turbing and hardest parting that ever I have seen, although it was pretty bad too with Tiedjen, who called for his mother—a big bear of a fellow who, with wild eyes full of terror, held off the doctor from his bed with a dagger until he collapsed.
Suddenly Kemmerich groans and begins to gurgle.
I jump up, stumble outside and demand: “Where is the doctor? Where is the doctor?”
As I catch sight of the white apron I seize hold of it: “Come quick, Franz Kemmerich is dying.”
He frees himself and asks an orderly standing by: “Which will that be?”
He says: “Bed 26, amputated thigh.”
He sniffs: “How should I know anything about it, I’ve amputated five legs to-day;” he shoves me away, says to the hospital-orderly “You see to it,” and runs off to the operating room.
I tremble with rage as I go along with the orderly. The man looks at me and says: “One operation after another since five o’clock this morning. You know to-day alone there have been sixteen deaths—yours is the seventeenth. There will probably be twenty altogether———”
I become faint, all at once I cannot do any more. I won’t revile any more, it is senseless, I could drop down and never rise up again.
31
