acket. I followed up the stream and found that my right hand was
smashed and hanging limp. My men rushed out and I told them it was
nothing, but promptly fell in a heap. When I came to, my hand was wrapped
up in an emergency bandage, and a stretcher was coming down from Bedford
House, an advanced dressing-station, the next house back. To the delight
of the men who were carrying it, I waved them away and told them I could
walk. Assisted up to the dressing-station by one of my men, I made it. I
then made a discovery. A soldier is a man until he's hit, then he's a
case. I first had an injection of "anti-tetanus" in the side, and the fact
was recorded on a label tied to my left-hand top pocket button. The doctor
tied me up, then said: "You'll soon be all right. Will you have a bottle
of English beer or a drop of whiskey?" I had the whiskey. I needed it. All
the time I was there the wounded poured in. Seeing them I felt ashamed to
be there with only a smashed hand. A corporal came in with both hands
blown off and fifty-six other wounds. He had tried to save the men in his
bay by throwing back a German bomb and it had gone off in his hands.
Hawkins came up later on with my helmet and the fuse head of the shell
which blew me up. We were all collected together and waited in the dugouts
of the dressing station until dusk. Several shells came close to us. I
tried to write to my mother with my left hand, so that when she received
the War Office cable she would know I was able to write.

Dusk came, then night, and finally the Ford ambulance cars which were to
take us out of Hell. It was a beautiful night. Belgium looked lovely. The
merciful night had thrown a veil over the war scars on the land and a moon
was shining. I was told to sit up in the seat with the driver. We traveled
along one road, then the shelling became so bad that the drivers decided
to go back and take another road which was running nearly parallel. Back
over the line the planes of the Royal Flying Corps were bombing the Forest
of Houltholst, and the bursting of the shrapnel from the German
anti-aircraft guns pierced the velvet of the sky like stars as we went out
of Belgium into France.

-------------------------------------

Several times shells burst on the road, and from the inside of the car
came the stifled groans of the men as the Ford hit limbs of trees and
shell-holes.

Our first stop was a ruined windmill, the walls of which were near