the leg above was wounded. He lay unmurmuring for all the
tossing of the road over the long miles of the ride. We lifted him from
the stretcher, which he had wet with his blood, into the white cot in
"Hall 15" of Zuydcoote Hospital. The wound and the journey had gone
deeply into his vitality. As he touched the bed, his control ebbed, and
he became violently sick at the stomach. I stooped to carry back the
empty stretcher. He saw I was going away, and said, "Thank you." I knew
I should not see him again, not even if I came early next day.

There is one unfading impression made on me by those wounded. If I call
it good nature, I have given only one element in it. It is more than
that: it is a dash of fun. They smile, they wink, they accept a light
for their cigarette. It is not stoicism at all. Stoicism is a grim
holding on, the jaws clenched, the spirit dark, but enduring. This is a
thing of wings. They will know I am not making light of their pain in
writing these words. I am only saying that they make light of it. The
judgment of men who are soon to die is like the judgment of little
children. It does not tolerate foolish words. Of all the ways of showing
you care that they suffer there is nothing half so good as the gift of
tobacco. As long as I had any money to spend, I spent it on packages of
cigarettes.

[Illustration: SAILORS LIFTING A WOUNDED COMRADE INTO THE
MOTOR-AMBULANCE.]

When the Marin officers found out we were the same people that had
worked with them at Melle five months before, they invited my wife and
three other nurses to luncheon in a Nieuport cellar. Their eye brightens
at sight of a woman, but she is as safe with them as with a cowboy or a
Quaker. The guests were led down into a basement, an eighteen foot room,
six feet high. The sailors had covered the floor and papered the walls
with red carpet. A tiny oil stove added to the warmth of that blazing
carpet. More than twenty officers and doctors crowded into the room, and
took seats at the table, lighted by two lamps. There were a dozen plates
of _patisserie_, a choice of tea, coffee, or chocolate, all hot, white
and red wine, and then champagne. An orderly lifted in a little wooden
yacht, bark-rigged, fourteen inches long, with white painted sails. A
nurse spilled champagne over the tiny ship, till it was drenched, and
christened. The chief doctor made a speech of thanks. Then the ship went
around the table, and each guest wrote her name on the