The copper era and Morenci leader., 1916-01-07
SEES WAR HORRORS
Stretcher Bearer Gives Impress
 sionS of Life at Front.
Is Nearly Overcome by Sight of First Operation Till Given Slap by Sur qeon-Dare Not Tell Men,
 Truth.

Villers-C -Cotterets.-We had just left the hospital and had reached the sta tion. We were exchanging glances of joy and shaking hands, saying Paris! We are going to see Paris again" The train was waiting on a siding. We into it; the hospital atten- dants placed us in our seats.
 There I heard a conversation that struck me more than has any other since the beginning of the war. One of the soldiers in our carriage, doubt less in a confidential mood that day, began to relate the impressions of his life as a military hospital attendant.
 Tt was in the early days of the war. I had received a commission as stretcher bearer in a hospital at Nice. The first wounded arrived; long trains were filled with them; they had lain on the straw of the cars throughout the interminable journey across France in slow military trains, which were constantly delayed. Many died on the way; others were landed here and there in heaps. How feverishly we had to work; there was not a min ute to be lost.
 T remember the terrible slap the head surgeon gave me the first day he entered the operating room, when was ordered to hold a wounded sol dier whose leg was being amputated The odor, the cruel sight of the opera tion, caused me to turn as white as death, and I was about to faint. That blow brought me quickly to my senses. 1 have seen worse sights sincel
 we spent some terrible moments of anguish there. We had no anti tetanus serum; we had written and telegraphed everywhere for it, but the hospitals which had it kept it jeal- ously and it was impossible to obtain aily.
 'I recall one of the finest men l have ever known, a charming com rade, who was wounded in the foot. His wound was not serious; at the end of two weeks it had healed. Then one night he felt a stiffness in his neck; his mind began to wander, his muscles to contract. He was done for. All we could do was to relieve his suffering.
 Whenever a patient had an attack of this, nature we dared not tell him what it was. He was sent to a spe- cial hospital; it wasn't hospital, it was a morgue. He went there to die.
 Finally, one day we heard that serum could be procured at a fantas- tic price in Italy. The doctor immedi- ately requisitioned the swiftest auto mobiles he could find in Nice. The next day we had serum and tetanus disappeared.
 "The recollection of this period is not more terrible than that of the days I spent in Arras as stretcheI bearer during the fierce combats o1 Notre Dame de Lorette. I was there a month gathering the dead and wounded; witnessing the most terri ble mutilations; my ears filled with the groans of men. The work was hard; we had to carry the men away on our backs, for the approaches were too narrow to permit of the use oi stretchers. More than one died or my back.
 'I am old; I'm forty-six. was taker from the trenches, and am now one of the conductors of this train oi wounded.
 Day before yesterday we had . wounded soldier whose head was z mass of bandages, with a little hole in the place of his mouth. Another hospital attendant and I were curious enough to raise his bandage. His tal indicated that his nose and the lower by the splinter of a shell. By lucl he had not lost his sight. His wound: had been cleaned and disinfected; { piece of skin had been removed iron his back and applied to his face; il this round hole was made througf which he was fed, and another through which he breathed Liquit food was given him by means of { rubber tube.
 And those poor unfortunates whose limbs have been amputated! I sav one whose two arms and a leg haC been cut of. He had received more than 200 shell splinters; the greate part were small, like pinheads."
 As we listened to this man, sad anC serious, fine tall Moroccan, who wa wounded, got up from his seat. Hi eyes were filled with tears and h. started to talk with fierce energy:
 Why French take care boch, wounded? After war they go home have many children; begin war agail with children, and war no good French stupid! Boches, kill all, al bad men. When no more boches, n' more war. That gocd.''