n holes were discovered in the hedge. Holes underneath the
prickly thorn, not more than a foot high, but sufficient to allow a
crawling body to wriggle through on its stomach. These holes persisted
for a day or two or three, and then were suddenly staked up, with strong
stakes and barbed wire. After which, a few days later, perhaps, other
holes like them would be discovered in the hedge a little further along.
After each hole was discovered, curious happenings would take place
amongst the hospital staff.

Certain men, orderlies or stretcher bearers, would be imprisoned. For
example, the nurse of _Salle I._, the ward of the _grands blesses_,
would come on duty some morning and discover that one of her orderlies
was missing. Fouquet, who swept the ward, who carried basins, who gave
the men their breakfasts, was absent. There was a beastly hitch in the
ward work, in consequence. The floor was filthy, covered with cakes of
mud tramped in by the stretcher bearers during the night. The men
screamed for attention they did not receive. The wrong patients got the
wrong food at meal times. And then the nurse would look out of one of
the little square windows of the ward, and see Fouquet marching up and
down the plank walks between the _baracques_, carrying his eighty pounds
of marching kit, and smiling happily and defiantly. He was "in prison."
The night before he had crawled through a hole in the hedge, got blind
drunk in a neighbouring _estaminet_, and had swaggered boldly through
the gates in the morning, to be "imprisoned." He wanted to be. He just
could not stand it any longer. He was sick of it all. Sick of being
_infirmier_, of sweeping the floor, of carrying vessels, of cutting up
tough meat for sullen, one-armed men, with the _Croix de Guerre_ pinned
to their coffee-streaked night shirts. Bah! The _Croix de Guerre_
pinned to a night shirt, egg-stained, smelling of sweat!

Long, long ago, before any one thought of war--oh, long ago, that is,
about six years--Fouquet had known a deputy. Also his father had known
the deputy. And so, when it came time for his military service, he had
done it as _infirmier_. As nurse, not soldier. He had done stretcher
drill, with empty stretchers. He had swept wards, empty of patients. He
had done his two years military service, practising on empty beds, on
empty stretchers. He had had a snap, because of the deputy. Then came
the war, and still he had a snap, although now the beds and the wa