How often on the march one had looked back
oneself into a passing ambulance and wished, rather shamefully, for a
"Blighty" one. Sunburnt and healthy they looked as they shouted after
us: "Good luck, boys, give our love to Blighty."

At the end of the village the ambulance swung off on a road leading to
the left. It must have crossed the track by which my platoon and I had
gone up the night before. About 11.30 A.M. we arrived at Couin, the
headquarters of the First Field Ambulance.

A hum of conversation and joking arose from every side, and, with some
exceptions, you could not have found such a cheery gathering anywhere.
The immediate strain of battle had passed, and friends meeting friends
compared notes of their experiences in the "show." Here a man with a
bandaged arm was talking affectionately to a less fortunate "pal" on a
stretcher, and asking him if he could do anything for him; it is
extraordinary how suffering knits men together, and how much sympathy
is brought out in a man at the sight of a badly wounded comrade:
yonder by the huts an orderly assisted a "walking case," shot through
the lungs and vomiting blood freely.

Near by I recognised E----'s servant of the L---- S----. When he had
finished giving some tea or water to a friend, I hailed him and asked
him if Mr. E---- was hit. Mr. E----, he told me, had been laid up for
some days past, and had not taken part in the attack. He was, however,
going round and writing letters for the men. Would I like to see him?
We were fairly good acquaintances, so I said that I should. Presently
he arrived.

"Bad luck, old chap. Where have you caught it?" he asked.

"In the thigh," I replied.

He wrote two post-cards home for me, one home and another to
relatives, and I did my best to sign them. I remember that on one of
them was inscribed: "This is to let you know that E---- has been
caught bending," and wondering what my grandfather, a doctor, would
make out of that!

The sun was beating down on us now, and since, after I had been duly
labelled "G.S.W. (gun-shot wound) Back," a Medical Staff Officer
advised that I should be transferred into the officers' hut, I entered
its cooler shades with much gladness.

Captain W----t came in soon afterwards. In the second line German
trench he had looked over the parados to see if any opposition was
coming up from the third line trench, and had been hit by a
machine-gun bullet in the shoulder. In making his way home he had