t leg--give a help here and remove
this man's bandages."

I was looking at a head that resembled a huge football made of soiled
linen. In place of the mouth there was a small, dirty hole through which
the fetid breath came and went. Above the hole was a big red patch. I
unwound the bandages one by one. Gradually the face was revealed.
Between the mouth with black, swollen lips and the bruised eyes, closed
by grey greenish lids, there was, where the nose should have been, a red
hole big enough to contain a human fist.

The wounded came and went in an unbroken stream. The tables were always
occupied. I went from one to another, unwound bandages, held up limbs
for amputation, fetched splints, padding, gauze, or new bandages. I was
too busy to think or to feel any horror. I was vaguely conscious of
nausea and of a hot, stifling atmosphere heavy with the fumes of
chloroform and ether.

Some of the wounded had arms that hung by shreds of muscle and sinew.
Others had feet that were nothing but masses of clotted blood, lumps of
torn flesh, and bits of bone tied up in blood-sodden linen parcels. Some
had deep holes in their backs, others had gashes in their heads from
which soft, pink matter oozed.

Before me lay a man with a blackened face, a shattered knee, and
festering holes all over his body. Gas-gangrene had set in and the
stench was almost unendurable. The surgeon gently felt the injured leg,
but the man gave such long-drawn piercing shrieks that he had to be left
alone. He was sent to the resuscitation ward to recover strength a
little, for he was very weak through loss of blood. In the evening he
began to rave--he asked for whisky in a boisterously jovial voice, and
then he yelled and cried: "Sergeant, Sergeant, Sergeant, you've ruined
my career." In the night he died.

The wounded were often perfectly silent. But more often they would groan
or wail or shout. Sometimes they would all howl in chorus like cats on a
roof. Indeed the weird and terrible howling of wounded men is more like
the howling of cats than any other sound I know.

Men regaining consciousness after an operation would sometimes laugh
uproariously or cackle fiendishly. Or they would break into torrents of
filthy language. One man yelled in a crazy voice that England was the
most glorious country on earth and that he had done his best to be a
good soldier. Then he was seized by a fit of violent weeping, while
someone at the other end of the theatre