To give a French touch to the scene, this great space, rapidly filling with human beings in an appalling state of misery, as the aftermath of the offensive broke on us, was decorated with evergreen trees and shrubs so that the effect was that of an indoor fair or exhibition; you felt as if you might get samples of something at each barraque, as the French termed the little houses.  To the side of these there was a platform, and a sunken track running along the wall, and behind, a great open space set with benches for those of the wounded able to walk.  Some fifty great, cylindrical braziers, which added a strange bit of rosy, fiery color to the scene, warmed this space.  When the wounded had begun to arrive at about midnight, a regiment of Zouaves was at hand to help the regular stretcher-bearers; these Zouaves were all young, “husky” men dressed in the baggy red trousers and short blue jacket of their classic uniform, and their strength was in as much of a contrast to the weakness of those whom they handled as their gay uniform was in contrast to the miry, horizon blue of the combatants.  There was something grotesque in seeing two of these powerful fellows carrying to the wagons a dirty blue bundle of a human being.

With a piercing shriek, that cut like a gash through the uproar of the ambulance engines, a sanitary train, the seventh since midnight, came into the station, and so smoothly did it run by, its floors on a level with the main floor, that it seemed an illusion, like a stage train.  On the platform stood some Zouaves waiting to unload the passengers, while others cleared the barraques and helped the feeble to the ambulances.  There was a steady line of stretchers going out, yet the station was so full that hardly a bit of the vast floor space was unoccupied.  One walked down a narrow path between a sea of bandaged bodies.  Shouldering what baggage they had, those able to walk plodded in a strange, slow tempo to the waiting automobiles.  All by themselves were about a hundred poor, ragged Germans, wounded prisoners, brothers of the French in this terrible fraternity of pain.

About four or five hundred assis (those able to sit up) were waiting on benches at the end of the hall.  Huddled round the rosy, flickering braziers, they sat profoundly silent in the storm and din that moved about them, rarely conversing with each other.  I imagine that the stupefaction, which is the physiological reaction of an intense emotional and muscular effort, had not yet worn away.  There were fine heads here and there.  Forgetful of his shattered arm, an old fellow, with the face of Henri Quatre, eagle nose, beard, and all, sat with his head sunken on his chest in mournful contemplation, and a fine-looking, black-haired, dragoon kind of youth with the wildest of eyes clung like grim death to a German helmet.  The same expression of resigned fatalism was common to all.

Sometimes the chauffeurs who were waiting for their clients got a chance to talk to one of the soldiers.  Eager for news, they clustered round the wounded man, bombarding him with questions.