At the end of February I was wounded and went home. Without any conceit, without exaggerating our friendship, I may say that this was the final blow for Harry. I was the last of the Old Crowd; I was the one man who knew the truth of things as between him and Philpott.... And I went.
I was hit by a big shell at Whizz-Bang Corner, and Harry saw me on the stretcher as we came past D Company on the Bapaume Road. He walked with me as far as the cookers, and was full of concern for my wound, which was pretty painful just then. But he bucked me up and talked gaily of the good things I was going to. And he said nothing of himself. But when he left me there was a look about him—what is the word?—wistful—it is the only one, like a dog left behind.
While I was still in hospital I had two letters from the battalion. The first was from Harry, a long wail about Philpott and the dullness of everybody now that the Old Crowd were extinct, though he seemed to have made good friends of some of the dull ones. At the end of that endless winter, when it seemed as if the spring would never come, they had pulled out of the line and 'trekked' up north, so that there had been little fighting. They were now in shell-holes across the high ridge in front of Arras, preparing for an advance.
The other letter was from old Knight, the Quartermaster, dated two months after I left.
I will give you an extract:
'Probably by now you will have seen or heard from young Penrose. He was hit on the 16th, a nasty wound in the chest from a splinter.... It was rather funny—not funny, but you know what I mean—how he got it. I was there myself though I didn't see it. I had been up to H.Q. to see about the rations, and there were a lot of us, Johnson (he is now Adj. in your place) and Fellowes, and so on, standing outside H.Q. (which is on a hill—what you people call a forward slope, I believe), and watching our guns bombarding the village. It was a remarkable sight, etc. etc. (a long digression).... Then the Boche started shelling our hill; he dropped them in pairs, first of all at the other end of the hill, about 500 yards off, and then nearer and nearer, about 20 yards at a time ... the line they were on was pretty near to us, so we thought the dug-out would be a good place to go to.... Penrose was just starting to go back to his company when this began, and as we went down somebody told him he'd better wait a bit. But he said "No, he wanted to get back." I was the last down, and as I disappeared (pretty hurriedly) I told him not to be a fool. But all he said was, "This is nothing, old bird—you wait till you live up here; I'm going on." The next thing we heard was the hell of an explosion on top. We ran up afterwards, and there he was, about thirty yards off.... The funny thing is that I understood he rather had the wind-up just now, and was anything but reckless ... in fact, some one said he had the Dug-out Disease.... Otherwise, you'd have said he wanted to be killed. I don't know why he wasn't, asking for it like that.... Well, thank God I'm a Q.M., etc. etc.'
I read it all very carefully, and wondered. 'You'd have said he wanted to be killed.' I wondered about that very much.
And there was a postscript which interested me:
'By the way, I hear Burnett's got the M.C.—for Salvage, I believe!'