I'm all right."
"Come, come," he said. "Don't be a bloody hero." Then in Italian: "Lift him very carefully about the legs.
His legs are very painful.
He is the legitimate son of President Wilson."
They picked me up and took me into the dressing room.
Inside they were operating on all the tables.
The little major looked at us furious.
He recognized me and waved a forceps.
"Ca va bien?"
"Ca va."
"I have brought him in," the tall Englishman said in Italian. "The only son of the American Ambassador.
He can be here until you are ready to take him.
Then I will take him with my first load." He bent over me. "I'll look up their adjutant to do your papers and it will all go much faster." He stooped to go under the doorway and went out.
The major was unhooking the forceps now, dropping them in a basin.
I followed his hands with my eyes.
Now he was bandaging.
Then the stretcher-bearers took the man off the table.
"I'll take the American Tenente," one of the captains said.
They lifted me onto the table.
It was hard and slippery.
There were many strong smells, chemical smells and the sweet smell of blood.
They took off my trousers and the medical captain commenced dictating to the sergeant-adjutant while he worked,
"Multiple superficial wounds of the left and right thigh and left and right knee and right foot.
Profound wounds of right knee and foot.
Lacerations of the scalp (he probed--Does that hurt?--Christ, yes!) with possible fracture of the skull.
Incurred in the line of duty. That's what keeps you from being court-martialled for self-inflicted wounds," he said. "Would you like a drink of brandy?
How did you run into this thing anyway?
What were you trying to do? Commit suicide?
Antitetanus please, and mark a cross on both legs.
Thank you.
I'll clean this up a little, wash it out, and put on a dressing.
Your blood coagulates beautifully."
The adjutant, looking up from the paper,
"What inflicted the wounds?"
The medical captain,
"What hit you?"
Me, with the eyes shut,
"A trench mortar shell."
The captain, doing things that hurt sharply and severing tissue--"Are you sure?"
Me--trying to lie still and feeling my stomach flutter when the flesh was cut,
"I think so."
Captain doctor--(interested in something he was finding),
"Fragments of enemy trench-mortar shell.
Now I'll probe for some of this if you like but it's not necessary.
I'll paint all this and--Does that sting?
Good, that's nothing to how it will feel later.
The pain hasn't started yet.
Bring him a glass of brandy.
The shock dulls the pain; but this is all right, you have nothing to worry about if it doesn't infect and it rarely does now.
How is your head?"