Impressions of small queer things still stamp themselves with a clear kodak-click on my mind—an ivory-white mule's skull lying in the sand with green beetles running through the eye-holes... anything—trivial, childlike details.
I remember reading an article in a magazine which stated that under fire, and more especially in a charge, a man moves in a whirl of excitement which blots out all the small realities around him, all the “local colour.” He remembers nothing but a wild, mad rush, or the tense intensity of the danger he is in.
It is not so. The greater the danger and the more exciting the position the more intensely does the mind receive the imprint of tiny commonplace objects.
Memories of Egypt and the Mediterranean are far more a jumble of general effects of colour, sound and smell.
The closer we crept to the shores of Suvla Bay, and the deathbed of the Salt Lake, the more exact and vivid are the impressions; the one is like an impressionist sketch—blobs and dabs and great sloshy washes; but the memories of Pear-tree Gully, of the Kapanja Sirt, and Chocolate Hill are drawn in with a fine mapping pen and Indian ink—like a Rackham fairy-book illustration—every blade of dead grass, every ripple of blue, every pink pebble; and towards the firing-line I could draw it now, every inch of the way up the hills with every stone and jagged rock in the right place.
Before sailing from England I had bought a little colour-box, one good sable brush, and a few H.B. pencils—these and a sketch-book which my father gave me I carried everywhere in my haversack. The pocket-book was specially made with paper which would take pencil, colour, crayon, ink or charcoal. I was always on the look out for sketches and notes. The cover bore the strange device—
JOHN HARGRAVE,
R.A.M.C.
32ND FIELD AMBULANCE.
printed in gilt which gradually wore off as time went on. Inside on the fly-leaf I had written—
“IF FOUND, please return to
Sgt. J. HARGRAVE, 32819, R.A.M.C.
32nd Field Ambulance,
X Division, Med. Exp. Force.”
And on the opposite page I wrote—