the tops of gasoline-cans for heating water—for our woman doctor was asked to take care of several hundred typhoid cases and was not provided with so much as a bowl that would hold water. Presently, as they worked, she noticed that there were but nineteen men there. All day she studied their faces, their bearing, what was written on them for the seeing eye to read. At night, at supper-time, there were twenty men. Those clear brown eyes swept around the circle and pounced77 on a mild-looking poilu innocently taking his soup with the others.
“Where have you been all day?” she asked him.
He fairly turned pale with astonishment, “Why, how did you—? I’ve been right here, working!” he tried to bluster78 her down.
“No, you haven’t. You haven’t been here since a quarter past ten this morning,” she assured him.
He hung his head a moment, then looked an ugly defiance79. “Well, I’ve been in to Verdun to[51] spend the day with a friend. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to have you punished for disobeying an officer,” she said promptly80, though so little military had been her beneficent life, that she had no more idea than you or I or any other woman would have of what punishment could be given in such a case.
“Officer’s orders!” said the man. “What officer?” All the men laughed.
“I’m your officer,” she said, and went away to telephone to the military authority in charge of such cases.
“I can’t be expected to have discipline if I’m not backed up,” she said. “This is a test case. It’s now or never.”
The answer was a non-com and a guard marching up to the barracks, saluting81 the military doctor, and, with all due military ceremony, carrying off the offender82 for a week in prison. Dr. Girard-Mangin laughs still at the recollection of the consternation83 among the nineteen who were left. “I never had any trouble about discipline, after that,” she says. “Of course[52] there were the utter incompetents84 to be weeded out. For that I followed the time-honored army custom of sending my worst man whenever the demand from Headquarters came for a good, competent person to be sent to other work! Before long I had reduced the force of nurses to twelve. Those twelve I kept for all the time of my service there, and we parted at the end old friends and tried comrades. I have never lost track of them since. They always write me once in a while, wherever they are.”
As soon as it grew dark enough, that first night, for the ambulances to dash out through the blackness, over the shell-riddled roads to the abris, close to the front, the stricken men began to come in. Before dawn, that very first night, there were fifty-five terrible typhoid cases brought into the bare sheds. Then it was that Dr. Girard-Mangin, working single-handed with her score of crude, untrained helpers, needed all her capacity for going without sleep. Then it was that her men, seeing her at work, stopped laughing because she was a woman and admired her because she was a woman doing wonderful[53] things; then, best of all, forgot that she was a woman, and took her simply for the matchless leader that she is, in the battle against disease. I think it was not wholly the guard, marching away the disobedient man to prison, who was responsible for the fact that our little woman doctor had no further difficulty with discipline.
The condition of the typhoid patients was harrowing beyond words. A man going out with his squad85 to a front-line trench56 would be stricken down with fever on arriving. It was impossible for him to return until his squad was relieved and he could be carried to the rear on a comrade’s back. There he was, there he must remain, for the three or four or five days of his squad’s “turn” in the front lines. Can you imagine the condition of a man with typhoid fever, who has lain in a trench in the mud for four days, with no shelter from the rain or snow but an overcoat spread over him, with no care beyond an occasional drink of water from a comrade’s flask86? For your own sake I hope you can not imagine it. And I will not go into details. Enough to say that such men were[54] brought in by the tens, by the twenties, by the fifties, filthy87 beyond words, at the limit of exhaustion88, out of their heads with weakness and fever and horror.
And there to stem that black tide of human misery89 stands this little upright, active, valiant, twentieth-century woman. I think, although we are not of her nation, we may well be proud of her as a fellow-being who had voluntarily renounced ease to choose the life which had made her fit to cope with the crisis of that night—and of the more than four hundred days and nights following. For cope with it she did, competently, resolutely90, successfully. “Oh yes, we gave them cold baths,” she says, when you ask for details. “We managed somehow. They had all the right treatment, cold baths, wet packs, injections, the right food—everything very primitive91 at first, of course, but everything you ever do for typhoid anywhere. Our percentage of losses was very low always.”
“But how? How? How did you manage?” you ask.
“Oh, at the beginning everything was very[55] rough. We had only one portable galvanized-iron bathtub. Since they were all so badly infected, there was less danger in bathing them all in the same tub than in not fighting the fever that way. And then, just as soon as I could reach the outside world by letter, I clamored for more, and they were sent.”
“But how could you, single-handed, give cold baths to so many men? It’s a difficult matter, giving a cold bath to a typhoid patient.”
“I wasn’t single-handed. I had my twelve soldier-nurses.”
“‘Nurses,’ you say! Farm-laborers, accountants, barbers, drunken druggists!”
“But I got rid of that good-for-nothing pharmacist at once! And the others—the twelve good ones—they learned what to do. They learned how to give the simple remedies. They learned how to do the other things enough to give me a report—how to take temperatures, how to give the baths at the right degree for the right time, how to take the pulse.”
“How could they learn all that?” you ask, amazed.
[56]“I taught them,” says Dr. Girard-Mangin, slightly surprised, in the simplest, most matter-of-fact tone.
You look past her, out there to that hand-to-hand struggle with death which was carried on by the one indomitable will and the one well-trained mind, strong enough not only to animate92 this woman’s body before you, but those other bodies and ignorant, indocile minds.
“They did it very well, too,” she assures you, and you do not doubt her.
That woman could teach anybody to do anything.
You come back to details. “But how could you get enough water and heat it for so many baths, on just those rough, small, heating-stoves?”
“Well, we were at it all the time, practically, day and night. We cut the tops off those big gasoline-cans the automobilists use, and stood one on every stove up and down the barracks. There wasn’t a moment when water wasn’t being heated, or used, or carried away.”
“What could you do about intestinal93 hemorrhages?”[57] you ask. “You must have had many, with such advanced cases. Your farm-hand nurses couldn’t——”
“I never tried to teach them how to handle any real crisis, only to recognize it when it came, and go quickly to fetch me. I taught them to watch carefully and at the first sign of blood on their patients’ clothing or on the mattress68, to take the knapsack out from under the sick man’s head—they had no other pillow, of course—to lay him down flat, and then to run and call me, from wherever I was.”
“You must have had almost no sleep at all.”
“That was the greatest help I had, being able to get along on little sleep. And I got more work out of my helpers than any man could, for they were ashamed to ask to sleep or rest, seeing that a woman, half their size, could still keep going.”
“But how about your famous hygienic regularity, the morning exercises and cold baths and——”
“Oh, as soon as I saw I was in for a long period of regular service, I took the greatest[58] care to go on with all the things which keep one fit for regular service.”
“Morning tubs?”
“Yes, morning tubs! I slept—what time I had to sleep—in an abandoned peasant’s house in an evacuated94 village near the hospital. I didn’t take any of the downstairs rooms because people are likely to walk right into an abandoned house, and part of the time there were soldiers quartered in the village. Then there was usually somebody in the house with me. The other times I had it all to myself. I took a room on the second floor. It happened to have a flight of steps leading up to it, and another one going out of it into the attic96. Of course, I never had any heat, and the drafts from those two open stairways—well, it was like sleeping in the middle of a city square. Sometimes I used to take down a bottle filled with hot water, but the bed was so cold that it was almost instantly chilled. Many a time I have gone to sleep, all curled up in a ball, holding my feet in my hands, because they were so cold, and wakened to find them still as icy. Oh, the cold! That is the worst enemy[59] of all at the front, the most wearing, the most demoralizing, the most dehumanizing, because it lasts so. With other things—hunger, wounds, danger—either it kills you, or it passes. But the cold is always there.”
She loses herself for a moment in brooding recollection and you wonder if Jeanne d’Arc ever did anything braver for her country than did this delicate, stout-hearted modern woman, sleeping alone for months and months in bitter cold in a deserted97 house in a deserted village.
She comes back to the present. “And it was there that I took my morning tubs!” she says with an amused smile. “Of course the water froze hard into a solid lump. So I put carbonate de potasse into it. This not only kept it from freezing, but made it alkaline, so that it was an excellent detergent98 and stimulant to the skin. I assure you, after a night in which I had been incessantly called from one bed to another, when I felt very much done-up, my cold sponge-bath in that water was like a resurrection. I was made over. Then, of course, no matter how busy I was, I took care of my feet—changed my[60] stockings and shoes every day. Feet are one’s weakest point in a long pull like that.”
You venture to remark about a slight limp noticeable when she walks. “Yes, it comes from a frozen foot—I have to admit it. But it’s really not my fault. That was later, at the time of the battle at Verdun. There are always brief crises, when you have to give your all and not stop to think. I went nine days then without once taking off my shoes. I hadn’t my other pair by that time. The Boches had them, probably.”
But we have not come to that terrific epic99, as yet. Before that second tornado burst over the heads of the French and of our woman doctor, there was a long, hard, dull period of four hundred and seventy days of continuous service—for Dr. Girard-Mangin, being a pioneer woman, felt in honor bound to do more than a man would do. In the three years and more of her war service, she has had just three weeks’ furlough, seven days out of every year to see her son, to see her family, to relax. Every other day of that long procession of days, she has been on[61] duty, active, and, as befits a woman, constructively active.
She did not continue resignedly to struggle with tin-can drinking-cups, and one bathtub for two hundred men. Neither did she rely on the proverbially slow mills of the Government to grind her out the necessary supplies. She was not only the army doctor in charge of the contagious cases in the big sanitary100 section and hospital near Verdun, she was also a figure of international importance, the Présidente of the Hygiene101 Department of the Conseil International des Femmes—her predecessor102 had been Lady Aberdeen; she was high in honor at the big Beaujon Hospital in Paris; she was well-known to the charitable world in the Society for Hygienic Lodgings103 for the poor, which owed so much to her; and she had a wide circle of friends everywhere. The little aide major sent out from her bare shed-hospital, lacking in everything, a clarion105 call for help for her sick men. With years of experience in organization back of her, she set to work and, in the midst of the fury of destruction all about her, built up, item by item,[62] a little corner of order and competent activity. In November, 1914, there was nothing but a windswept shed, with straw pallets and tin-can utensils106. By June of the next year you would have found, if you had had the courage to go within two kilometers of the front line, a very well-appointed contagious ward73 of a military hospital, where nothing was lacking for the men’s comfort—except a certainty that the whole thing might not be blown to pieces by a shell. And by the end of 1915, when there began to be talk of a great German drive against Verdun, the men under our doctor’s supervision107 had as good care as they could have had anywhere, with laboratory and sterilizing108 facilities—everything. Dr. Girard-Mangin knew what was the best to be had in hospitals and she did not rest until somehow, Aladdin-like, she had made it to blossom, out there in danger and desolation.
All during January of 1916 there was terrific tension along that front. The monster German offensive against Verdun was in the air. The month of January passed with desperate slowness, such intent, apprehensive109 suspense110 being[63] torturing for human nerves, especially tired human nerves which had already been through a long, severe period of trial.
Everybody showed signs of nervousness. Our little doctor stuck faithfully to her bedrock principles of health, changed her shoes and stockings every day, took her Spartan112 baths and rub-downs in her colder-than-freezing water, went through her deep-breathing and her setting-up exercises every morning. By such merely feminine reliance on everyday sanity113 in life, she kept herself in excellent physical shape, and did not succumb114 to the temptation, which is too much for so many doctors under strain, of hypodermics of strychnin, and other stimulants115.
February inched itself along, and finally, because human nature can only stand about so much of strain, nerves began to relax in utter fatigue.
On February 21st, which was a Monday, it was fairly clear, cold, with what passes for sunshine in that region. Dr. Girard-Mangin[64] stepped out in front of her shed-hospital ward, after lunch, and made this remark to herself: “I don’t believe the Boches are going to pull off that offensive at all. And to-day is almost sunny. I have a good notion to go over to the 165th and get my hair washed.” There was an ex-coiffeur in that regiment118 who kept on with his trade in his leisure moments.
As this singularly peace-time thought passed through her mind, an obus screamed its way loudly over her head. “That’s near,” she thought, “nearer than they generally are.”
Before she could get back into the hospital, the battle of Verdun had begun.
The blow was delivered with astounding119 rapidity, and with stunning120 force. Up to that time, nothing had ever been conceived like the violence of the artillery121 fire. There in the hospital, only two kilometers back of the front, the noise was so great they could scarcely hear each other’s voices. Upon those men, and that woman, unnerved by six weeks of nerve-racking suspense, the great crisis leaped with murderous fury. It was as though the world were being[65] battered122 to pieces about their heads. Each one called up in himself all the reserve strength his life had given him and, tight-lipped, clung as best he could to self-control.
The first nerves to give way were in the bakeshop. The bakers suddenly burst out of their overheated cell and, half-naked in that sharp cold, clad only in their white-linen aprons123 and trousers, fled away, anywhere, away, out of that hell. One of the doctors, seeing this beginning of the panic, shouted out in an angry attempt to stem the tide of fear, “Shame on you, men! What are you doing! What would happen if every one ran away!”
One of the fleeing bakers, dodging124 with agility125 the outstretched restraining arms, called out heartily126, with a strong Southern accent, “Right you are, doctor, perfectly127 right!” and continued to run faster than ever. Which typically Midi phrase and action was seized upon by those gallant128 French hearts for the laugh which is the Gallic coquetry in the face of danger.
But even they could not smile at what they next saw. At four o’clock that afternoon began[66] the spectacle, awful to French eyes, of regiments129 of chasseurs fleeing toward the rear.
“So inconceivable was this to me, that I repeated, ‘Chasseurs! Retreating!’”
Dr. Girard-Mangin closed her eyes a moment as if she saw them again. “Oh, yes, retreating—and no wonder! All their equipment gone, no guns, no ammunition130, no grenades, no bayonets—their bare fists, and those bleeding, for weapons. Many of them were naked, yes, literally naked, except for their leather cartridge131 belts. Everything made of cloth had been blown from their bodies by the air-pressure from exploding shells. Many of them were horribly wounded, although they were staggering along. I remember one man, whose wounds we dressed, who came reeling up to the hospital, holding his hand to his face, and when he took his hand down most of his face came with it. Oh, yes, they were retreating, those who had enough life left to walk. And they told us that Verdun was lost, that no human power could resist that thrust.”
All that night, and all the next day and all[67] the next night, such men poured through and past the hospital and during all that time there was no cessation in the intolerable, maddening din26 of the artillery. When you ask Dr. Girard-Mangin how she lived through those days and nights, she tells you steadily, “Oh, that was not the worst. We could still work. And we did. More than eighteen thousand wounded passed through the hospital that week. We had too much to do to think of anything else. It seemed as though all the men in the world were wounded and pouring in on us.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the tide of men changed in character somewhat, and this meant that the end was near. In place of chasseurs and the ordinary poilus, quantities of brown Moroccans, those who fight at the very front, came fleeing back, horribly wounded, most of them, yelling wild prayers to Allah, clutching at themselves like children and howling like wild beasts—impossible to understand or to make understand. And yet, somehow, the hospital staff, staggering with fatigue themselves, ministered to them, too, until—this was where they[68] all touched bottom—until, on Wednesday night, the electricity suddenly gave out and, in the twinkling of an eye, blackness fell on the great wards132, shaken by the incessant infernal screaming rush of the shells overhead, by the thunder of the cannon133, and filled with the shrieks134 of the agonizing135 wild men from Africa. Blackness like the end of the world.
Messengers were sent hastily to grope their way down to the nearest village for candles. But they returned empty-handed. Long before that the soldiers had carried off all the supply of candles.
“What did you do, all that night?”
“It was awful beyond anything imaginable,” she tells you gravely. “The worst thing that can happen to a doctor had come—to be in the midst of suffering and not to be able to lift a finger to help. All that we could do was to give them water to drink. We could feel our way to the water-pitchers. The rest of the time we could only sit, helpless, listen to the shells and[69] to the wounded men groaning138, and wait for dawn.”
Yes, it is a small, delicately fashioned woman, like you, like me, who lived through those days and those nights, and came through them morally and physically139 intact, into an even greater usefulness. It will not be a bad thing to remember her the next time we feel “tired” in our ordinary round of small efforts.
On the next day came the order to evacuate95 the hospital, bitter proof of the German success. Dr. Girard-Mangin began sending off her sick men in relays of four in the only ambulance at her disposal. They were taken down to the nearest little branch railroad, there put on the train, and sent—nobody knew where, anywhere out of the range of German guns.
All day Thursday the evacuation went on. By Thursday evening there were left only nine men in her ward, men practically dying, far gone with intestinal hemorrhages, too ill to move. Dr. Girard-Mangin spent another black night beside her dying men, moving from one to another in the intense obscurity, raising her voice[70] above the thunder of the artillery to comfort them, to give them what small help she could without a light. On Friday all the hospital staff, with a few exceptions, was to leave. The hospital buildings and equipment were to be left in the charge of a non-com and two privates; and the men too ill to transport were to be left with one doctor and two aides. The rule in the French Sanitary Service for that case is that the youngest doctor stays with the sick. Dr. Girard-Mangin was the youngest doctor.
But at this, the good head-doctor, who had daughters of his own in Paris, cried out that there was a limit, that he would never forgive any man who left a daughter of his alone in such a position, alone with dying men, alone under fire, alone to face the Boches. No, no Frenchman could be expected to do that.
Dr. Girard-Mangin appealed over his head to the military authority in command, for permission to do her duty as it fell to her. “I have not failed in my services so far. It is not just to force me to fail now.”
[71]The military ruling was that the usual rule would hold. The little woman doctor stayed in danger, and the men went back to the rear. The parting was a moving one; those comrades of hers who had seen her working by their sides for so many months took her in their arms and wept openly as they bade her good-by.
If you venture to ask her what were her own emotions at this moment, she tells you with a shudder140, “Oh, sorrow, black, black sorrow for France. We all thought, you know, that Verdun had fallen, that the Germans had pierced the line. No one knew how far they had gone. It was an awful moment.” Apparently141 she did not think of herself at all.
All day Friday, she was there with her stricken men and with two aides. Friday night she lay beside them in the dark. On Saturday the man left in charge of the hospital buildings went mad from the nervous tension—they expected almost from hour to hour to see the Germans appear—and from the hellish noise of the artillery.
I find myself cold as I try to think what[72] another black night meant in those conditions. Dr. Girard-Mangin passed it and emerged into another dawn.
On Sunday morning the General in command of that region, amazed to find that any one was still there, sent peremptory142 orders that the premises143 must be evacuated entirely144, dying men and all. They would certainly be killed if they were kept there. And more, there was no longer anything to give them to eat. This was a military order and so overrode145 the rulings of the Sanitary Service. Dr. Girard-Mangin prepared to evacuate. She had at her disposition146 a small camion in which she put the four men best able to be carried, and her own ambulance in which she packed the five worst cases, crosswise of the vehicle. To try to give them some security against the inevitable147 jolting148, she bound them tightly over and over to their stretchers. Then, with her little medicine-kit, she got in beside them and told her chauffeur149 to take them to Clermont-en-Argonne, and not by the safer route taken by the ravitaillement convoys150, because her sick men could never live through the length of[73] that trip, but by the shorter road, leading along directly back of the front.
“I wonder that he was willing to take that dangerous route,” you say.
“I didn’t ask his opinion about it,” says Dr. Girard-Mangin with a ring of iron in her voice.
So began a wild ride of forty-three kilometers, constantly under fire, with five men at the point of death. The chauffeur dodged151 between the bursting shells, the woman in the car watched her sick men closely and kept them up with hypodermics of stimulants—which are not administered by a shaking hand!
You ask respectfully, looking at the white scar on her cheek, “It was then, during that ride, that you were wounded, wasn’t it?”
She nods, hastily, indifferently, and says, “And when we finally reached Clermont-en-Argonne, my sick men were no better off, for I found the hospital absolutely swamped with wounded. I said I was there with five mortally sick men from Verdun, and they answered, ‘If they were all Generals we could not take them in. You are mad, Madame, to bring sick men[74] here.’ So we went on ten kilometers further to a little village called Froidos, where my face-wound was dressed and where finally I was able to leave my men, all alive still, in good hands.”
“They didn’t live to get well, did they?” you ask.
At this question, she has a moment of stupefaction before the picture of your total incomprehension of what she has been talking about; she has a moment’s retrospective stare back into that seething152 caldron which was the battle of Verdun; she opens her mouth to cry out on your lack of imagination; and she ends by saying quietly, almost with pity for your ignorance, “Oh, I never saw or heard of those men again. There was a great deal too much else to be done at that time.”
Have you lost track of time and place in that adventure of hers? It is not surprising. She was then in the little village of Froidos, on the afternoon of Sunday, February 27th, almost exactly a week after the battle began—and after almost exactly a week of unbelievable horror—after four nights spent without a light in a great[75] hospital full of wounded men—after a ride of nearly fifty kilometers constantly under fire, with mortally sick men. And she now turned, like a good soldier who has accomplished153 the task set him, to report at headquarters for another.
Her headquarters, the Direction du Service Sanitaire was at Bar-le-Duc. Without a moment’s rest or delay, she set out for Bar-le-Duc, she and her chauffeur, half-blind with lack of sleep. They arrived there at midnight. She reported herself at the hospital, so large that in normal times it holds three thousand wounded. “I have just brought in the last of the sick from the military hospital at Verdun,” she said, to explain her presence. They were astounded154 to hear that any one had been there so lately. Every one had thought that certainly the Germans were there by that time.
“Please, is there a place where I may sleep a few hours?” she said.
But there was no place, not one. The great hospital was crowded to the last inch of its space with wounded—halls, passageways, aisles155, even the stairs had wounded on them. Finally[76] some one gave her a blanket and she lay down on the floor in the little office of the head-doctor and slept till morning—five or six hours. Then she went out into the town to try to find a lodging104. Not one to be had, the town being as full as the hospital. She had not taken her clothes off, naturally, nor her shoes.
“Oh, then I did feel tired,” she says. “That morning, for the first time, I knew how tired I was, as I went dragging myself from door to door, begging for a room and a bed. It was because I was no longer working, you see. As long as you have work to do, you can go on.”
At last a poor woman took pity on her, said that she and her daughter would sleep together on one narrow bed, and let her have the other one.
“I was so glad, so glad,” says Dr. Girard-Mangin, “to know I was to have a real bed! I was like a child. When you are as tired as that, you don’t think of anything but the simple elementals—lying down, being warm, having something to eat—all your fine, civilized156 ideas are swept away.”
[77]She went back toward the hospital to get what few things she had been able to bring with her, and there she saw her chauffeur waving a paper toward her. “We are to be off at once,” he said, and showed her an order to leave Bar-le-Duc without delay, taking two nurses with them, and to go with all speed to the hospital at Vadelaincourt. They were crowded with wounded there.
“Then, at once, my tiredness went away,” she says. “It only lasted while I thought of getting a bed. When I knew we were going into action once more, I was myself again.”
By two o’clock that afternoon—this was Monday—they were en route for the hospital, the doctor on the seat by the chauffeur, the two nurses, hysterical157 with fear over the shells, weeping inside.
“What a terrible, tragic158, inspiring trip that was!” she exclaims, and almost for the only time during her quietly told narration159 her voice quivers, her eyes suffuse160. “We were going against the tide of fresh reserves, rushing out to the front—mile after mile, facing those strongly marching ranks of splendid young Frenchmen,[78] all going out to suffer the unimaginable horrors from which I had just come. I could not bear to look into those eager, ardent161 faces. I was so proud of them, so yearning162 over them! And they were so full of spirit, hurrying forward to the supreme163 sacrifice. They shouted out to us again and again, ‘The battle isn’t over yet, is it? Will we get there in time?’ They laughed light-heartedly, the younger ones, when they saw me and called out, ‘Oh, the women are fighting out there, too, are they?’ Wave after wave of them, rank on rank, the best of my country, marching out to death.”
They were delayed by an accident to a tire, being instantly—as is the rule on military roads, always crammed164 to the last inch—lifted bodily into a neighboring field for repairs. No stationing for repairs is allowed on a road where every one is incessantly in movement. While the repairs were being made, the car sank deeper and deeper into the mud, and it was a Herculean undertaking165 to get it back in the main thoroughfare. As usual, a crowd of good-natured poilus managed this, heaving together with the hearty[79] good-will to which all drivers of American ambulances can testify.
Delayed by this, it was nearly midnight when they drew near their destination. The chauffeur turned off the main road into a smaller one, a short cut to the hospital, and sank at once in mud up to his hubs. From twelve o’clock that night till half-past five in the morning, they labored166 to make the few kilometers which separated them from Vadelaincourt. Once the chauffeur, hearing in the dark the rush of water against the car, announced that he was sure that the river had burst its banks, that they had missed the bridge and were now in the main current. Dr. Girard-Mangin got down to investigate and found herself knee-deep in mud so liquid that its sound had deceived the chauffeur. They toiled167 on, the nurses inside the car wringing168 their hands.
By the time it was faintly dawn they arrived at the hospital, where the hard-worked head-doctor, distracted with the rush of wounded, cried out upon her for being a woman, but told her for Heaven’s sake to stay and help. The[80] nurses were taken in and set to work, where at once they forgot themselves and their fears. But again there was no place for the new doctor to sleep, the hospital being overflowing169 with human wreckage170. She did what all ambulance people hate to do, she went back to the reeking171 ambulance, laid herself on a stretcher, wet boots and all, drew up about her the typhoid-soaked blankets of her ex-patients, and instantly fell asleep. The chauffeur had the preferable place of sleeping under the car, on another stretcher.
She had no more than closed her eyes, when came a loud, imperious pounding on the car, “Get up quickly. The médecin-en-chef sends for you at once; terrible lot of wounded just brought in; every hand needed.”
She went back through the mud to the hospital, had a cup of hot coffee and—detail eloquent172 of the confusion and disorganization of that feverish173 week—some plum-cake! By what freak of ravitaillement there was only plum-cake, she never knew.
Then she put on her operating-apron and cap. She went into the operating-room at half-past[81] seven in the morning. She operated steadily, without stopping, for more than five hours. At one o’clock she felt giddy and her legs failed her. She sat down flat on the floor, leaning back against the wall. “Here it comes!” she said to herself, fighting the faintness which dissolved all her members, “Here comes womanishness!”
But it did not come. She sat thus, setting her teeth and tightening174 her will until she conquered it. A new relay of doctors came in. She staggered off, had more coffee, a piece of chocolate and another piece of plum-cake! And was told that she would be “off duty” till eight that evening. Where could she go to rest? Nowhere. Snow lay on the fields, mud was deep in the roads. There was not a bed empty.
“I sat down in a corner, in a chair, quite a comfortable chair,” she tells you, “and took down my hair and brushed and braided it. You know how much that rests you!”
Now, Dr. Girard-Mangin is the last person in the world over whom to sentimentalize, and I swore before beginning to write about her that I would try not to do it. But I can not restrain[82] myself from asking you here if you do not feel with me like both laughing and crying at the inimitable, homely175 femininity of that familiar gesture, at the picture of that shining little warrior-figure, returning in that abomination of desolation to the simple action of a sheltered woman’s everyday home life?
Then she went to sleep, there in the “quite comfortable” chair, with her shoes unlaced but still on her feet. “I had lost my other pair somewhere along the route,” she explains, “and I didn’t dare to take those off because I knew I could never get them on again if I did.”
There followed twenty days of this terrific routine, steady work in the operating-room with intervals of seven hours’ “rest,” with nowhere to go to rest. “But the food got better almost at once,” she says, in explanation of her having lived through it. “We couldn’t have gotten along on plum-cake, of course!”
For nine of those twenty days, she never took off her shoes at all, and the foot was frozen there which now she drags a little in walking.
On March 23rd, a month after the battle of[83] Verdun had begun, the médecin-chef-inspecteur came to Vadelaincourt, went through the usual motions of stupefaction to find a woman doctor there, decided—rather late—that it was no place for a woman, and sent her to Chalons. For six months thereafter, she was in the Somme, near Ypres, working specially111 among the tubercular soldiers, but also taking her full share of military surgery. “Just the usual service at the front, nothing of special interest,” she says with military brevity, baffling your interest, and leaving you to find out from other sources that she was wounded again in June of that year.
On the 11th of October, 1916, a remarkable and noteworthy event took place. For once a Governmental action was taken with intelligence. The Government, wishing to institute a special course of training for military nurses at the front, called to its organization and direction, not somebody’s relation-in-law, not a politician’s protégée, but the woman in France best fitted to undertake the work. Such an action on the part of any Government is worthy24 of note!
The hospital which had been built for charitable[84] purposes on the Rue176 Desnouettes was loaned to the Government. What was needed for its head was some one who knew all about what training was essential for nursing service at the front. Any good military doctor could have done this part. Also some one was needed who knew all about what is the life of a woman at the front. Any good nurse of military experience could have seen to this. Also there was needed a person with experience in organization, with the capacity to keep a big enterprise in smooth and regular running. Any good business man could have managed this. Furthermore there was needed a person with magnetism177 who could inspire the women passing through the school with enthusiasm, with ardor178, with devotion— I needn’t go on, I think. You must have seen that only one person combined all these qualifications, and she is the one now at the head of the hospital-school.
Dr. Girard-Mangin received a call summoning her back to that “work at the rear” which is such a trial for those who have known the glory of direct service at the front.
[85]This meant drudgery179 for her, long hours of attention to uninteresting but important details, work with a very mixed class of intelligences—the women in her courses of study vary from peasant girls to officers’ widows; bending her quick intelligence to cope with sloth180 and dullness. It meant, worst of all and hardest of all, living again in the midst of petty bickerings, little personal jealousies181, mean ambitions. Nothing is more startling for those who “come back from the front” than to find the world at the rear still going on with its tiny quarrels and disputes, still industriously182 raking in its muck-heap. And nothing more eloquently183 paints our average, ordinary life than the intense moral depression which attends the return to it of those who have for a time escaped from it to a rougher, more dangerous, and more self-forgetful atmosphere.
For me, no part of Dr. Girard-Mangin’s usefulness is more dramatic than the undramatic phase of it in which she is now faithfully toiling. Her coolness under fire, her steadiness under overwhelming responsibilities, her astonishing[86] physical endurance do not thrill me more than this prompt, disciplined ability to take up civilian184 life again and quiet, civilian duties.
She has organized the hospital ingeniously along original lines, as a perfect reproduction of what the nurses will encounter at the front: a series of barracks, a ward to each shed, with the nurse’s little sleeping-cubicle at the end with its rough but sufficient sanitary arrangements. Another unit is given over to the operating-room and its appendages185, the sterilizing-room, anesthetic-room, etc. Another is the administrative building, and contains the offices of the médecin-en-chef, the head-nurse, the pharmacy186, the bacteriological laboratory. At one side are very simple but wholesome187 sleeping quarters and study-rooms for the fifty and more nurses who pass through the school every three months. For Dr. Girard-Mangin only takes them in hand when they have already completed a course of training in ordinary hospitals. Even then she weeds out rigorously, in the middle of the short, intensive, concentrated course, those who do not show the necessary physical, mental, and moral[87] qualities to fit them for the grave responsibilities they will have at the front, for nurses from this hospital go out to direct and run the field hospitals, not merely to be nurses there.
The work for the doctor at the head is a “grind,” nothing less, monotonous188, like all teaching—an ever-reiterated repetition of the same thing—no glory, no change, no bright face of danger. The clear brown eyes face it as coolly, as undaunted, as they faced bursting shells, or maddened soldiers. The clear-thinking brain sees its vital importance to the country as well as it saw the more picturesque189 need for staying with sick men under fire. The well-tempered will keeps lassitude and fatigue at bay, keeps the whole highly strung, highly developed organism patiently, steadily, enduringly at work for France.
There, my fellow-citizens in America, there is a citizen to envy, to imitate!
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1
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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tornado
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| n.飓风，龙卷风 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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garb
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| n.服装，装束 | |
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investigators
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| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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tuberculosis
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| n.结核病，肺结核 | |
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tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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feminist
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| adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的 | |
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renounced
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| v.声明放弃( renounce的过去式和过去分词 )；宣布放弃；宣布与…决裂；宣布摒弃 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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ordeal
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| n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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fatiguing
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| a.使人劳累的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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humdrum
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| adj.单调的，乏味的 | |
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din
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| n.喧闹声，嘈杂声 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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inertia
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| adj.惰性，惯性，懒惰，迟钝 | |
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boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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sociably
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| adv.成群地 | |
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steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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courageous
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| adj.勇敢的，有胆量的 | |
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concierge
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| n.管理员；门房 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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wrecks
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| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
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temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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51
stimulant
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| n.刺激物，兴奋剂 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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constructively
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| ad.有益的，积极的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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55
competences
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| 能力（competence的复数形式） | |
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56
trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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58
bakers
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| n.面包师( baker的名词复数 )；面包店；面包店店主；十三 | |
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currying
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| 加脂操作 | |
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specialty
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| n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长 | |
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valiant
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| adj.勇敢的，英勇的；n.勇士，勇敢的人 | |
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surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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63
contagious
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| adj.传染性的，有感染力的 | |
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64
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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65
epidemic
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|
| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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66
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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67
mattresses
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| 褥垫，床垫( mattress的名词复数 ) | |
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68
mattress
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| n.床垫，床褥 | |
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69
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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70
clogging
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| 堵塞，闭合 | |
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71
administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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72
unwillingly
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| adv.不情愿地 | |
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73
ward
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|
| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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74
ironic
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|
| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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75
invincible
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|
| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
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76
guffaws
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|
| n.大笑，狂笑( guffaw的名词复数 )v.大笑，狂笑( guffaw的第三人称单数 ) | |
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77
pounced
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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78
bluster
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| v.猛刮；怒冲冲的说；n.吓唬，怒号；狂风声 | |
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79
defiance
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|
| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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80
promptly
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|
| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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81
saluting
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|
| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的现在分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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82
offender
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|
| n.冒犯者，违反者，犯罪者 | |
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83
consternation
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|
| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
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84
incompetents
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|
| n.无能力的，不称职的，不胜任的( incompetent的名词复数 ) | |
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85
squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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86
flask
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| n.瓶，火药筒，砂箱 | |
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87
filthy
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|
| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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88
exhaustion
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|
| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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89
misery
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|
| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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90
resolutely
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|
| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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91
primitive
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|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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92
animate
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| v.赋于生命，鼓励；adj.有生命的，有生气的 | |
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93
intestinal
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|
| adj.肠的；肠壁；肠道细菌 | |
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94
evacuated
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| 撤退者的 | |
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95
evacuate
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| v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便 | |
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96
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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97
deserted
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|
| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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98
detergent
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|
| n.洗涤剂；adj.有洗净力的 | |
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99
epic
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|
| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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100
sanitary
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|
| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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101
hygiene
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| n.健康法，卫生学 （a.hygienic） | |
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102
predecessor
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| n.前辈，前任 | |
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103
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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104
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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105
clarion
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|
| n.尖音小号声；尖音小号 | |
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106
utensils
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| 器具，用具，器皿( utensil的名词复数 )； 器物 | |
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107
supervision
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| n.监督，管理 | |
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108
sterilizing
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|
| v.消毒( sterilize的现在分词 )；使无菌；使失去生育能力；使绝育 | |
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109
apprehensive
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|
| adj.担心的，恐惧的，善于领会的 | |
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110
suspense
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|
| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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111
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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112
spartan
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|
| adj.简朴的，刻苦的；n.斯巴达；斯巴达式的人 | |
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113
sanity
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|
| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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114
succumb
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| v.屈服，屈从；死 | |
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115
stimulants
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|
| n.兴奋剂( stimulant的名词复数 )；含兴奋剂的饮料；刺激物；激励物 | |
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116
looming
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|
| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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117
murkily
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|
| adv.阴暗地；混浊地；可疑地；黝暗地 | |
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118
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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119
astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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120
stunning
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| adj.极好的；使人晕倒的 | |
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121
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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122
battered
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|
| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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123
aprons
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| 围裙( apron的名词复数 )； 停机坪，台口（舞台幕前的部份） | |
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124
dodging
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|
| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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125
agility
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|
| n.敏捷，活泼 | |
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126
heartily
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|
| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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127
perfectly
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|
| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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128
gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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129
regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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130
ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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131
cartridge
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| n.弹壳，弹药筒；(装磁带等的)盒子 | |
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132
wards
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| 区( ward的名词复数 )； 病房； 受监护的未成年者； 被人照顾或控制的状态 | |
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133
cannon
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|
| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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134
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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135
agonizing
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|
| adj.痛苦难忍的；使人苦恼的v.使极度痛苦；折磨(agonize的ing形式) | |
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136
pretense
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|
| n.矫饰，做作，借口 | |
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137
belittling
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| 使显得微小，轻视，贬低( belittle的现在分词 ) | |
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138
groaning
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|
| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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139
physically
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|
| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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140
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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141
apparently
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|
| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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142
peremptory
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|
| adj.紧急的，专横的，断然的 | |
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143
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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144
entirely
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|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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145
overrode
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|
| 越控( override的过去式 )； （以权力）否决； 优先于； 比…更重要 | |
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146
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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147
inevitable
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|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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148
jolting
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| adj.令人震惊的 | |
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149
chauffeur
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|
| n.(受雇于私人或公司的)司机；v.为…开车 | |
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150
convoys
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|
| n.（有护航的）船队( convoy的名词复数 )；车队；护航（队）；护送队 | |
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151
dodged
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| v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 )；回避 | |
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152
seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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153
accomplished
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|
| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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154
astounded
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| v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶 | |
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155
aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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156
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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157
hysterical
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|
| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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158
tragic
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|
| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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159
narration
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| n.讲述，叙述；故事；记叙体 | |
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160
suffuse
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| v.(色彩等)弥漫，染遍 | |
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161
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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162
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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163
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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164
crammed
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|
| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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165
undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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166
labored
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| adj.吃力的，谨慎的v.努力争取(for)( labor的过去式和过去分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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167
toiled
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|
| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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168
wringing
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| 淋湿的，湿透的 | |
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169
overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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170
wreckage
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| n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏 | |
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171
reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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172
eloquent
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|
| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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173
feverish
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|
| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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174
tightening
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| 上紧，固定，紧密 | |
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175
homely
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|
| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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176
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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177
magnetism
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| n.磁性，吸引力，磁学 | |
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178
ardor
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| n.热情，狂热 | |
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179
drudgery
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|
| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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180
sloth
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|
| n.[动]树懒；懒惰，懒散 | |
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181
jealousies
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|
| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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182
industriously
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183
eloquently
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|
| adv. 雄辩地(有口才地, 富于表情地) | |
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184
civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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185
appendages
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| n.附属物( appendage的名词复数 )；依附的人；附属器官；附属肢体（如臂、腿、尾等） | |
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186
pharmacy
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|
| n.药房，药剂学，制药业，配药业，一批备用药品 | |
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187
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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188
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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189
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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