Tatterdemalion by John Galsworthy — Read

The tides of the war were washing up millions of wrecked lives on all the shores; what mattered the flotsam of a conscripted deep-sea Breton fisherman, slowly pining away for lack of all he was accustomed to; or the jetsam of a tall glass-blower from the 'invaded countries,' drifted into the hospital -- no one quite knew why -- prisoner for twenty months with the Boches, released at last because of his half-paralysed tongue -- What mattered they? What mattered anything, or any one, in days like those?

Corporal Mignan, wrinkling a thin, parchmenty face, full of suffering and kindly cynicism, used to call them '_mes deux phenomenes_. ' Riddled to the soul by gastritis, he must have found them trying roommates, with the tricks and manners of sick and naughty children towards a long-suffering nurse. To understand all is to forgive all, they say; but, though he had suffered enough to understand much, Mignan was tempted at times to deliver judgment -- for example, when Roche, the Breton fisherman, rose from his bed more than ten times in the night, and wandered out into the little courtyard of the hospital, to look at the stars, because he could not keep still within four walls -- so unreasonable of the '_type_. ' Or when Gray, the tall glass-blower -- his grandfather had been English -- refused with all the tenacity of a British workman to wear an undervest, with the thermometer below zero, Centigrade.