Today, while bringing medicine to one of our patients, I heard the young man in the next bed over breathing strangely. This patient’s face is so badly damaged that he can only breathe through his mouth. I quickly understood at that point that he could no longer breathe at all. The cause was a hemorrhage that was filling his throat with blood. I lifted up his head and drew out as much blood as I could with a syringe.
Then I ran to find Doctor Debalme, who arrived a few minutes later. He wasn’t pleased that I hadn’t called him first; he told me rather firmly that I was only a nurse and it wasn’t up to me to decide if blood needs to be drawn out, since it’s a medical procedure.
October 24, 1916
Major de Brisson called me in this morning and congratulated me on saving the life of the young man with the hemorrhage. He said, “Marguerite, you saved him and you did well. Doctor Debalme would have arrived too late.”
The patient is an artillery lieutenant. He was really unlucky—it’s rare for an artilleryman to be wounded in the face. The majority of those whom we treat here served in the infantry, they’re the ones who charge out of the trenches and take the most hits.
Tuesday the 31st
This morning, I again had to show a truly disfigured young man his new face. He’s the one who had the hemorrhage last week. He still has his left eye, his left check, and a bit—a tiny bit—of his left jaw, his forehead, and his chin. There’s a big lock of hair on his right temple that is growing back red, like an extra scar in his brown hair. A single bullet managed to do all this damage. But it must be said that it was practically shot point blank.
He’s the first of my patients who didn’t cry at seeing his destroyed face. But he is very young, still a student.
I don’t dare write anything about him because he is a polytechnician like Robert. There has already been another mathematician in the unit. That one left blind a week ago; he told me he was going to do a dissertation on geometry. I thought of Robert. I wonder what he’s doing now; maybe he’s still in the infernal trenches. I continue mentioning him in my evening prayers.
We have taken back Douaumont.
My cousin Jacques was killed in Verdun.
We have never done so many operations in the unit as we did today.
November 8, 1916
This morning, I was taking off the polytechnician’s dressings so that he can undergo a bone graft (he already had a xenograft when he arrived; today they’re trying an autograft, using a fragment from one of his tibias), when he recited the following to me:
You’ll be a Man, my son!
He added that he really liked Kipling. I think I smiled, and then answered:
But I do not tremble in seeing my weakness.
He recognized it as one of Papa’s verses and said he really liked the poetry of Albert Janvier. I felt myself blush and said that the poet Albert Janvier was my father. Then I told him about how Papa died, the railroad accident, but I couldn’t talk for very long—they were taking him to the operating room and other unfortunate men were awaiting treatment.
I wonder if he has a fiancée. I think about all those girls whose lovers will return disfigured, and all those whose lovers will never return… I don’t know which will need more courage.
The worst will perhaps be for those who won’t know, because their men will have been declared missing.
November 14, 1916
Today, a surprise: Cousin Paul, dressed in full mourning attire, came to the unit. He had come to see a patient, and it was Lieutenant Mortsauf, my polytechnician! They spent the whole afternoon together, talking about mathematics. Paul had brought some books. I listened to their conversation while I was treating the others in the room—they were discussing things and writing formulas on sheets of paper that were then falling all around them onto the floor. When Paul left, I came over to remove the polytechnician’s stitches from his last operation. As I picked up the papers, he said, “So, Mademoiselle Marguerite, I take it you know Professor de Saint-Bonnet?” When I replied that he’s Mama’s cousin, he commended me. I told him that one of Paul’s sons had been killed in January and another last month, but he knew. He said that Paul was going to help him make use of his time at the hospital and that he was going to write a dissertation.
Friday, December 1st
As I move throughout the room, treating the other patients, I can see the polytechnician filling entire pages of his little yellow notebooks with calculations. Paul comes to see him two or three times a week. Sometimes he brings other mathematicians, and the patient always introduces me to them as “Mademoiselle Marguerite, the nurse who saved my life.” He tells me he owes his “second birth” to me. He explains his work to them; sometimes he tears sheets from his notebook and they take the papers with them. I don’t understand what they talk about, and besides, I don’t have time to listen, but I know that when they’re here, he smiles more. Even underneath the layers of gauze, I can discern a smile as soon as one is there. Today I heard them speaking in the stairwell as they were leaving.
Paul was crying and I could see his colleague had teary eyes. I know Paul was thinking about his two sons. Jacques, his oldest, was so brilliant, and he hadn’t even had time to start working on anything. At least he died gloriously. Glory and honor are also (I don’t dare write what they are above all) death and tears.
December 11, 1916
Last week, like he asked me, I brought home a few pages from the polytechnician’s notebook to write out a clean copy in the evenings—that’s why I haven’t had time to write in this diary.
I told him I really like his handwriting, but I don’t understand any of it and I hope I don’t write something foolish or add in mistakes.
Maybe I spend a little too much time talking to him. I worry that the other patients in the room, behind the beige curtains, resent me. So I try to speak with some of them as well. I give words of comfort to those coming back from rehabilitation sessions, where heavier and heavier weights are attached to their lower jaws in order to help their muscles get used to opening their mouths, in spite of their deformed jawbones. Sometimes I write letters for those who don’t know how to write very well. Last night, I even played charades with two of them. Although I had to force myself at the beginning, we were soon laughing together. But laughing also makes them suffer.
December 19, 1916
I’ve finally finished copying the one hundred twenty pages that Christian (Lieutenant Mortsauf asked me to call him by his first name) gave to me. Fortunately, his handwriting is very readable. When I told him once more I didn’t understand any of it, he laughed and replied “Of course you don’t understand any of it, it’s not for girls, do you expect a girl to understand the transcendence of π?” But he seemed very satisfied. I could see him smiling under the bandages then, too.
The battle of Verdun is finally over. Major de Brisson says 300,000 men died there. But their sacrifice was not in vain because the victory was ours.
December 20, 1916
I stayed very late at the hospital yesterday evening. The doctors aren’t finished with my polytechnician, so he’s going to have to stay here for the holidays. In any case, his family is in Africa, and it would be out of the question for him to get leave to visit them. He told me about the village where he was born, where his parents run a peanut plantation. He described a big river, with the Negroes’ pirogues, the pelicans, and beautiful trees called flame trees. He told me about his mother, Saint Theresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, and a little yellow dog, a kind of retriever, that he loved very much and that had died. If I were a man, I think I would like to travel and see such places. But a woman’s place is the home.
He told me, very tenderly, about a nurse, a young nun who had cared