fort to hold its own.

I was quite conscious and thinking clearly: I knew what had happened
and what would happen; I remembered every detail.

My head at the moment was inclined to the right, for I was shouting to
the men. Like a flash I remembered that about fifty yards to the left
of me there was a "German strong point" still occupied by the Germans.
A bullet had entered my left temple; it must have come from a sniper
in that strong point. The bullet had passed clean through my head; I
thought it had emerged through my right temple. I was mistaken on that
point, for I found some days later that it had emerged through the
centre of my right eye.

I remember distinctly clutching my head and sinking to the ground, and
all the time I was thinking "so this is the end--the finish of it all;
shot through the head, mine is a fatal wound."

Arnold jumped up, and catching me in his arms, helped me back into the
shell-hole.

I hesitate to tell what followed. But as I am trying to record the
sensations experienced at the time of receiving a head wound, I will
describe the next experience simply, and leave the reader to form his
own conclusions.

I was blind then, as I am now; but the blackness which was then before
me underwent a change. A voice from somewhere behind me said: "This is
death; will you come?"

Then gradually the blackness became more intense. A curtain seemed to
be slowly falling; there was space; there was darkness, blacker than
my blindness; everything was past. There was a peacefulness, a
nothingness; but a happiness indescribable.

I seemed for a moment somewhere in the emptiness looking down at my
body, lying in the shell-hole, bleeding from the temple. I was dead!
and that was my body; but I was happy.

But the voice I had heard seemed to be waiting for an answer. I seemed
to exert myself by a frantic effort, like one in a dream who is trying
to awaken.

I said: "No, not now; I won't die." Then the curtain slowly lifted; my
body moved and I was moving it. I was alive!

There, my readers, I have told you, and I have hesitated to tell it
before. More than that, I will tell you that I was not unconscious;
neither did I lose consciousness until several minutes later, and then
unconsciousness was quite different.

I have told you how clear was my brain the moment I was hit, and I
tell you also that after the sensation I have just related, my brain
was equally clear, as I will show you, until I beca