By this time I had discovered that I still had all my hands and feet and could move them about. Satisfied on that point, I asked where I was.
"Hospital; but you mustn't talk."
"What hospital; why can't I talk?"
"Number Twelve; but I think you should keep quiet and rest."
"Had plenty rest; where's Number Twelve?"
"St. Pol; but, really, you must go to sleep now."
I went to sleep, wondering how the dickens I happened to be in St. Paul, which was what I understood her to say. (The French spell it differently but pronounce it about the same.)
From that time on, scarcely an hour passed that one of the kindly nurses or sisters did not come in and look to see if I was awake, and if so, could they get me something to eat or drink. It was heaven, all right; or at least, my idea of what heaven should be.
I learned that, although I was disabled on the night of the tenth, I was not picked up until the twelfth and then had been relayed through several dressing stations and hospitals until I landed in Number Twelve General Hospital, at the town of St. Pol. It was a B. R. C. (British Red Cross) institution and was altogether different from my preconceived ideas of hospitals. The day when I first "woke up" was the fifteenth of October, my birthday.
After several days I was put aboard a hospital train and taken to LeTreport, where I was assigned to Lady Murray's Hospital, another B. R. C. place. It had been, before the war, The Golf Hotel, one of the many splendid seaside hotels that have been converted into hospitals. Here, again, I was royally treated. Every wish appeared to be anticipated by the indefatigable and ever-cheerful women and girls, many of them volunteers, members of prominent and even titled families. Lady Murray personally visited every patient at least once a day.