XIV
London August 30, 1917
I've just left hospital and am staying at this hotel. You keep saying in your letters that you never heard how I got my injury. I described it—but that letter must have gone astray. On 26th June I was wounded not by a shell, but by a piece of an iron chimney which was knocked down on to my right arm. I had it sewn up and for two days it was all right. The third I went up for an attack and it started to swell—by the time I came back I had gas-gangrene. The arm is better now and I'm on sick leave, though still working. They've made me an offer of a job here in London, but I should break my heart if I could not go back to the Front. But I think when I've finished here that I may get a special leave, with permission to call in at New York. Wouldn't that be grand?
I don't want to raise your hopes too high, but it seems extremely likely that I shall see you shortly. I was to-day before my medical board, and they gave me two months' home service. I have been promised that as soon as a new Canadian ruling on home leave is confirmed, my application for leave will go through.
If that happens, I shall cable you at once that I am coming. It doesn't seem at all possible or true that this can be so, and I'm making myself no promises till I'm really on the boat. It would be better that you should not, also. I'm taking a gamble and am going to order a new tunic for the occasion this afternoon.
It's a golden afternoon outside—the kind that turns the leaves red at Kootenay, with the tang of iced wine in the air. The sound of London is like the tumming of a thousand banjos. It's good to be alive, and very wonderful after all that has happened.
Note.—Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson arrived at Quebec on 26th September and came home on the following day. He was at home for a month. During that time he spoke in public on several occasions, and wrote the book which was brought out the following spring, entitled “The Glory of the Trenches.”