SLOWLY RECOVERING--FIELD HOSPITAL--AMBULANCE
TRAIN--BACK IN ENGLAND
How I ever got back I don't know. I remember dragging myself into a
cottage, in the garden of which lay a row of dead men. I remember some
one giving me a glass of water there, and seeing a terribly mutilated
body on the floor being attended to. And, finally, I remember being
helped down the Wieltj road by a man into a field dressing station. Here
I was labelled and sent immediately down to a hospital about four miles
away. Arrived there, I lay out on a bench in a collapsed state, and I
remember a cheery doctor injecting something into my wrist. I then lay
on a stretcher awaiting further transportation. My good servant Smith
somehow discovered my whereabouts, and turned up at this hospital. He
sat beside me and gave me a writing-pad to scribble a note on. I
scrawled a line to my mother to say I had been knocked out, but was
perfectly all right. Smith went back to the battalion, and I lay on the
stretcher, partially asleep. Night came on and I went off into a series
of agonizing dreams. I awoke with a start. I was being lifted up from
the floor on the stretcher. They carried me out. It was bright
moonlight, and looking up I saw the moon, a dazzling white against the
dark blue sky. The stretcher and I were pushed into an ambulance in
which were three other cases beside myself. We were driven off to some
station or other. I stared up at the canvas bottom of the stretcher
above me, trying to realize it all. Presently we reached the train.
Another glimpse of the moon, and I was slid into the ambulance car....
In three days I was back in England at a London hospital--"A fragment
from France."
[Illustration: FINIS]