who always came out just about dawn to collect the wounded.
I was lying on the ground, in a sort of ditch, for six hours before I was picked up by the stretcher-bearers and carried to a stable which was being used as a temporary hospital.
The Germans fired on the wounded as they were being carried off in the grey light, but they didn’t hit me again.
I lay in the stable for about eight hours, waiting for the ambulance, which took me to the rail-head, and then I was put in a train and taken to Rouen—and that travelling was simply awful, because the French trains jolt like traction-engines.
All the same, I had a pleasant voyage to Southampton, and hoped that I might be sent to a hospital near home, but I was too ill to go a long journey to the north, so I was taken to Woolwich, and afterwards sent here, to the Royal Hospital at Richmond, where everybody is kindness itself, and can’t do enough for you, it seems.
I’ve had a month in bed, so far, but I’m hoping to be out of it soon and hobbling about.
CHAPTER VII
GERMAN TREACHERY AND HATRED
[“Die hard, my men, die hard!” shouted the heroic Colonel Inglis, when, at Albuhera, in the Peninsular War, his regiment, the 57th Foot, were furiously engaged with the enemy. And the regiment obeyed, for when the bloody fight was ended twenty-two out of twenty-five officers had been killed or wounded, 425 of 570 rank and file had fallen and thirty bullets had riddled the King’s Colour. The 57th is now the 1st Battalion Middlesex Regiment, but the regiment is still best known by its gallant nickname of the “Die-Hards.” It has suffered exceptional losses in this war, and the story of some of its doings is told by Corporal W. Bratby, who relates a tale which he has described as a brother’s revenge.]