sergeant major of the
R.A.M.C.

After that there was a ride on a flat car on a light railway and
another in an ambulance with an American driver. Snatches of
conversation about Broadway and a girl in Newark floated back, and
I tried to work up ambition enough to sing out and ask where the
chap came from. So far I hadn't had much pain. When we landed in a
regular dressing station, the M.O. gave me another going over and
said,

"Blighty for you, son." I had a piece of shrapnel or something
through the right upper arm, clearing the bone and making a hole
about as big as a half dollar. My left shoulder was full of
shrapnel fragments, and began to pain like fury. More tea. More
rum. More fags. Another faint. When I woke up the next time,
somebody was sticking a hypodermic needle into my chest with a shot
of anti-lockjaw serum, and shortly after I was tucked away in a
white enameled Red Cross train with a pretty nurse taking my
temperature. I loved that nurse. She looked sort of cool and holy.

I finally brought up in General Hospital Number 12 in Rouen. I was
there four days and had a real bath,--a genuine boiling out. Also
had some shrapnel picked out of my anatomy. I got in fairly good
shape, though still in a good deal of dull pain. It was a glad day
when they put a batch of us on a train for Havre, tagged for
Blighty. We went direct from the train to the hospital ship,
_Carisbrook Castle_. The quarters were good,--real bunks, clean
sheets, good food, careful nurses. It was some different from the
crowded transport that had taken me over to France.

There were a lot of German prisoners aboard, wounded, and we
swapped stories with them. It was really a lot of fun comparing
notes, and they were pretty good chaps on the whole. They were as
glad as we were to see land. Their troubles were over for the
duration of the war.

Never shall I forget that wonderful morning when I looked out and
saw again the coast of England, hazy under the mists of dawn. It
looked like the promised land. And it was. It meant freedom again
from battle, murder, and sudden death, from trenches and stenches,
rats, cooties, and all the rest that goes to make up the worst of
man-made inventions, war.

It was Friday the thirteenth. And don't let anybody dare say that
date is unlucky. For it brought me back to the best thing that can
gladden the eyes of a broken Tommy. Blighty! Blighty!! Blighty!!!

CHAPTER XV

BITS OF BLIGHTY

Blig