Now I had to get back down the other road before it began to grow light, and, as I truly imagined, deliver my message before I died. Half a mile inside the Hun lines, after spending two hours up to my shoulders in water on a November night my condition is better imagined than described. I ate a sodden mass of crumbs and bully that had once been sandwiches in my pocket and finished the rum. I was nearly caught in getting to the downstream side of the bridge and lay shivering under a hedge for several minutes while a party marched by within three paces of my head. I think they were the working party off the road and I noticed that it was beginning to grow lighter—luckily the storm grew worse. Eventually I got on to the second road and crawled back along the water’s edge until I came to my last bridge—there was a German machine-gun party sitting right in the middle of it. My brain was still perfect, but I had lost all sense of feeling in my body—I wanted to cry—they sat there between me and England, and I believe I had some idea of getting up and asking them to let me go home. For a few minutes I had no more will power than a child. Then some of our shells came over and I could hear them bursting on the road over the bridge. There was only one way back and that was as I had come—through the water. I forgot all about the stream and waded in. The cold seemed to pull me together, although, God knows, nothing could be colder than my own body. There was a bit of dry land between the flood and the stream, but I got across without being seen—I was keeping close to the bridge in the hope of seeing something of it as I passed. If I couldn’t wade the stream I was done, but I determined to try even if my head was under water and I had to hold my breath. It was not more than five feet deep in the centre and I got across and so over the bank into the flood on the far side. I had still to keep to the water, as I was afraid there would be a patrol on the road in advance of the people on the bridge. A few of our shells were still falling on the road, and I could hear the angry hisses as the red-hot bits of steel rained into the water round about. I did about 200 yards like this and then I gave up—it was either the road or collapse and drown in the water. I got on to the road, worked back carefully until I felt safe, and then ran like the devil until I knew I was inside our posts. When I stopped I nearly fainted, so I set off again—my head pulling me up into the clouds like a bubble and my legs holding me to the road as if they were tons of lead. Eventually I came across some gunners and they marvelled at the whisky I drank. I told them I had been out scouting and slipped into some water—I didn’t really know what had happened just at the time—I had vague impressions of a mass of water and some Germans sitting on a bridge, refusing to let me go home. Then I fell asleep, just sat down bang on the mess floor and collapsed.