"You boys take your bikes and go ahead. Tell the refugees you meet to pull to the right and not encumber the whole road. We're rushing a wounded man to the hospital. When I think you've got the way clear I'll drive on full speed. Tell our carts to head for Melun and keep on going till they get there. I can't bother with them. We'll meet at the first bridge over the Seine."
They departed, and climbing in beside my patient, who writhed in agony, now lurching from one side, now rolling to the other, I tried to make him as comfortable as possible. All the other carts had departed ere we got away, and my tearful driver kept on grumbling and lamenting.
Two hundred yards from the hotel, where the road makes a sharp turn, we halted abruptly, for we had come upon a group composed of my boy George and three French chasseurs. Two were on horseback, their naked swords glittering in the sunlight; the third on a bicycle—and all three, as well as George, were shrieking excitedly at a phlegmatic Tommy Atkins who, seated on a milestone, was calmly smoking his pipe. Behind him, his horse was peacefully nibbling grass. At the sight of my armlet and the agitated white sheet in the wagon, the chasseurs approached in haste.
"What have you got there? Our comrade, Ballandreau?"
"Yes." (I had seen the boy's name in his military book.)
"Is he dead?"
"No."
"Badly wounded?"
"Yes."
"Parlez-vous anglais?" they fairly bawled, all three at once.