slowly and painfully a man in a sitting position slid forward, pushing
himself with his hands, his two bandaged feet held in the air. He sat
at the edge of the doorway and lowered his feet carefully until they
hung free.

"Frozen feet from the trenches," said a man standing beside me.

The first man was lifted down and placed on a truck, and his place was
filled immediately by another. As fast as one man was taken another
came. The line seemed endless. One and all, their faces expressed keen
apprehension, lest some chance awkwardness should touch or jar the
tortured feet. Ten at a time they were wheeled away. And still they
came and came, until perhaps two hundred had been taken off. But now
something else was happening. Another car of badly wounded was being
unloaded. Through the windows could be seen the iron framework on
which the stretchers, three in a tier, were swung.

Halfway down the car a wide window was opened, and two tall
lieutenants, with four orderlies, took their places outside. It was
very silent. Orders were given in low tones. The muffled rumble of the
trucks carrying the soldiers with frozen feet was all that broke the
quiet, and soon they, too, were gone; and there remained only the six
men outside, receiving with hands as gentle as those of women the
stretchers so cautiously worked over the window sill to them. One by
one the stretchers came; one by one they were added to the lengthening
line that lay prone on the stone flooring beside the train. There was
not a jar, not an unnecessary motion. One great officer, very young,
took the weight of the end as it came toward him, and lowered it with
marvellous gentleness as the others took hold. He had a trick of the
wrist that enabled him to reach up, take hold and lower the stretcher,