e again?" kept hammering through my brain. The pain was
becoming rapidly worse and I began to wonder just where my legs were
broken. As I could move neither I could not discover at all, and
presently I gave a gasp as I felt something tighten and hurt terribly.
It was a boot lace they were fixing to stop the haemorrhage (bootlaces
are used for everything in France). The men stood round, and I watched
them furtively wiping the tears away that rolled down their furrowed
cheeks. One even put his arm over his eyes as a child does. I wondered
vaguely why they were crying; it never dawned on me it had anything to
do with _me_. "Completement coupee," I heard one say, and quick as a
shot, I asked, "Ou est-ce que c'est qu'est coupe?" and those tactful
souls, just rough soldiers, replied without hesitation, "La jaquette,
Mademoiselle."

"Je m'en fiche de la jaquette," I answered, completely reassured.

I wished the ambulance would come soon. "I _am_ in a beastly mess," I
thought again. "Fancy broken legs hurting like this. What must the men
go through!"

It was singular I was so certain they were broken. But a month before I
had received a wire from the War Office stating one of my brothers had
crashed 1,000 feet and had two legs fractured, and without more ado I
took it for granted I was in a similar plight. "I won't sit up and
look," I decided, "or I shall think I'm worse than I am. There's sure to
be some blood about," and the sun beat down fiercely, drying what there
was on my face into hard cakes. My lower lip had also been cut inside
somehow. One man took off his coat and held it high up to form a shade.
I saw everything that happened with a terrible distinctness. They had
already bound up my head, which was cut and bleeding profusely.

The pain was becoming almost intolerable and I wondered if in time I
would cry, but luckily one does not cry on those occasions; it becomes
an impossibility somehow. I even began to wish I could. I asked to have
my legs lifted a little and the pain seemed to ease somewhat. I shall
never forget those Frenchmen. They were perfect. How often I had smiled
at them as I passed, and laughed to see them standing in a ring like
naughty schoolboys, peeling potatoes, their Sergeant walking round to
see that it was done properly!

The little French doctor from the Battery, who had once helped me change
a tyre, came running up and I covered the scratched side of my face lest
he should get too much of