n to some of them and drew their
blankets back, and now and then felt a man's pulse. Most of them were
unconscious, breathing with the hard snuffle of dying men. Their skin
was already darkening to the death-tint, which is not white. They were
all plastered with a gray clay and this mud on their faces was, in some
cases, mixed with thick clots of blood, making a hard incrustation from
scalp to chin.

"That fellow won't last long," said the M. O., rising from a stretcher.
"Hardly a heart-beat left in him. Sure to die on the operating-table
if he gets as far as that... Step back against the wall a minute, will
you?"

We flattened ourselves against the passage wall while ambulance-men
brought in a line of stretchers. No sound came from most of those
bundles under the blankets, but from one came a long, agonizing wail,
the cry of an animal in torture.

"Come through the wards," said the colonel. "They're pretty bright,
though we could do with more space and light."

In one long, narrow room there were about thirty beds, and in each bed
lay a young British soldier, or part of a young British soldier. There
was not much left of one of them. Both his legs had been amputated to
the thigh, and both his arms to the shoulder-blades.

"Remarkable man, that," said the colonel. "Simply refuses to die. His
vitality is so tremendous that it is putting up a terrific fight against
mortality... There's another case of the same kind; one leg gone and
the other going, and one arm. Deliberate refusal to give in. 'You're
not going to kill me, doctor,' he said. 'I'm going to stick it through.'
What spirit, eh?"

I spoke to that man. He was quite conscious, with bright eyes. His right
leg was uncovered, and supported on a board hung from the ceiling. Its
flesh was like that of a chicken badly carved-white, flabby, and in
tatters. He thought I was a surgeon, and spoke to me pleadingly:

"I guess you can save that leg, sir. It's doing fine. I should hate to
lose it."

I murmured something about a chance for it, and the M. O. broke in
cheerfully.

"You won't lose it if I can help it. How's your pulse? Oh, not bad. Keep
cheerful and we'll pull you through." The man smiled gallantly.

"Bound to come off," said the doctor as we passed to another bed. "Gas
gangrene. That's the thing that does us down."

In bed after bed I saw men of ours, very young men, who had been lopped
of limbs a few hours ago or a few minutes, some of them unconsci