Our own shells were bursting so close to our front that they were showering us with earth and stones.
I saw the nearest Germans about a couple of hundred yards away.
Then suddenly a dark curtain dropped before my eyes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I seemed to awake from a long sleep, only to discover that instead of being in a trench or a billet I was in a hospital; one of the kind made of canvas. There were two great marquee tents, with nurses flitting about quietly—like angels they seemed to me, for the moment.
The pain that racked my body was awful. I lay there trying to determine in what part of me the pain was located but it seemed to be all over me. I noticed that either a nurse or an orderly was constantly in attendance at my cot.
As my comprehension of things about me became clearer, I realized that my neighbour was a German. His moaning, coupled with his muttering of “Ach, mein Gott in Himmel!” got on my nerves, but I decided to say nothing, as I had not yet learned whether it was an enemy hospital or one of our own. I decided that if it was the former, the quietest way to die was the best, if die I must. During one of the moaning spells of my neighbour, I seemed to lose consciousness. When I “came back,” a soft voice whispered in my ear: “It’s all right; keep still; we are only taking a plate of your leg.”
An English voice!—and with such kindness in it! Our own hospital! Not a prisoner! I just wanted to cry out, from sheer happiness.