"We'll just have this bit o' bandage orf an' then we'll give yer some
gas and send yer orf to sleep. You won't feel nothin' and yer a sure
Blighty. I wouldn' be surprised if yer got acrorss termorrer."

He went on unwinding the bandage, but the man began to shout and
struggle again.

Thereupon the surgeon intervened:

"For God's sake be quiet. Pull yourself together and don't make such a
fuss."

"I can't 'elp it, sir--I couldn't never stick no pain, sir, no, sir,
never, sir--it's very painful, sir, very painful. I'll try 'ard, I'll do
me best--but it _is_ painful, sir."

However, as soon as the bandage was pulled a little he yelled and
writhed. The surgeon at last lost patience and said: "Hold him down."

Two orderlies and two bearers seized his hands and feet while the
bandage was quickly removed. He shrieked and struggled violently, but he
was firmly held.

He had a small, deep wound in the fleshy part of the forearm. He
received gas and soon lost consciousness. The surgeon pushed a probe
into the hole. There was a metallic click, whereupon he inserted his
forceps and pulled out a jagged piece of steel, the fragment of a German
shell. When the wound had been excised and dressed, the man was carried
away and replaced by another whose right leg was thickly wrapped up. The
wrapping was removed and revealed a shattered knee and two toes dangling
from the foot. Captain Wycherley snipped them off with a pair of
scissors. The man winced and they dropped on to the floor. The
anaesthetist administered gas. It was some time, however, before the
patient lost consciousness, for the balloon that adjoined the mouthpiece
leaked badly and once the rubber-tubing was blown off the nozzle of the
cylinder.

Captain Dowden was busy with a foot, or all that was left of a foot, a
number of crimson shreds hanging from an ankle over a projecting piece
of bone. Captain Calthrop was attending to a "belly case"--he had cut a
longitudinal slit in his patient's abdomen and both his hands were
groping inside it, buried up to the wrists, while the stomach-wall
heaved up and down with the breathing of the unconscious man.

The "case" lying on the end table had been in the C.C.S. for several
days. He had undergone operation as soon as he arrived. At that time he
only had a small surface-wound below the knee, but it was slightly
gangrenous. The next day the gas-gangrene appeared above the knee-joint.
The wound was excised a second time. But