Wounds

by Norman Bethune

This remarkable document was written by Dr. Norman Bethune shortly before his death from blood poisoning, contracted while operating on a wounded Chinese soldier.


The kerosene lamp overhead makes a steady buzzing sound like an incandescent hive of bees. Mud walls. Mud floor. Mud bed. White paper windows. Smell of blood and chloroform. Cold. Three o’clock in the morning, 1 December, North China, near Lin Chu, with the Eight Route Army.

Men with wounds

Wounds like little dried pools, caked with black-brown earth; wound with torn edges frilled with black gangrene; neat wounds, concealing beneath the abcess in their depths, burrowing into and around the great firm muscles like a dammed-back river, running around and between the muscles like a hot stream; wounds, expanding outward, decaying orchids or crushed carnations, terrible flowers of flesh; wounds from which the dark blood is spewed out in clots, mixed with the ominous gas bubbles, floating on the fresh flood of the still-continuing secondary haemorrhage.

Old filthy bandages stuck to the skin with blood-glue. Careful. Better moisten first. Through the thigh. Pick the leg up. Why it’s like a big, loose, red stocking. What kind of stocking? A Christmas stocking. Where’s that fine, strong rod of bone now? In a dozen pieces. Pick them out with your fingers; white in dog’s teeth, sharp and jagged. Now feel. Any more left? Yes, here. All? Yes. No. Here’s another piece. Is this muscle dead? Pinch it. Yes, it’s dead. Cut it out. How can that heal? How can those muscles, once so strong, now so torn, so devastated, so ruined, resume their proud tension? Pull, relax. What fun it was! Now that is finished. Now that’s done. Now we are destroyed. Now what will we do with ourselves?

Next. What an infant! Seventeen! Shot through the belly. Chloroform. Ready? Gas rushes of the opened peritoneal cavity. Odour of faeces. Pink coils of distended intestine. Four perforations. Close them. Purse string suture. Sponge out pelvis. Tube. Three tubes. Hard to close. Keep him warm. How? Dip those bricks into hot water.

Gangrene is a cunning, creeping fellow. Is this one alive? Yes, he lives. Technically speaking, he is alive. Give him saline intravenous. Perhaps the innumerable, tiny cells of his body will remember. They may remember the hot, salty sea, their ancestral home, their first food. With the memory of a million years, they may remember other tides, other oceans and life being born of the sea and sun. It may make them raise their tired little heads, drink deep and struggle back into life again. It may do that.

And this one. Will he run along the road beside his mule at another harvest, with cries of pleasure and happiness? No, that one will never run again. How can you run with one leg? What will he do? Why, he’ll sit and watch other boys run. What will he think? He’ll think what you and I would think. What’s the good of pity? Don’t pity him. Pity would diminish the sacrifice. He did this for the defence of China. Help him in your arms. Why, he’s as light as a child! Yes, your child, my child.

How beautiful the body is; how perfect its parts; with what precision it moves; how obedient; proud and strong. How terrible when torn. The little flame of life sinks lower, and, with a flicker, goes out. It goes out like a candle goes out. Quietly and gently. It makes its protest at extinction, then submits. It has its say, then is silent.

Any more? Four Japanese prisoners. Bring them in. ln this community of pain, there are no enemies. Cut away that blood-stained uniform. Stop that haemorrhage. Lay them beside the others. Why, they’re alike as brothers! Are these soldiers professional man-killers? No, these are amateurs-in-arms. Workerman’s hands. These are workers-in-uniform.

No more. Six o’clock in the morning. God, it’s cold in this room. Open the door. Over the distant, dark-blue mountains, a pale, faint line of light appears in the East. In an hour the sun will be up. To bed and sleep.

But silence will not come. What is the cause of this cruelty, this stupidity? A million workmen come from Japan to kill or mutilate a million Chinese workmen. Why should the Japanese worker attack his brother worker, who is forced merely to defend himself. Will the Japanese worker benefit by the death of the Chinese? No, how can he gain? Then, in God’s name, who will gain? Who is responsible for sending these Japanese workmen on this murderous mission? Who will profit from it? How was it possible to persuade the Japanese workman to attack the Chinese workman – his brother in poverty; his companion in misery?

Is it possible that a few rich men, a small class of men, have persuaded a million poor men to attack, and attempt to destroy, another million men as poor as they? So that the rich may be richer still? Terrible thoughtl! How did they persuade these poor men to come to China? By telling them the truth? No, they would never have come if they had know the truth. Did they dare to tell these workmen that the rich only wanted cheaper raw materials, more markets and more profit? No, they told them that this brutal war was ‘the Destiny of the Race’, it was for the ‘Glory of the Emperor’, it was for the ‘Honour of the State’, it was for their ‘King and Country’.

False! False as Hell!

The agents of a criminal war of aggression, such as this, must be looked for like the agents
of other crimes, such as murder, among those who are likely to benefit from those crimes. Will the eighty million workers of Japan,the poor farmers, the unemployed industrial workers – will they gain? In the entire history of wars of aggression, from the Conquest of Mexico by Spain,the capture of India by England, the rape of Ethiopia by Italy, have the workers of those ‘victorious’ countries ever been known to benefit? No, these never benefit by such wars.

Does the Japanese workman benefit by the natural resources of even his own country, by the gold, the silver, the iron, the coal, the oil? Long ago he ceased to possess that natural wealth. It belongs to the rich, the ruling class. The millions who work those mines live in poverty. So how is he likely to benefit by the armed robbery of the gold, silver, iron, coal and oil of China? Will not the rich owners of the one retainfor their own profit the wealth of the other? Have they not always done so?

It would seem inescapable that the militarists and the capitalists of Japan are the only class likely to gain by the mass murder, this authorized madness. That sanctified butcher; that ruling class, the true State stands accused.

Are wars of aggression, wars for the conquest of colonies, then just Big Business? Yes, it would seem so, however much of the perpetrators of such national crimes seek to hide their true purpose under the banners of high-sounding abstraction and ideals. They make war to capture markets by murder; raw materials by rape. They find it cheaper to steal than to exchange; easier to butcher than to buy. This is the secret of all wars. Profit. Business. Profit. Blood money.

Behind all stands that terrible, implacable God of Business and Blood, whose name is Profit. Money, like an insatiable Moloch, demands its interest, its return, and will stop at nothing, not even the murder of millions, to satisfy its greed. Behind the army stand the militarists. Behind the militarists stand finance capital and the capitalist. Brothers in blood; companions of crime.

What do these enemies of the human race look like? Do they wear on their foreheads a sign so that they may be told, shunned and condemned as criminals? No. On the contrary, they are the respectable ones. They are honoured. They call themselves, and are all called, gentlemen. What a travesty of the name! Gentlemen! They are the pillars of the State, of the church, of society. They support private and public charity out of the excess of their wealth. They endow institutions. In their private lives they are kind and considerate. They obey the law, their law, the law of property. But there is one sign by which these gunmen can be told. Threaten a reduction in the profit of their money and the beast in them awakes with a snarl. They become as ruthless as savages, brutal as madmen, remorseless as executioners. Such men as these must peril if the human race is to continue.

There can be no permanent peace in the world while they live. Such an organization of human society as permits them to exist must be abolished.

These men make the wounds.


In Memory of Dr. Norman Bethune

by Mao Tse-tung
December 21, 1939

Comrade Norman Bethune, a member of the Communist Party of Canada, was around fifty when he was sent by the Communist Parties of Canada and the United States to China; he made light of travelling thousands of miles to help us in our War of Resistance Against Japan. He arrived in Yenan in the spring of last year, went to work in the Wutai Mountains, and to our great sorrow died a martyr at his post. What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinse people’s liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism, from which every Chinese Communist must learn. Leninism teaches that the world revolution can only succeed if the proletariat of the capitalist countries supports the struggle for liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples and if the proletariat of the colonies and semi-colonies supports that of the proletariat of the capitalist countries. Comrade Bethune put this Leninist line into practice. We must unite with proletariat of all the capitalist countries, with the proletariat of Japan, Britain, the United States, Germany, Italy and all other capitalist countries, for this is the only way to overthrow imperialism, to liberate our nation and people and to liberate the other nations and peoples of the world. This is our internationalism, the internationalism with which we oppose both narrow nationalism and narrow Patriotism.

Comrade Bethune’s spirit, this utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his great sense of responsibility in this work and his great warm- heartedness towards all comrades and the people. Every Communist must learn from him. There are not a few people who are irresponsible in their work, preferring the light and shirking the heavy, passing the burdensome tasks on to others and choosing the easy ones for themselves. At every turn they think of themselves before others. When they make some small contribution, they swell with pride and brag about it for fear that others will not know. They feel no warmth towards comrades and the people but are cold, indifferent and apathetic. In truth such people are not Communists, or at least
cannot be counted as devoted Communists. No one who returned from the front failed to express admiration for Bethune whenever his name was mentioned, and none remained unmoved by his spirit. In the Shangsi-Chahar-Hopei border area, no soldier or civilian was unmoved who had been treated by Dr. Bethune or had seen how he worked. Every Communist must learn this true communist spirit from Comrade Bethune.

Comrade Bethune was a doctor, the art of healing was his profession and he was constantly perfecting his skill, which stood very high in the Eight Route Army’s medical service. His example is an excellent lesson for those people who wish to change their work the moment they see something different and for those who despise technical work as of no consequence or as promising no future.

Comrade Bethune and I met only once. Afterwards he wrote me many letters. But I was busy, and I wrote him only one letter and do not ]7even now if he ever received it. I am deeply grieved over his death. Now we are all commemorating him, which shows how profoundly his spirit inspires everyone. We must all learn the sirit of absolutes selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very useful to the people. A man’s ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, his is already noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people.