e, and cut across the open space again to
the two guns.

"You know what to do here, Corporal?" I said. "I am going round the farm
over to the right to see what's happened to the others."

I left him, and went across towards the farm. As I went I heard the
enormous ponderous, gurgling, rotating sound of large shells coming. I
looked to my left. Four columns of black smoke and earth shot up a
hundred feet into the air, not eighty yards away. Then four mighty
reverberating explosions that rent the air. A row of four "Jack
Johnsons" had landed not a hundred yards away, right amongst the lines
of men, lying out firing in extended order. I went on, and had nearly
reached the farm when another four came over and landed fifty yards
further up the field towards us.

"They'll have our guns and section," I thought rapidly, and hurried on
to find out what had become of my sergeant. The shelling of the farm
continued; I ran past it between two explosions and raced along the old
gulley we had first come up. Shells have a way of missing a building,
and getting something else near by. As I was on the sloping bank of the
gully I heard a colossal rushing swish in the air, and then didn't hear
the resultant crash....

All seemed dull and foggy; a sort of silence, worse than all the
shelling, surrounded me. I lay in a filthy stagnant ditch covered with
mud and slime from head to foot. I suddenly started to tremble all over.
I couldn't grasp where I was. I lay and trembled ... I had been blown up
by a shell.

* * * * *

I lay there some little time, I imagine, with a most peculiar sensation.
All fear of shells and explosions had left me. I still heard them
dropping about and exploding, but I listened to them and watched them as
calmly as one would watch an apple fall off a tree. I couldn't make
myself out. Was I all right or all wrong? I tried to get up, and then I
knew. The spell was broken. I shook all over, and had to lie still, with
tears pouring down my face.

* * * * *

I could see my part in this battle was over.

CHAPTER XXXI

SLOWLY RECOVERING--FIELD HOSPITAL--AMBULANCE
TRAIN--BACK IN ENGLAND

How I ever got back I don't know. I remember dragging myself into a
cottage, in the garden of which lay a row of dead men. I remember some
one giving me a glass of water there, and seeing a terribly mutilated
body on the floor being attended to. And, finally,