stinguished; for the reason
they needed a courier was because they had given their health, or limbs,
or eyesight, in defence of their country.

It happens only too often that when a patient is discharged from
hospital he is not fit to make his journey home alone. An orderly is
detailed to accompany him. Sometimes the lot has fallen on me. Generally
the trip is a short one, to some outlying suburb of London or to some
town or village in the home counties; but sometimes my flights have been
further afield, to Ireland, or Wales; and once I went to Yorkshire with
a blind man.

That Yorkshire expedition was singularly lacking in drama and in surface
pathos, yet its details remain with great clearness. The piece of
damaged goods which, being of no further fighting use, was being
returned with thanks to the hearthside from whence it came, was an
individual answering to the unheroic cognomen of Briggs. A
high-explosive shell had been sent by the Gods to alter the current of
Briggs's career. Briggs came through all that part of the war which
concerned him without a scratch upon his person--only after the arrival
in his immediate vicinity of the high-explosive shell he was
unfortunately unable to see. Never again would Briggs be of the
slightest value either as a soldier or in his civilian trade, which was
that of driver of ponies in a coal-mine. Consequently, as a
distinguished invalid (with the sum of one pound in his pocket to
comfort him until such time as his pension should materialise),
Mister--no longer Private--Briggs, for the first and presumably the last
time in his existence, went travelling with a courier.

A car supplied by the National Motor Volunteer Service awaited Briggs
and his courier at the hospital entrance. Here the introduction between
Briggs and his courier took place. Ours is a large hospital, and I had
never to my knowledge encountered Briggs before that moment. I beheld a
young fellow (he was only twenty-three) with a stout, healthy visage
which wore a pleasant smile and would have been describable as roguish,
only ... well, the eyes of a blind man, whatever else they are, are not
conducive to a roguish mien. They were eyes not visibly damaged: nice
blue eyes. And they stared at nothingness. I was in the presence of a
stripling who, a few weeks ago, must have owned a mobile face, and was
in rapid process of developing a quite different face, a face which
still might--it certainly did--grin and laugh,