y body
seemed gone. The shelling had ceased and there was a dead silence. I knew
I was freezing to death. I once even tried to place the muzzle of my rifle
under my chin and blow my head off, but I was unable to feel for the
rifle. My hands had lost sense of touch. My lower limbs were insensible. I
gave up all hopes of help or of ever leaving the shell hole--alive.

What seemed a long time after I had deemed myself lost I heard some one in
the vicinity. I wasn't able to lift my head. I tried to speak. I was as
one dead, with the exception of my brain.

The next thing I knew something was being poured down my throat. Some one
was attending to me but I was unconcerned. I wanted only to die. If I
could but have spoken, I would have begged the men who were attending me
to put me out of my agony. After a while, I recognized them as our men.
They were rubbing and slapping my body for all they were worth. Now and
again one of them put his water bottle to my mouth. At first I could not
make out what he was trying to pour down my throat, but at last I
recognized it as rum. I forced myself to drink it. Then they rubbed my
abdomen and legs with some of it as briskly as they could. One of them
exchanged his kilt for mine; then they both wrapped their greatcoats
around me, and, between them, managed to carry me back to the trenches--to
safety.

The jolting on the way back started my blood circulating. It is beyond me
to explain exactly the feeling. My stomach began aching as if it contained
boiling lead; then a feeling as if a million electrically charged wires
had commenced to burn in the lower part of my abdomen and down to my lower
limbs. I had the desire to shout out loud; whether or not I did, to this
day I cannot tell. I must have gone completely insane with the pain for a
while, for later I found myself struggling with a group of men, and they
were urging me to keep quiet. They poured lots of rum into me, and I began
to feel much better; in fact, more like myself, except that my legs and
feet were like lumps of lead.

During this time--since my rescue from the shell hole--the Germans had
made a charge and were repulsed. The Black Watch had taken a line of their
trench and were holding it. Two men had been sent out to find what had
happened to the lance-corporal and myself, as the company commander had
been expecting our report. They found the lance-corporal, riddled with
bullets, not far from where he had left me. When the