"I bet 'e's took some photographs--'e'll be over to-night. I reckon we're bloody lucky to be at a C.C.S." "D'yer think 'e wouldn't bomb a C.C.S.?" "Course 'e wouldn't--'e knows as well as what we do that there's some of 'is own wounded at C.C.S.'s." "Yer've got some bleed'n' 'opes--do anythink, 'e would. Didn't yer see it in the papers? 'E bombed a French C.C.S. at Verd'n an' knocked out umpteen wounded." "I bet that's all bloody lies--yer can't believe nothin' what's in the papers." "Can't yer! If yer don't it's because yer don't want ter. I believe yer a bleed'n' Fritz yerself, always stickin' up fer the bastard. Everythink what's in the papers is true--the Government wouldn't allow it if it wasn't! That's got yer, ain't it?" "Yer want ter look at it a bit more broad-minded. Course 'e makes mistakes sometimes like anybody else--'ow do 'e know it's a C.C.S.--'e can't see no Red Crorss at night?" "Mistakes be blowed--'e knows what's what, you take my word for it ..." We gathered idly round the disputants, glad of a distraction that would help to pass the time. A third person joined in the argument: "If 'e bombs 'orspitals an' C.C.S.'s it's our own bloody fault. Look at our C.C.S. 'ere. There's a ordnance park and a R.E. dump up the road. There's a railway in front an' a sidin' where troops is always detrainin'. Then there's a gas dump over yonder. An' if we're bloody fools an' leave the lights on at night, 'ow can 'e tell what's what when everything's mixed up together? Why the bloody 'ell don't they put C.C.S.'s away from dumps an' railways? Why don't they stick 'em right in the fields somewhere? I bet we'll cop it one o' these nights, an' serve us right too." German aeroplanes had passed overhead almost every clear windless night, but the buzz of propellers, that often went on for hours, and the dull boom of bombs exploding far away had never caused anything more than slight uneasiness and apprehension. One night, after we had been at the C.C.S. for about a month, we heard the uproar of a distant air-raid. Early the next morning a number of motor-ambulances arrived with their loads of wounded men. A camp, a mile or two from the station, had been bombed and fifty men had been killed and many more wounded. One of the "cases" brought into the theatre had been hit on the forehead. The bomb-fragment had not penetrated the skull, but had passed along its surface. The scalp hung over the forehead loosely like an enormous flap, the red, jagged edge nearly touching the eyebrows. Since then I thought of this man every time there was an air-raid.