The firing on the extreme
right seemed to be farther in the rear, and he made his way in that
direction. Again he came out at the edge of the woods, and to his
surprise saw a battalion of the enemy at a short distance from him. He
turned his horse, stuck his spurs into him, and went back along the
path to the rear at a full run, while a shower of bullets fell around
him. He still kept on working to the right in the direction of the
firing which he heard in front of him. At last in a hollow of the
jungle he came upon a Red Cross station, one of those advance temporary
relief posts where the wounded who are too much injured to be taken at
once to the rear are treated. Twenty or thirty men were lying in a row,
some of them on their coats, others on the bare ground. Two surgeons
were doing what they could in the line of first aid to the injured,
binding up arms and legs, dressing wounds, and trying to stop the flow
of blood from arteries. Two soldiers were lifting a wounded man on a
stretcher so that he might be carried to the rear, and he was groaning
with agony. Every one of the patients was blotched in one place or
another with blood, and some of them were lying in pools of the crimson
fluid. Sam felt a little sick at his stomach. Two men came in with
another stretcher, bringing a wounded man from the front. The man gave
a convulsive start as they set him down.
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