took me about twenty minutes to pass the
sentry near where I was lying, but after that there was no danger of
discovery--the front line still appearing almost unoccupied; but I was
getting dizzy and not sure of my direction. I knew, however, where
there was a derelict aeroplane in No Man's Land, and made toward it.
When I sighted this I was overcome with relief, and laid my face in the
mud for a while to recover. I had now crawled about six hundred yards
dragging my useless legs. And my elbows were skinned through, being
used as grapples that I dug in the ground ahead, in that way dragging
myself a few inches at a time. I knew our trenches were still about
two hundred yards away, and the sweat of fear broke out on me as I
remembered the two machine-guns in front of me that would fire on
anything seen moving out there, no one expecting me to return that way.
So I crawled higher up the line, where it was safer to enter, and a few
yards from our trenches gave our scouting call. Several of my boys
came running out and tenderly picked me up. I was all in and could not
move a muscle. My own boys would not allow the stretcher-bearers to
touch me, but six of them put me on a stretcher and carried me over the
top just as day was breaking. They would not go down into the
communication-trench or shell-holes because they thought it would be
too rough on me, and so carried me over the exposed ground; and when
they got me to the dressing-station they said: "You will come back to
us, sir, won't you?" I said: "Yes, boys, you bet I will!" And you may
bet that I shall, as soon as ever I am passed as fit again.

The pain of my wounds was soon altogether forgotten, for each medical
officer that examined me finished up with the liquid melody of the
phrase: "Blighty for you!" My leave was long past due, and the very
next day I was to report for transfer to the Australian wing of the
Royal Flying Corps, which would have meant several weeks' training in
England, but "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft
a-gley!"--and there's a science shapes our ends, rough-hack them though
Huns may!

PART V

HOSPITAL LIFE

CHAPTER XXVII

IN FRANCE

My hospital experiences in France were a procession of five nights with
intermissions of days spent in travel. From the advance
dressing-station I was slid over the mud for three miles in a sledge
drawn by the Methuselah of horses borrowed from some French farmhouse.
His