I ever knew. Seeing so many of my closest
chums go west so horribly had nearly broken me, shaky as I was when
the attack started. I was dripping with sweat and frightfully
nauseated. A sudden overpowering impulse seized me to get out in
the open and have it over with. I was ready to die.

Sooner than I ought, for the second wave had not yet shown up, I
shrilled the whistle and lifted them out. It was a hopeless charge,
but I was done. I would have gone at them alone. Anything to close
the act. To blazes with everything!

As I scrambled out of the shell hole, there was a blinding,
ear-splitting explosion slightly to my left, and I went down. I did
not lose consciousness entirely. A red-hot iron was through my
right arm, and some one had hit me on the left shoulder with a
sledge hammer. I felt crushed,--shattered.

My impressions of the rest of that night are, for the most part,
vague and indistinct; but in spots they stand out clear and vivid.
The first thing I knew definitely was when Smith bent over me,
cutting the sleeve out of my tunic.

"It's a Blighty one," says Smithy. That was some consolation. I was
back in the shell hole, or in another, and there were five or six
other fellows piled in there too. All of them were dead except
Smith and a man named Collins, who had his arm clean off, and
myself. Smith dressed my wound and Collins', and said:

"We'd better get out of here before Fritz rushes us. The attack was
a ruddy failure, and they'll come over and bomb us out of here."

Smith and I got out of the hole and started to crawl. It appeared
that he had a bullet through the thigh, though he hadn't said
anything about it before. We crawled a little way, and then the
bullets were flying so thick that I got an insane desire to run and
get away from them. I got to my feet and legged it. So did Smith,
though how he did it with a wounded thigh I don't know.

The next thing I remember I was on a stretcher. The beastly thing
swayed and pitched, and I got seasick. Then came another crash
directly over head, and out I went again. When I came to, my head
was as clear as a bell. A shell had burst over us and had killed
one stretcher bearer. The other had disappeared. Smith was there.
He and I got to our feet and put our arms around each other and
staggered on. The next I knew I was in the Cough Drop dressing
station, so called from the peculiar formation of the place. We had
tea and rum here and a couple of fags from a