hty meant life,--life and happiness and physical comfort. What
we had left behind over there was death and mutilation and bodily
and mental suffering. Up from the depths of hell we came and
reached out our hands with pathetic eagerness to the good things
that Blighty had for us.

I never saw a finer sight than the faces of those boys, glowing
with love, as they strained their eyes for the first sight of the
homeland. Those in the bunks below, unable to move, begged those on
deck to come down at the first land raise and tell them how it all
looked.

A lump swelled in my throat, and I prayed that I might never go
back to the trenches. And I prayed, too, that the brave boys still
over there might soon be out of it.

We steamed into the harbor of Southampton early in the afternoon.
Within an hour all of those that could walk had gone ashore. As we
got into the waiting trains the civilian populace cheered. I, like
everybody else I suppose, had dreamed often of coming back sometime
as a hero and being greeted as a hero. But the cheering, though it
came straight from the hearts of a grateful people, seemed, after
all, rather hollow. I wanted to get somewhere and rest.

It seemed good to look out of the windows and see the signs printed
in English. That made it all seem less like a dream.

I was taken first to the Clearing Hospital at Eastleigh. As we got
off the train there the people cheered again, and among the
civilians were many wounded men who had just recently come back.
They knew how we felt.

[Illustration: CORPORAL HOLMES WITH STAFF NURSE AND ANOTHER
PATIENT, AT FULHAM MILITARY HOSPITAL, LONDON, S.W.]

The first thing at the hospital was a real honest-to-God bath. _In
a tub. With hot water!_ Heavens, how I wallowed. The orderly helped
me and had to drag me out. I'd have stayed in that tub all night if
he would have let me.

Out of the tub I had clean things straight through, with a neat
blue uniform, and for once was free of the cooties. The old
uniform, blood-stained and ragged, went to the baking and
disinfecting plant.

That night all of us newly arrived men who could went to the
Y.M.C.A. to a concert given in our honor. The chaplain came around
and cheered us up and gave us good fags.

Next morning I went around to the M.O. He looked my arm over and
calmly said that it would have to come off as gangrene had set in.
For a moment I wished that piece of shrapnel had gone through my
head. I pictured m