You will forgive the left-handedness of the writing, won't you? My friend opposite has had a good deal of pain during the night, and I cannot ask him to write for me now. It was a strange night, and I don't think I'll ever forget it, though there's really nothing to tell; "Nothing to write home about," as the men say. I didn't sleep much, but I had quite a comfortable night, all the same, and plenty to think about. When the train lay still between stations, as it sometimes did, I could hear snatches of talk from different parts of the train itself—doctors, nurses, orderlies, patients, railway officials, and so on. Then perhaps another train would rumble along and halt near us, and there would be talk between people of the two trains: French, English, and the queer jumble of a patois that the coming together of the twain in war has evolved. Also, there was the English which remains English, its speaker not having a word of any other tongue, but which yet, on the face of it, somehow, tells one it is addressed to someone who must understand it from its tone or not at all.
"Oh, that's it, is it? Cigarettes? You bet. Here, catch, old chap! Bong, très bong Woodbine. What ho! Same to you, old chap, an' many of 'em. Yes, yes; we'll soon be back again, an' then we'll give the blighters what for, eh? Chocolate, eh? Oh, mercy, mercy! No, no; no more; we got plenty grub; much pang, savvy. You're a brick, you are. You bong, très bong; compree? Hallo! Off again! Well, so long, old sport! Good luck! Bong charnce! See ye 'gain some time! Bong sworr!"
There's a poor chap in the bunk under mine who's been delirious most of the night. He looks such a child. A second lieutenant of the ——s; badly shaken up in a mine explosion, and bombed afterwards. The M.O. says he'll get through all right. He's for Blighty, no doubt. Odd, isn't it? This time to-morrow he may be in England, or mighty near it. England—what an extraordinary long way off it seems to me. There have been some happenings in my life since I was in England; and as for the chap I was before the war, upon my word, I can hardly remember the fellow. Pretty sloppy, wasn't he? Seems to me I must have been a good deal of a slacker; hadn't had much to do with real things then.
We know at last where we're bound for; in fact, we're there. The train has been backing and filling through the streets of the outskirts of Havre for the last half-hour or more. But last evening, when I was writing, we could only ascertain that we were going to ——. Benevolent smiles, you know.
It's frightfully interesting to see the streets. I see them through the little narrow flap at the top of my window that's meant to open. It seems quite odd to see women walking to and fro; and row after row of roofs and windows, all unbroken. No signs of shell-shock here. But on the other side of the train, nearest the harbour, one sees acres and acres of war material; I mean really acres and acres of rations, barbed wire, stores of all kinds.
There's a sort of bustle going on in the train. I think we must be near the end, so I'll put my notebook away.
10.45 A.M.
We are in what they call the Officers' Huts, on some quay or another. It's a miniature hospital or clearing station, built of wood, and very nicely fitted up. Sitting-room at one end, then beds, and then baths and cooking-place and offices; all bright and shining and beautifully clean, with Red Cross nurses, doctors, orderlies, and no end of benevolent smiles. They've taken our temperatures and fixed us up very comfortably, and somebody's started a gramophone, and I've just had a cup of the glutinous, milky stuff I used to hate, you remember. I don't hate such things nowadays; not really, you know; but I pretend I don't care much about 'em for the sake of the virtuous glow it gives to take 'em.
Everyone has asked everyone else where we are going next, and everyone has been given benevolent smiles and subsided into a Camps Library magazine or book. The sitting-up cases are pottering about in the sitting-room, where there are basket chairs and the gramophone. I can see them through the open door. The nurses have fixed jolly little curtains and things about, so that the place looks very homely. I gather it's a sort of rest-house, or waiting-place, where cases can be put, and stay put, till arrangements have been made for their admission into the big hospitals, or wherever they are to go. We have all been separately examined by the Medical Officer. My arm is so much better, I think it must be practically well. I don't know about the leg. I asked the M.O.—an awfully decent chap—to try to arrange things for me so that I should not be cut adrift from my own Battalion, and he said he thought that would be all right.