ONE morning, during the War, I had a most vivid dream of being chased
by two Germans with fixed bayonets, and I'd almost reached safety
when one of them stabbed me in the right shoulder. The shock woke me,
and, on looking at the clock, I found it was about 6:45 a.m. When I
got downstairs I remarked that something had happened to my husband
and related my dream, only to be laughed at. I heard nothing at all
from, or of, my husband for fifteen days; then I had the usual
official notification, saying that he was in hospital with severe
gun-shot wounds to the head and left shoulder. Some few weeks later I
went to see him in hospital and found that it was his right shoulder
that was in bandages, and, of course, told him my dream. He looked at
me in such a queer way that I asked him what was the matter, and this
is what he told me: The morning he was wounded, they were ordered to
attack at 6:30, and they hadn't got very far from their trenches when
he was hit in the right shoulder with a piece of shell which sent him
spinning into a shell hole, where he lay unconscious for two or three
hours. When he recovered consciousness he saw me standing on the edge
of the shell hole, beckoning him, and, with great difficulty (for his
right arm was quite useless) managed to scramble out and follow me. He
was joined by two wounded Germans. When I'd gone some distance, I
stopped, so did he and one of the Germans; the other one went on and
was blown to bits by a shell which exploded just in front of us. Then
I went on and took him safely to the dressing-station, where he
collapsed. To this day he declares I saved his life.