Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/543



one who has been in an action has no doubt experienced that strange and strong, though not at all logical, feeling of disgust with the place where one has been killed or wounded. In the first moment my soldiers were obviously experiencing this feeling, when it was necessary to lift up Velenchúk and carry him to the vehicle which had just come up. Zhdánov angrily went up to the wounded man, in spite of his increasing shrieks took him under his arms, and raised him. "Don't stand around! Take hold of him!" he shouted, and immediately some ten men, even superfluous helpers, surrounded him. But the moment he was moved away, Velenchúk began to cry terribly and to struggle.

"Don't yell like a rabbit!" said Antónov, rudely, holding his leg, "or we will throw you down."

The wounded man really quieted down, and only occasionally muttered, "Oh, I shall die! Oh, brothers!"

When he was laid on the vehicle he stopped groaning, and I heard him speaking with his comrades in a soft, but audible voice,—he evidently was bidding them good-bye.

During an action, nobody likes to look at a wounded man, and I, instinctively hastening to get away from this spectacle, ordered that he be taken at once to the ambulance, and walked over to the guns; but a few minutes later I was told that Velenchúk was calling me, and I went up to the vehicle.

In the bottom of it, clinging with both hands to the