as that of an officer lying
about three beds down from me. In the usual course of events an
R.A.M.C. corporal asked him his name.

"F----," he replied in a vague tone.

The corporal thought that he had better make certain, so with as
polite a manner as possible looked at his identification disc.

"It puts Lt. B---- here," he said.

There followed a lengthy argument, at the end of which the patient
said--

"Well, it's no use. You had better give it up. I don't know what my
name is!"

A Fusilier officer was carried in on a stretcher and laid next to me.
After a time he said--

"Is your name L----?"

I replied affirmatively.

"Don't you recognise me?" he questioned.

I looked at him, but could not think where I had seen him before.

"My name's D----. I was your Company Quartermaster-Sergeant in the
Second Battalion." Then I remembered him, though it had been hard to
recognise him in officer's uniform, blood-stained and tattered at
that. We compared notes of our experiences since I had left the second
line of my battalion in England nearly a year before, until, soon
afterwards, he was taken out to an ambulance.

At the other end of the hut it was just possible to see an officer
tossing to and fro deliriously on a stretcher. I use the word
"deliriously," though he was probably another case of shell shock. He
was wounded also, judging by the bandages which swathed the middle
part of his body. The poor fellow thought that he was still fighting,
and every now and again broke out like this--

"Keep 'em off, boys. Keep 'em off. Give me a bomb, sergeant. Get down!
My God! I'm hit. Put some more of those sandbags on the barricade.
These damned shells! Can I stand it any longer? Come on, boys. Come
along, sergeant! We must go for them. Oh! my God! I must stick it!"

After a time the cries became fainter, and the stretcher was taken
out.

About three o'clock I managed to get a doctor to inject me with
anti-tetanus. I confess that I was rather anxious about getting this
done, for in crawling back across No Man's Land my wound had been
covered with mud and dirt. The orderly, who put on the iodine, told me
that the German artillery was sending shrapnel over the ridge. This
was rather disconcerting, but, accustomed as I had become to shrapnel
at close quarters, the sounds seemed so distant that I did not bother
more about them.

It must have been about four o'clock when my stretcher was picked up
and I passed once