Trying to find a book I tried to read as a child, but was stopped because it contained very graphic descriptions of post-war injuries and PTSD.

When I was in elementary school, I found an interesting book in the school library and tried to read it. I remember only the first scene, because I think that's all I read. It begins in the POV of a child, I think a girl but I may be wrong, who is at a train station, where she witnesses many soldiers being carried off on gurneys or in wheelchairs. I vividly remember the description of a man with most of his limbs missing, and a man "with no hole where his mouth should be, and instead a hole on the side of his face, gaping." After reading that first chapter my teacher found out I was reading the book and took it away from me. Ever since I have been trying to figure out what it was.