“Lord, it was jolty, driving along in the ambulance to the station! The poor boy next to me--badly wounded, poor chap! lost a lot of blood--he got faint and lay across my breast; went to sleep there in the end.”
“Shells? ’Pon me word, it was beautiful to see them at night! Oh, one’s all right, you know, if one keeps in one’s trenches. One of my subalterns--ah, poor lad! I don’t know what took him--he got right out of the trench and stood on the edge, stretching himself. A shell came along and bowled him over. We dug him out. He was an awfully good-looking boy. There wasn’t a scratch on him, but he was stone dead; his back broken. And there he lay as beautiful as an angel. The Colonel and I, we buried him. He was twenty-three; just married. The Colonel and I used to bury our men at night.”
Suddenly the speaker’s shoulders shook with laughter.
“Those shells! One of my fellows had one burst within a yard of him. Lord, I thought he was in pieces! He was covered in earth and rubbish! ‘Has that done for you?’ I called out to him. ‘I think it has, sir,’ he said, and you should have seen him clutching himself all over! And then there was a grin. ‘No, sir, it’s only a bruise!’ Oh, you get not to mind them, except one kind; that does make a nasty noise--a real nasty noise; it was just that noise one minded. Ugh, when you heard it coming along! Spiteful, it was!”
In the private London hospital where he spent three days the bed next to him was occupied by a Major of Artillery, wounded in the head.
“There was not much wrong with him, poor old chap! but he had got a bit of nerve-strain. Lord, he never let me get a wink, calling out all night in his sleep: ‘D---- that mist! I can’t see the swine. A bit more to the left. Now, now, boys, now we’ve got them! Oh, damn that mist! Ha! we got them that time--got the swine!’”
The doctors who saw our soldier were rather surprised to find him so calm in his mind. They could scarcely believe he should sleep so sound at nights--that the human machine should be so little out of gear. Yet there were days when he called himself “slack,” looked ill enough, and one could see that even a short walk was a severe trial of strength.
We shall not lightly forget a funny little incident which happened upon an afternoon when he seemed peculiarly exhausted. He was sitting in his arm-chair close to the fire, looking grey and drawn, declaring that the north-east wind never agreed with him. A kindly clerical neighbour rushed in upon us. He had just heard that fifty thousand Germans had landed at Sheringham. All the troops were under orders. Despatch riders had galloped from Aldershot to stop the billeting of a regiment just arrived here. The men had started up in the middle of their dinners and begun to pack again. They were to go back to Aldershot and concentrate for the great move. Further--indisputable authority!--the Chief Constable of the county had private information of the invasion.