er a hedge into a field. When they
reached him, his leg was gone and one arm badly smashed. He was
sitting up smoking a cigarette, and all he said was, "Well, I fancy
that's the end of my football days." One very undeveloped man, who had
somehow leaked into Kitchener's Army, told me, "Well, you see, Major,
I was a bit too weak for a labouring man, so I joined the army. I
thought it might do my 'ealth good!" One of the English papers
reported that when a small Gospel was sent by post to a prisoner in
Germany the Teuton official stamped every page, "Passed by the
Censor."

The practice of listening to the yarns of the wounded was much
discouraged, chiefly for one's own sake, for their knowledge was less
accurate than our own, while shell-shock led them to imagine more. The
censor had always good yarns to tell. The men showed generally much
good-humour and a universal light-heartedness. Our wounded hardly ever
"groused." They hid their troubles and cheered their families, seldom
or never by pious sentiments. One man writing from a regimental camp
close to Boulogne, after a painfully uneventful Channel crossing,
announced, "Here we are in the enemies' country right under the
muzzles of the guns. We got over quite safely, though three submarines
chased us and shelled us all the way. Food here is very short. I
haven't looked at a bun for weeks. A bit more of that cake of yours
would do nicely, not to talk o' smokes. Your loving husband." Another
letter was quoted in the "Daily Mail." It ran: "Dear Mother--This
comes hoping that it may find you as it leaves me at present. I have a
broken leg, and a bullet in my left lung. Your affectionate son."

Yet the men were far from fatalists, and the psychic stimulus of being
able to tell your patient that he was ordered to "Blighty" was
demonstrable on his history chart. One poor fellow whose right arm was
infected with gas bacillus was so anxious to save it that we left it
on too long and general blood poisoning set in. He was on the dying
list. The Government under these circumstances would pay the expenses
of a wife or mother to come over and say the last good-bye. After the
message went, it seemed that our friend could not last till their
arrival, and the colonel decided as a last chance to try intra-venous
injections of Eusol, the powerful antiseptic in use at that time in
all the hospitals. On entering the ward the next morning the nurse
told me with a smiling face, "B. is ever