out and there were lots of stars. They gave
one something to think about. After all, how insignificant was one
little life.

In this mood, something in the jolting of the camion brought to my mind
the metre and words of George Amicks' wistful verses, "The Camion
Caravan," and I repeat it from memory:

"Winding down through sleeping town
Pale stars of early dawn;
Like ancient knight with squire by side,
Driver and helper now we ride--
The camion caravan.

"In between the rows of trees
Glare of the mid-day sun;
Creeping along the highway wide,
Slowly in long defile, we ride--
The camion caravan.

"Homeward to _remorque_ and rest,
Pale stars of early night;
Through stillness of the eventide,
Back through the winding town we ride--
The camion caravan."

Sometime during the dark hours of the early morning we stopped in the
courtyard of a hospital and I was taken into another examination room
illuminated with painfully brilliant lights. I was placed on a table for
an examination, which seemed rather hurried, and then the table was
rolled away some distance down a corridor. I never understood that move
until some weeks later when a Lieutenant medical officer told me that it
was he who had examined me at that place.

"You're looking pretty fit, now," he said, "but that night when I saw
you I ticketed you for the dead pile. You didn't look like you could
live till morning."

His statement gave me some satisfaction. There is always joy in fooling
the doctor.

Hartzell, who still accompanied me, apparently rescued me from the "dead
pile" and we started on another motor trip, this time on a stretcher in
a large, easier-riding ambulance. In this I arrived shortly after dawn
at the United States Military Base Hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the
outskirts of Paris.

There were more hurried examinations and soon I was rolled down a
corridor on a wheeled table, into an elevator that started upward. Then
the wheeled table raced down another long corridor and I began to feel
that my journeyings were endless. We stopped finally in a room where I
distinctly caught the odour of ether. Some one began removing my boots
and clothes. As that some one worked he talked to me.

"I know you, Mr. Gibbons," he said. "I'm from Chicago also. I am
Sergeant Stephen Hayes. I used to go to Hyde Park High School. We're
going to fix you up right away."

I lear