During the six weeks I was in hospital in Alexandria, I improved wonderfully. The doctor in charge of the ward took a special interest in my progress, and seemed to pride himself on having handled the case successfully. Every day or so he brought in a doctor from some other ward to show him my wounds and the X-ray plates. He was very careful and tried in dressing to cause me as little pain as possible. "Poor old chap," he would say, when he saw me wince, "poor old chap." I think there was a great deal of psychology in my getting well. In this Twenty-first General Hospital nothing was omitted that could make one comfortable. Every morning an orderly washed me. The orderlies were all very considerate, except one. He did not last very long in our ward. He began washing the patients at four o'clock in the morning. He always made me think of a hostler washing a carriage. When he had washed my arms he always let them drop in a way that reminded me of the shafts of a wagon. He was soon replaced by a chap who did not begin his work until seven. At eight we had breakfast: fruit, cereal, and eggs. At eleven we had soda water and crackers or sweet biscuits. At one came dinner: soup, chicken, and vegetables, half a chicken to each man, with a dessert of pudding or custard. At four we had tea, with fish, and at eight came supper: cocoa and bread and butter, with jelly. In the morning visitors came in and brought us the daily papers. Sisters of the V.A.D.—Voluntary Aid Detachment—came in each afternoon to relieve the regular nursing sisters. They were mostly Englishwomen resident in Egypt. Most of their men folks were at one of the fronts. They read to the men who could not hold books in their hands, talked to us cheerfully, and wrote letters for us. Some of them brought us little delicacies: grapes and chocolate. Men in hospital have no money. Any money they have is taken away when they arrive and refunded when they leave. Like most of the rules in the army to-day, this was made for the old regulars. When the regulars felt they needed a rest they went into hospital; the only way they could be stopped was to keep all their money away from them. To-day two million men suffer as a result. Ever since the day I left the Peninsula I had wanted chocolate. But I had no money, and for a long time I had to go without it. At last young Varney got me some. He had gone errands for a wounded Australian, who had been given some money from outside, and the Australian had given him some; he could hardly wait to get to me with it.
As soon as a man was sufficiently recovered to travel, he was sent to England. New men were always coming in to take the places of the old. A lot of them were Australians. I kept asking them all as they came in if they could tell me anything of my friend White George. Of course a nickname is very little to go on. A man who was White George in one part of the trench might be Queensland Harry in another. All I knew about him was that he was in the Fifteenth Battalion, and that he had a beard. At last a chap did come in one evening from the Fifteenth Battalion. I was in bed at the time, and could not get a chance to ask him about White George. The next day the poor chap was writhing and screaming in the terrible spasms of tetanus, and for two days the screens were around his bed. On the third day he was better. As soon as Varney came in, he wheeled me up to the Australian's bed. I asked him what was the matter with him, and he told me that he had a flesh wound in the head that didn't bother him, but that his left leg was off at the knee.
"Are you from the Fifteenth Battalion?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Do you know a chap in that battalion," I said, "that they call White George?"
The wounded Australian looked at me in a quizzical way. Then he drawled slowly, "Well, I think I do. Why, damn it, man, I'm White George."
Then he recognized me. "Why, it's the Newfoundland Corporal. Hello, Corporal. You're just the man I wanted to see," he said. "I stood on that bomb all right, and got away with it—once. When I tried it a second time, I put the bomb on the firing platform, and when I stepped on it, my head was over the parapet; Johnny Turk got me in the head, and the bomb did the rest."
"Don't you wish now you hadn't tried the experiment?" I said.
"No," said White George, "I feel perfectly satisfied."
"By the way," I said, as I was leaving him, "why do they call you White George? Your hair is dark."