The pages 91-112 of book The Forbidden Zone by Mary Borden feature three distinct stories told by the same narrator, a nurse working in the receiving station of a large French field hospital during the First World War. All three stories are short, and are told in the writing style of Mary Borden; clipped, staccato, short sentences that details the gore and horror of war. The reader is brutalized by the sheer detail and the sentence structure that does not give a break. In the first paragraph, the reader comes to understand the “organized chaos” of a field hospital receiving station through the eyes of a nurse and what that woman must do to cope with life-and-death decisions made with each stretcher. Each narrative explores instances where the nurse suppresses human empathy but also moments when her emotional armor cracks, revealing underlying humanity. In one story about a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi, the reader sees the same horror of war, but that in the end it is not a faith system that salves the wounded spirit, but human compassion. This reading segment has two over-arching themes; the horror of war and what people must do to deal with the unimaginable, and how human compassion is fragile, needs to be protected and in the end, is all that matters to the wounded and their care givers is human compassion. and their souls who endure the First World War.
“Blind” is the first story in this reading segment. In it we see her effectively making life-and-death decisions for which soldiers brough to the receiving station will live and who will die. She has a big span of control, running the station that has 400 wounded men that she manages by orchestrating the efforts of a 30+ team of medical staff veterans. She is happy in her work, fulfilled with the responsibility to save as many of the wounded as possible and proud of the fact that the mortality rate of her station is 19% as opposed to the usual 30% death rate. Early on in the story, the reader can understand how she shoulders it all; “I didn’t worry. I didn’t think. I was too busy, too absorbed in what I was doing”. In order to work thorough the daily brutality of war, the nurse must suppress her humanity to function as shown in her holding a severely wounded man, just out of boyhood, who is crying for his mother when he finally dies. She orders the stretcher holding the dead man out into the hallway before moving on to the next soldier, not pausing to think. Her fragile defense against the horror of war shatters in a scene of intimate cruelty and psychological trauma that is encapsulated by a blinded soldier who is brought in one afternoon and calls out to her, afraid that he has been left alone and abandoned. The man does not yet know he is permanently blind and is described as courteous and calm. The nurse knows his prognosis but maintains her professional and emotional distance but it is the blind soldier’s innocent, vulnerable questioning that finally breaks her. When he asks if she had forgotten him, she lies and says no. He then smiles, a moment of touching human connection. But this simple moment of compassion and her own lie completely shatter her detachment, and she flees to hide and sob. It is the human connection, not the gruesome wounds, that breaks her.
“The Priest and the Rabbi” is only three pages long, and yet is a striking story about the religious duty and piety in the face of brutal warfare. The story finds a French General walking through a hospital speaking to the wounded soldiers there. One man, severely wounded with arms and legs broken and skin blackened by an artillery shell blast wants to tell the General about what he saw during the four days he was laying in the field. Intrigued, the General asks him what he saw. The tale is about a Christian priest and a Jewish rabbi working their way through “No Man’s Land” ministering to the dying. While offering comfort and spiritual wisdom, the two holy men are consumed by the horrific, dehumanizing chaos, but they do not falter in going from one soldier to the next. At one point, a sniper’s bullet kills the priest and the rabbi comes over, picks up the crucifix the priest had been using to comfort a dying soldier and finishes the blessing. The man dies never knowing that the holy man administering his last rights is not a Catholic priest – and that it did not matter. What mattered was not the correct religious authority, but human compassion.
“The Two Gunners” is the third story in this segment of the book and tells the tale of the two British gunners who are mistakenly brought to the French field hospital. The nurse’s thoughts about these two men are striking because it presents a stark juxtaposition between two different types of bravery, while also serving as a stark reminder of the anonymity and dehumanizing nature of war. The nurse observes the demeanor of two British gunners compared with that of the French soldiers, or “Poilus” she regularly encounters. Specifically:
- The British gunners. These two wounded soldiers are “pals” and represent a more reserved, understated, and displaying an intimate form of courage. The nurse perceives them as fighting for each other and their immediate comrades. In all the time the nurse is treating them, they only say two things; “stick it” and “A1 at Selfridges”.
- The French soldiers. The courage of the Poilus, in contrast, is more overt, and “courteous”, a term that is used at least 10 times in this reading, where the French soldiers are more talkative always apologizing for making a fuss, for the dirt, the blood and for the ugly wounds. As is written, the French wounded are “peasants with perfect manners and a beautiful way of speaking”.
The contrast between the two nationalities as causalities also highlight the commonality; namely, the anonymity and dehumanization of war that turns men into cannon fodder regardless of nationality, and who are, in the end, just men, wounded and sent to a field hospital.