The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1919-01-31
"0NE IN A, THOUSAND"
SAID The SURGEON
But Your Red Cross Made Most of
That Chance and Now a Dark
eyed Girl in Naples is Happy.

-Four italian soldiers, carrying a
stretcher very carefully, brought their
burden through the narrow, sand-bag-
ged door and lowered it gently to the !
ground. The thud and roar of Italian |
batteries outside was u~nceasinp,
Above, the sky was blue and lovely.
but it shrilled and shrieked with the
nervous, whining, petulant note of the
shells that went %shivering through the
autumn air, one after another as fast
as great guns could spit them out. I
This front line dressing station was a
shaken stone hut-a hut now; once it
had been a house and a home, with a
bomb-proof (barring a direct hit) dug
out underneath. Stretcher bearers
from the front line trenches CROPPED
nm and out with bloody burdens-bro-
ken bodies that had been whole half
an hour before-twisted wrecks that
writhed, or that lay very still, or that
gasped and moaned and sobbed, or that
only stared silently, with agony-glaz-
ed eyes and courageous faces, at the
surgeons who bent above them and at
the American Red Cross ambulance
men who would carry them to hospi-
tails.
His face was ashen, this boy on the
stretcher. His features were finely
chiseled, a of coal-black hair
swept from his forehead in the fash
ion affected by every college fresh
man in America. That face might
have been carved from gray marble
gray marble, notified slightly with red
old, gray marble already upon the
verge of disintegration. His eyes,
only half opened, were just a dead,
burned-out black. They were Neapoli-
tan eyes and an hour before they had
danced and glistened with excitement
as he went into the charge. The sur
geons worked quickly, and the blanket
was replaced over the stretcher.
Along one side it's folds settled
down into a place where a leg should
have been. From one corner there
protruded a grotesque rubber contri-
vance, clamped onto the stub of a
wrist-a handless wrist now, for all
time. A grizzled, unshaven stretcher
bearer, who looked like a gorilla in
uniform, knelt and tucked the blanket
up under the fine, firm chin of the
gray marble face-old, gray marble
flecked with red. He did it as ten
derby as a mother might have done,
He patted it into place with the deli
cacy of a woman's hands putting her
baby to bed. His huge paws could be
as soft as they were strong and the
gorilla face didn't seem so ferocious
after all.
There was a ring on a finger of the
hand that now remained to the boy or
the stretcher-a cameo ring, with a
setting that opened when a spring
was pressed, and disclosed a tiny pic.
ture of a girl-a girl with the Madon'
na-like face of vague sadness one
finds sometimes in types of Latir
loneliness. AS they were bringing him
back from the front line where he fell
the boy had tried, with his manglet
shred of a hand, to open the ring. i
was still clotted with blood, which thu
stretcher bearer tried to wipe away
And that smeared a crimson film ovel
the tiny picture. The gorilla stretch
er bearer lifted the hand and PLACED
it outside the blanket, just under tn
boys chin, and so she looked at hin
through a mist of his own blood as WI
carried him out to the American Re-
Cross ambulance. But he didn't lool
at her. We wondered if he woul'
ever look at anything again. For tn
face was the hue of putty now.
"It's a damn mean run right now,
said the surgeon. "Hate to ask 70,
fellows to make it as this minute
These other cases could wait. Blu
it's this mans only chance"
"Has he got a chance?"
Eyes, about m out of-oh! l don
know-one out of a thousand, maybe.
Fred had the old bus cranked b,
that time-the old flivver that is on
of the many which American none
bought and sent to France and the
to Italy, and that American boys cam
over to drive-the old "busses,' as tn
Ambulance hounds" call them, tina
trundle up along the Italian 'front.'
mountain and plain and river-the oil
BUSES that get the wounded back t
the hospitals if there is-oh! on
chance in a thousand, let US say.