By way of transport for their chattels the Medical Blokes have a cart, called Maltese, a square contrivance on two wheels and no springs, drawn by three horses abreast. You can pick it out on the road at the tail end of the Regimental transport in company with the water-cart. It is invariably overloaded with what looks like a lunatic’s purchases at a bargain auction sale—or somebody’s goods undergoing a back street removal—baskets, bottles, barrels, boxes, bedding, brushes, blankets, bivvies, buckets, to say nothing of all the things which begin with other letters of the alphabet. The driver of the cart is not a Medical Bloke; he is a Philistine from the transport lines. [Illustration] There are cinema-and-picture-nourished imaginations at Home who fancy war as one unending, crimson, bloody pageant of battle, whereas it is merely a different sort of humdrum existence from their own, with occasional violent patches of excitement. Also, they worship the A.M.C. man as the Red Cross Hero of the Piece, whereas ... never mind. But you will grant me that, of all the A.M.C. personnel, the Medical Bloke gets nearest to the heroic rôle. He shares the hazards of a fighting unit; he is an all-but combatant. When the squadrons go out to fight he sloughs all his bulky baggage, puts gauze, wool, bandages, iodine and scissors into his haversack, and follows. Comes at dawn—we have branded dawn for ever as the battle hour—a moment when a ragged, scattered line of men begin to walk forward up the gentle slope of a low ridge. This is attack. The split and scatter of shrapnel, the hiss-bang-crash of H.E., and z-z-z-en of flying fragments, make death a chance in the shallow gully. But the top of the ridge is the edge of open, machine gun-swept country. It is a hundred yards to the crest—and death for someone. This Medical Bloke, the wind well up, has shrunk himself into a crevice and waits for a call. He desires nothing better than to stay there. He watches the men walking up the slope—such everyday, wise, silly, plain, good, bad, smart, childish men—just simply walking up the slope. And in that moment our Medical Bloke realizes that they are better men than he, because they are walking up that slope of which _he_ is afraid. Are they better? He is walking, rather slowly, up the slope now. He runs a few steps and drops behind cover on the crest, and waits for the need that will call him. Fate grants him a few minutes’ spell, and then puts him to the test. “Stretcher-bearers!” they cry to the left. The Medical Bloke can see two men bending over the third, and he faces one of those decisions which mould character. Quite properly, he may wait until they carry the man to him, behind cover (there are troopers whose hazardous duty it is to act as stretcher-bearers), or he may walk out and help. He walks out as steady as he can; it is quicker and ... well, what peculiar right has a Medical Bloke to the safety of cover when the men are “out there”? [Illustration]