hings.

I woke before we reached a dugout dressing station. Here I was given a
first-aid dressing and immediately after carried away to an old-fashioned
village behind the lines. At this point there was a rough field hospital,
an old barn probably. There were eighty or ninety wounded there when I
arrived. Among the many French and British were some Germans. The very next
stretcher to me was occupied by one of the enemy.

The Red Cross floated over the building, but that emblem of mercy made no
difference to the Hun. The shells commenced to find range, and in a short
time the roof was lifted off. A wounded man died close to me. I can only
remember the purr of a motor as an ambulance rushed up. Then I saw four
stretcher-bearers; two grabbed the German, and two caught hold of me. We
were rushed to the ambulance and driven at maddening speed through the
shell-ridden town.

Though I was barely conscious, though I believed that I was nearing my last
moments, I remember how it struck me vividly,--the contrast in the methods
of fighting. German shells were blasting to pieces the shelter of wounded
men and nurses. German wounded were being cared for by those whom their
comrades sought to kill. The Hun might have killed his own. It did not
matter. What is a life here or there to a Hohenzollern? And the
Allies--here were two British stretcher-bearers bent under the burden of an
enemy patient. They were striving to save his life from the fire of his own
people.

I do not remember any more after I was put in the ambulance. I came to
myself in a base hospital in France. I was strapped to a water bed.
Everything round me was soft and fresh and clean, and smelled deliciously.
There was a patient, sweet-smiling woman in nurse's costume who came and
went to the beck and call of every man of us. We were whimpering and
peevish; we were wracked with pain and weary of mind, but that nurse never
failed to smile. Call a hundred times, call her once, she was always there
to soothe, to help, to sympathize, and always smiling. Her heart must have
been breaking at times, but her serene face never showed her sorrow or her
weariness.

Often and often I am asked, "Why didn't you die when you were lying out
there on the battle-field?" Why didn't I die? I could have, several times,
but I didn't want to die, and I knew that if I were found I need not die.
We raw soldiers when we go to France are interested in the possibilities of
being wounded. We