ht was the officer of the K----'s, still fairly cheery, though in a
certain amount of pain; on my left lay a rifleman hit in the chest,
and very grey about the face; I remember that, as I looked at him, I
compared the colour of his face with that of the stomach cases I had
seen. A stomach case, as far as I can remember, has an ashen pallor
about the face; a lung case has a haggard grey look. Next to him a boy
of about eighteen was sitting on his stretcher; he was hit in the jaw,
the arms, and the hands, but he calmly took out his pipe, placed it in
his blood-stained mouth, and started smoking. I was talking to the
officer of the K----'s, when he suddenly fell to groaning, and rolled
over on to my stretcher. I tried to comfort him, but words were of no
avail. A doctor came along, asked a few questions, and examined the
wound, just a small hole in the pit of the stomach; but he looked
serious enough about it. The stretcher was lifted up and its tortured
occupant borne away behind the screen for an operation. That was the
last I saw of a very plucky young fellow. I ate some bread and jam,
and drank some tea doled out liberally all down the two lines of
stretchers, for another line had formed by now.

My turn came at last, and I was carried off to a table behind the
screen, where the wound was probed, dressed, and bandaged tightly, and
I had a foretaste of the less pleasant side of hospital life. There
were two Army nurses at work on a case next to mine--the first English
women I had seen since I returned from leave six months before. My
wound having been dressed, I was almost immediately taken out and put
into a motor-lorry. There must have been about nine of us, three rows
of three, on the floor of that lorry. I did not find it comfortable,
though the best had been done under the circumstances to make it so;
neither did the others, many of whom were worse wounded than myself,
judging by the groans which arose at every jolt.

We turned down a road leading to the station. Groups of peasants were
standing in the village street and crying after us: "Ah! les pauvres
blesses! les pauvres Anglais blesses!" These were the last words of
gratitude and sympathy that the kind peasants could give us. We drew
up behind other cars alongside the hospital train, and the
engine-driver looked round from polishing his engine and watched us
with the wistful gaze of one to whom hospital train work was no longer
a novelty. Walking wounded came