“Give my regards to Blighty, you lucky beggar,” was the most frequent saying.
“Bli’ me,” said one Cockney Tommy. “There goes one o’ th’ Canadians with an escort from the Kaiser.”
Another man stopped and asked about my wound.
“Good work,” he said. “I’d like to have a nice clean one like that, myself.”
I noticed one of the prisoners grinning at some remark and asked him if he understood English. He hadn’t spoken to me, though he had shown the greatest readiness to help me.
“Certainly I understand English,” he replied. “I used to be a waiter at the Knickerbocker Hotel, in New York.” That sounded like a voice from home, and I wanted to hug him. I didn’t. However, I can say for him he must have been a good waiter. He gave me good service.
Of the last stages of my trip to Poizers I cannot tell anything for I arrived unconscious from loss of blood. The last I remember was that the former waiter, evidently seeing that I was going out, asked me to direct him how to reach the field dressing station at Poizers and whom to ask for when he got there. I came back to consciousness in an ambulance on the way to Albert.
CHAPTER VI
A VISIT FROM THE KING
I was taken from Poizers to Albert in a Ford ambulance, or, as the Tommies would say, a “tin Lizzie.” The man who drove this vehicle would make a good chauffeur for an adding machine. Apparently, he was counting the bumps in the road for he didn’t miss one of them. However, the trip was only a matter of seven miles, and I was in fair condition when they lifted me out and carried me to an operating table in the field dressing station.
A chaplain came along and murmured a little prayer in my ear. I imagine that would make a man feel very solemn if he thought there was a chance he was about to pass out, but I knew I merely had a leg pretty badly smashed up, and, while the chaplain was praying, I was wondering if they would have to cut it off. I figured, if so, this would handicap my dancing.