I soon found that this was a bit too warm for me, and so I turned and took what I supposed was the right direction. I had had enough of crawling, which was very slow work. I wanted to get out of it, and I made up my mind to rise and run. That does not sound very brave, but it was the better part of valour.
I started to run, as best I could; but I had hardly got going when a bullet struck me, as I supposed, and I collapsed alongside some of my own comrades.
Stretcher-bearers came up, in time, and I was carried to the field hospital. Then a curious discovery was made, which was, that a bullet had gone through four or five pleats of my kilt and had stuck in my leg, high up. This is the place where it struck and stuck and here’s the bullet, which the doctor easily pulled out with his fingers, for it had not penetrated deeply, owing, I think, to the resistance of the pleats of my kilt. Apart from this bullet wound I was struck by shrapnel four times, but I managed to keep going.
I left the field hospital the next day and joined an ambulance column which was shelled by the Germans as it went along. I escaped myself, but one of the waggons was completely wrecked.
Having recovered from my wound to a certain extent I went back to the regiment, but after a few days I had to be invalided home, and I have had a long and tedious spell in hospital.
There is one more incident I would like to mention by way of closing. We halted in a village in France where we saw some of the Turcos, one of whom was very noticeable because he was proudly wearing the greatcoat of a German officer which he had secured on the battlefield, after killing the officer.
While we halted, a batch of German prisoners was brought into the village, and they were put into a courtyard between two rows of cottages. No sooner had this been done than an old man rushed out, and if it had not been for the guard he would have hurled himself upon the prisoners and done his best to thrash them.
The act was so strange that I inquired the reason for the old man’s fury. And the answer I received was, “He remembers 1870.”
