The practice of listening to the yarns of the wounded was much discouraged, chiefly for one's own sake, for their knowledge was less accurate than our own, while shell-shock led them to imagine more. The censor had always good yarns to tell. The men showed generally much good-humour and a universal light-heartedness. Our wounded hardly ever "groused." They hid their troubles and cheered their families, seldom or never by pious sentiments. One man writing from a regimental camp close to Boulogne, after a painfully uneventful Channel crossing, announced, "Here we are in the enemies' country right under the muzzles of the guns. We got over quite safely, though three submarines chased us and shelled us all the way. Food here is very short. I haven't looked at a bun for weeks. A bit more of that cake of yours would do nicely, not to talk o' smokes. Your loving husband." Another letter was quoted in the "Daily Mail." It ran: "Dear Mother--This comes hoping that it may find you as it leaves me at present. I have a broken leg, and a bullet in my left lung. Your affectionate son." Yet the men were far from fatalists, and the psychic stimulus of being able to tell your patient that he was ordered to "Blighty" was demonstrable on his history chart. One poor fellow whose right arm was infected with gas bacillus was so anxious to save it that we left it on too long and general blood poisoning set in. He was on the dying list. The Government under these circumstances would pay the expenses of a wife or mother to come over and say the last good-bye. After the message went, it seemed that our friend could not last till their arrival, and the colonel decided as a last chance to try intra-venous injections of Eusol, the powerful antiseptic in use at that time in all the hospitals. On entering the ward the next morning the nurse told me with a smiling face, "B. is ever so much better. I think that he will pull through all right." "Then the Eusol injection has done good, I suppose?" "His wife and mother came last night and sat up with him"--and I saw a twinkle in the corner of her eye. Eusol injections are now considered inert.