CHAPTER XX
DISCHARGED
“Come, mon vieux, swallow this; it will set you up.”
A sergeant of the 88th Territorials is speaking. I see his white number as he bends over me. I swallow the contents of the cup at one draught. Ouf! it’s strong; it burns, but I feel my strength coming back.
Where am I?
I am behind a bank in a dugout cut in the side of the trench. How I got there I don’t know. I have lost all idea of things.
I am anxious about Morin. They don’t know, but they say that they saw stretcher-bearers pick him up.
I have received my reckoning, but I shall recover. I feel my trousers and boots heavy with a tepid dampness. I feel a shooting pain in the groin and something like a warm stream flows drop by drop.
The stretcher-bearer, Bertrand, an old college friend, now a Dominican, stops a second beside me, hurrying on to more pressing cares, to the more seriously wounded. He speaks kindly simple words, but what they are I know not. He speaks of country, the sun, my wife.