t with the parapet. Next day it seemed none the worse,
so I did not take the accident seriously. During the weeks and months
that followed the knee was painless, but it grew larger and larger for
no noticeable reason, like Alice in Wonderland and the daily cost of
the war.

Then an aggressive lobster, eaten in Amiens one fine evening, revenged
itself by making necessary a visit to the casualty clearing station for
attention to a mildly poisoned tummy. The doctor who examined me noticed
the swollen knee, and looked grave. He pinched, punched, and pressed it,
and finally said: "My dear boy, why the devil didn't you report this?
It's aggravated synovitis, and, if you don't want permanent
water-on-the-knee, you'll have to lie up for at least three weeks. I'll
have you sent to the Base to-morrow."

My ambition did not yet soar beyond a short rest at the Base. Meanwhile
it was pleasant to lie between real sheets and to watch real English
girls making beds, taking temperatures, and looking after the newly
wounded with a blend of tenderness and masterful competence. Their worst
job appeared to be fighting the Somme mud. The casualties from the
trench region were invariably caked with dirt until the nurses had
bathed and cleaned them with comic tact and great success.

It being the day of an advance, scores of cases were sent to Gezaincourt
from the field dressing stations. Each time an ambulance car, loaded
with broken and nerve-shattered men, stopped by the hospital entrance, a
young donkey brayed joyously from a field facing the doorway, as if to
shout "Never say die!" Most of the casualties echoed the sentiment, for
they seemed full of beans and congratulated themselves and each other on
their luck in getting Blighty ones.

But it was otherwise with the cases of shell-shock. I can imagine no
more wretched state of mind than that of a man whose nerves have just
been unbalanced by close shaves from gun fire. There was in the same
lysol-scented ward as myself a New Zealander in this condition. While he
talked with a friend a shell had burst within a few yards of the pair,
wounding him in the thigh and sweeping off the friend's head. He lost
much blood and became a mental wreck. All day and all night he tossed
about in his bed, miserably sleepless and acutely on edge, or lay in a
vacant and despondent quiet. Nothing interested him, nothing comforted
him--not even a promise from the doctor of a long rest in England.

There w