good-hearted man and took a personal interest in the camp kitchens, had built a cinema-hut within the camp, been reasonably mild in orderly room, and done his best not to drive returned soldiers too hard. I decided to leave Litherland somehow. I knew what the winter would be like with the mist coming up from the Mersey and hanging about the camp full of T.N.T. fumes. When I was there the winter before I used to sit in my hut and cough and cough until I was sick. The fumes tarnished all buttons and made our eyes smart. I considered going back to France but I knew this was absurd as yet. Since 1916 the fear of gas had been an obsession; in any unusual smell that I met I smelt gas—even a sudden strong scent of flowers in a garden was enough to set me trembling. And I knew that the noise of heavy shelling would be too much for me now. The noise of a motor-tyre exploding behind me would send me flat on my face or running for cover. So I decided to go to Palestine, where gas was not known and shell-fire was said to be inconsiderable in comparison with France. Siegfried wrote from Craiglockhart in August: ‘What do you think of the latest push? How splendid this attrition is! As Lord Crewe says: “We are not the least depressed.”’ I matched this with a remark of Lord Carson’s: ‘The necessary supply of heroes must be maintained at all costs.’ At my next medical board I asked to be passed in the category of B2. This meant: ‘Fit for garrison service at home.’ I reckoned on being sent to the Third Garrison Battalion of the regiment, now under canvas at Oswestry in Wales. From there, when I felt a bit better, I would get myself passed B1, which meant: ‘Fit for garrison service abroad,’ and would, in due course, go to a garrison battalion of the regiment in Egypt. Once there it would be easy to get passed A1 and join the Twenty-fourth or Twenty-fifth (new-army) Battalion in Palestine.