--no butter. (p. 060)
After breakfast you could go to bed again, but this was not allowed if
you were going to be let out during the day, as I was most of the
time. So there you sat again, freezing, till an orderly came and said
your bath was ready, usually about 9.30 a.m.--three hours after you
had left your bed. The bath was in an outhouse about fifty yards
across the yard from the ward. In hail, rain or snow, you had got to
go there. In it I was boiled in a bath, scrubbed all over with a
nail-brush, and then smothered all over with sulphur--wet, greasy,
stinking sulphur rubbed in all over me. I dressed by putting on a pair
of pyjamas first. These more or less kept this grease from getting
through to my other clothes, and I was allowed out to work--a sick,
freezing, wet individual. But my room at the "Hotel de la Paix" was
warm, and I sat over my "Flamme Bleue" all the morning. After I had
been treated with sulphur for "scabies" a couple of weeks, a hole came
in my throat just like the one I had on my foot--a white hole with a
black band round it, and all the flesh for about six inches beyond it
a deep scarlet. One morning the boy who washed me said: "I beg your
pardon, sir, but what are you being treated for?" "Scabies," said I.
Said he: "Don't say I said so, sir, but show the M.O. that thing on
your neck. You haven't got scabies, and this sulphur will kill you
soon." So I waited for the M.O. till he did his rounds. When he came
to me he said the usual, "Everything all right with you?" "No," said
I. "I've got a scabie on my neck that is worrying me." So he had a
look at it and said: "I don't think this treatment is doing you much
good. I shall get you dismissed from the hospital to-day." So I was
chucked out. I happened to have blood-poisoning, not scabies, and I (p. 061)
have it still. During the time I was in hospital, I got four very
amusing poems from a General at G.H.Q. They were the bright spots
during those days. I am sorry they are too personal to print.

[Illustration: XXV. _A Death among the Wounded in the Snow._]

About this time an officer told me a good story about my friend,
Carroll Carstairs. The Cambrai battle was on, and the Grenadier Guards
were advancing through a village. Carroll was with a brother officer,
and said suddenly, "Look at the shape of that church now! Isn't it
magnificent?" Another shell shrieked and hit the structure, and he
said, "Damn! the fools have spoilt it." I believe it